Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday May 10 2007 - (813)

Thursday May 10 2007 edition
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Bush Told Iraq War Is Harming The GOP 2007-05-10 02:42:45 House Republican moderates, in a remarkably blunt White House meeting, warned President Bush this week that his pursuit of the war in Iraq is risking the future of the Republican Party and that he cannot count on GOP support for many more months. The meeting, which ran for an hour and a half Tuesday afternoon, was disclosed by participants yesterday as the House prepared to vote this evening on a spending bill that could cut funding for the Iraq war as early as July. GOP moderates told Bush they would stay united against the latest effort by House Democrats to end U.S. involvement in the war. Even Senate Democrats called the House measure unrealistic. But the meeting between 11 House Republicans, Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, White House political adviser Karl Rove and presidential press secretary Tony Snow was perhaps the clearest sign yet that patience in the party is running out. The meeting, organized by Rep. Charlie Dent (Pennsylvania), one of the co-chairs of the moderate "Tuesday Group," included Reps. Thomas M. Davis III (Virginia), Michael N. Castle (Delaware), Todd R. Platts (Pennsylvania), Jim Ramstad (Minnesota) and Jo Ann Emerson (Missouri). Read The Full Story Shaha Riza: In The Sadow Of A Scandal 2007-05-10 02:41:52 She is the invisible woman at the center of the storm swirling around embattled World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz. Serious, discreet and strong-willed, Shaha Ali Riza has been variously described as Wolfowitz's "girlfriend," his "female companion" and, according to Salon.com, his "neoconcubine." Yet little beyond labels is publicly known about the 52-year-old British citizen who has been dating Wolfowitz, one of Washington's most high-profile and powerful men, for the past seven years. People close to Riza have encouraged her to go public and tell her side of the story, but she remains silent. When a friend is asked how Riza is feeling at the moment, the friend, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation, says, "What would you expect? How would you like to be portrayed as somebody's bimbo when you're a highly educated person who has actually worked hard to make life better for women and civil society in the Middle East and has actually achieved a lot." Read The Full Story Wednesday, The Beginning Of The End For Tony Blair 2007-05-10 02:41:03 Intellpuke: There are two articles here about British Prime Minister Tony Blair's political legacy. The first is by the political editor of the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper and, beneath that, you will find the Washington Post's take on the same event. That event is Blair's announcement, anticipated Thursday, that he will be stepping down as Prime Minister. The Guardian's article follows: Tony Blair will Thursday return to Durham's Trimdon Labour Club, and the room where he launched his Labour leadership campaign on June 11, 1994, to announce that he is standing down as party leader, before finally endorsing Gordon Brown as his successor. Blair wants to bring down the curtain on his time in high office in the place where he began his fight to succeed John Smith and create the New Labour electoral success story. He will inform the cabinet Thursday morning before flying to his Sedgefield constituency to announce his decision at noon amid the party workers who first selected him as their parliamentary candidate on May 20, 1983, at the age of 30. He is expected to make a personal speech that will insist he is a product of Labour and that his government has left Britain stronger than he found it. Read The Full Story U.S. House Passes Ban On Gifts From Student Lenders 2007-05-10 02:38:00 The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to ban gifts and payments by student loan  companies to universities, showing bipartisan resolve to clean up the $85 billion industry. The vote, 414 to 3, demonstrated how politically potent the issue of paying for college has become at a time when tuition is steadily rising and millions of students depend on borrowing to finance college. “With this vote,” said Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who leads the House education committee, “the House has taken a huge step in the right direction to put a stop to those practices and make sure that the student loan programs operate on the level, in the best interests of students and families trying to pay for college.” The bill passed a day before Education Secretary Margaret Spellings was scheduled to testify before the House education committee about oversight of the industry. Read The Full Story U.S. Senate Votes To Give FDA Sweeping New Powers 2007-05-09 15:40:01 By a vote of 93 to 1, the Senate passed a bill this afternoon that gives the Food and Drug Administration sweeping new power to police drug safety, order changes in drug labels, and restrict the use and distribution of medicines found to pose serious risks to consumers. The bill calls for a fundamental change in the philosophy and operations of the F.D.A., requiring the agency to focus on the entire life cycle of a drug - not just the years prior to its approval, but also the experience of patients who later take it. Senators said the bill was a response to a widespread loss of confidence in the ability of the F.D.A. to protect consumers against the dangers of drugs like Vioxx, a popular painkiller withdrawn from the market in 2004. The bill would carry out many recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences and appears broadly acceptable to the House. The Bush administration has not actively opposed the measure and many drug manufacturers support it. Read The Full Story 4 More Arrested In 2005 London Terror Attacks 2007-05-09 15:38:43 British police Wednesday arrested three men and the widow of a suicide bomber involved in the terror attack on the London transit system in 2005 on suspicion they helped in the atrocity that killed 52 people. Three of the early morning arrests, the second round of arrests in six weeks in connection with the attack, were in the West Yorkshire region of Britain where three of the four suicide bombers lived, and the fourth was in the West Midlands region. The arrests