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Editorial: Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
The Register
Thursday 17th August 2006
Binary liquid explosives are a sexy staple of Hollywood thrillers. It would be tedious to enumerate the movie terrorists who've employed relatively harmless liquids that, when mixed, immediately rain destruction upon an innocent populace, like the seven angels of God's wrath pouring out their bowls full of pestilence and pain.
The funny thing about these movies is, we never learn just which two chemicals can be handled safely when separate, yet instantly blow us all to kingdom come when combined. Nevertheless, we maintain a great eagerness to believe in these substances, chiefly because action movies wouldn't be as much fun if we didn't.
Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?
We're told that the suspects were planning to use TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that supposedly can be made from common household chemicals unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner - all easily concealed in drinks bottles - and the forces of evil have effectively smuggled a deadly bomb onboard your plane.
Or at least that's what we're hearing, and loudly, through the mainstream media and its legions of so-called "terrorism experts." But what do these experts know about chemistry? Less than they know about lobbying for Homeland Security pork, which is what most of them do for a living. But they've seen the same movies that you and I have seen, and so the myth of binary liquid explosives dies hard.
Better killing through chemistry
Making a quantity of TATP sufficient to bring down an airplane is not quite as simple as ducking into the toilet and mixing two harmless liquids together.
First, you've got to get adequately concentrated hydrogen peroxide. This is hard to come by, so a large quantity of the three per cent solution sold in pharmacies might have to be concentrated by boiling off the water. Only this is risky, and can lead to mission failure by means of burning down your makeshift lab before a single infidel has been harmed.
But let's assume that you can obtain it in the required concentration, or cook it from a dilute solution without ruining your operation. Fine. The remaining ingredients, acetone and sulfuric acid, are far easier to obtain, and we can assume that you've got them on hand.
Now for the fun part. Take your hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid, measure them very carefully, and put them into drinks bottles for convenient smuggling onto a plane. It's all right to mix the peroxide and acetone in one container, so long as it remains cool. Don't forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked "perishable foods"), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You're going to need them.
It's best to fly first class and order Champagne. The bucket full of ice water, which the airline ought to supply, might possibly be adequate - especially if you have those cold gel-packs handy to supplement the ice, and the Styrofoam chiller handy for insulation - to get you through the cookery without starting a fire in the lavvie.
Easy does it
Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you'll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you'll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.
After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven't overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you'll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.
The genius of this scheme is that TATP is relatively easy to detonate. But you must make enough of it to crash the plane, and you must make it with care to assure potency. One needs quality stuff to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale," as Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson put it. While it's true that a slapdash concoction will explode, it's unlikely to do more than blow out a few windows. At best, an infidel or two might be killed by the blast, and one or two others by flying debris as the cabin suddenly depressurizes, but that's about all you're likely to manage under the most favorable conditions possible.
We believe this because a peer-reviewed 2004 study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) entitled "Decomposition of Triacetone Triperoxide is an Entropic Explosion" tells us that the explosive force of TATP comes from the sudden decomposition of a solid into gasses. There's no rapid oxidizing of fuel, as there is with many other explosives: rather, the substance changes state suddenly through an entropic process, and quickly releases a respectable amount of energy when it does. (Thus the lack of ingredients typically associated with explosives makes TATP, a white crystalline powder resembling sugar, difficult to detect with conventional bomb sniffing gear.)
Mrs. Satan
By now you'll be asking why these jihadist wannabes didn't conspire simply to bring TATP onto planes, colored with a bit of vegetable dye, and disguised as, say, a powdered fruit-flavored drink. The reason is that they would be afraid of failing: TATP is notoriously sensitive and unstable. Mainstream journalists like to tell us that terrorists like to call it "the mother of Satan." (Whether this reputation is deserved, or is a consequence of homebrewing by unqualified hacks, remains open to debate.)
It's been claimed that the 7/7 bombers used it, but this has not been positively confirmed. Some sources claim that they used C-4, and others that they used RDX. Nevertheless, the belief that they used TATP has stuck with the media, although going about in a crowded city at rush hour with an unstable homebrew explosive in a backpack is not the brightest of all possible moves. It's surprising that none of the attackers enjoyed an unscheduled launch into Paradise.
So, assuming that the homebrew variety of TATP is highly sensitive and unstable - or at least that our inept jihadists would believe that - to avoid getting blown up in the taxi on the way to the airport, one might, if one were educated in terror tactics primarily by hollywood movies, prefer simply to dump the precursors into an airplane toilet bowl and let the mother of Satan work her magic. Indeed, the mixture will heat rapidly as TATP begins to form, and it will soon explode. But this won't happen with much force, because little TATP will have formed by the time the explosion occurs.
We asked University of Rhode Island Chemistry Professor Jimmie C. Oxley, who has actual, practical experience with TATP, if this is a reasonable assumption, and she tolds us that merely dumping the precursors together would create "a violent reaction," but not a detonation.
To release the energy needed to bring down a plane (far more difficult to do than many imagine, as Aloha Airlines Flight 243 neatly illustrates), it's necessary to synthesize a good amount of TATP with care.
Jack Bauer sense
So the fabled binary liquid explosive - that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question. Meanwhile, making TATP ahead of time carries a risk that the mission will fail due to premature detonation, although it is the only plausible approach.
Certainly, if we can imagine a group of jihadists smuggling the necessary chemicals and equipment on board, and cooking up TATP in the lavatory, then we've passed from the realm of action blockbusters to that of situation comedy.
It should be small comfort that the security establishments of the UK and the USA - and the "terrorism experts" who inform them and wheedle billions of dollars out of them for bomb puffers and face recognition gizmos and remote gait analyzers and similar hi-tech phrenology gear - have bought the Hollywood binary liquid explosive myth, and have even acted upon it.
We've given extraordinary credit to a collection of jihadist wannabes with an exceptionally poor grasp of the mechanics of attacking a plane, whose only hope of success would have been a pure accident. They would have had to succeed in spite of their own ignorance and incompetence, and in spite of being under police surveillance for a year.
But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a movie plot. Liquids are now banned in aircraft cabins (while crystalline white powders would be banned instead, if anyone in charge were serious about security). Nearly everything must now go into the hold, where adequate amounts of explosives can easily be detonated from the cabin with cell phones, which are generally not banned.
Action heroes
The al-Qaeda franchise will pour forth its bowl of pestilence and death. We know this because we've watched it countless times on TV and in the movies, just as our officials have done. Based on their behavior, it's reasonable to suspect that everything John Reid and Michael Chertoff know about counterterrorism, they learned watching the likes of Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Vin Diesel, and The Rock (whose palpable homoerotic appeal it would be discourteous to emphasize).
It's a pity that our security rests in the hands of government officials who understand as little about terrorism as the Florida clowns who needed their informant to suggest attack scenarios, as the 21/7 London bombers who injured no one, as lunatic "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, as the Forest Gate nerve gas attackers who had no nerve gas, as the British nitwits who tried to acquire "red mercury," and as the recent binary liquid bomb attackers who had no binary liquid bombs.
For some real terror, picture twenty guys who understand op-sec, who are patient, realistic, clever, and willing to die, and who know what can be accomplished with a modest stash of dimethylmercury.
You won't hear about those fellows until it's too late. Our official protectors and deciders trumpet the fools they catch because they haven't got a handle on the people we should really be afraid of. They make policy based on foibles and follies, and Hollywood plots.
Meanwhile, the real thing draws ever closer.
[ Original ]
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Editorial: Home Front: Dispatches from the War on America
by Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque
Monday, 14 August 2006
While your attention has been diverted by the proxy war in Lebanon, the civil war in Iraq, the still-hot shootin' war in Afghanistan and the coming war with Iran, the Bush Regime been busy waging -- and winning -- another take-no-prisoners, give-no-quarter conflict right in the sacred Homeland itself: class war.
I know, I know: we don't have "classes" in America. No, our society is flatter than a flitter; we're all born on the same level playing field, lined up together at the same starting gate, given the same amount of seed corn to plant on identical plots of rich topsoil. We're all subject to the same laws, which are applied equally to everybody, all the time, regardless of race, creed, color, national origin or sexual orientation. Who would deny these self-evident truths -- except perhaps for those same churls who refuse to acknowledge the seasonal beneficence of Santa Claus or the wonder-working power of the Easter Bunny?
And in truth, the epic despoliation now being wrought by the Bush Regime upon the overwhelming majority of the American people does not fall neatly into classic (or classist) Marxist categories. For one thing, Marx's bête noir, the bourgeoisie, are getting it in the neck along with everybody else. In fact, now that the poor have essentially been erased from public consciousness, wiped out by decades of savage Right-wing rollback, and "tough love" from corporate-coddling, welfare-whacking "New" Democrats, the middle class and its "privileges" -- higher education, affordable health care, job security, pensions, government services and regulatory protections, civil liberties, etc. -- have become primary targets of the Bushists' bold attempt to return American society to the glory days of the Gilded Age, where rapacious robber barons held untrammeled sway.
Dispatches from the Bush Faction's war on America come in every day, piecemeal, the dots rarely if ever connected. Last week saw a bumper crop of precision strikes, hitting an array of some of the Regime's favorite targets: the cannon fodder they've used up in their wars of crony conquest then tossed aside like so much bad meat; the two million Americans that have been clapped behind bars by the Bush Regime -- more prisoners both in sheer numbers and percentage of the population than any nation on earth; and those ever-popular punching bags, the unwealthy sick.
First up, from USA Today: Center for war-related brain injuries faces budget cut. Excerpts:Congress appears ready to slash funding for the research and treatment of brain injuries caused by bomb blasts, an injury that military scientists describe as a signature wound of the Iraq war. House and Senate versions of the 2007 Defense appropriation bill contain $7 million for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center - half of what the center received last fiscal year.
Proponents of increased funding say they are shocked to see cuts in the treatment of bomb blast injuries in the midst of a war. "I find it basically unpardonable that Congress is not going to provide funds to take care of our soldiers and sailors who put their lives on the line for their country," says Martin Foil, a member of the center's board of directors...George Zitnay, co-founder of the center, testified before a Senate subcommittee in May that body armor saves troops caught in blasts but leaves many with brain damage. "Traumatic brain injury is the signature injury of the war on terrorism," he testified.
The Brain Injury Center, devoted to treating and understanding war-related brain injuries, has received more money each year of the war - from $6.5 million in fiscal 2001 to $14 million last year. Spokespersons for the appropriations committees in both chambers say cuts were due to a tight budget this year.
"Honestly, they would have loved to have funded it, but there were just so many priorities," says Jenny Manley, spokeswoman for the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Boy, they're not even trying very hard to put a plausible spin on these things, are they? No "budget flexibility" to fund treatment for the heads being battered, splattered and bashed in Bush's lie-greased, blood-sodden "war of choice" in Iraq.? The Republicans couldn't even find $7.5 million in chump change just to keep the current level of funding? Seven-and-a-half million dollars -- Dick Cheney could pay that much with a personal check with scarcely a flutter in his bank balance. Halliburton and Boeing charge the taxpayers that much in "overhead" before they sit down to breakfast every day. George Widowmaker Bush could chip in that much with just a chunk of the windfall he'll get from his elimination of inheritance taxes. And how much money have they given the Moonies to peddle "abstinence" in the public schools?
The Republicans are slashing war-related brain trauma treatment for one reason only: they don't give a good goddamn about the rabble they send off to kill and die in their crusade for loot and dominion. That's all there is to it. If they wanted to fund it, if it was important to them, they'd fund it. But they don't, and it isn't, so they won't.
Buried deep in the story is yet another twist of the knife. It seems the Center has also offended the Lord High Warlord, Don Rumsfeld. How so? Here's how:
... The center has clashed with the Pentagon in recent months over a program to identify troops who have suffered mild to moderate brain injuries in Iraq from mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs - the most common weapons used by insurgents. Preliminary research by the center shows that about 10% of all troops in Iraq, and up to 20% of front line infantry troops, suffer concussions during combat tours....The center urged the Pentagon to screen all troops returning from Iraq in order to treat symptoms and create a database of brain injury victims. Scientists say multiple concussions can cause permanent brain damage.
