Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday August 21 2007 - (813)

Tuesday August 21 2007 edition
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Plaintiffs In Vioxx Cases Yet To Be Paid 2007-08-21 02:21:26 None of the 45,000 people who have sued Merck over it's painkiller Vioxx have received payment. In Carol Ernst’s eyes, two years ago she won a measure of justice. On Aug. 19, 2005, a Texas jury awarded Mrs. Ernst $253.5 million after concluding that Merck & Company and its painkiller Vioxx had caused the death of her husband, Robert, in 2001. At a news conference after the verdict, Mrs. Ernst said she was pleased that jurors had punished Merck for hiding Vioxx’s heart risks. “This has been a long road,” she said. “I just know that it was a road that I had to run and I had to finish.” But her comfort was premature. Merck, the third-largest American drug maker, appealed the verdict - which Texas laws on punitive damages automatically reduced to $26.1 million. Until higher courts rule on the appeal, Merck is not obligated to pay. So Mrs. Ernst, 62, has yet to receive any money. In fact, none of the 45,000 people who have sued Merck, contending that they or their loved ones suffered heart attacks or strokes after taking Vioxx, have received payments from the company. The lawsuits continue, for now in a state of legal limbo, with little prospect of resolution. In combating the litigation, Merck has made an aggressive, and so far successful, bet that forcing plaintiffs to trial will reduce the number of Vioxx lawsuits and, ultimately, its liability. Read The Full Story Dean Now A Category 5, Yucatan Villages Implored To Flee Homes 2007-08-20 22:40:25 Hurricane Dean drew strength from warm Caribbean waters Monday and roared toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, where soldiers begged campesinos to abandon thatch-roofed shacks and take refuge in shelters. After battering the Cayman Islands with heavy rain and wind, Dean, which reached Category 5 strength Monday evening, is expected to smash into the Yucatan with 160 mph winds and even stronger gusts before dawn Tuesday. Torrential rains and storm surges up to 18 feet are forecast. "It's as bad as it gets," meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said in a telephone interview from the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida. The storm, which is blamed for eight deaths over the weekend on Caribbean islands, appeared to be veering away from the luxury resorts of Cancun and toward lightly populated areas at the southern end of the peninsula seldom visited by tourists. The region is known for its natural splendor, highlighted by the Sian Kaan Biosphere Reserve, and is rich with natural buffers, such as swamps, that can help deaden the impact of hurricanes. Read The Full Story What's Not In Your Wallet? Capital One Will Close Loan Unit 2007-08-20 22:37:46 Capital One Financial, the McLean, Virginia-based financial services company, said it is closing a mortgage banking subsidiary and eliminating 1,900 jobs, joining a parade of firms that took steps Monday to adjust to the widening credit crunch. The string of announcements showed the depth of the trauma, as problems in the market for subprime, or risky, mortgages have spread and traditional sources of funding for lenders have dried up. Companies far and wide are going out of business or selling what they can to shore up their cash reserves. Thornburg Mortgage, a New Mexico lender specializing in jumbo loans - mortgages more than $417,000 - to wealthy people with stellar credit, sold $20.5 billion in assets to reduce its debt. "If there's a hiccup in the market for any reason, a company like Thornburg gets sucked into the vortex of the liquidity problem," said Steven Marks, a managing director at Fitch Ratings. "That's what's happening all around." Read The Full Story U.S. Stocks Down After Rallies In Asia, Europe 2007-08-20 15:02:15 After an unremarkable start to the day, stocks on Wall Street began a modest decline in the afternoon as shares gained in Asia and Europe. Investors pushed the three main American stock indexes down slightly, exhibiting little of the enthusiasm from Friday’s rally that lifted the Dow Jones industrial average more than 233 points. Shortly before 1 p.m., the Dow was down about 50 points. Asian stock markets rebounded earlier in the day from a sell-off on Friday. Just as American and European investors were, Asian investors appeared heartened by the Federal Reserve’s decision to lower rates on loans to banks, known as the discount rate. The Fed announced the move after most Asian markets closed on Friday. Read The Full Story Cayman's And Mexico Brace For