Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday May 22 2007 - (813)

Tuesday May 22 2007 edition
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Doctors, Legislators Resist Pharmaceutical Companies' Prying Eyes 2007-05-22 01:03:18 Seattle, Washington, pediatrician Rupin Thakkar's first inkling that the pharmaceutical industry was peering over his shoulder and into his prescription pad came in a letter from a drug representative about the generic drops Thakkar prescribes to treat infectious pinkeye. In the letter, the salesperson wrote that Thakkar was causing his patients to miss more days of school than they would if he put them on Vigamox, a more expensive brand-name medicine made by Alcon Laboratories. "My initial thought was 'How does she know what I'm prescribing?' " said Thakkar. "It feels intrusive. ... I just feel strongly that medical encounters need to be private." He is not alone. Many doctors object to drugmakers' common practice of contracting with data-mining companies to track exactly which medicines physicians prescribe and in what quantities - information marketers and salespeople use to fine-tune their efforts. The industry defends the practice as a way of better educating physicians about new drugs. Read The Full Story Federal Prosecutors Furious At Web Sites That Expose Informants, Undercover Officers 2007-05-22 01:02:42 There are three “rats of the week” on the home page of whosarat.com, a Web site devoted to exposing the identities of witnesses cooperating with the government. The site posts their names and mug shots, along with court documents detailing what they have agreed to do in exchange for lenient sentences. Last week, for instance, the site featured a Florida man who agreed in September to plead guilty to cocaine possession but not gun charges in exchange for his commitment to work “in an undercover role to contact and negotiate with sources of controlled substances.” The site says it has identified 4,300 informers and 400 undercover agents, many of them from documents obtained from court files available on the Internet. “The reality is this,” said a spokesman for the site, who identified himself as Anthony Capone. “Everybody has a choice in life about what they want to do for a living. Nobody likes a tattletale.” Federal prosecutors are furious, and the Justice Department has begun urging the federal courts to make fundamental changes in public access to electronic court files by removing all plea agreements from them - whether involving cooperating witnesses or not. Read The Full Story Supporters Urge Musharraf To Alter Course Or Lose Power 2007-05-22 01:02:00 After a series of political blunders in the last two months, Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is being advised by his political supporters to make a dramatic change of course or risk losing power amid more chaos and bloodshed. Members of the ruling party, the Pakistani Muslim League, who provide General Musharraf’s base of support in Parliament, say that nationwide protests since the suspension of the country’s chief justice in March, and violent clashes that left 42 people dead in Karachi on May 12, have cast a pall over his leadership. They are encouraging General Musharraf to strike a compromise with the Supreme Court justice, who did not shy away from challenges to the government and whose removal has been protested as a threat to the judiciary. Read The Full Story Immigration Bill Passes First Test - Sort Of 2007-05-22 01:01:24 The Senate voted last night to move forward on an overhaul of immigration laws, but even proponents of the delicate compromise proposal conceded that the furor over the deal was surpassing their expectations and endangering the plan. The 69 to 23 vote masked deep troubles from the right flank of the Senate, as well as from the left. Opponents of even conducting a debate on the measure included some unexpected voices, such as freshman Sens. Jon Tester  (D-Montana) and Bernard Sanders, an independent liberal from Vermont. Several conservatives - and some liberals - made it clear that they cast a vote to proceed only in order to fundamentally change the proposed legislation in the coming days. With dozens of amendments planned, traps being laid by opponents could upset the fragile coalition that drafted the measure. What's more, Senate leaders gave up hope last night that they could pass the bill this week, ensuring it will be left hanging over a week-long Memorial Day recess. That will allow the opposition to gather strength before a final vote can be scheduled next month. Read The Full Story Iran's Secret Plan For Summer Offensive To Force U.S. Out Of Iraq 2007-05-22 01:00:45 Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaeda elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering U.S. Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, U.S. officials say. "Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq and it's a very dangerous course for them to be following. They are already committing daily acts of war against U.S. and British forces," a senior U.S. official in Baghdad warned. "They [Iran] are behind a lot of high-profile attacks meant to undermine U.S. will and British will, such as the rocket attacks on Basra palace and the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. The attacks are directed by the Revolutionary Guard who are connected right to the top [of the Iranian government]." The official said U.S. commanders were bracing for a nationwide, Iranian-orchestrated summer offensive, linking al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents to Tehran's Shia militia allies, that Iran hoped would trigger a political mutiny in Washington and a U.S. retreat. "We expect that al-Qaeda and Iran will both attempt to increase the propaganda and increase the violence prior to Petraeus's report in September [when the U.S. commander General David Petraeus will report to Congress on President George Bush's controversial, six-month security "surge" of 30,000 troop reinforcements]," said the official. Read The Full Story U.S. Supreme Court: Parents Don't Need Lawyers In Special-Education Cases 2007-05-21 14:27:22 Parents need not hire a lawyer to sue public school districts over their children's special education needs, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. The decision came in the case of an autistic boy from Ohio, whose parents argued they were effectively denied access to the courts because they could not afford a lawyer. Federal law gives every child the right to a free appropriate public education, which in the case of special needs children sometimes means enrollment in a private facility. Read The Full Story Lebanese Army Shells Tripoli Refugee Camp 2007-05-21 14:26:59 Lebanese troops pounded a Palestinian refugee camp with artillery and tank fire for a second day Monday, raising huge columns of smoke as they battled a militant group suspected of ties to al-Qaeda in the worst violence since the end of the 1975-90 civil war. Nearly 50 combatants were killed in the first day of fighting Sunday, but it was not known how many civilians have been killed inside the Nahr el-Bared camp on the outskirts of the northern port city of Tripoli. Palestinian officials in the camp reported at least nine civilians were killed Monday, along with 40 wounded. The figures could not be confirmed because emergency workers or security officials have not been able to get in. The White House said it supports Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora's efforts to deal with fighting, and the State Department defended the Lebanese army, saying it was working in a "legitimate manner" against "provocations by violent extremists" operating in the camp. Read The Full Story General Electric To Sell Plastics Division To Saudi Firm 2007-05-21 14:26:17 General Electric agreed Monday to sell its plastics division for $11.6 billion to the largest public company in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation. The deal for the G.E. division, which has 11,000 employees in 20 countries, is one of the largest yet by the Saudi company, known as Sabic. Sabic prevailed in a sometimes crowded race, with other top bidders being Basell, the Dutch plastics maker, and Apollo Management, the American private equity firm led by Leon Black. In a statement, Mohamed al-Mady, the vice chairman and chief executive of Sabic, said: “This business is complementary to our existing business without any overlaps. Sabic’s intention is to grow the business globally.” Read The Full Story Iraq Draws Up Plans For U.S. Departure 2007-05-21 14:25:41 Iraq's military is drawing up plans on how to cope if U.S.-led forces leave the country quickly, the defense minister said Monday. The statement by Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi marked the first time a senior Iraqi official has spoken publicly about the possibility of a quick end to the U.S.-led mission. It was unclear if the remarks were more than routine contingency planning. ''The army plans on the basis of a worst-case scenario so as not to allow any security vacuum,'' said al-Obeidi. ''There are meetings with political leaders on how we can deal with a sudden pullout.'' Read The Full Story Meet The All-Broad Fraud Squad: Mortgage Fraud Is Up, But Not In Their Back Yard 2007-05-21 01:34:22 The three women call themselves the All-Broad Fraud Squad. Nearly a decade ago, concerned that mortgage fraud was threatening their pastoral towns, the women - two full-time mothers and a mortgage executive then in their 40s - got together to write down license plate numbers of suspicious cars in their neighborhoods, scour public documents for housing titles and deeds and seek the help of local law enforcement. At first they were ignored, written off as bored housewives. Today, the three women - Ann Fulmer, Alicia Sheppard and Julia Barrette - are helping train F.B.I. agents, speaking to lending associations across the country and lecturing college students on how to identify mortgage fraud. “For us in the industry, we could deal with mortgage fraud during the day but go to our homes at night and forget about it,” said Matt Wade with Fannie Mae in Atlanta. “But for these gutsy women, it was personal.” Read The Full Story Coming Soon: The Shopping Channel Run By Pharmaceutical Companies 2007-05-21 01:33:56 Four of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies are proposing to launch a television station to tell the public about their drugs, amid strenuous lobbying across Europe by the industry for an end to restrictions aimed at protecting patients. Pharma TV would be a dedicated interactive digital channel funded by the industry with health news and features but, at its heart, would be detailed information from drug companies about their medicines. A 10-minute pilot DVD, seen by the Guardian, featured a white-coated doctor discussing breast cancer and a woman patient who reassured viewers that "there are many new treatments available". Under the proposals, viewers could use their remote control to click on treatment options and read what manufacturers have to say about