Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday September 28 2007 - (813)

Friday September 28 2007 edition
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Report Assails F.D.A. Oversight Of Clinical Trials 2007-09-28 03:33:16 Federal investigator finds that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does very little to ensure the safety of the millions of people who participate in clinical drug trials. In a report due to be released Friday, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, Daniel R. Levinson, said federal health officials did not know how many clinical trials were being conducted, audited fewer than 1 percent of the testing sites and, on the rare occasions when inspectors did appear, generally showed up long after the tests had been completed. The F.D.A. has 200 inspectors, some of whom audit clinical trials part time, to police an estimated 350,000 testing sites. Even when those inspectors found serious problems in human trials, top drug officials in Washington, D.C.,  downgraded their findings 68 percent of the time, the report found. Among the remaining cases, the agency almost never followed up with inspections to determine whether the corrective actions that the agency demanded had occurred, the report found. “In many ways, rats and mice get greater protection as research subjects in the United States than do humans,” said Arthur L. Caplan, chairman of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania.  Animal research centers have to register with the federal government, keep track of subject numbers, have unannounced spot inspections and address problems speedily or risk closing, none of which is true in human research, said Caplan. Read The Full Story China's Booming Cities Are Running Out Of Water 2007-09-28 03:32:22 Hundreds of feet below ground, the primary water source for Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital of more than two million people, is steadily running dry. The underground water table is sinking about four feet a year. Municipal wells have already drained two-thirds of the local groundwater. Above ground, this city in the North China Plain is having a party. Economic growth topped 11 percent last year. Population is rising. A new upscale housing development is advertising waterfront property on lakes filled with pumped groundwater. Another half-built complex, the Arc de Royal, is rising above one of the lowest points in the city’s water table. “People who are buying apartments aren’t thinking about whether there will be water in the future,” said Zhang Zhongmin, who has tried for 20 years to raise public awareness about the city’s dire water situation. For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China’s galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China - even as demand keeps rising everywhere. Read The Full Story Hurricane Lorenzo Hits Mexican Coast 2007-09-28 03:31:41 Lorenzo made landfall early Friday after strengthening rapidly into a Category 1 hurricane as it bore down on Mexico's Gulf Coast with powerful winds and rain, forcing authorities to evacuate low-lying coastal communities. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said the hurricane made landfall along the east-central coast of Mexico, southeast of Tuxpan. Officials canceled classes and opened more than 60 shelters on the coastline of Veracruz state Thursday, as Mexico's government issued a hurricane warning from Palma Sola to Cabo Rojo. At least 30 communities near several rivers were ordered to evacuate late Thursday. Residents scrambled to move furniture and belongings to higher ground even as roads began to flood. "We never expected the hurricane would hit here," said Ribay Peralta, a 33-year-old lawyer who was packing his car with televisions sets, DVD players and other appliances in the town of San Rafael, a low-lying community about 9 miles from Veracruz's coast. Read The Full Story U.S. New Home Sales Tumble To Seven-Year Low 2007-09-27 12:31:17 New-homes sales in the U.S. tumbled in August to the lowest level in seven years, a stark sign that the credit crunch is aggravating an already painful housing slump. Sales of new homes dropped by 8.3 percent in August from July, the Commerce Department reported Thursday, driving down sales to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 795,000 units. That was the lowest level since June 2000, when sales clocked in at a pace of 793,000. The home sales report came on the same day that the government reported a relatively brisk business growth rate in revised figures for the second quarter, but the 3.8 percent GDP (gross domestic product) figure was less than first estimated and it occurred before the credit crisis and its repercussions across the broad spectrum of the economy had taken hold. The median sales price in August fell by 7.5 percent from a year earlier to $225,700. That was the biggest drop in percentage terms in nearly 37 years. The median price is the middle point at which half sell for more and half for less. The average sales price dropped by 8 percent in August from a year earlier to $292,000. That was the biggest decline in 17 years. Read The Full Story Pakistan's Chief Justice Frees Musharraf Opponents 2007-09-27 12:30:42 Pakistan's chief justice ordered the immediate release of detained opposition members Thursday as President Gen. Pervez Musharraf formalized his disputed candidacy for a new five-year term. Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry issued the edict after summoning police and government officials to explain who signed an order to close roads into the capital Thursday to prevent a planned lawyer-led protest against Musharraf. State television reported that the court had ordered the release of Javed Hashmi, acting leader of the party of exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and all other political detainees. Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim said Chaudhry's decision ''will be fully implemented''. Read The Full Story Federal Judge Rules That Two Provisions Of USA Patriot Act Are Unconstitutional 2007-09-27 02:31:09 Judge rules law gives to much power to executive branch. A federal judge in Oregon ruled Wednesday that two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional, marking the second time in as many weeks that the anti-terrorism law has come under attack in the courts. In a case brought by a Portland, Oregon, man who was wrongly detained as a terrorism suspect in 2004, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Patriot Act violates the Constitution because it "permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment." "For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law - with unparalleled success," Aiken wrote in a strongly worded 44-page opinion. "A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised." Read The Full Story As Burmese Troops Fire On Monks, Russia And China Block Sanctions 2007-09-27 02:29:59 Burma's military rulers were facing calls from around the world Wednesday night to show restraint in their treatment of pro-democracy demonstrators, but China and Russia blocked more punitive measures. After troops in Rangoon opened fire on monks and their supporters on the bloodiest day of the week-long protests, the United Nations Security Council held an emergency session to consider a joint call for sanctions from the U.S.  and the European Union. George Bush announced new sanctions on Tuesday and European ministers said they would consider toughening the existing package of European Union sanctions, as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had demanded. But any suggestion of global sanctions against the Burmese regime was blocked by China and Russia, who had tried to halt Wednesday night's council meeting. Read The Full Story Federal Prisons To Restore Purged Religious Books 2007-09-27 02:28:16 Facing pressure from religious groups, civil libertarians and members of Congress, the federal Bureau of Prisons has decided to return religious materials that had been purged from prison chapel libraries because they were not on the bureau’s lists of approved resources. The bureau had said it was prompted to remove the materials after a 2004 Department of Justice report mentioned that religious books that incite violence could infiltrate chapel libraries. After the details of the removal became widely known this month, Republican lawmakers, liberal Christians and evangelical talk shows all criticized the government for creating a list of acceptable religious books. The bureau has not abandoned the idea of creating such lists, Judi Simon Garrett, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message, but, rather than packing away everything while those lists were compiled, the religious materials will remain on the shelves, Garrett explained. Read The Full Story HIV-Infected Condoms Sent To Kill Africans, Claims Archbishop 2007-09-27 02:27:12 Mozambique's Roman Catholic archbishop has accused European condom manufacturers of deliberately infecting their products with HIV "in order to finish quickly the African people". The archbishop of Maputo, Francisco Chimoio, told the BBC that he had specific information about a plot to kill off Africans. "I know that there are two countries in Europe ... making condoms with the virus, on purpose," he alleged. But he refused to name the countries. He added: "They want to finish with the African people. This is the program. They want to colonize until up to now. If we are not careful we will finish in one century's time." His views have prompted outrage from activists trying to combat AIDS and help sufferers. They described the statements as ridiculous. Medical specialists said it was impossible for the AIDS virus to live inside condoms for any length of time. Read The Full Story	Children's Health Bill Advances In U.S. Senate 2007-09-28 03:32:42 Overwhelming bipartisan vote in Senate sets up biggest domestic policy clash of Bush presidency. The Senate, with an overwhelming bipartisan vote Thursday, sent President Bush a $35 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, setting up the biggest domestic policy clash of his presidency and launching a fight that will reverberate into the 2008 elections. Bush has vowed to veto the measure, but he has faced strong criticism from many fellow Republicans reluctant to turn away from a popular measure that would renew and expand an effective program aimed at low-income children. Democratic leaders, while still as many as two dozen votes short in the House, are campaigning hard for the first veto override of Bush's presidency. They secured a veto-proof majority last night in the Senate, with the 67 to 29 tally including "yes" votes from 18 of the 49 Republicans, including some of the president's most stalwart allies, such as Christopher S. Bond (Missouri), Kay Baily Hutchison (Texas) and Ted Stevens (Alaska). Democratic leaders are likely to send the measure to the White House next week, giving advocates a few more days to pressure Bush to sign it. Read The Full Story U.S. To Let Key Guantanamo Detainees Request Lawyers 2007-09-28 03:31:59 Fourteen "high-value" terrorism suspects who were transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from secret CIA prisons last year have been formally offered the right to request lawyers, a move that could allow them to join other detainees in challenging their status as enemy combatants in a U.S. appellate court. The move, confirmed by U.S. Defense Department officials, will allow the suspects their first contact with anyone other than their captors and representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross since they were taken into custody. The prisoners, who include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, have not had access to lawyers during their year at Guantanamo Bay or while they were held, for varying lengths of time, at the secret CIA sites abroad. They were entitled to military "personal representatives" to assist them during the administrative process that determined whether they are enemy combatants. U.S. officials have argued in court papers against granting lawyers access to the high-value detainees without special security rules, fearing that attorney-client conversations could reveal classified elements of the CIA's secret detention program and its controversial interrogation tactics. Read The Full Story 9 Killed As Junta Soldiers Fire Into Burmese Crowds, Raid Monasteries 2007-09-27 12:31:33 Security forces raided monasteries, beating Buddhist monks and arresting more than 100, according to a monk at one monastery. Soldiers fired automatic weapons into a crowd of anti-government demonstrators Thursday, during clashes that killed at least nine people including a Japanese national and injured 11 others, said the government. The shootings came as tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar's main city defied for a second day a government crackdown that has drawn international appeals for restraint by the ruling military junta. "Today, when security forces tried to disperse rioters, they clashed with them," said Ye Htut, a government spokesman said in an e-mail to the Associated Press. "During these attacks, nine people died and 11 people (were) wounded. Also, 31 security forces were wounded." Read The Full Story California's KB Home, One Of Nation's Largest Home Builders, Takes Hit 2007-09-27 12:30:59 Home builder