The Pentagon so far has declined to do the screening and argues that more research is needed.
In other words, the Pentagon doesn't want to acknowledge all the brain injuries being borne by returning troops -- because then they'd have to pay to treat them. And they don't want to pay. Bush and Rumsfeld need that money for the black-hole warpits they've already dug, and the one they're planning for Iran. (As Sy Hersh notes this week: "A former intelligence officer said, "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later - the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.'") They don't care if the soldiers they've ordered into battle come back damaged, crippled, irradiated or diseased. They don't want to know about it. All they really care about is that these soldiers have the good grace to kick off quietly and cheaply somewhere after their service, so their deaths won't add to the politically-charged body count of the Bush wars.
Next up, from the New York Times: Panel Suggests Using Inmates in Drug Trials. Excerpts:An influential federal panel of medical advisers has recommended that the government loosen regulations that severely limit the testing of pharmaceuticals on prison inmates, a practice that was all but stopped three decades ago after revelations of abuse.
The proposed change includes provisions intended to prevent problems that plagued earlier programs. Nevertheless, it has dredged up a painful history of medical mistreatment and incited debate among prison rights advocates and researchers about whether prisoners can truly make uncoerced decisions, given the environment they live in.
Supporters of such programs cite the possibility of benefit to prison populations, and the potential for contributing to the greater good.
Until the early 1970's, about 90 percent of all pharmaceutical products were tested on prison inmates, federal officials say. But such research diminished sharply in 1974 after revelations of abuse at prisons like Holmesburg here, where inmates were paid hundreds of dollars a month to test items as varied as dandruff treatments and dioxin, and where they were exposed to radioactive, hallucinogenic and carcinogenic chemicals.
In addition to addressing the abuses at Holmesburg, the regulations were a reaction to revelations in 1972 surrounding what the government called the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, which was begun in the 1930's and lasted 40 years. In it, several hundred mostly illiterate men with syphilis in rural Alabama were left untreated, even after a cure was discovered, so that researchers could study the disease.
"What happened at Holmesburg was just as gruesome as Tuskegee, but at Holmesburg it happened smack dab in the middle of a major city, not in some backwoods in Alabama," said Allen M. Hornblum, an urban studies professor at Temple University and the author of "Acres of Skin," a 1998 book about the Holmesburg research. "It just goes to show how prisons are truly distinct institutions where the walls don't just serve to keep inmates in, they also serve to keep public eyes out."
..."It strikes me as pretty ridiculous to start talking about prisoners getting access to cutting-edge research and medications when they can't even get penicillin and high-blood-pressure pills," said Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News, an independent monthly review. "I have to imagine there are larger financial motivations here."
This story speaks -- screams -- for itself. It's part of that grand rollback mentioned earlier. The Hard Right and its present avatars in the Bush Faction really do want to repeal and destroy all of the advances in civil rights and civic rights and human rights won -- at such tremendous sacrifice -- over the past century. It's not just about dismantling the Great Society or undoing the New Deal; it's about going all the way back to the post-Civil War era, when the powerful few could prey without let or hindrance upon the wretched many, and government was a brutal tool in the robber baron's arsenal. These guys don't just have Franklin Roosevelt in their sights; they're going after Teddy Roosevelt too, with all the trust-busting and major social reforms of his era (many of which he gets unearned credit for, but that's another story). -- And of course, a goodly number of these Hard-Righters don't want to stop at the post-Civil War era; they'd like to restore the "honor" and "morality" of the antebellum South as well.
Anyone who wants to understand the roots -- and future goals -- of the Hard Right's penal philosophy should check out David Oshinsky's searing 1996 book, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. You might have trouble finding it (I ran across my copy in the remainder bin in a Nashville bookstore): hard truths don't hang around on the shelves as long as the latest Harry Potter. But if you want to see where the Hard Right is coming from -- and what they "admire" when, like John Ashcroft and Trent Lott, they hark back to the good old days -- the book is well worth the effort of looking up.
Like America's soldiers, America's two million prisoners are worthless trash in the eyes of the elite. The former are to be denied medical treatment; the latter are to be subjected to medical experiments. Either way, they're just things, just ciphers to be moved around in the great game of grabbing loot. You ditch the soldiers so you can take the money that should have been used to heal them and either stuff it in your trousers or ladle it out as pork or payoff in some backroom deal. And you use the prisoners as guinea pigs to pump profits for Big Pharma. As for the usual porous "protections" outlined in the measure, one expert noted: "They're also the parts of the report that faced the strongest resistance from federal officials, and I fear they're most likely the parts that will end up getting cut as these recommendations become new regulations."
Finally, a week wouldn't be complete with yet another Bush bashing of the sick and old and poor. Once more into the breach with the NYT: Planned Medicaid Cuts Cause Rift With States. Excerpts:
The White House is clashing with governors of both parties over a plan to cut Medicaid payments to hospitals and nursing homes that care for millions of low-income people. The White House says the changes are needed to ensure the "fiscal integrity" of Medicaid and to curb "excessive payments" to health care providers....
More than 330 members of Congress, including 103 Republicans, have objected to the plan. A letter signed by 82 House Republicans says it "would seriously disrupt financing of Medicaid programs around the country." A bipartisan group of 50 senators recently urged President Bush to scrap the proposed rules, which were set forth in his 2007 budget and could be issued before the end of this year.
Medicaid finances health care for more than 50 million low-income people, with money provided by the federal government and the states. Under the White House plan, the federal government would reduce Medicaid payments to many public hospitals and nursing homes by redefining allowable costs. It would also limit the states' ability to finance their share of Medicaid by imposing taxes on health care providers. About two-thirds of the states have such taxes.
Ah, there's the rub, you see. There's the heart of the matter: limiting "the states' ability to finance their share of Medicaid by imposing taxes on health care providers." How dare these commie bastard states try to help the poor and sick by begging a nickel from the billionaires of Big Medicine like Bill Frist.
State and local officials, members of Congress, hospitals, nursing homes and advocates for poor people make several arguments. First, they say, Mr. Bush is doing by regulation what he unsuccessfully asked Congress to do by legislation in the last two years. Second, they say, prior administrations and the Bush administration itself approved many of the state taxes that would be deemed improper under the new rules.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican, said, "The administration is attempting to reverse decades of federal Medicaid policy through the regulatory process," less than a year after "Congress rejected these misguided cuts."
In Missouri, Gov. Matt Blunt, a Republican, said the change "could mean a loss of more than $84.9 million" for his state. That, he said, would "jeopardize the continuity of care for Medicaid recipients" and set back efforts to improve care in nursing homes....
The cuts contemplated by the White House would not reduce the cost of care. But state officials said the changes would put pressure on states to reduce Medicaid benefits, restrict eligibility or lower payments to health care providers...
Dr. Bruce A. Chernof, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, said the cuts would "reduce access to services in a county where 33 percent of residents are uninsured." The county's five public hospitals operate trauma centers and burn treatment units for all patients, not just Medicaid recipients, he said.
The effects are magnified by the way Medicaid is financed. For each dollar that a state loses in provider tax revenue, the federal government will reduce its contributions - by $1 in California and Connecticut, and by $3 in a poor state like Mississippi.
In other words, the point is to kick people off the Medicaid rolls, make it much harder to get treatment (just as it's now harder for students to go to college), and re-define whole sections of the population out of eligibility. And in classic Bush style, the poorest of the poor, as in Mississippi, will lose the most.
Every day, the Regime makes it abundantly, overwhelmingly, undeniably clear that there is only one thing that sick poor people -- and used-up soldiers and chained-up prisoners -- can do to play their part in Bush's noble vision for American society: they should all slink off into the dark somewhere and die.
That is the very quintessence of Bushism. That is now the actual, actionable platform of the modern Republican Party. This is the reality they want to create behind the words "the United States of America."
[ Original ]
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Editorial: Venezuela Leading the Race For the UN Security Council Seat
by Stephen Lendman
In October, elections will take place for five non-permanent UN Security Council seats to be held in 2007. One of them will be for the Latin American seat now held by Argentina. The two leading regional contenders vying to fill the opening are Venezuela and Guatemala, and the other countries in the region comprising Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC) will vote on which one gets it. If they're unable to reach a consensus, which may happen, the choice will be up to the General Assembly where it will take a two-thirds majority secret ballot vote process to select the winner.
It's not hard to know which country the US supports and why it's doing all it can to subvert the chances of the other one. Guatemala has been a close US ally ever since the CIA fomented a coup in 1954 to oust the country's democratically elected leader Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Ever since, the country has been run by a succession of oppressive military and civilian governments that turned Guatemala into pariah state compiling the hemisphere's worst human rights record that never ended even after the 1996 UN brokered Peace Accords that officially ended a brutal 36 year civil conflict waged mainly against the country's indigenous Mayan majority that resulted in the state-sponsored murder of 200,000 or more of its people.
Throughout the last half century, the US treated Guatemala as a valued ally and ignored its atrocious human rights record that Amnesty International continues to document. The human rights organization finds that although Guatemala today is nominally a democratic republic, it's abuses against its own people continue unabated and its electoral process leaves much to be desired. It led Amnesty to call Guatemala a "land of injustice." But that's not an issue for the Bush administration that's exerted its typical strong-arm bullying tactics to line up votes for its preferred candidate it knows will back all US proposals in the Council. That's sure not to happen if Venezuela under democratically elected President Hugo Chavez wins the seat, which is why Washington is pulling out all the stops to prevent it. Chavez is committed to building an alternative to the neoliberal Washington consensus and is undeterred by the power and threats against him by his dominant northern neighbor that wants Venezuela marginalized in the region and President Chavez ousted and replaced by someone willing to serve the interests of capital. Chavez won't and Washington knows it.
Venezuela On Track to Win Based On Chavez's Opposition to US Dominance
At this stage in the campaign, Venezuela looks on track to win the Council seat although it's likely to be a close vote. In lobbying for support, Venezuela has built its campaign on the need to counter the Global North's one-sided brave new world order agenda and especially to neutralize Washington's dominance and misuse of power in the region and wanting to continue exploiting it for its own imperial gain. Venezuela's Permanent Mission of the Bolivarian Republic to the UN put it in terms of hoping to "be an element of balance against hegemonic trends, in favor of the interests of countries from the South with an independent position." The country's former Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez Araque put it in terms that: "This has become an issue of national dignity, because a superpower launched a campaign and exerts pressure on foreign countries." And Vice-Foreign Minister for North America Mari Pili Hernandez added that his country deserves the seat because it "respects the sovereignty of all nations (and) has demonstrated that it is an independent country that does not accept pressure from any (other) state."
Hugo Chavez personally has been vigorously working to build a coalition of support to win the Council seat and took his anti-imperialism campaign abroad in July to do it visiting Iran, Russia, Belarus, Mali, Benin, Qatar and Vietnam. His efforts have paid off in many parts of the world including in the US dominated Middle East where Caracas recently earned observer status in the Cairo-based Arab League. The organization's Deputy Secretary General for Political Affairs Ahmed Benhelli soon plans to visit Venezuela and said he would make "an effort to gain common support from all countries of my region so that Venezuela can join the UN Security Council." Chavez also sought support within the African Union at its July Summit in Banjul. At it he proposed a program of cooperation between Africa and Latin America based on the creation of four initiatives aimed at closer economic ties between the two regions. Part of it involves an oil-trade agreement known as PetroSouth. The effort may be working as Ghana, Zimbabwe and Mali have since indicated they will support Venezuela's bid for the Security Council seat.