suggested that after a long period of investigation, with little early success, the police were beginning to piece together how the plot worked and who else, aside from the four suicide bombers, was responsible. Read The Full Story U.N.: Biofuel Threatens To Bring Food Shortages, Increase Poverty 2007-05-09 01:47:08 The global rush to switch from oil to energy derived from plants will drive deforestation, push small farmers off the land and lead to serious food shortages and increased poverty unless carefully managed, says the most comprehensive survey yet completed of energy crops. The United Nations report, compiled by all 30 of the world organization's agencies, points to crops like palm oil, maize, sugar cane, soya and jatropha. Rich countries want to see these extensively grown for fuel as a way to reduce their own climate changing emissions. Their production could help stabilize the price of oil, open up new markets and lead to higher commodity prices for the poor. But the U.N. urges governments to beware their human and environmental impacts, some of which could have irreversible consequences. Read The Full Story Pentagon To Deploy 35,000 Troops To Iraq 2007-05-09 01:46:13 The Pentagon announced Tuesday that 35,000 soldiers in 10 Army combat brigades will begin deploying to Iraq  in August as replacements, making it possible to sustain the increase of U.S. troops there until at least the end of this year. U.S. commanders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that heightened troop levels, announced by President Bush in January, will need to last into the spring of 2008. The military has said it would assess in September how well its counterinsurgency strategy, intended to pacify Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, is working. "The surge needs to go through the beginning of next year for sure," said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day commander for U.S. military operations in Iraq. The new requirement of up to 15-month tours for active-duty soldiers will allow the troop increase to last until spring, said Odierno, who favors keeping experienced forces in place for now. Read The Full Story In Brazil, Pope To Face A Church Losing Hold 2007-05-09 01:45:03 When Pope Benedict XVI lands here Wednesday for his first visit to Latin America since becoming pontiff, he will set foot in a region considered by many here to be the heart of his church, home to nearly half the world's Roman Catholics. A clear challenge awaits him: to persuade them to stay true to a church that is losing thousands of adherents throughout the region every day. Latin America is still predominantly Catholic, but not like it used to be. In Brazil, for example, as evangelical Pentecostalism has spread, the country's population has gone from being 89 percent Catholic in 1980 to about 64 percent today, according to a survey released this week by the Brazilian polling firm DataFolha. Read The Full Story After Arrest, HBO Chief Takes Leave Of Absence 2007-05-09 01:44:08 The chairman and chief executive of HBO, Chris Albrecht, announced yesterday that he was taking a leave of absence after being charged with assaulting a girlfriend in a Las Vegas parking lot early on Sunday.. Albrecht said that he was an alcoholic and that the incident, which he did not characterize, had resulted from a lapse in his sobriety. In an e-mail message yesterday to all HBO employees, Albrecht said that he was “deeply sorry for what occurred in Las Vegas this weekend” and that it represented “a wake-up call to me of a weakness I thought I had overcome long ago.” “I had been a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous for 13 years,” he wrote. “Two years ago, I decided that I could handle drinking again. Clearly, I was wrong.” Read The Full Story	Fires, Extreme Weather Befall U.S. 2007-05-10 02:42:23 Nature's fury made life miserable Wednesday from one end of the nation to the other, with people forced out of their homes by wildfires near both coasts and the Canadian border and by major flooding in the Midwest. And although the calendar still said spring, the first named storm of the year was whipping up surf on the beaches of the Southeast. Overall, it wasn't quite a day for the record books. ''It's a major flood,'' National Weather Service meteorologist Suzanne Fortin said Wednesday of the flooding in Missouri. ''It won't be a record breaker, but it will be in the top three.'' Read The Full Story 9th U.S. Attorney Firing Revealed 2007-05-10 02:41:30 The former U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Missouri, Todd P. Graves, said Wednesday that he was asked to step down from his job by a senior Justice Department official in January 2006, months before eight other federal prosecutors would be fired by the Bush administration. Graves said he was told simply that he should resign to "give another person a chance." He said he did not oppose the department's request, because he had already been planning to return to private practice. He did appeal to Missouri's senior senator to try to persuade the White House to allow him to remain long enough to prosecute a final, important case - involving the slaying of a pregnant woman and kidnapping of her 8-month fetus. Justice officials rejected the request. The former prosecutor's disclosure, in an interview on the eve of a second appearance today by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzalesbefore lawmakers investigating the firings, means that the administration began moving to replace U.S. attorneys five months earlier than was previously known. It also means that at least nine prosecutors were asked to resign last year, a deviation from repeated suggestions by Gonzales and other senior Justice officials in congressional testimony and other public statements that the firings did not extend beyond the eight prosecutors already known to have been forced out. Read The Full Story Psychiatrists, Children And The Drug Industry's Role 2007-05-10 02:39:30 When Anya Bailey developed an eating disorder after her 12th birthday, her mother took her to a psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota who prescribed a powerful antipsychotic drug called Risperdal. Created for schizophrenia, Risperdal is not approved to treat eating disorders, but increased appetite is a common side effect and doctors may prescribe drugs as they see fit. Anya gained weight but within