the latest branded breast cancer drugs. Four companies, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Novartis and Procter & Gamble, are behind the pilot, which they are offering to the European commission as a way to give patients more information. The commission is consulting on potential changes to the regulations that ban all direct-to-consumer advertising of medicinal drugs. Read The Full Story Iraq Study Group Report May Get A Second Look 2007-05-21 01:33:19 After an initially tepid reception from policymakers, the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group are getting a second look from the White House and Congress, as officials continue to scour for bipartisan solutions to salvage the American engagement in Iraq. With negotiations continuing this week on a new war funding bill, the administration is strongly signaling that it would accept the idea of requiring the Iraqi government to meet political benchmarks or else risk losing some assistance from the United States. That was one of the key proposals from the group headed by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Indiana congressman Lee H. Hamilton, but it was initially dismissed by the White House when first proposed last December. The administration is also preparing for its first substantive discussions with Iran, to begin on Memorial Day, not long after its first high-level talks with Syria in more than two years. The Iraq Study Group had strongly urged such regional diplomacy aimed at fostering a political settlement and bringing down the sectarian violence in Baghdad. "They are coming our way," Hamilton said in a recent interview. Read The Full Story Guantanamo Detainee Hicks Returns To Australia 2007-05-21 01:32:41 David M. Hicks, the first of hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees convicted under Congress' new rules for enemy-combatant terrorism trials, arrived home in Australia Sunday to finish his prison sentence after more than five years in U.S. custody, the Pentagonand the Australian government announced. Hicks, 31, will serve nine months in isolation at a maximum-security prison near his home town of Adelaide, under a March 30 plea deal in which he confessed to material support of terrorists and received a suspended seven-year sentence. The high school dropout, Muslim convert and al-Qaeda recruit fought for two hours alongside the Taliban before he sold his rifle for taxi fare and was captured trying to escape Afghanistan in December 2001. He will be eligible for release Dec. 29. "It was a clear look of relief and joy that he was back in the land of his countrymen," Hicks' attorney, David H.B. McLeod, told reporters outside Yatala Labor Prison, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "He was generally very relieved and grateful to the Australian taxpayers for bringing him home." Read The Full Story	Commentary: America's Reputation Is In Tatters, But After Bush Recovery Could Be Swift 2007-05-22 01:02:58 Intellpuke: In the following commentary, Max Hastings writes that the next U.S. president will inherit a legacy of global mistrust. Restoration of is authority must begin with a painful exit from Iraq. Mr. Hastings commentary, which appears in the Guardian edition for Tuesday, May 22, 2007, follows: Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter lambasted Tony Blair over the weekend for participating in George Bush's Iraq adventure. Carter might show a little more gratitude. It is Bush's achievement to have displaced him from the ignominy of bottom place in the roll call of modern American chief executives. Historians will surely judge that Bush's two terms of office have done much more damage to U.S. interests, and indeed to those of the world, than Carter's blunders a generation ago. A few months ago I heard a British diplomat in Washington bemoan the horrors of the current administration. We must just somehow stagger through to the end, he muttered. I said that it seemed rash to assume the next U.S. president would be perfectly to the taste of Britain, or the world, because few people elected to the White House ever are. He said: "Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be worse than what we have got now." This has become hard to dispute. Whatever happens between now and January 2009, America's next president will inherit a legacy of global mistrust, alienation and loss of respect unknown in modern times. It is unlikely that President Bush will admit the logic of defeat in Iraq and start withdrawing. It will fall to his successor to face that humiliation, which will dominate the first stage of a new administration. Read The Full Story Environmentalists: Fence Along U.S-Mexican Border Could Imperil Wildlife 2007-05-22 01:02:18 Nancy Brown drives a government truck slowly past mossy ponds, thick shrouds of beardlike Spanish moss and majestic ebony trees. As the truck rounds a bend near the greenish-brown Rio Grande, a bobcat scampers ahead. Somewhere in the forest, well-camouflaged by evolution, are ocelots and jaguarundi, both endangered species of cats. These are some of the natural wonders in the Rio Grande Valley that Ms. Brown and other wildlife enthusiasts fear could be spoiled by the fences and adjacent roads the government plans to erect along the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants and smugglers. Environmentalists have spent decades acquiring and preserving 90,000 riverfront acres of Texas scrub and forest and protecting their wildlife. Now they fear that the hundreds of miles of border fences will undo their work