reports loss and sees "no signs that the housing market will stabilize". KB Home Thursday posted a third-quarter loss amid a rapidly deteriorating housing market and warned that it expected conditions to worsen as rising foreclosures swell the supply of homes on the market, pushing down prices. "At this time, we see no signs that the housing market will stabilize and believe it will be some time before a recovery begins," Jeffrey Mezger, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles-based home builder, said in a statement. The company's bleak results came as the Commerce Department reported that sales of new single-family homes fell 21.2% in August, compared to a year earlier, as the supply of unsold new homes stood at 8.2 months, meaning it would take that long to sell the current inventory. Read The Full Story Diplomats Accuse Bush Of Attempting To Derail U.N. Climate Talks 2007-09-27 02:31:26 President goes ahead with his own environment meeting. Fear that U.S. will again reject limit on emissions. President George Bush was criticized Wednesday by diplomats for attempting to derail a United Nations initiative on climate change by pressing ahead with his own conference, which starts in Washington today (Thursday). One European diplomat described the U.S. meeting as a spoiler for a U.N. conference planned for Bali in December. Another, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, claimed that the U.S. conference was merely a way of deflecting pressure from other world leaders who had asked at the G8 summit this year for the U.S. to make concessions on global warming. They predicted that Bush, who is to address Thursday's meeting, will stress the need to make technological advances that can help combat climate change but will reject mandatory caps on emissions. The British government shares the frustration of other European governments with the lack of urgency on the part of the Bush administration. The British assessment of Bush's conference is reflected in the level of representation - Phil Woolas, a junior environment minister. Read The Full Story Report: Pentagon's Promised Fixes At Walter Reed Haven't Materialized 2007-09-27 02:30:55 More than half a year after disclosures of systemic problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals, the Pentagon's promised fixes are threatened by staff shortages and uncertainty about how best to improve long-term care for wounded troops, according to a congressional report issued Wednesday. Army units developed to shepherd recovering soldiers lack enough nurses and social workers, and proposals to streamline the military's disability evaluation system and to provide "recovery coordinators" are behind schedule, according to the Government Accountability Office report. Members of a congressional oversight committee, discussing the report at a hearing Wednesday, said the effort to reform the medical bureaucracy has itself become mired in bureaucracy. "After so many promises but so little progress, we need to see more concrete results," said U.S. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Virginia), the ranking Republican on the panel. His staff hears "appalling stories" every week from soldiers dealing with the disability process, he said, adding that "they're trapped in a system they don't understand and that doesn't understand them." Read The Full Story Editorial: The 'Crazies' And Iran 2007-09-27 02:28:54 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Thursday, September 27, 2007. Like Mohamed ElBaradei, we want to make sure what he calls the “crazies” don’t start a war with Iran. We fear his do-it-yourself diplomacy is playing right into the crazies’ hands - in Washington, D.C., and Tehran. Last month, Mr. ElBaradei, the chief nuclear inspector for the United Nations, cut his own deal with Iran’s government, intended to answer questions about its secretive nuclear past. Unfortunately, it made no mention of Iran’s ongoing, very public refusal to stop enriching uranium - usable for nuclear fuel or potentially a nuclear weapon - in defiance of Security Council orders. In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly this week, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wasn’t shy about explaining what a great deal he’d gotten: gloating that the dispute over his country’s nuclear program is now “closed.” That’s not true, but the deal has given Russia and China another reason to delay imposing new sanctions on Iran for its continued defiance. We’d like to hear the answers to a lot of those outstanding questions. Among our favorites: Has Iran built more sophisticated uranium centrifuges for a clandestine program? And, what were Iran’s scientists planning to do with designs, acquired from Pakistan, to mold uranium into shapes that look remarkably like the core of a nuclear weapon? Read The Full Story U.S. Defense Secretary Gates Seeks $190 Billion For Wars 2007-09-27 02:27:48 $42 billion boost would raise 2008 total to $190 billion. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates asked Congress Wednesday to approve an additional $42.3 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the Bush administration's 2008 war funding request to nearly $190 billion - the largest single-year total for the wars so far. The move came as Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., the Army chief of staff and former top U.S. commander in Iraq,  warned lawmakers that the Army is stretched dangerously thin because of current war operations and would probably have trouble responding to a major conflict elsewhere. "The current demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply," Casey said Wednesday. "We are consumed with meeting the demands of the current fight and are unable to provide ready forces as rapidly as necessary for other potential contingencies." The administration's funding request - which came on the same day that the Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for the split of Iraq into three semiautonomous regions - would boost war spending this year by nearly 15 percent and would bring the total cost of both conflicts to more than $800 billion since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the Congressional Research Service. The request comes two weeks after President Bush  announced a limited troop drawdown from Iraq starting in December and the continuation of the "surge" troop increase through next summer. In the days since, Democrats have failed to force a shift in policy on troop rotations or the adoption of withdrawal timelines, but the debate over war funding offers them another chance to push for a change in course. Read The Full Story
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