Chavez has also been active in Latin American using his new leverage as a formal member of the Southern Common Market Mercosur trade bloc that also includes Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay with Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru as associate members. A close eye is now on thus far undecided countries like Chili and several others in the region to see if they can withstand Washington's intimidation to support Venezuela as the candidate most deserving of serving on the Council. Other countries in the region have already shown they're willing to do it and have announced they will vote for Venezuela in October. Those countries include the four other Mercosur members as well as Bolivia, Cuba and the Caribbean Community 15 country trade bloc known as CARICOM. Opposed to Venezuela largely because of US pressure are Mexico, Nicaragua, Hondurus, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. On the fence and being watched is Haiti under its new president Rene Preval who in his first term as the country's President in the 1990s governed progressively meaning he should support his putative ally Hugo Chavez. But US pressure is intense against him, and he's well aware of what happened to former Haitian president and ally Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was ousted from office by a US-instigated coup against him in February, 2004 only because he governed independently of Washington's authority. It remains to be seen if Preval is courageous enough to support Chavez or will succumb to the threat of becoming a victim of the same fate. We'll soon know.
US Strong-Arm Bullying To Defeat the Venezuelan Bid
The US anti-Venezuelan campaign's main thesis is that the Chavez government's presence as a Council member would be "disruptive (and) non-consensus-seeking," meaning, of course, that any vote against a US position is one to be avoided so the de facto ruler of the world will always get its way. One example of this is Caracas' refusal to support the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) US pressured resolution to have the Security Council vote and act against Iran's perfectly legal commercial nuclear program. The only reason the Bush administration opposes it is the same reason it opposes the Chavez government. Both countries act independently of US authority which is anathema to the ruling hegemon that wants total control and no effective opposition. It wields a heavy hand against any challenge to its authority and uses all means to do it including preemptive war.
Washington Engendered Opposition
Once again the usual heavy-handed Washington pressure may be backfiring as it's already convinced some Latin American and other nations to buck US authority and support Venezuela for the Council seat. Washington tried before in 2005 to isolate Venezuela in the Organization of American States (OAS) by backing a supposed process of democratic rule in the region allowing member states the right to intervene against any nation that violates the OAS charter. The plan was a thinly veiled scheme aimed at Venezuela that the member states saw through and rejected. It showed that when Washington goes too far, as it's now doing, other nations on the receiving end of its bullying may coalesce against it successfully.
That's what happened in 2001 when the US was humiliated and denied a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission it was a founding member of and was replaced on it by Syria. It happened again in 2003 at the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha round trade talks in Cancun and once more in July, 2006 in Geneva after the resumption of these talks collapsed because enough participating nations in them refused any longer to put up with the usual US negotiating practice of demanding all take and offering little give in return. Right now that's how it seems to be going in the race for the UN Security Council seat. Venezuela looks to be on track to win it and likely will as long as President Hugo Chavez makes no serious tactical error between now and the October vote. So far in his campaigning efforts Chavez has performed admirably, and if he continues to he may be on his way to dealing the US still another stinging and humiliating defeat to go along with all the others the US has been sustaining (politically and militarily) proving even the de facto ruler of the world is vulnerable when enough other nations (or a determined "resistance") refuse to submit and are willing to take it on.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Bushland
The Dumb Americans: Four-Fifths of U.S. High School Graduates Not Ready for College
Bloomberg
16 Aug 06
Almost four-fifths of U.S. high school graduates failed to pass this year's standard examinations designed to show their readiness for college, test designer ACT Inc. reported.
Scores on the four-part ACT test, taken this year by more than 1.2 million U.S. students, ranged from only 27 percent passing in biology to 69 percent in English, the company reported. A total of 21 percent met the benchmark in all four subject areas, including algebra and social science, it said.
The nationwide average total score on the ACT test rose the fastest in 20 years, yet the overall performance remains unacceptable, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said.
"The ACT findings clearly point to the need for high schools to require a rigorous, four-year core curriculum and to offer advanced placement classes so that our graduates are prepared to compete and succeed in both college and the workforce,'' Spellings said in a statement.
The ACT tests, based on curriculum surveys of high school and college instructors, serve as a competitor to the SAT test administered by the New York-based College Board. ACT's benchmark for passing is designed to indicate a 50 percent chance of obtaining a grade of "B'' or higher in the college-level course.
More than 40 percent of U.S. high school graduates took the ACT tests this year, said Richard Ferguson, chief executive of the Iowa City, Iowa-based company. Yet the low pass rate suggests that many college students will "struggle or need some remediation along the way,'' Ferguson said.
"We have a lot of work ahead of us to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills they need to succeed at the next level of education,'' he said in a briefing on the results.
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Feds renew contract with Net oversight body
By Anne Broache
CNET News.com
August 16, 2006
The U.S. government this week renewed its contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, effectively extending its grip on the administrative body that coordinates Net addressing until up to 2011.
The new contract (click for PDF) between the Marina Del Ray, Calif.-based nonprofit and the U.S. Department of Commerce covers technical functions related to the Internet domain name system (DNS) and is scheduled to go into effect on Oct. 1, one day after the existing contract expires. Technically, the agreement lasts for one year, and the government has the option of renewing it each year for up to four additional years.
"In executing this contract the Department of Commerce has confirmed that ICANN is uniquely positioned to perform this function," Paul Twomey, the organization's CEO, said in a statement.
The move appears to be consistent with a set of Internet governance principles issued last summer by the Commerce Department that ignited a worldwide debate. In addition to asserting its plans to retain control over the Internet's "root," the master file that lists what top-level domains are authorized, the Bush administration said it planned to maintain its supervision over ICANN.
For years, the U.S. government has been saying it ultimately intends to unleash ICANN from its control. It has operated the Net addressing system under an agreement with U.S. authorities since 1998. At a recent public hearing, John Kneuer, the department's acting assistant secretary for communications and information, said the agency remained "committed" to that transition but gave no indication of when that may happen.
The contract awarded this week covers only technical tasks performed by ICANN, such as allocating DNS numbers and performing certain responsibilities related to managing the Internet root zone. Also set to expire on Sept. 30, but not yet addressed formally by the Commerce Department, is a separate agreement known as a "memorandum of understanding," which has been repeatedly amended and renewed.
The MoU, designed to pave the way for an eventual shift away from U.S. oversight, outlines more specific obligations for ICANN, such as procedures for establishing new top-level domain names, for keeping tabs on "Whois" registry information, and for fostering greater transparency in the organization's dealings. A Commerce Department spokesman told CNET News.com on Wednesday that he had "no idea" how the agency would proceed with that agreement.
Over the years, controversy has plagued ICANN, which grew out of a clandestine meeting in Cambridge, Mass. Critics in the past have accused it of lacking transparency in its operations and moving sluggishly to approve new top-level domain names. More recently, Capitol Hill politicians and advocacy groups have criticized the organization for agreeing to what amounts to a perpetual contract with VeriSign to run the .com registry, which some say would result in unnecessary price hikes and a veritable monopoly.
Some organizations, such as domain name registrar GoDaddy.com and the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Democracy and Technology, charged at the recent hearing that the administrative body hasn't yet proven it's ready to function on its own.
Despite that "rough start," ICANN has "come a long way over the past couple of years," said Will Rodger, public policy director for the Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include Google, Microsoft, Verizon Communications and Yahoo.
U.S. authorities should let the contract lapse after two years, Rodger suggested, adding that "ICANN should have earned its independence by then."
Meanwhile, suspicion of the United States' cozy relationship with ICANN appears to persist. During a public comment period, a large number of people sent a two-paragraph form letter urging the United States to "work cooperatively with all stakeholders to complete the transition to a domain name system independent of U.S. governmental control."
Representing about a dozen countries--including Australia, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, Morocco, Nigeria, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States--they wrote, "No single government should have a pre-eminent role in Internet governance."
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NYC releases new 9/11 tapes
Associated news
By Amy Westfeldt and Larry McShane
16/08/06
NEW YORK - Trapped and running out of air on the smoky 83rd floor of the World Trade Center, Melissa Doi begged the 911 operator not to hang up. "Can you stay on the line with me, please? I feel like I'm dying," Doi said.
The operator stayed on for 24 minutes, imploring Doi to keep breathing and praying, saying, "It's going to be fine" over and over, long after Doi had stopped talking.
Finally, the connection ended. "The line is now dead," one dispatcher said. "Oh my lord," said the operator.
Doi, a 32-year-old financial manager, died in the World Trade Center's south tower on Sept. 11. On Wednesday, her voice was heard as the city released new tapes of hundreds of heart-wrenching phone calls, along with other emergency transcripts.
The tapes recorded rescuers complaining about chaos in the twin towers. But they also evoked the firefighters' powerful sense of duty, with some struggling to evacuate the towers and others begging dispatchers to send them to the scene. A total of 343 firefighters died in the disaster.
"We're in a state of confusion," Battalion Chief Dennis Devlin said, standing inside a command post at the trade center as the towers burned above. "We have no cell phone service anywhere because of the disaster. ... Bring all the additional handy talkies."
Devlin was one of 19 dead firefighters whose voices were captured on the 1,613 previously undisclosed emergency calls. The New York Times and relatives of Sept. 11 victims sued for release of the tapes to learn what happened in the towers and what dispatchers told workers and rescuers.
Most of the calls involved firefighters and dispatchers. The voices of 10 civilians calling from inside the World Trade Center were edited out because of privacy concerns.
A portion of Doi's end of the conversation was played for jurors in April at the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, but this was the first time the operator's voice was heard.
Within minutes of the first plane hitting at 8:46 a.m., firefighters - some off-duty, some even retired - began calling dispatchers to volunteer their help. Lt. Timothy Higgins, in a typical response, called at 8:52 a.m.
"We're available for the trade center," he volunteered.
"OK, thanks," replied the dispatcher. Higgins, with five other members of his squad, made the trip to Manhattan. All six died.
In the Bronx, Lt. Michael Healey called a dispatcher just before the second plane hit to ask for an assignment in lower Manhattan.
"I was just seeing if he could maybe possibly get us over there, so, just keep us in mind, over into Manhattan," he said.
"OK," the dispatcher said. They responded, with Healey and five other squad members killed.
Devlin, in the lobby of the south tower, provided a glimpse of the problems. Thirty-five floors above, fire Capt. Patrick Brown reported a chaotic scene of civilians - some with burn injuries - going down the stairwell as firefighters headed into the fire.
"Apparently it's above the 75th floor," Brown said in the 24-second exchange barely an hour before the north tower fell. "I don't know if they got there yet. We're still heading up."
The same mix of concern and confusion was evident in other more frantic calls.
"One of the towers just collapsed," said an unidentified fire lieutenant. "Everybody's got to be inside of it. ... There's got to be thousands of the people inside it. One of the towers just came down on top of everybody."
One off-duty worker was in tears when she called in to try to report for duty.
"All those people - what about the EMTs and paramedics and firefighters in there helping people get out?" she asked her supervisor.
"I don't know, sweetie, I really don't know."
"Oh God."
Family members complained their loved ones were betrayed by poor communication that could have steered them outside before the buildings collapsed.
"We're still looking for information for how we can fix what went wrong that day," said Aggie McCaffrey, whose firefighter brother Orio Palmer was killed when the first tower collapsed.
Barbara Hetzel lost her son Thomas, a firefighter. Although she has listened to such tapes before, she said, it does not get easier with time.
"It's even deeper and sadder," said Hetzel, who listened with less than a dozen family members in a midtown Manhattan high-rise.
In March, the city released transcripts of 130 calls from people trapped in the towers, including only the voices of operators and other public employees. The callers' voices were cut out after city attorneys argued that their pleas for help were too emotional and intense to be publicized without their families' consent.
Thousands of pages of emergency workers' oral histories and radio transmissions were released last August. Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta ordered his department to search for additional recordings when another tape turned up shortly after the March release.
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What we know and don't know about 9/11
Information clearing house
Paul Craig Roberts
16/08/06
I received a number of intelligent responses from readers of my August 14 column, "Gullible Americans," The letters deserve a reply. Moreover, some contain important points that should be shared with a wider audience. Pundits such as myself are not the only people who have interesting things to say. Considering the number of letters and the time it would require to respond individually, I am replying instead in this column.
Most readers from whom I heard understand the difference between loyalty to country and loyalty to a government. They understand that to support a political party or a government that is destroying the US Constitution and America's reputation in the world is, in fact, an act of treason. Therefore, I did not have to read the usual drivel about how doubting "our government" is un-American.