two years developed a crippling knot in her back. She now receives regular injections of Botox to unclench her back muscles. She often awakens crying in pain. Isabella Bailey, Anya’s mother, said she had no idea that children might be especially susceptible to Risperdal’s side effects. Nor did she know that Risperdal and similar medicines were not approved at the time to treat children, or that medical trials often cited to justify the use of such drugs had as few as eight children taking the drug by the end. Read The Full Story Atlantic's First Named Storm Forms Early 2007-05-09 15:40:12 The first named storm of the year formed Wednesday off the southeastern U.S. coast, more than three weeks before the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season, forecasters said. Subtropical Storm Andrea had top sustained winds around 45 mph Wednesday afternoon and didn't appear to be much of a threat, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Still, a tropical storm watch was issued for parts of Georgia and Florida, meaning tropical storm conditions are possible within 36 hours. "We're not looking at this system strengthening significantly," said Richard Pasch, a senior hurricane specialist at the center. The storm's wind, however, has been blowing smoke from wildfires across Georgia and Florida. Read The Full Story German Police Conduct Raids Across Country Ahead Of G-8 Meeting 2007-05-09 15:39:43 Hundreds of police on Wednesday raided the offices and apartments of left-wing activists suspected of planning to disrupt next month's Group of Eight summit, and security officials tightened border controls ahead of the gathering. The crackdown was an attempt to ward off the violence that has marred past summits, particularly in 2001 in Genoa, Italy, when police and protesters clashed in the streets for days. Prosecutors said they were investigating more than 18 people suspected of organizing what they called a terrorist group that planned to carry out firebombings and other violent attacks. Some 900 federal and local police officers in cities including Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen searched about 40 premises used by several anti-globalization groups, they said. Read The Full Story Doctors Reap Millions For Anemia Drugs That May Not Be Safe 2007-05-09 01:48:19 Two of the world’s largest drug companies are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to doctors every year in return for giving their patients anemia medicines, which regulators now say may be unsafe at commonly used doses. The payments are legal, but very few people outside of the doctors who receive them are aware of their size. Critics, including prominent cancer and kidney doctors, say the payments give physicians an incentive to prescribe the medicines at levels that might increase patients’ risks of heart attacks or strokes. Industry analysts estimate that such payments - to cancer doctors and the other big users of the drugs, kidney dialysis centers - total hundreds of millions of dollars a year and are an important source of profit for doctors and the centers. The payments have risen over the last several years, as the makers of the drugs, Amgen and Johnson & Johnson, compete for market share and try to expand the overall business. Read The Full Story V.A. Benefits System For PTSD Victims Is Criticized 2007-05-09 01:46:48 The government's methods for deciding compensation for emotionally disturbed veterans have little basis in science, are applied unevenly and may even create disincentives for veterans to get better, an influential scientific advisory group said Tuesday. The critique by the Institute of Medicine, which provides advice to the federal government on medical science issues, comes at a time of sharp increases in cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among veterans and skyrocketing costs for disability compensation. The study was undertaken at the request of the Department of Veterans Affairs amid fears that troops returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will produce a tidal wave of new PTSD cases. Between 1999 and 2004, benefit payments for PTSD increased nearly 150 percent, from $1.72 billion to $4.28 billion, the report noted. Compensation payments for disorders related to psychological trauma account for an outsize portion of V.A.'s budget - 8.7 percent of all claims, but 20.5 percent of compensation payments. Read The Full Story Nigerian Militants Destroy 3 Oil Pipelines In Oil-Rich Delta 2007-05-09 01:45:47 Militants in Nigeria's volatile oil-producing region destroyed three pipelines in raids early Tuesday as part of what they said would be a rising campaign of destruction leading up to the inauguration of the nation's new president on May 29. Political protests against the election of Umaru Yar'Adua have fizzled in Nigeria since he won the presidency on April 21 in a vote that observers said was profoundly flawed nationwide and, in many places, simply rigged. Rising discontent appears to have fueled a fresh round of conflict in the Niger Delta. The targets of frustration include not just Yar'Adua, a soft-spoken northern governor with little national profile before his run for the presidency, but outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo, who has alternated between being conciliatory and confrontational with militants who in recent years have waged a low-level guerrilla war against oil companies working in Nigeria. Read The Full Story Giuliani Assailed Over Abortion 2007-05-09 01:44:41 GOP rivals pounced on former New York mayor Rudolphy W. Giuliani this week after fumbling explanations of his support for abortion rights again exposed his biggest vulnerability in the quest for the Republican presidential nomination. Giuliani's rambling and sometimes contradictory responses on abortion during last week's Republican presidential debate in Californiaprovided an opening for the other GOP hopefuls, including Sen. John McCain (Arizona), who declared Monday that an abortion rights candidate violates one of the "fundamental principles of a conservative." That was followed up Tuesday by the revival of stories noting that Giuliani had contributed to Planned Parenthood  in the 1990s, sparking outrage on conservative blogs and a lengthy, uncomfortable appearance on Laura Ingraham's radio program. Read The Full Story
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