Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday May 9 2007 - (813)

Wednesday May 9 2007 edition
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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 Six Arrested Over Plot To Kill U.S. Soldiers 2007-05-08 15:22:42 The FBI Monday arrested six men for allegedly plotting the mass killing of U.S. soldiers at a base in New Jersey and discussing attacks on two warships, it was revealed Tuesday. Four of the men were born in the Balkans, one in Jordan and one in Turkey. The six - who U.S. authorities said were Islamist radicals - had been under FBI surveillance since last year, and were alleged to have carried out training with guns in Pennsylvania's Poconos mountains. The FBI said it had managed to infiltrate the group and record conversations. Read The Full Story Justice Department Allows Immunity Deal For Ex-Gonzales Aide Goodling 2007-05-08 15:22:16 The Justice Department cleared the way Monday for a limited immunity deal between House investigators and Monica M. Goodling, a former top Justice aide who has refused to answer questions about her role in last year's firing of eight U.S. attorneys. The move means that Goodling is likely to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee on a broad range of questions about the firings that she helped coordinate, including the extent of involvement by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and the White House,said officials. Goodling, who resigned last month as Gonzales' senior counselor and White House liaison, has invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions from House and Senate investigators about the firings. She worked closely with D. Kyle Swampson, then Gonzales' chief of staff, on the dismissals and is also the subject of an internal Justice Department investigation of whether she weighed political affiliation in reviewing hiring decisions for career prosecutors. Read The Full Story China To Send Military Engineering Unit To Darfur 2007-05-08 15:21:37 China will send a military engineering unit to help strengthen the overtaxed African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, the Foreign Ministry announced Tuesday. A spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, did not say how many Chinese soldiers would be dispatched or what their duties would be, describing them as "multifunctional" military engineers. U.S. officials in Washington estimated the number at around 300, the Reuters news agency reported. The decision to help bolster the 7,000 African Union peacekeepers was seen mainly as a gesture to underline Chinese support for a U.N.-administered solution to the four-year-old conflict in western Sudan's Darfur region. Since an armed secessionist revolt began there in 2003, an estimated 200,000 people have been killed and nearly 2.5 million have been driven from their homes. Read The Full Story Exploded Star The Brightest Ever Seen 2007-05-08 02:27:09 Astronomers have spotted a cataclysmic explosion that marked the death of a huge, distant star in a blast five times as bright and powerful as any they had seen previously. They said Monday that a similar fate may be imminent for a star in Earth's galactic neighborhood. The size and energy of the newly recorded blast, 240 million light-years away, have already begun to transform scientific understanding of how especially large stars explode, and have left awestruck researchers concerned - and a little excited - about what might happen to the similarly enormous and unstable star closer to home. If that nearer star, named Eta Carinae, blows up like the one just discovered, they said, it could possibly spew dangerous radiation in Earth's direction. More likely, however, it would erupt into the most luminous star in our sky - visible during the day and bright enough to let people read unaided at night for weeks and perhaps months. The new discovery of a massive star exploding in a runaway thermonuclear reaction is especially exciting for scientists, who said it gives them important clues to the nature of the early universe and the formation and destruction of the earliest stars. Read The Full Story Wolfowitz Scandal May Jeopardize World Bank Funds 2007-05-08 02:26:38 The leadership crisis engulfing the World Bank began with talk of favoritism for a girlfriend and ill feeling about the Iraq war but, as the bank's board this week considers the fate of President Paul D. Wolfowitz, the ethics controversy has swelled into a test of who controls the institution and its future relevance in battling global poverty. The outcome could determine whether governments from Berlin to Buenos Aires would be willing to contribute new funds in support of the bank's mission. "There's a real danger because of this Wolfowitz stuff that donors are going to find a reason not to give," said Elizabeth Stuart, senior policy adviser for Oxfam International, an anti-poverty group in Washington, D.C. 