Among the issues raised are:
How could the complicity of the US government, or some part of it, in the events of 9/11 be kept a secret? For the most part, this question comes from Americans who believe the government must have been, to some extent, complicit in the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon.
How can we differentiate between the real facts, the 9/11 Commission's reporting of the facts, and "conspiracy theories"?
What about the role of suicide flyers led by M. Atta?
What about the Popular Mechanics article and the TV documentary that debunk the skeptics and support the official explanation of 9/11?
What about the role of the US media in propagandizing Americans with the official explanation instead of examining the explanation, especially with regard to such truncated hatchet-job interviews with 9/11 skeptics such as the hatchet jobs presided over by Donny Deutsch on CNBC and by neocon Tucker Carlson on MSNBC?
Why are so many Americans hostile to holding the Bush regime accountable for its obvious and documented lies, lies that have misled America to war and gratuitously slaughtered and maimed tens of thousands of people, including our own troops?
I will begin by stating what we know to be a solid incontrovertible scientific fact.
We know that it is strictly impossible for any building, much less steel columned buildings, to "pancake" at free fall speed. Therefore, it is a non-controversial fact that the official explanation of the collapse of the WTC buildings is false.
We also know for a fact that the Air Force somehow inexplicably failed to intercept the alleged hijacked airliners despite the fact that the Air Force can launch jet fighters to 29,000 feet in 2.5 minutes. We also know that the two co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission have just written a book that reveals that the US military lied to the Commission about its failure to intercept the hijacked airliners.
There are various explanations for this second fact. The military could have lied to cover up complicity or to cover-up its incompetence. However, no investigation has been made to ascertain the true explanation for the failure.
This leaves us with the incontrovertible fact that buildings cannot "pancake" at free fall speeds.
The only explanation known to science for the free fall collapse of a building, especially into its own footprint, is engineered demolition, which removes the supports for each floor of the building at split second intervals so that the debris from above meets no resistance on its fall. To call this explanation a "conspiracy theory" is to display the utmost total ignorance. Any physicist or engineer who maintains that buildings can "pancake" at free fall speed has obviously been bought and paid for or is a total incompetent fool.
The WTC buildings are known to have collapsed at free fall speed into their own footprints.
This fact does not tell us who is responsible or what purpose was served.
Since the damning incontrovertible fact has not been investigated, speculation and "conspiracy theories" have filled the void. Some of the speculation is based on circumstantial evidence and is plausible. Other of the speculation is untenable, and it is used to protect the official explanation by branding all skeptics "conspiracy theorists." I would not be surprised if some of the most far-out "conspiracy theories" consist, in fact, of disinformation put out by elements in the government to discredit all skeptics. But I do not know this to be the case.
How could government complicity be kept a secret? It can be kept a secret, because so many Americans are scientifically ignorant and emotionally weak. They are incapable of realizing the contradiction in the government's claim that the WTC buildings "pancaked" at free fall speed, and they are emotionally incapable of confronting the evil of the Bush regime. Many Christians think that Bush is "a man of God" who is protecting American morality from homosexuals and abortionists. Others who wear their patriotism on their sleeves think Bush is standing up for America and innocent Israel, and that they must not let anti-American anti-war protesters cause America to lose another war and repeat the Vietnam experience. Americans are both ignorant and full of resentments against the left. This makes them easily manipulated by the neoconservatives who dominate the Bush regime and the media.
Also, many anti-war and anti-Bush online sites are scared of being called "crazy conspiracy kooks." They protect their sites by staying away from the 9/11 issue, just as so many Americans are scared to death of being called "anti-semitic" and thereby do not dare criticize Israel no matter the heinous war crimes that state routinely commits. Of all the online subscribers to my column, only vdare.com and NewsMax had the courage to post my column. Realizing that even antiwar sites would serve as de facto gatekeepers for the neocons, I offered the column to ICH, whose editor cannot be intimidated.
The Popular Mechanics article and the TV documentary are obviously false since they both endorse the official explanation that the WTC buildings "pancaked" at free fall speed, an obvious scientific impossibility. Whether the false reporting by Popular Mechanics and television are due to incompetence or to complicity in a government cover-up, I do not know.
We know nothing about alleged suicide flyers led by M. Atta except what the government has told us, a government that has lied to us about everything else, such as Iraq's alleged WMD and alleged links to Osama bin Laden, and Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, a program for which the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors cannot find evidence.
According to reports, the BBC has found 6 of the alleged suicide hijackers alive and well in their home countries. I do not know if the report is true, but I do know that the report has been ignored and there has been no investigation. Both the US government and the US media have turned a blind eye. We have no way of knowing if Atta and his named accomplices hijacked the planes, or, if they did, whether they were dupes of intelligent services that pretended to be a terrorist cell and organized the cover for the engineered demolition.
The fact that we do not know any of these things, and the fact that the 9/11 Commission co-chairmen now tell us that their report is flawed, are good indications that we have no documented information of who was behind the plot, why it occurred, or how it operated.
With regard to the role of the US media, if it is indeed a media rather than a propaganda ministry, one reader cited remarks by the distinguished investigative reporter, John Pilger, made in an address at Columbia University on 14 April 2006:
"During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. 'I have to tell you,' said their spokesman, 'that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don't have that. What's the secret? How do you do it?'"
This quote is probably apocryphal, but it is well used to make a valid point. The answer to the Russian's question is that during the cold war the American public viewed the Soviet Union as a dangerous adversary and were amenable to reports to that effect. The fact that the Soviets were a potentially dangerous adversary made Americans blind to the roles of the US military-industrial complex, which benefitted financially from cultivating the adversary relationship, and the US government, which benefitted politically from cultivating the adversary relationship, in keeping the adversarial relationship alive.
The uniformity of the US media has become much more complete since the days of the cold war. During the 1990s, the US government permitted an unconscionable concentration of print and broadcast media that terminated the independence of the media. Today the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence. More importantly, the values of the conglomerates reside in the broadcast licenses, which are granted by the government, and the corporations are run by corporate executives--not by journalists--whose eyes are on advertising revenues and the avoidance of controversy that might produce boycotts or upset advertisers and subscribers. Americans who rely on the totally corrupt corporate media have no idea what is happening anywhere on earth, much less at home.
Despite the dark days in which we live, some readers find optimism in recent polls that show more than one-third of the US public now disbelieve the official account of 9/11 despite the Bush regime's propaganda faithfully trumpeted by the US media. Bush's own rock-bottom polls show that Americans, like the Russians of the Soviet era, can read between the lines of the propagandistic US media. Many Americans can still spot a liar and a cheat when they see one.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
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A's fans unknowingly pass scientists' sniff test: Baseball game site of chemical detection security experiments
By Ian Hoffman
InsideBayArea.com
8/16/2006
As fans marched into McAfee Coliseum to see the Oakland A's play the Detroit Tigers and the Los Angeles Angels, scientists working for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were sniffing them - their popcorn, their cigars, hairspray and after-shave.
The scientists, sent from Sandia National Laboratories, wondered whether they could catch a whiff of a terrorist chemical attack in this morass of smells.
Their conclusion: Athletics' fans might be among the baseball's rowdiest, but they're a pretty clean bunch and so is their stadium, or at least neither is lethally bad smelling.
Sandia's chemical engineers had feared worse, especially for a stadium in the heart of an industrial neighborhood with Interstate 880 next-door. Enough ambient odors and chemicalscould swamp or confuse detectors tuned to sniff out sarin and VX gas at concentrations down to the parts per trillion. As molecules, garden pesticides are near twins to deadly poisons.
"We were very pleased with the background at the coliseum," said Ben Wu, project manager for Sandia's "rapidly deployable chemical detection system."
"It was very clean based on what we were expecting."
He led a half-dozen Sandians who set up shop inside the stadium's control center from late June into early July and put out a network of eight sensor boxes, each containing eight different chemical detectors with a surveillance camera keeping watch from a pole overhead.
The scientists tried a similar system at San Francisco International two years ago. Indoor spaces can concentrate smells and chemicals, such as floor waxes and cleansers.
But Homeland Security officials were keen to learn about open-air venues, especially those used for national security "special events" such as the Super Bowl and the Olympics. In a few years, they want to hone the system into a network of chemical sensors that require no more attention than a home smoke detector but could sniff an industrial toxin or nerve gas in time to evacuate thousands of spectators.
Dave Rinetti was happy to oblige.
"It was something to help them better their systems, so I was all for it," said Rinetti, the club's vice president for stadium operations.
The scientists moved in just as the Arizona Diamondbacks came to town and the A's fortunes sagged - three losses in a row. Rinetti looked over at the scientists and threatened to revoke their invitation.
The scientists kept their heads down, and the A's recovered, trouncing the Tigers and Angels to take over the lead in the American League West.
"They weren't a complete jinx," Rinetti conceded.
Wu and the Sandians found that A's fans carry a zoo of chemicals, but all fleeting and innocuous. The scientists successfully trained a computer to ignore them.
"When they pop up, I can't tell you whether it's Chanel No. 5 or Old Spice," said Wu, who, incidentally, became an A's fan during the assignment.
So what does the homeland security experiment say about A's ticketholders?
"There's nothing out of the ordinary about our fans," Rinetti suggested.
Tougher venues await the scientists. Next week, their sensor network will be tested against live chemical poisons at the Nevada Test Site, in an outdoor release. Details, according to Wu, are classified.
The Sandians also want to sniff around a few rock concerts in the neighboring arena and perhaps a few Raiders games.
"Speculatively, I don't see too much different," he said. "But I don't know what they have in all that make-up."
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Accidental Gunshots Vex LAPD
Los Angeles News
By Scott Glover and Matt Lait
17/08/06
The iconic confrontation in American policing, in which brave officers shoot it out with armed thugs, has occurred time and again in the annals of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Only days ago, what seemed like a routine traffic stop turned into a gun battle when officers pulled over a car only to see a passenger emerge with an AK-47 assault rifle. The gunman sprayed the squad car with about 20 high-velocity rounds, one of which nearly severed an officer's wrist.
As unsettling - and unpredictable - as such incidents are, a Times analysis of two decades of police records highlights another danger to officers, one little appreciated even by officials who oversee the department: Officers over those years shot themselves or one another nearly as often as they were shot by suspects.
Since 1985, there have been more than 350 accidental discharges by LAPD officers. There also have been more than a dozen so-called friendly fire incidents.
Though the resulting wounds tended to be less serious than in gun battles with suspects, scores of officers and more than two dozen suspects and bystanders have been injured in incidents that department officials blame on careless handling of firearms.
"Any officer being shot for any reason is an unacceptable number," said Police Commission Vice President Alan Skobin, who is one of two commissioners assigned to review accidental discharges of guns. "Unfortunately, when you have a large number of people who frequently handle weapons, there will be accidents. You just hope that there aren't serious consequences."
Last month offered up a sad example: The 3-year-old son of an LAPD officer got hold of his father's 9-millimeter service handgun as they sat in a pickup truck at a traffic light in Anaheim. When the child pulled the trigger, a bullet passed through the officer and left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Officials say that kind of tragedy is rare, but department records don't track accidental shootings not committed by an officer.
The vast majority of accidental shootings the department does monitor are avoidable and generally the result of careless or reckless conduct.
Over the last five years, the number of accidents has declined - as have all types of officer-involved shootings - but such incidents still accounted for about a third of all gunshot injuries sustained by officers.
Some officers have been involved in more than one accidental shooting. However, because the Police Commission this year started withholding the names of officers involved in shootings, it is no longer possible to determine from its public reports whether an officer has a history of negligently handling firearms.
Mishaps commonly occur as officers chase suspects or clean their guns. However, over the years, some accidental gunshots have been highly unusual.
One off-duty officer shot himself in a leg as he sat behind his desk and, according to department records, contemplated "a complex mathematical problem." Another officer inadvertently pulled the trigger when his African gray parrot flew into his face.
One officer accidentally shot his girlfriend in a leg while trying to retrieve a cartridge from his handgun as a "memento" of their date. Yet another officer admitted that he accidentally fired his gun because he was startled by a woman holding a teddy bear. Two officers accidentally discharged their weapons as they handled them at home while watching themselves in mirrors.