Hurricane Dean 2007-08-20 15:01:33 Hurricane Dean gained strength Monday as it surged past the Cayman Islands and directly toward Mexico after battering the south coast of Jamaica Sunday night and leaving a trail of destruction across the Caribbean. Jamaica awoke Monday to downed power lines and trees, damaged buildings and flooded streets, but most people agreed that the first hurricane of the Atlantic season held back some of its fury. There were no deaths reported this morning in Jamaica after the center of the storm passed just south of the island. “It could have been a whole lot worse if it had gone right over Jamaica,” Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, said in a telephone interview Monday. “But Dean is still a work in progress. The center has not really gone over land yet. Now we have the Yucatan Peninsula in its way.” As the Cayman Islands braced for the storm this morning, a curfew was in place and officials were scrambling to prepare residents for what forecasters said would be a glancing blow from Dean. The center of the storm passed far enough to the south of the islands that they were spared its strongest winds. Read The Full Story Another Governor In Iraq Is Assassinated By A Roadside Bomb 2007-08-20 15:00:38 The governor of a southern Iraqi province was assassinated Monday by a roadside bomb, said officials, in the latest attack to open up the prospect of escalating violence among Shiites. The killing of the official, Muhammad Ali Al-Hassani, was the second time this month that a provincial governor has been assassinated. On Aug. 11, the governor of Qadisiya Province was killed in a roadside bomb attack in a southern region that has been a battleground between Shiite factions. In Monday’s attack, Hassani was leaving his house in the Rumaitha area of Samawa in Muthana Province for his office when he and a number of his security personnel were killed by the bomb, said an Iraqi army commander. ”The governor was in continuous battles with the militias in the area,” said Gen. Habeeb Al-Husseini, the commander of 10th division of the Iraqi army in Samawa. “I believe this attack came as retaliation on his attempts to eliminate their influence”. Read The Full Story Hurricane Dean Punishes Jamaica, Takes Aim At Yucatan 2007-08-20 03:13:24 Hurricane Dean's massive eye skidded just south of Jamaica on Sunday, but its ferocious outer bands still socked the island with 145 mph winds that shredded roofs, shattered windows and toppled trees. Kingston lay in eerie darkness after the national power company shut off electricity in hopes of averting fires, while mudslides were reported in several areas of the country. A curfew was imposed to discourage looting. The hurricane is now taking aim at Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, where tourists slept on airport floors hoping to catch the last flights out of Cancun. Dean, the first Atlantic hurricane of the season, could grow as it crosses the Caribbean's warm, deep waters, reaching Category 5 strength with winds topping 155 mph, before its expected landfall on Mexico's Gulf Coast on Monday night or Tuesday morning, according to U.S. National Hurricane Center projections. Read The Full Story Asian Markets Rise Sharply After U.S. Rebound 2007-08-20 03:12:59 Asian stocks were on track for their biggest rally in more than three years on Monday after the U.S. Federal Reserve slashed a key U.S. bank lending rate, helping soothe jitters about a worldwide credit shortage. The yen remained shaky after falling from a 14-month high against the dollar, while safe-haven government bonds retreated as market confidence made a tentative comeback. In a surprise move that sparked a rebound on Wall Street last Friday, the U.S. central bank cut its discount rate by a half-percentage point to 5.75 percent. It left its benchmark federal funds rate steady at 5.25 percent. The Fed also said "downside risks to growth have increased appreciably," dropping its views about inflation being a major concern and signalling a willingness to take more dramatic action to cushion the economy from tightening credit. Read The Full Story Commentary: Bush Is Now The Embarrassing Uncle The Republicans Just Can't Hide 2007-08-20 03:12:16 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by journalist Gary Younge and appears in the Guardian edition for Monday, August 20, 2007. Mr. Younge writes that, with the departure of Karl Rove, the stench of failure hangs over the president - and his party wants to ignore the smell. Mr. Younge's commentary follows: George Bush likes his sleep. While campaigning for the presidency in 2000 his prize possession was a feather pillow. On the night that Saddam