and kill some land animals by cutting them off from the Rio Grande, the only source of fresh water. Read The Full Story U.S. Gasoline Prices Close To 1981 Record 2007-05-22 01:01:37 Gasoline prices last week came within a half penny of tying the modern era's inflation-adjusted record set in March 1981, the U.S. Energy Departmentsaid Monday. The nationwide price of unleaded regular gasoline hit $3.218 a gallon, barely below the adjusted $3.223 a gallon level 26 years ago. Behind the rise were high crude oil prices and disruptions in output at oil refineries. The 1981 record was set two years after the Iranian revolution brought down the pro-American shah, seven months after war broke out between Iraq and Iran and two months after President Ronald Reagan ended U.S. oil price and allocation controls. Read The Full Story American Scholar Is Charged With Trying To Topple Iran Government 2007-05-22 01:00:57 Noted American scholar and Potomac resident Haleh Esfandiari has been charged with "seeking to topple the ruling Islamic establishment," Tehran's state-controlled television reported Monday. Esfandiari was charged with setting up a network that was working "against the sovereignty" of Iran, the government outlet said. "This is an American-designed model with an attractive appearance that seeks the soft-toppling of the country," state television reported, according to the Associated Press. In a separate statement, Iran's intelligence ministry alleged that the 67-year-old grandmother, director of the Middle East program at the Smithsonian's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was involved in activities trying to foment a soft revolution. The Wilson Center denied the allegations. "Haleh was not engaged in any activities to undermine any government, including the Iranian government. Nor does the Wilson Center engage in such activities. ... There is not one scintilla of evidence to support these outrageous claims," said Lee H. Hamilton, Wilson Center director and co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, which in December urged U.S. diplomatic engagement with Iran. Read The Full Story Lebanon Death Toll Rises As Army Clashes With Islamist Militants 2007-05-22 00:59:51 Plumes of thick black smoke towered into the sky against a backdrop of the Mediterranean Monday as shells rained on a sprawling Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli. Shrouded in dust from the explosions and with fires breaking out in breeze block apartment buildings, Nahr el-Bared camp, home to 40,000 Palestinians, suffered a second day of intense fighting which raised the death toll in the latest crisis to engulf Lebanon to more than 70. Across lush green banana and citrus groves, Lebanese army troops ferried ammunition up and down a deserted strip of highway to the camp's three main entrances, amid heavy machine gun and small arms fire. Witnesses described bodies lying in the streets leading into the camp. Residents from the surrounding area took shelter, hugging the walls as explosions shook buildings. Read The Full Story Editorial: Why The Gonzales Scandal Matters 2007-05-21 14:27:11 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Monday, May 21, 2007. As Monica Goodling, a key player in the United States attorney scandal, prepares to testify before Congress on Wednesday, the administration’s strategy is clear. It has offered up implausible excuses, hidden the most damaging evidence and feigned memory lapses, while hoping that the public’s attention moves on. But this scandal is too important for the public or Congress to move on. This story should not end until Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is gone, and the serious damage that has been done to the Justice Department is repaired. The Justice Department is no ordinary agency. Its 93 United States attorney offices, scattered across the country, prosecute federal crimes ranging from public corruption to terrorism. These prosecutors have enormous power: they can wiretap people’s homes, seize property and put people in jail for life. They can destroy businesses, and affect the outcomes of elections. It has always been understood that although they are appointed by a president, usually from his own party, once in office they must operate in a nonpartisan way, and be insulated from outside pressures. This understanding has badly broken down. It is now clear that United States attorneys were pressured to act in the interests of the Republican Party, and lost their job if they failed to do so. The firing offenses of the nine prosecutors who were purged last year were that they would not indict Democrats, they investigated important Republicans, or they would not try to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups with baseless election fraud cases. Read The Full Story Diabetes Drug Avandia Tied To Heart Risks 2007-05-21 14:26:39 An article released today by The New England Journal of Medicine raised safety questions about the widely-used dibetes pill Avandia. An analysis of clinical trials concluded that the drug might significantly increase the risk of heart attacks. While noting possible weaknesses in data used in the analysis, an accompanying editorial calls for a Food and Drug Administration review and questions why physicians would prescribe Avandia, which is made by the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSMithKlineand known generically as rosiglitazone. The journal, a prestigious weekly, posted the paper on its Web site, ahead of its print publication June 14, a step the editors take with