Even officers from the department's elite SWAT unit have accidentally fired guns while on duty.
In one case, officers had just completed a highly dangerous operation in which they entered the home of a barricaded suspect. Though they emerged from the house unscathed, one of them errantly fired his shotgun while unloading ammunition from another weapon. Shotgun pellets struck the ground between his feet, with metal fragments ricocheting into his partner's upper leg.
In another case, an officer from the division that studies police behavior and attempts to reduce risk was off duty when he decided to give his fiancee a lesson on the safe handling of guns, according to a department report.
The officer thought he had removed all of the rounds from the cylinder of his .38-caliber weapon when he pointed it at a wall and began to explain "trigger pull pressure." As he pulled the trigger, a round that had been left in the chamber discharged into the wall.
Accidental shootings are not unique to LAPD officers. Statistics from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department show that deputies over the last five years accidentally discharged their weapons at roughly the same rate.
"I don't see it as a problem any more significant than other agencies might have, and maybe, in fact, less significant," LAPD Chief William J. Bratton said.
Police Department records show that 161 officers were injured by gunfire from 1985 to 2005, the last year for which statistics are available.
Ninety officers were shot by suspects, compared to 68 officers who either shot themselves or were shot by other officers. (In three cases it was unknown whether the officer was wounded by a suspect's gun or by friendly fire.)
At the LAPD, accidental gunshots can mean administrative headaches and embarrassment for those involved. Officers are required to report immediately any discharge of a weapon whether it is intentional or not, on duty or off.
All gun discharges are investigated by detectives and then reviewed by the chief and the civilian Police Commission, which makes the final determination on whether a shooting is within departmental guidelines.
Nearly every accidental gunshot results in an "out of policy" finding by the commission and can result in an officer being disciplined. Often, however, they receive minor punishments such as reprimands.
Because of administrative repercussions, police experts suspect that many accidental shootings go unreported, especially if they occur while the officer is off duty, which according to LAPD records is when more than 20% of the accidents happen.
Former LAPD training Officer Hank Cousine admitted that he did not report an accidental discharge by a probationary officer under his supervision because he didn't want to hurt the young officer's career.
Cousine, a 15-year veteran who was fired for participating in an illegal pyramid scheme in 1998, said he believes that many accidental discharges go unnoticed by the department.
"If there's no one around, you're not going to say anything about it," Cousine said. "Why would you lay yourself out? Why would you want to give up money, get yourself in trouble, and take days off and get ridiculed? Why would you do that?"
Over the years, alcohol appeared to play a role in some accidental discharges.
Officer Timothy J. McLaughlin accidentally fired a .38-caliber bullet through his apartment wall and into a neighbor's home after drinking six beers in 1999. He reported the discharge a day later, only after learning that the neighbor took a photo of the bullet hole and talked to his landlord about hiring an attorney.
"A firearm must be handled with extreme care at all times; no one should be more aware of this than a police officer," said Capt. Joseph Curreri, who recommended that McLaughlin be suspended for 15 days. "Only but for the grace of God was no one injured as a result of the accidental discharge."
While drinking for several hours at a bar in Hermosa Beach in 1998, records show, officers Erik Cortes and Jeffrey Ingalls got to talking about guns and police tactics.
At one point, they went to the restroom together. As Ingalls washed his hands at a sink, Cortes saw Ingalls' gun and removed it from its holster, accidentally shooting his friend's hand. As the bullet shattered on the bathroom floor, a fragment ricocheted into Ingalls' neck.
In a 1992 case, Officer John Duran had a blood alcohol level of 0.232 - nearly three times the legal driving limit - when he accidentally fired his gun, setting off a chain reaction of injuries.
According to police reports, Duran was a passenger in the backseat of a pickup truck when his gun fell out of his waistband. As he picked it up, one of his buddies started play-fighting, slapping the off-duty officer.
The gun went off and the bullet hit the driver in an arm, causing him to lose control and crash into a telephone pole. The collision broke Duran's neck and fractured a leg of another passenger - also an off-duty LAPD officer - in five places.
"People make mistakes," Commissioner Skobin said. "They are human beings. You wish it would never happen, but unfortunately it does."
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Immigrant Takes Refuge in Chicago Church
By DON BABWIN
Associated Press
Aug 16, 2006
CHICAGO - Immigration activists around the country are taking up the cause of a single mother who invoked the ancient principle of sanctuary and took refuge in a Chicago church rather than submit to deportation to Mexico.
Elvira Arellano, 31, was holed up for a second day Wednesday at Aldalberto United Methodist Church with the support of the congregation's pastor. With her was her 7-year-old son, Saul, an American citizen.
Federal officials said there is no right to sanctuary in a church under U.S. law and nothing to prevent them from arresting her. But they would not say exactly what they planned to do, or when.
The protest raised the spectacle of agents barging into a church and dragging her out.
"She is the face of the movement," said Emma Lozano, executive director of the Chicago immigration-rights group Centro Sin Fronteras, who was at the church with Arellano.
In Phoenix, Martin Manteca of Mi Familia Vota said Hispanic activist groups were organizing a vigil in her support. Lozano said an event also was scheduled in Detroit.
Arellano also has attracted attention from political officials including Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who has voiced his support. And Dolores Huerta, a leader in the effort to organize the nation's farm workers, plans to come to Chicago to show her support, according to Huerta's daughter, Alicia.
A few dozen supporters gathered at the storefront church, sitting in the pews and praying for Arellano. But the doors were not barricaded, and there were no apparent efforts to fortify the church.
Arellano, who is president of United Latino Family, which lobbies for families that could be split by deportation, had been ordered to appear at the immigration office in Chicago at 9 a.m. Tuesday, but instead went to the church, where she is an active member.
She said that if authorities want her, they will have to come and get her.
"My son is a U.S. citizen," she told reporters. "He doesn't want me to go anywhere, so I'm going to stay with him."
Pastor Walter Coleman said his congregation offered Arellano refuge after praying about her plight. Coleman said he does not believe Arellano should have to choose between leaving her son behind or removing him from his home.
"She represents the voice of the undocumented, and we think it's our obligation, our responsibility, to make a stage for that voice to be heard," he said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said there is nothing preventing the U.S. government from arresting her at the church.
"Ms. Arellano willfully violated U.S. immigration laws and is now facing the consequences of her actions by failing to report to immigration authorities," said agency spokeswoman Gail Montenegro. "We will arrest and deport her as required by law at an appropriate time and place."
Legal experts agreed that the traditional doctrine that people are protected from arrest in a church is not recognized under U.S. law.
But Joel Fetzer, associate professor of political science at Pepperdine University in California, said: "If the government comes in, it's going to look very jack-booted fascistic. It would look very bad."
Churches and synagogues also tried to offer sanctuary to illegal immigrants escaping civil war in El Salvador during the 1980s, a civil disobedience activity known as the Sanctuary movement. Susan Gzesh, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago who assisted the churches and synagogues that offered sanctuary, said she does not believe federal authorities ever went into the churches to make arrests.
Arellano illegally crossed into the United States in 1997 and was deported shortly afterward. She returned within days, living for three years in Oregon before moving to Chicago in 2000. Arrested two years later at O'Hare Airport, where she was working as a cleaning woman, she was convicted of working under a false Social Security number and ordered to appear at the immigration office in Chicago.
Activists said her desire to come here to work and provide a better life for herself and her son illustrates why they believe the nation's immigration laws must be changed.
"She is a leader in the movement who has made the issue of family unity the key issue in the question of the undocumented," her pastor said. "That is the most sympathetic issue there is."
Others are not so sure.
"I don't think the immigration debate should be focused on a woman who ... disregards an order," said Carlina Tapia-Ruano, a Chicago lawyer and president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Tapia-Ruano said she worries that Arellano's story will be used by extremists on both sides of the issue and cited as an example "of how illegals come here to be in flagrant disregard of our laws, and I don't think that's true."
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Suspect Says Ramsey Death 'An Accident'
Associated Press
By Sutin Wannabovorn
17/08/06
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- A former American school teacher said publicly Thursday he was with JonBenet Ramsey when she was killed and called the 6-year-old's death "an accident," a stunning admission that should help answer 10 years of questions in the unsolved murder case.
John Mark Karr, 41, will be taken within the week to Colorado, where he will face charges of first degree murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault, Ann Hurst of the Department of Homeland Security told a news conference in Bangkok.
"I was with JonBenet when she died," John Mark Karr told reporters afterward, visibly nervous and stuttering as he spoke. "Her death was an accident."
Asked if he was innocent of the crime, Karr said: "No."
Karr confessed to the killing after his arrest Wednesday at his downtown Bangkok apartment by Thai and American authorities, said Lt. Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul, head of Thailand's immigration police.
He said Karr insisted his crime was not first-degree murder but that she died during a kidnapping attempt that went awry.
"He said it was second-degree murder. He said it was unintentional. He said he was in love with the child, she was a pageant queen," Suwat said.
Karr declined to say what his connection was to the Ramsey family. Dressed in a turquoise polo shirt and khaki trousers, he appeared ashen with an expressionless look on his face.
An attorney for the Ramsey family said Wednesday that Karr once lived near the family in Conyers, Ga.
JonBenet was found beaten and strangled in the basement of the family's home in Boulder, Colo., on Dec. 26, 1996.
Wednesday's arrest was a surprise development in one of America's most lurid murder cases, which had left a cloud of suspicion over her family after years went by with no arrests. Some feared the case would never be solved.
Striking video images of the blonde-haired girl in child beauty pageants helped propel the case into one of the highest-profile mysteries in the United States.
A law enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the AP that Karr had been communicating periodically with somebody in Boulder who had been following the case and cooperating with law enforcement officials.
A University of Colorado spokesman, Barrie Hartman, said journalism professor Michael Tracey communicated with Karr over several months and contacted police. The university spokesman said he didn't know what prompted Tracey to become suspicious of Karr.
Tracey produced a documentary in 2004 called "Who Killed JonBenet?" A woman who answered the phone at a number under his name said he didn't live there anymore; his office phone mailbox was full.
The Ramseys learned that police were investigating Karr at least a month before the June death of JonBenet's mother, Patsy Ramsey, of ovarian cancer, the family said.
In a statement Wednesday, father John Ramsey said that if his wife had lived to see Karr's arrest, she "would no doubt have been as pleased as I am with today's development almost 10 years after our daughter's murder."
Suwat quoted Karr as saying he tried to kidnap JonBenet for a $118,000 ransom but that his plan went awry and he strangled her. Patsy Ramsey reported finding a ransom note in the house demanding $118,000 for her daughter.
Investigators said at one point that JonBenet's parents were under an "umbrella of suspicion" in the slaying, and some news accounts cast suspicion on JonBenet's older brother, Burke. But the Ramseys insisted an intruder killed their daughter, and no one was ever charged.
Over the years, some experts suggested that investigators had botched the case so thoroughly that it might never be solved. The Ramseys moved back to Atlanta after their daughter's slaying.
"It's been a very long 10 years, and I'm just sorry Patsy isn't here for me to hug her neck," said Lin Wood, the family's longtime attorney.
"John and Patsy lived their lives knowing they were innocent, trying to raise a son despite the furor around them," Wood told MSNBC.
Suwat said U.S. authorities informed Thai police on Aug. 11 that an arrest warrant had been issued for Karr on charges of premeditated murder. The warrant was sent to Thai police on Wednesday.
"Through investigation we were able to determine where his residence was and the Thais arrested him," Hurst said. "He did not resist. He did express surprise."
Hurst said Karr has been "very cooperative" with authorities and that he's shown a "variety of emotions."
Suwat said Karr arrived in Bangkok on June 6 from Malaysia to look for a teaching job. It was not clear whether he had gotten a job, the police officer said.
Karr's visa has been revoked as an "undesirable person" given the accusations against him, and U.S. authorities were expected to take him to the United States in the next few days, Suwat said.
Hurst, with the department's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Bangkok, said that Karr had left the United States several years ago and had not returned.