Hussein was executed he went to bed at 9pm with strict orders not to be woken. When the then CIA director, George Tenet, tried to alert him to news of the first night's bombing of Iraq he was sent away. "He is the type of person who sleeps at 9:30 p.m. after watching the domestic news," Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah told Okaz, a Saudi newspaper. But one can't help wondering if Karl Rove's resignation might not disturb his slumber for his remaining months in the White House. Rove, Bush's consigliere for the past 30 years, left last week in much the same manner as he had stayed: misleading the public. He told the nation that he wanted to spend more time with his family. Maybe he should have checked with his family first. His only son leaves for college in just a few days. Rove is leaving because there is nothing more for him to do; Bush is letting him go because he no longer has any use for him. His departure effectively marks the end of the Bush presidency - from here on Bush's tenure is about keeping the troops in Iraq and as many of his administration out of handcuffs as possible. Last week Fox News asked the neocon commentator Charles Krauthammer how much time Bush had to promote his agenda. "None," said Krauthammer. "It's over. There is no agenda." Read The Full Story Evacuations Urged As Southern California Wildfire Grows 2007-08-20 03:11:38 A massive fire in the Los Padres National Forest grew an additional 11,500 acres Sunday, making it one of the largest wildfires in modern California history, said officials. Authorities closed a highway and encouraged residents of about two dozen rural Ventura County homes to evacuate while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency for Ventura County. The move clears the way for state government assistance with costs related to the fire. "It's growing, and it may become the granddaddy of them all before this is over with," Maeton Freel, a fire information officer with the U.S. Forest Service told the Ventura County Star. The fire had burned 199,588 acres of wilderness, or 312 square miles. It was 75 percent contained, with more than 3,000 personnel working on it. Read The Full Story	Editorial: Not Paying For Medical Errors 2007-08-21 02:21:12 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Tuesday, August 21, 2007. Medicare, the government insurance program for older Americans, has announced that it will soon stop paying hospitals for the extra costs of treating certain patients whose illnesses are compounded by preventable errors. The effort won’t save much money at first, and it will impose additional testing and documentation burdens on many hospitals, but it should promote better care. If the initial steps are expanded, it could yield greater savings as well. Under current payment rules, Medicare typically pays hospitals more for treating a surgical patient whose illness is complicated by an infection than it would if there were no infection present. That is true even if the infection is caused by sloppy sanitary practices in the hospital itself. The perversity of a payment system that actually rewards incompetence rather than penalizing it seems self-evident. So Medicare is clearly wise to start changing the incentives. Starting on Oct. 1, 2008, Medicare will no longer pay extra for eight specific conditions that could generally be avoided if the hospital followed proven preventive procedures or common-sense precautions. Medicare will no longer pay hospitals to retrieve surgical tools or sponges left in a patient after the initial operation. Nor will it reimburse for extra care given patients harmed by incompatible blood or air embolisms, for treating bedsores developed in the hospital, injuries caused by falls in the hospital, infections caused by prolonged use of catheters in the bladder or blood vessels, or a surgical site infection after coronary artery bypass surgery. Read The Full Story Cheney's Office Says It Has Wiretap Documents - Won't Give Them To Congress 2007-08-20 22:40:09 Vice President Cheney's office acknowledged for the first time Monday that it has dozens of documents related to the administration's warrantless surveillance program, but it signaled that it will resist efforts by congressional Democrats to obtain them. The disclosure by Cheney's counsel, Shannen W. Coffin, came on the day that the Senate Judiciary Committee had set as a deadline for the Bush administration to turn over documents related to the wiretapping program, which allowed the National Security Agencyto monitor communications between the United States and overseas without warrants. White House counsel Fred F. Fielding has also declined to turn over any