matters they consider to have public health importance. The journal’s editor, Dr. Jeffrey M. Drazen, said: “We view this as the best publicly available data on a very important question. It shows what we regard as a preliminary, but worrisome, signal about cardiovascular toxicity of this drug.” Read The Full Story Pfizer CFO, Research Head To Leave 2007-05-21 14:26:01 Chief Executive Jeffrey Kindler proved even those at the top aren't immune to an ongoing companywide transformation late Sunday in announcing the departure of Research and Development President John LaMattina and Chief Financial Officer Alan Levin. The news comes as the world's largest drug maker seeks to cut 10,000 jobs, or 10 percent of its work force, amid a tepid sales outlook in the near term. Kindler, the architect of the company's transformation, became Pfizer Inc.'s CEO and chairman last year. The 10,000 job cuts were first announced in January. Andy McCormick, a Pfizer spokesman, said the company is not disclosing how many jobs have already been cut but that the company is ''making progress'' on that front. In April, the company said it had ''completed a significant reduction and redeployment of the U.S. field force and began the elimination of large numbers of positions in other parts of the company.'' Read The Full Story Discord On The Immigration Accord 2007-05-21 01:34:33 There is little doubt about how grass-roots organizations feel about a bipartisan immigration compromise reached in the Senate: They don't like it. The New York Immigration Coalition issued a statement that called the proposal unacceptable, saying, "We say no to this deal." In California, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund vowed to oppose numerous provisions in the plan. In Massachusetts, an immigrant and refugee advocacy coalition said the deal was "immoral, unworkable and unacceptable." While the senators and Bush administration officials exchanged congratulations on Capitol Hill for reaching the compromise, supporters and opponents of illegal immigrants eyed the politicians warily and prepared for a legislative showdown as the proposal heads to the Senate floor this week. Read The Full Story Commentary: Michael Moore? Oh Yes, He's Got An Agenda 2007-05-21 01:34:07 Intellpuke: The following commentary by journalist and film critic Agnes Poirier appears in the Guardian edition for Monday, May 21, 2007. Ms. Poirier is an independent adviser on British films for the Cannes film festival. Her commentary, in which she says Michael Moore's new documentary film "Sicko" should be seen in Europe as well as the U.S., follows: The big guy with a baseball cap knows his stuff. He has a point to make and he makes it efficiently and amusingly. In the past his targets were General Motors ruining Flint, Michigan; the gun lobby as the culprit for America's crime culture; the lies behind the Iraq war. He's back with a vengeance with Sicko, premiered at the Cannes film festival on Saturday. His question: What has happened to the idea of universal healthcare in the United States? In four tidy acts, Michael Moore spells out the facts. Act one: 50 million Americans have no health cover, and 250 million who think they do, through costly health insurance schemes ($2,000 per person a year), are often denied treatment when they need it. A guy without cover who chopped off two of his fingers in a bout of do-it-yourself  was presented with an invoice for $12,000 to reattach his ring-finger and $60,000 for his forefinger. Being a romantic, and skint, he chose to get his ring-finger back. Read The Full Story Bush Presidency Worst In History, Says Former President Carter 2007-05-21 01:33:28 Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter unleashed a torrent of criticism against George Bush and Tony Blair over the weekend, in which he accused the Bush presidency of being the "worst in history" and said Blair's support had been abominable and subservient. Even for a former politician with a reputation for plain talking, Carter's blazing criticism took observers by surprise and had the Republican leadership responding in equally harsh measure. The White House spokesman Sunday called Carter "increasingly irrelevant", adding that his "reckless personal criticism is out there". In a newspaper interview, Carter said of the Bush years: "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." And speaking on BBC Radio 4, Carter criticized Blair, who leaves office next month, for his close relations with Bush, particularly concerning the Iraq war. Read The Full Story China To Take A $3 Billion In U.S. Equity Firm The Blackstone Group 2007-05-21 01:32:56 China's new state investment agency is taking a $3 billion stake in U.S. private equity firm The Blackstone Group, in a sign China plans to use its financial reserves to become a global investor. The agreement gives China's government a stake in the private equity boom sweeping the globe and hands a key alliance to Blackstone at a time foreign investors struggle to gain support from the Chinese government for takeovers of domestic assets. The announcement comes just days before this week's planned visit to the United States by Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi to discuss sticking points in trade. The talks are hosted by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. "If we are going to borrow from them, then we have to let them buy things," said William Overholt, director of the RAND Corp's Center for Asia Pacific Policy. Read The Full Story
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