The immigration and customs office had assisted the Boulder County District Attorney's Office and the Royal Thai Police in the investigation.
The suspect, who has been in Thailand five times over the past two years, was being detained by immigration police pending arrival of U.S. officials, Suwat said.
When asked how he could travel for so many years in Asia, and whether he was independently wealthy, Hurst responded, "We're asking the same questions."
Police said Karr had been living in a dormitory-style hotel called The Blooms in a neighborhood of massage parlors and travel agents that cater to expatriate residents and sex tourists. The nine-story hotel offers rooms for as short as three-hour rentals.
The district attorney in Boulder, Mary Lacy, said the arrest followed several months of work.
She said Karr, who had traveled extensively across the world, may also be connected to a prior case in Santa Rosa County, Calif. She did not provide further details.
Sonoma County Chief Deputy District Attorney Joan Risse confirmed the child pornography charges and arrest warrant against a John Mark Karr, though she cautioned that she didn't know if he was the same person held Bangkok. State records show Karr lost his teaching credential in 2002.
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Earth Changes
US suffers world's first climate change exodus: study
AFP
by Jitendra Joshi
August 16, 2006
WASHINGTON - The first mass exodus of people fleeing the disastrous effects of climate change is not happening in low-lying Pacific islands but in the world's richest country, a US study said.
"The first massive movement of climate refugees has been that of people away from the Gulf Coast of the United States," said the Earth Policy Institute, which has warned for years that climate change demands action now.
Institute president Lester Brown said that about a quarter of a million people who fled the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina a year ago must now be classed as "refugees".
"Interestingly, the country to suffer the most damage from a hurricane is also primarily responsible for global warming," he said.
The United States is the world's largest consumer of energy, but has refused to sign up to the Kyoto pact aimed at reducing emissions of gases that scientists say are to blame for heating up the Earth.
Many environmentalists had expected the first big population shift to come somewhere like the Tuamotu islands in French Polynesia, the world's largest chain of atolls which rise barely metres (feet) from the Pacific.
Rising sea levels are part of the problem afflicting low-lying places but, experts argue, so are tropical storms that are mounting in ferocity because of warmer ocean temperatures.
Brown said many thousands of people who evacuated last year as Katrina slammed into New Orleans and other populated areas on the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts had no intention of returning.
"We estimate that at least 250,000 of them have established homes elsewhere and will not return," he said.
"They no longer want to face the personal trauma and financial risks associated with rising seas and more destructive storms. These evacuees are now climate refugees."
Many businesses have also deserted the coastal towns left ravaged by Katrina as insurance and other costs soar, the study said.
"As rising seas and more powerful hurricanes translate into higher insurance costs in these coastal communities, people are retreating inland," Brown said.
"And just as companies migrate to regions with lower wages, they also migrate to regions with lower insurance costs."
The study also warned: "The experience with more destructive storms in recent years is only the beginning."
The institute said that since 1970, the Earth's average temperature has risen by one degree Fahrenheit, but by 2100 it could rise by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (six degrees Celsius).
Rising temperatures could melt glaciers and polar ice caps, raising sea levels and displacing coastal residents worldwide.
"The flow of climate refugees to date numbers in the thousands, but if we do not quickly reduce CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, it could one day number in the millions," Brown said.
The institute's study classed "climate refugees" as part of a larger group of people who have been forced from their homes by man-made environmental change such as overgrazing.
"Overgrazing destroys the vegetation which leads then to local sandstorms ... we are looking at growing flows of environmental refugees in Africa, for example in Nigeria, Senegal, Mauritania or Kenya," Brown told reporters.
Millions of people in northern and western China have abandoned their villages as the land turns semi-arid because of overgrazing, the study said.
China is also the second biggest greenhouse-gas polluter after the United States thanks to the voracious rise in coal, gas and oil consumption to power its economic growth.
The booming port city of Shanghai could be at risk of flooding from more ferocious typhoons linked to global warming as it is only a metre (three feet) above sea level, Brown said.
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Study: Man-made Climate Change Causing Stronger Hurricanes
Live Science
By Ker Than
15/08/06
The increase in the intensity and duration of Atlantic hurricanes in recent decades is due to temperature increases in the atmosphere caused by global warming, and not by natural variations in ocean temperature, according to a new study.
Recent studies have linked rising sea surface temperatures, or SSTs, in the Atlantic Ocean to climate change caused by human activities. Warmer SST's means the ocean is capable of storing more energy-energy that is converted into wind power during tropical storms.
However, other scientists blame a decades-long natural variation in ocean temperature, called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO, for the rising SST trend.
Both camps agree that rising SSTs are contributing to increasing hurricane strength, but until now, the connection between air temperature and SST was unclear. Do rising atmospheric temperatures cause sea surface temperatures to rise? Or is it the other way around?
Now, James Elsner, director of the Hurricane Center at Florida State University, says he has broken the deadlock using a statistical test that determines causality. His conclusion: that a warming atmosphere is raising sea surface temperatures, causing hurricanes to become stronger.
Elsner's finding is detailed in the current issue of the journal Geophysical Letters.
X predicts Y, but not vice versa
Elsner looked at the connection between average global near-surface air temperatures and Atlantic SSTs and the effect of each on hurricane intensities over the past 50 years.
He found that the average air temperatures during the hurricane season months of July to November could predict sea surface temperatures but that the opposite was not true: SST could not be used to predict average air temperature.
Elsner says this supports recent studies linking rising SSTs to global warming.
"If natural variability of oceans were the driving force, you'd expect that you'd be able to predict the air temperatures from the sea surface temperatures, but you can't do that," he told LiveScience.
To conduct his study, Elsner used satellite data collected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for air temperature information from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for Atlantic SST records.
However, the reliability of such tropical cyclone databases was recently questioned by a group of scientists that included hurricane specialist Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.
Questionable data?
Landsea cited changes in satellite technology in recent decades, differences in operational standards at tracking stations around the world and gaps in official records as reasons to question the use of cyclone databases for evaluating hurricane strengths over long periods of time.
Elsner says these problems do not apply to his study because he looked at year-to-year variations instead of trends over several years.
"The trend analysis is more susceptible to the changes in instrument records than is the type of regression analysis that I did," he said.
Elsner says his findings cannot be generalized to other oceans around the world and only applies to the Atlantic basin, and even then, only during the summer months.
"It could be that the ocean is actually forcing the atmosphere at other times of the year," Elsner said. "But during the hurricane season, it appears that it's going the other way-it's the atmosphere that's forcing the ocean."
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Cost of water shortage: civil unrest, mass migration and economic collapse
Guardian
By John Vidal
17/08/06
Cholera may return to London, the mass migration of Africans could cause civil unrest in Europe and China's economy could crash by 2015 as the supply of fresh water becomes critical to the global economy. That was the bleak assessment yesterday by forecasters from some of the world's leading corporate users of fresh water, 200 of the largest food, oil, water and chemical companies.
Analysts working for Shell, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Cargill and other companies which depend heavily on secure water supplies, yesterday suggested the next 20 years would be critical as countries became richer, making heavier demands on scarce water supplies.
In three future scenarios, the businesses foresee growing civil unrest, boom and bust economic cycles in Asia and mass migrations to Europe. But they also say scarcity will encourage the development of new water-saving technologies and better management of water by business.
The study of future water availability, which the corporations have taken three years to compile, suggests water conflicts are likely to become common in many countries, according to the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, which brought the industrial groups together.
Lloyd Timberlake, spokesman for the council, said: "The growing demand for water in China can potentially lead to over-exploitation and a decline in availability for domestic, agricultural, industry and energy production use. This inevitably leads to loss of production, both industrial and agricultural, and can also affect public health - all of which in turn will ultimately lead to an economic downturn. The question is how can business address these challenges and still make a profit."
The corporations were yesterday joined by the conservation group WWF and the International Water Management Institute, the world's leading body on fresh water management, which said water scarcity was increasing faster than expected. In China, authorities had begun trucking in water to millions of people after wells and rivers ran dry in the east of the country.
"Globally, water usage has increased by six times in the past 100 years and will double again by 2050, driven mainly by irrigation and demands of agriculture. Some countries have already run out of water to produce their own food. Without improvements ... the consequences will be even more widespread water scarcity and rapidly increasing water prices," said Frank Rijsberman, director of the institute.
The institute, funded by government research organisations, will report next week that a third of the world's population, more than 2 billion people, is living in places where water is overused - leading to falling underground water levels and drying rivers - or cannot be accessed.
Mr Rijsberman said rising living standards in India and China could lead to increased demand for better food, which would in turn need more water to produce. He expected the price of water to increase everywhere to meet an expected 50% increase in the amount of food the world will need in the next 20 years.
According to the institute's assessment, Egypt imports more than half of its food because it does not have enough water to grow it domestically and Australia is faced with water scarcity in the Murray-Darling Basin as a result of diverting large quantities of water for use in agriculture. The Aral Sea in central Asia is another example of massive diversion of water for agriculture in the Soviet era causing widespread water scarcity, and one of the world's worst environmental disasters.
Researchers say it is possible to reduce water scarcity, feed people and address poverty, but the key trade-off is with the environment. "People and their governments will face some tough decisions on how to allocate and manage water," says the institute's report.
In a further paper, WWF said yesterday that water crises, long seen as a problem of only the poorest, are affecting the wealthiest nations. "In Europe, countries along the Atlantic are suffering recurring droughts, while water-intensive tourism and irrigated agriculture are endangering water resources in the Mediterranean. In Australia, salinity is a major threat to a large proportion of its key agricultural areas", said Jamie Pittock, director of WWF's freshwater programme.
In the United States, Mr Pittock said, large areas are already using substantially more water than can be naturally replenished. "This situation will only be exacerbated as climate change is predicted to bring lower rainfall, increased evaporation and changed patterns of snow melting."
Three visions of the future
1. Misery and shortages in the megacities and drought in Africa
By 2010, 22 megacities with populations larger than 10 million face major water and sewerage problems. The situation is gravest in China, where 550 of the country's 600 largest cities are running short. Growing demand for water by industry leads to serious over-exploitaion with less and less water available for consumers and farmers. This leads to a fall in Chinese food production, which in turn leads to more imports and impacts on other countries. Friction and unrest grow worldwide as the middle classes struggle to pay bills. Businesses are exposed to charges of moral culpability and litigation over water use. Waves of immigrants flood in to Europe from increasingly drought-torn Africa
2. China leads recycling rush as world moves to a new hydro economy
By 2010, the water shortage in many developing countries is recognised as one of the most serious political and social issues of the time. Lack of water is stopping development and in many countries the rural poor suffer as their water and other needs take second place to those of swelling cities and industry. Local government worldwide is increasingly distrusted over water allocation, and historical divides between rich and poor are exacerbated by water shortages. However, by 2025 a worldwide hydro economy is developing, led by China. Vast new investments are made in recycling water and the cost of desalination is greatly reduced. Innovative small-scale water treatment processes become the norm
3. Water is the means of social control as floods and disease devastate world
Water becomes a key symbol of protest around the world and is seen as the most serious social and political issue of the generation. By 2015, multinational companies are accused regularly of taking too much water in developing countries, cholera breaks out in London, and governments start to use water as a form of social control, subsidising some sectors and rationing it to others. Great floods follow each other in quick succession. Deforestation leads to massive mudslides in Asia and increasing flooding affects Europe, damaging industry. A second New Orleans flood destroys the city again. Global focus grows on the "export" of water via crops such as wheat or fruit
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60 missing after volcano erupts in Ecuador
AFP
August 17, 2006
QUITO - About sixty people have been missing and 13 others were injured after southern Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano erupted violently, unleashing its highest level of activity since 1999, a local official said.
"The situation is indescribable. There are approximately 60 people missing in the highest-risk area, as well as seven wounded people who were taken to the city of Riobamba and six others wounded in Penipe," Penipe Mayor Juan Salazar told Ecuavisa television on Thursday.
The mayor said the areas were affected by lava and flames from the 5,029-meter (16,499-foot) volcano, located just 135 kilometers (83 miles) south of Quito.