documents about the program, telling lawmakers last week that more time was needed to locate records that might be responsive to the panel's subpoenas. The committee's chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vermont), said Monday that he will pursue contempt proceedings against administration officials if the documents are not produced. Read The Full Story Stocks Flat, Investors Tap Into Treasury Bills 2007-08-20 22:37:10 It was a quiet day on Wall Street Monday, but these days, quiet is relative. The stock market was basically flat, but as turmoil in the market for mortgage and other risky assets continued, money gushed into ultra-safe, short-term U.S. government debt, driving down interest rates. The yield on three-month Treasury bills fell to 3.01 percent, from 3.76 percent. The decline was its biggest one-day swing since the stock market crash of 1987, according to calculations by Bloomberg News. That was just one piece of evidence that the financial markets, while apparently calm Monday, may have only been taking a breather. "Today was a bit of a pause," said Georges Ugeux, chief executive of the investment bank Galileo Global Advisors. "People reflected on the short-term stability that came about from the Fed's moves and considered what the next move will be." Read The Full Story Global Warming Will Exacerbate Global Water Conflicts 2007-08-20 15:01:56 Steve Johnson scans the hot, translucent sky. He wants to make rain - needs to make rain for the parched farms and desperate hydro companies in the Fresno, California, valley. But first, he must have clouds. The listless sky offers no hint of clouds. Inside a darkened room near the Fresno airport, Johnson's colleagues study an array of radar screens. If a promising thunderstorm appears, Johnson will send his pilots into it in sturdy but ice-battered single-engine planes, burning flares of silver iodide to try to coax rain from the clouds. This year, there have been few promising clouds, to the dismay of the farmers, ranchers and power companies who hire Johnson's cloud seeders. "We can increase the rainfall by 10 percent, but Mother Nature has to cooperate. Ten percent of zero is zero," says Johnson, a meteorologist and director of Atmospherics Inc. Read The Full Story Peru Earthquake Rescuers Give Up Hope Of Finding More Survivors 2007-08-20 15:01:04 Rescuers gave up hope of finding any more survivors and concentrated Monday on clearing tons of rubble from the streets of this southern port city leveled by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 540 people. The magnitude-8 quake on Wednesday destroyed more than 85 percent of the homes in Pisco, a fishing port 125 miles southeast of Lima that was the hardest hit city. Rescue workers have removed 148 bodies from a church in the city after its domed ceiling broke apart during the earthquake. It was not clear how many of the 300 congregants inside survived the shaking that lasted for an agonizing two minutes. Jorge Vera, a firefighter who led the operation to find survivors at the San Clemente church in Pisco, said Sunday the rescue work had stopped and the focus was now on recovering the bodies. Friday was the last time a survivor was pulled from the quake's debris. Read The Full Story U.S. Sens. Levin, Warner 'Not Optimistic' On Iraq Politics 2007-08-20 15:00:25 The Democratic chairman and ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Monday that the surge of U.S. troops "is having measurable results" in Iraq, but they are "not optimistic" about prospects that officials in Baghdad will "make the political compromises which are essential for a political solution." Back from a brief trip to Iraq and Jordan, Sens. Carl Levin (D-Michigan) and John Warner (R-Virginia) said in a statement released Monday that the surge "has provided a degree of 'breathing space' for Iraqi politicians to make political compromises" but they "are not optimistic about the prospects for those compromises." The views of Levin and Warner, acknowledged defense experts within their own parties, will be important in September when Congress returns and the Armed Services panel takes up President Bush's expected new approach to Iraq. That will come after scheduled mid-September reports from the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. Read The Full Story Analysis: Bush's Sweeping Push For Democracy Is Sinking 2007-08-20 03:13:15 By the time he arrived in Prague in June for a democracy conference, President Bush was frustrated. He had committed his presidency to working toward the goal of "ending tyranny in our world," yet the march of freedom seemed stalled. Just as aggravating was the sense that his own government was not