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 Car Bomb Kills 16 In Shiite Holy City Of Kufa 2007-05-08 15:22:31 A suicide car bomber flattened a restaurant in a busy market in the Shiite holy city of Kufa on Tuesday, killing at least 16 people and wounding 70 in an attack sure to further inflame tensions between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite populations. In response, local authorities closed the entrances to Kufa and its sister holy city of Najaf - strongholds of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia - and imposed a vehicle ban around the revered shrines and mosques in the two towns, said Ahmed Duaible, a local government spokesman. The suicide attack came a day after Iraq's Sunni vice president threatened to leave the Shiite-dominated government unless key unspecified amendments to the constitution were made by May 15 - a move that would plunge Iraq into a political crisis. Read The Full Story Officer Injured In Kansas Tornado Dies 2007-05-08 15:21:56 Officer Robert Tim Buckman was rushing to warn rural residents of the approaching storm that had just destroyed Greensburg when the tornado crushed his squad car flung it 300 yards into a field. Buckman, 46, was critically injured and declared dead Tuesday morning, his son, Derick Buckman, told the Associated Press. He became the 10th person to die in Greensburg from the tornado that nearly obliterated the farming town Friday night. "He died being a hero," said Derick Buckman. "He was sworn to protect people and that's what he was doing the night he got picked up by a tornado." During his final hours, Buckman's 18-year-old daughter got married at his bedside, said Derick Buckman. The family's hometown preacher officiated. Read The Full Story September Could Be Key Deadline On Iraq War 2007-05-08 02:27:22 Congressional leaders from both political parties are giving President Bush a matter of months to prove that the Iraq war effort has turned a corner, with September looking increasingly like a decisive deadline. In that month, political pressures in Washington will dovetail with the military timeline in Baghdad. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, has said that by then he will have a handle on whether the current troop increase is having any impact on political reconciliation between Iraq's warring factions. And fiscal 2008, which begins Oct. 1, will almost certainly begin with Congress placing tough new strings on war funding. "Many of my Republican colleagues have been promised they will get a straight story on the surge by September," said Sen. Gordon Smith(R-Oregon). "I won't be the only Republican, or one of two Republicans, demanding a change in our disposition of troops in Iraq at that point. That is very clear to me." Read The Full Story Deal Is Offered For Wolfowitz Exit At World Bank 2007-05-08 02:26:54 Leading governments of Europe, mounting a new campaign to push Paul D. Wolfowitz from his job as World Bank president, signaled Monday that they were willing to let the United States choose the bank’s next chief, but only if Wolfowitz stepped down soon, European officials said. European officials had previously indicated that they wanted to end the tradition of the United States picking the World Bank leader. But now the officials are hoping to enlist American help in persuading Wolfowitz to resign voluntarily, rather than be rebuked or ousted. The goal, they said, is to avert a public rupture of the bank board over a vote, possibly later this week, to sanction Wolfowitz. Even if the vote is a reprimand, they said, it could effectively make it impossible for him to stay on. The Europeans worked to arrange a quick exit for Wolfowitz as a special bank committee concluded that he was guilty of breaking rules barring conflicts of interest in arranging for a pay raise and promotion for Shaha Ali Riza, his companion and a bank employee, in 2005. Read The Full Story Capitol Goes Ga Ga Over The Queen For A Day 2007-05-08 02:25:48 Queen Elizabeth II arrived at the White House Monday for the grand finale to a visit that's whirled from history to horse racing to high society with barely enough time for a spot of tea and a cucumber sandwich between. Hugs from schoolchildren, a private luncheon, a garden party and the Bush administration's first white-tie state dinner kept the queen changing hats and offering polite greetings most of the day and well into the evening. Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, arrived at the White House to greet an estimated 7,000 dignitaries, legislators, Cabinet members and invited guests on the South Lawn on a blossom-fresh spring day. President Bush welcomed the queen with a royal faux pas about her age, suggesting she had witnessed American independence in 1776. Expressing admiration for her long friendship with the United States, Bush noted that Elizabeth had dined with 10 presidents and had "helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 ..." He quickly caught and corrected his mistake, "in 1976." Her Majesty did not appear to be amused. Read The Full Story
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