"There was a very powerful explosion this morning, which produced incandescent rocks, ash and lava that devastated several areas," Salazar said.
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Rare floods leave hundreds homeless in northern Niger desert
AFP
Wed Aug 16, 2006
NIAMEY - Torrential rains have left about a thousand people homeless over the past month in Ingal, a Tuareg region in the heart of the Sahel desert in Niger, a local governor said.
Many houses have been damaged and almost a hundred families, totalling "a thousand people, have found themselves homeless" Abba Malam Boukar, the governor of the nearby town of Agadez, said in a telephone interview with AFP.
Neighbouring Libya Tuesday dispatched by air humanitarian aid including tents, medicines and clothes to the disaster victims.
The Niger government and mining companies exploiting uranium in the north of the country have also distributed food and medicinal drugs.
Rain is quite rare in the northern desert of Niger, and a few tens of millimetres of rain are sometimes enough to crumble the houses built with clay mortar.
Located about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Agadez, Ingal hosts a popular annual stock breeders' festival, whose 2006 edition is due next month.
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Tropical storm nearing Japan, landfall likely
Reuters
August 17, 2006
TOKYO - Tropical storm Wukong hung nearly stationary off southwestern Japan on Thursday, threatening prolonged heavy rains and landfall overnight.
Wukong -- meaning Monkey King, a legendary Chinese hero -- was 130 km (81 miles) southeast of Miyazaki at 2:45 p.m. (0545 GMT), nearly unchanged from its morning position.
It had slowed slightly and was heading west at 15 km an hour, the Japanese Meteorological Agency said, warning that its slowness meant heavy rains would linger in one area for a long time, increasing the chance of flooding.
The storm maintained winds of up to 83 km (52 miles) an hour at its center and was expected to bring up to 300 mm (12 inches) of rain to some parts of Kyushu, Japan's southernmost main island, by Friday morning.
Landfall on southern Kyushu was likely on Thursday night or possibly early on Friday, a Meteorological Agency official said, but added that the storm appeared to be shifting direction.
"The storm is likely to head in a more northern direction than previously expected, but its movements are extremely difficult to predict right now so almost anything is possible," he said.
The northerly shift means the storm is now likely to head up the Korean peninsula, according to the Tropical Storm Risk (www.tropicalstormrisk.com) Web site, which also predicted it would weaken to a tropical depression on Friday.
The Web site had earlier shown the storm heading toward the eastern Chinese provinces of Shandong and Jiangsu.
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Rio Grande swelling, crews on alert
KVIA.com
Aug 17, 2006 03:29 AM
EL PASO, TX - Regional rains emptying into the Rio Grande pushed the river's level to the highest point since the historic storms from two weeks ago.
Officials with the National Weather Service say the river should have reached it's maximum point just after 6pm, cresting at a level between 8 and a half to 9 feet.
Doña Ana County Emergency Operations Center is receiving reports of the Rio Grande overflowing in the City of Sunland Park onto Racetrack Drive and at the Santa Teresa Bridge.
High river levels also are being reported near Radium Springs.
Residents throughout Doña Ana County who live near the Rio Grande are asked to remain vigilant as the river continues to rise.
No evacuations outside the Hatch area have been mandated, but rising water could result in people being asked to leave low-lying areas on short notice.
Heavy rains are being reported across Doña Ana County .
County road crews are standing by to deploy resources as necessary in affected areas.
The Doña Ana County Emergency Operations Center remains fully activated and staffed.
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Money Talks
FBI calls ex-Comverse chief a fugitive, casts wide net
By Julie Creswell
The New York Times
August 16, 2006
Where in the world is Kobi?
The hunt for Jacob Alexander, known as Kobi, was stepped up yesterday after the FBI declared him a fugitive and said agents were seeking his arrest.
The former chief executive of the communications software company Comverse Technology, Alexander, 54, was charged last week by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn with conspiracy to commit securities fraud. He and two other former Comverse executives were charged in connection with their suspected involvement in a stock options scheme that, prosecutors said, used a "secret slush fund" to dole out options to favored employees.
Two of the former executives showed up at their arraignment last week, but Alexander did not.
The FBI also said yesterday that a "red notice" was issued for Alexander with the international police organization Interpol. Such notices alert countries that an arrest warrant has been issued.
A lawyer for Alexander, Robert G. Morvillo of Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer, said on Tuesday that he had not spoken with Alexander for at least two weeks. Morvillo said he believed at the time that Alexander and his family were on vacation in Israel--a trip they normally take in the summer.
Described by the FBI as 5 feet 8 inches tall with green eyes, Alexander has roots in Israel. He has dual United States and Israeli citizenship, and he helped found Comverse in Israel in the early 1980s before moving its headquarters to Long Island, NY. A significant amount of Comverse's research-and-development base remained in Israel, where it is viewed as a darling of the Israeli high-tech industry.
Furthermore, in the last two weeks of July, just before charges were filed, Alexander wired about $57 million from accounts in the United States to an account in Israel. Federal prosecutors have frozen the remaining amounts in the accounts here in the United States--estimated to be around $45 million. When asked if he was still representing Alexander, Morvillo said he had not been discharged by his client. "We're in a peculiar circumstance," Morvillo noted. "We have not been able to reach our client at the usual numbers we have for him."
If Alexander is indeed discovered by the authorities to be in Israel and is unwilling to return to the United States, the process to extradite him could be tricky, said Richard Bierschbach, an assistant professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.
"While we have an extradition treaty with Israel, and chances are good crimes like this--major financial fraud--are covered by it, extradition is not only a legal process, but it's also a political process," Bierschbach said. "If he is a gigantic superstar over there, Israel could drag its feet on this."
Alexander, along with David Kreinberg, the former chief financial officer, and William F. Sorin, the former general counsel, are accused of manipulating stock options granted by the company's directors from 1998 to 2001. According to prosecutors, the three made a combined $8.4 million in profits by changing the grant date on the options to a time when Comverse's stock was trading at a lower price.
Options give an employee the right to buy a stock at some point in the future at the price of the stock on the day it was granted, commonly referred to as the strike price. The lower the strike price, the more an option is worth to the recipient.
The FBI has said it is investigating at least 45 cases involving the backdating of options. Options practices at more than 80 companies nationwide are under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission or by federal prosecutors in San Francisco, Brooklyn and Manhattan.
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Stocks scandal spells doom of embattled Israeli army chief
by Marius Schattner
AFP
Wed Aug 16, 2006
JERUSALEM - Israel's army chief, under fire for selling shares hours before launching an offensive in Lebanon, was looking set to become the first head to roll in the outcry over the state's handling of the month-long war.
Israel's media have piled opprobrium on Dan Halutz since the Maariv newspaper revealed Tuesday that he had sold shares hours before the start of the Israeli offensive in Lebanon on July 12.
The story, confirmed by Halutz himself, has focused the anger of many in a country struggling to come to terms with the less than decisive outcome of its war against the fundamentalist Hezbollah militia sparked on July 12.
"There's an old Romanian saying that goes like this: 'the country is burning, but grandma is combing her hair.' The country was on fire, and all that interested Halutz was his investment portfolio," member of parliament Colette Avital said Tuesday.
Resignation calls have come from parliament but also from the highest circles of the defence establishment.
Defence Minister Amir Peretz, also under fire for his performance since the start of the war on July 12, defended the army chief's "loyalty and dedication".
"His attention is entirely devoted to the war and the success of the army's missions," said Peretz in a statement.
"This regrettable affair would never have captured so much attention had the Lebanon campaign ended with clearcut victory" for Israel, said Mark Heller, an analyst with the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies.
"It is possible that the general made mistakes, but he certainly isn't the only one, whether at the political or military echelons," he told AFP.
Newspapers pilloried Halutz Wednesday, using the scandal to vent their anger at the man whose forces suffered unexpected setbacks at the hands of well-armed Hezbollah militiamen.
Maariv's editorial writer Ben Caspit was confident that the public's perception of a general who tries to save his stocks portfolio whilst sending his troops to the front lines would spell the end of his career.
"He entered this war as a prime minister designate. He is leaving it on a stretcher," he wrote.
The appointment last year of the former air force chief to the position of chief of staff had received a lukewarm reception within the ranks of the military, where some senior officers argued that a pilot was ill-suited for the top job.
Halutz was often criticised for being arrogant and over-estimating the air force.
The reproach returned to haunt him over the past month as it gradually emerged that Israel's fighters jets were failing to inflict enough damage on Hezbollah, which continued to rain rockets on northern Israel until the last day of the war.
When he was still air force chief, Halutz had ignited a controversy in 2002 when he said he had not lost any sleep over the death of 14 civilians in a strike of a top Palestinian militant in Gaza.
The sale of his shares caused a bigger stir.
The army chief sold shares worth 26,000 dollars on July 12 at noon, three hours after the Hezbollah border attack which left eight soldiers dead and two in the hands of the Lebanese militia.
A day later, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's TA-25 index had lost 8.3 percent.
Halutz did not deny he had sold his shares but charged he was the victim of a smear campaign.
"They've made me into a Shylock... I've gone into a tailspin, but I'll pull out," he was quoted as saying by Wednesday's newspapers.
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Bush to sign massive pension overhaul
By MARY DALRYMPLE
Associated Press
Thu Aug 17, 2006
WASHINGTON - Sweeping new rules aimed at prodding companies into shoring up their pension plans and ensuring that workers get the retirement benefits they've been promised are about to become law.
President Bush planned to sign the bill Thursday and has already praised it as "the most comprehensive reforms to America's pension system in over 30 years."
The massive legislation reflects the evolution of workers' retirement benefits - the decline in traditional pensions that give retired employees a fixed payment each month and the rise of defined-contribution savings plans that rely on workers to build retirement assets.
It could also save taxpayers from funding a multibillion-dollar bailout of the federal agency that insures pension plans.
Some critics, such as the Pension Rights Center, say the changes do nothing to stop companies from freezing their pensions and, with time, will weaken the pension system.
With its hundreds of pages, the bill seeks to strengthen traditional defined-benefit plans and requires companies to tell workers more about the health of their pension programs. It also nudges workers into putting more money away for their own retirement.
It aims to boost the 30,000 defined-benefit plans run by employers that are now underfunded by an estimated $450 billion. Those plans must reach 100 percent funding, up from the current 90 percent requirement, in seven years.
Seriously underfunded "at risk" companies must contribute at a faster rate and face certain restrictions, such as a ban on increasing benefits.
Lawmakers allowed workers to contribute more to their personal retirement savings accounts, such as IRAs and 401(k)s, in future years. Employers can encourage their workers to save by automatically enrolling them in 401(k) retirement accounts.
Financial firms will get greater leeway to offer advice to those 401(k) and IRA savers on how best to invest their retirement nest eggs.
Lawmakers singled out financially struggling airlines when drafting the new rules.
Airlines in bankruptcy proceedings that have frozen their pension plans, an act that stops participants from getting new benefits, get an extra 10 years to meet their funding obligations. That specifically helps Northwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
Other airlines could use those provisions if they freeze their pension plans. Two airlines with active defined-benefit plans, American Airlines and Continental Airlines Inc., nevertheless get 10 years after the new funding rules go into effect to meet their obligations, three years longer than other companies.
An additional change gives companies legal ground for hybrid plans known as cash balance plans, which have been challenged as discriminating against older workers. The AARP said the bill does not redress that potential discrimination.
To the benefit of all taxpayers, lawmakers hope the bill puts the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. on more stable financial footing. The federal agency, which insures pension plans, has deficits of $22.8 billion, stemming mainly from taking over defunct steel and airline plans.
The agency runs on company-paid premiums and interest earnings, but some worry that a rash of pension terminations could mean an expensive taxpayer bailout.
Lawmakers also wrote in special items for specific industries. Among them, defense contractors won a three-year grace period before being required to comply with the new pension funding rules. They argued that their government contracts don't provide enough flexibility to cover a sudden spike in pension costs.
Several unrelated items found their way into the bill, including a package of changes to the rules for charities and charitable donations.
It also paved the way for the $50 million Going-To-The-Sun road in Montana. The office of Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said the project was approved in the 2005 highway spending bill but the money had been held up by a technicality.