committed to his vision. As he sat down with opposition leaders from authoritarian societies around the world, he gave voice to his exasperation. "You're not the only dissident," Bush told Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a leader in the resistance to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "I too am a dissident in Washington. Bureaucracy in the United States does not help change. It seems that Mubarak succeeded in brainwashing them." If he needed more evidence, he would soon get it. In his speech that day, Bush vowed to order U.S. ambassadors in unfree nations to meet with dissidents and boasted that he had created a fund to help embattled human rights defenders. The State Department did not send out the cable directing ambassadors to sit down with dissidents until two months later and, to this day, not a nickel has been transferred to the fund he touted. Read The Full Story Businesses Pinched As More U.S. Firms Denied Credit 2007-08-20 03:12:47 Time-tested practice of borrowing to make money at risk as business loans fall to '90s recession levels. U.S. corporations for years operated by the maxim that you have to borrow money to make money. Now, the well of cheap loans is running dry. The corporate bond market, the MasterCard for U.S. companies, has slowed to levels not seen since the recession of the early 1990s, as rising defaults among mortgage borrowers are causing lenders to question loans going to companies as well. Without a healthy bond market, a swath of corporate activity is eliminated and the economy slows down. Firms stop borrowing to buy drilling equipment for coal mines, plants for manufacturing cars and land for expanding restaurant chains. "It affects everything," Michael Tarsala, an analyst for Thomson Squawk Box, said of the bond market. "It's access to capital. It's the lifeblood of a lot of big S&P companies. ... They've been encouraged to borrow money to make money for so long, and now the spigot's suddenly been shut off." Read The Full Story Kurds Flee Homes As Iran Shells Villages In Iraq 2007-08-20 03:11:57 Iraqi Kurdish officials expressed deepening concern Sunday at an upsurge in fierce clashes between Kurdish guerrillas and Iranian forces in the remote border area of northeast Iraq, where Tehran has recently deployed thousands of Revolutionary Guards. Jabar Yawar, a deputy minister in the Kurdistan regional government, said four days of intermittent shelling by Iranian forces had hit mountain villages high up on the Iraqi side of the border, wounding two women, destroying livestock and property, and displacing about 1,000 people from their homes. Yawer said there had also been intense fighting on the Iraqi border between Iranian forces and guerrillas of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), an armed Iranian Kurdish group that is stepping up its campaign for Kurdish rights against the theocratic regime in Tehran. On Saturday the Iranian news agency Mehr said an Iranian army helicopter which crashed killing six Republican Guard members had been engaged in a military operation against PJAK. Iranian officials said the helicopter had crashed into the side of a mountain during bad weather in northern Iraq. PJAK sources said the helicopter had been destroyed after it attempted to land in a clearing mined by guerrillas. The PJAK sources claimed its guerrillas had also killed at least five other Iranian soldiers, and a local pro-regime chief, Hussein Bapir. "If this escalates it could pose a real threat to the Kurdistan region, which is Iraq's most stable area," said Yawar, who said he expected the Iraqi government and U.S. officials in Iraq to make a formal protest to Tehran about the "blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty". Read The Full Story 13 Die In U.S. Midwest Flooding 2007-08-20 03:11:17 Rivers swollen by as much as a foot of rain lifted houses off their foundations and washed away roads, killing at least 13 people in three states, authorities said Sunday. Hundreds of people in southeastern Minnesota and southwestern Wisconsin were evacuated, some by boat off rooftops. "I cannot describe the terror of it all. I'm just glad to be alive," said Sean Wehlage, 29, who climbed onto the roof of his one-story home in Stockton to wait out the storm. Gov. Tim Pawlenty ordered 240 National Guard soldiers to the area to help with flood-relief and provide security, and the Red Cross set up emergency shelters. Six deaths were reported in Minnesota, and six more in Oklahoma. "This is the worst disaster that's hit southeast Minnesota in a lifetime," said state Sen. Sharon Erickson Ropes. Read The Full Story
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