Comment: In other words, the average American will theoretically have money for retirement, but her other benefits will not increase as costs continue to rise, thereby reducing her disposable income. That means even more buying on credit. Corporations win and the average Joe loses.
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Families troubled by health care costs
By THERESA AGOVINO
AP Business Writer
Thu Aug 17, 2006
NEW YORK - About half of adults in middle-income families reported serious problems in paying for their health care while even those in more affluent circumstances said they had troubles with medical bills, a new survey found.
Forty-eight percent of individuals in families earnings between $35,000 and $49,999 said they had either a somewhat serious or very serious problem paying their medical bills in the last two years, according to a study by The Commonwealth Fund. Meanwhile, 50 percent of adults in that income bracket said they had difficulties affording their health insurance.
Meanwhile, 33 percent of individual in families earning between $50,000 and $74,999 a year said they had trouble paying for medical bills while 21 percent of people in families earning $75,000 or more reported such a dilemma. Fifty percent of individuals in families earnings less than $35,000 annually reported such a problem.
Thirty-five percent of people in families with an annual income of between $50,000 to $74,999 reported they had trouble paying for health insurance while 23 percent of those in families earning $75,000 or more said the same. Forty-eight percent of those in families with incomes of less than $35,000 said they the premium cost represented a problem.
Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, said she was surprised that people earning more than $50,000 were having difficulties affording health care, and that it signals that the high costs are affecting more people.
The study also found that 48 percent of those surveyed worried that wouldn't be able to pay their medical bills in the event of a serious illness, regardless of their income.
The study also found that while people are having difficulties paying for their health services, they are also unsatisfied with them. Forty-two percent of people surveyed said they had experienced poorly coordinated, inefficient or unsafe care at some points during the past two years. Their experiences included a medical error, a duplicate test or the failure to provide important test results to doctors or nurses.
Three-quarters of the adults surveyed said the health care system needs fundamental change or a complete rebuilding.
The Commonwealth Fund is a New York-based private foundation that aims to promote better health care. The study contacted 1,023 adults by phone in early June.
Comment: And now, thanks to Bush's new "Pension Plan", out-of-pocket medical costs will increase even more as medical benefit plans are frozen...
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Oil deepens slide to near eight-week low
Reuters
Thu Aug 17, 2006
SINGAPORE - Oil fell for a fourth day on Thursday to the lowest in nearly eight weeks after U.S. data reminded traders that crude stocks are relatively robust and the summer driving season is nearing its end.
U.S. light, sweet crude for September delivery fell 61 cents to $71.28 a barrel, its lowest since June 26. London Brent was down 62 cents to $72.21 a barrel.
U.S. crude prices have shed more than 7 percent after falling for six of the last eight sessions as a ceasefire took hold in the Middle East and BP decided to shut in only half of its 400,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Prudhoe Bay oilfield.
Some dealers had feared the partial closure of the biggest oilfield in the United States might trigger a surprisingly large drawdown in this week's crude inventories, but data on Wednesday showed a decline of 1.6 million barrels, in line with forecasts.
Crude stocks have fallen from the eight-year high reached earlier this year, but still remain higher than almost any time since 1999, giving refiners a sizeable supply buffer to guard against any unexpected disruptions.
Gasoline inventories dropped by a deeper-than-expected 2.3 million barrels, but demand eased from the previous week as the summer driving season, which ends in early September, began to wind down.
"It is this pace of demand deceleration, as well as the plentiful supplies of heating oil, that may set a more modest bearish tone to the market in the weeks after August," said First Energy Capital analyst Martin King.
"WTI crude oil prices treading water more in the range of the very low $70s to very high $60s may be something that materialises, barring any hurricane-induced price spikes."
Distillate stocks rose 800,000 barrels and heating oil supplies stand higher than a year ago, the data showed.
Supplies of natural gas, also used for winter heating, stand at historically high levels for the season and are expected to have risen over the past week, a Reuters poll showed. Gas storage data is due for release later on Thursday.
MIDDLE EAST FOCUS SHIFTS TO IRAN
In the Middle East, Lebanese troops rolled into the country's south on Thursday to join U.N. peacekeepers in taking control of Hizbollah strongholds as a ceasefire ending the month-long war extended into a fourth day.
But regional security concerns remain a factor for the market, as Iran -- OPEC's second-largest producer -- faces a self-imposed deadline of August 22 for responding to a package of incentives meant to end its uranium enrichment.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Wednesday that Tehran was ready to discuss the issue of suspending enrichment but would explain that it believes any halt to be "illogical".
The spectre of an Atlantic storm season -- which has yet to produce a hurricane -- also supported prices. Devastating Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast at the end of August last year, and some oil and gas fields have yet to recover.
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Airlines set to sue for £300m over terror losses
By Ben Webster and Richard Ford
The Sunday Times
August 17, 2006
AIRLINES including Ryanair are considering suing the Government for up to £300 million to recover the losses incurred since extra security measures were imposed last week.
They are hoping that the threat of legal action will force ministers to lift the restrictions on hand luggage, which have caused thousands of flight cancellations and delayed millions of passengers since an alleged terrorist plot was foiled.
But the Home Office said yesterday that it would press the rest of Europe to adopt Britain's tighter airport controls, which include a smaller maximum size for hand luggage and a ban on carrying liquids.
The European Commission said that it was considering requiring all airlines flying to or from EU airports to collect detailed information on passengers and pass it to security services. A similar requirement by the US has resulted in long delays in the past week because each passenger has had to be checked and cleared before flights could depart.
The legal action being considered focuses on Section 93 of the Transport Act 2000, under which the Government can be liable to pay compensation for losses resulting from its emergency directions. Ryanair made the strongest threats against the Government yesterday but British Airways and easyJet also said that they were con-sidering legal action.
Jim Callaghan, Ryanair's head of regulatory affairs, sent an e-mail to a group of leading airlines yesterday outlining the case for compensation and encouraging them to take action.
The e-mail, a copy of which has been obtained by The Times, refers to Section 93 and says: "Ryanair intends to use this provision to put pressure on the Government to remove some of the illogical and unworkable restrictions at airports that are leading to large-scale disruptions and flight cancellations.
"We would invite other airlines to consider doing likewise."
A BA spokesman said: "Our lawyers are looking at this. It's certainly something worth exploring, although I don't think the provisions of the Act have been tested." BA has also said that it is considering seeking compensation from BAA, the airports operator, for failing to have adequate contingency plans at Heathrow and Gatwick.
An easyJet spokesman said: "We will consider whether either BAA or the Government has a case to answer. We have had to cancel 500 flights and put people up in hotels. Why should we have to pay for that?" Virgin Atlantic said that it would be urging the Government to pay for the additional security at airports. But a spokesman said: "We would prefer a cosy chat with the Government rather than suing them."
The British Air Transport Association, which represents 13 British airlines, urged the Department for Transport to return to the international standard size for hand luggage. Roger Wiltshire, the association's secretary-general, said: "The new smaller size has just been plucked out of the air to allow people to carry a laptop."
The T&G, the main union representing airport security staff, condemned the airlines for trying to pressurise the Government into relaxing security. Brendan Gold, the union's national secretary for aviation, said: "We are concerned that the industry is pushing for changes which serve its own business interests rather than the department's concern for the security of passengers."
Any compensation claims would be resisted on the grounds that security directions were issued under the Aviation Security Act 1982, not the Transport Act 2000, a government spokesman said.
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Strikes to prolong plane misery
Telegraph
By David Millward
17/08/06
The misery faced by airline passengers during the terrorism scare looked set to continue last night after two unions announced strike plans.
First, pilots working for the no-frills carrier bmibaby voted to walk out. Then Aslef, the train drivers' union, announced plans for four days of stoppages on the Gatwick Express.
The pilots' vote means that a walkout could take place at any time over the next 28 days, although Balpa, the pilots' union, said it would not take action over the August bank holiday. The airline flies out of a number of airports, including Heathrow, Aberdeen, Manchester, Norwich, Southampton, Stornoway, Cardiff, Birmingham, East Midlands, Teesside, Edinburgh and Belfast.
Further industrial action could follow if, as expected, pilots working for two other airline divisions - bmi mainline and bmi regional - also vote to walk out. The result of their ballot will be declared in a week's time.
Aslef said its members would walk out from midnight to midnight on Aug 25 and 29, with the union's second wave of strikes being planned for Sept 11, 22 and 25.
Aslef will soon announce the results of a ballot among drivers working for Heathrow Express who, it is believed, are also likely to back industrial action. The position of travellers in London is even worse, with the normally moderate white collar Transport and Salaried Staffs Association planning a 48-hour stoppage from noon on Sunday Aug 27 - during the bank holiday weekend - with further walkouts scheduled for Aug 31 and Sept 7.
Airports returned to some semblance of normality yesterday. British Airways cancelled 36 flights out of Heathrow, five fewer than Wednesday, and 11 out of Gatwick. BA expects to run a full long-haul schedule from Heathrow today. However there will be 19 short-haul flights cancelled, all to different destinations. Gatwick expects to run a full schedule. Tomorrow, the airline plans to run a full schedule, with minimal delays. The airline said it had been continuing to cancel flights until it was fully confident in its own and Heathrow's ability to operate a full schedule.
Gatwick airport and Sussex Police are reviewing security after a boy of 12 who had run away from a care home in Merseyside managed to board a Monarch Airlines plane bound for Lisbon on Monday. It is believed that the child ducked behind travellers as they went through initial document and passport checks.
He is understood to have passed through the x-ray machine and went through to the plane without being asked to show a boarding pass. It was only when he boarded without a stub that staff realised something was amiss.
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Fed's Fisher: Inflation greatest risk to US
By Ros Krasny
Reuters
Wed Aug 16, 2006
DALLAS - Inflation is still the greatest risk to the U.S. economy, and policy-makers will not hesitate to raise interest rates again if incoming data shows it is necessary, Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher said on Wednesday.
"There is a definite increase in inflationary momentum," Fisher said at a luncheon by a commercial real estate group. "The Federal Reserve will not tolerate inflation," he added, terming it the Lex Luthor to the "Superman" United States economy, referring to the superhero's nemesis.
Inflation "is a sinister force that has the capacity to charm and romance the heck out of you, but in the end wreaks only havoc," he said.
Fisher is the first Fed policy-maker to speak publicly since the Federal Open Market Committee voted this month to hold U.S. benchmark interest rates steady at 5.25 percent. He is not an FOMC voting member in 2006.
The Fed's decision, taken with a single dissenting vote, paused a string of rate hikes made at 17 consecutive meetings over more than two years.
Financial markets are split on whether the Fed will resume its tightening cycle; futures show just a 25 percent chance of a September rate increase, but higher prospects for a Fed move in October or later.
Chances for Fed rate moves have slipped this week after July's core producer and consumer price data came in below Wall Street expectations, suggesting the Fed's forecasts for inflation to moderate may be playing out.
The U.S. economy typically slows before inflation comes down, Fisher noted. But assessments that the Fed is either done raising rates, or is already preparing to raise again, are mere guesses, he said.
SENSES WORKING OVERTIME
Fisher said the Fed "will watch and listen and 'taste' the indicators as they come in," stay dependent on both statistical and anecdotal data, and continue to monitor the lag between its policy actions and their effect on the economy.
"I expect the 17 consecutive (Fed) actions have begun to take their effect ... but I don't know any great precision how long it will take or how long of an impact there will be," Fisher told reporters.
At their core, central bankers worry most about inflation, "the enemy of sustainable growth," he said.
"If we see, after this pause, that inflation is beginning to threaten economic prosperity, we will take deliberate ... measures to counter it," he said. Even so, "that doesn't mean we need to take a sledgehammer to the economy."
Price inflation does not typically become entrenched unless accompanied by wage inflation, Fisher said.
"Conversations with CEOs and other business operators all indicate an emerging and widening shortage of skilled and semiskilled workers, along with attendant upward wage pressures."
Fisher later told reporters that a slower economy should start to tamp down wage pressures somewhat, but the economy has been running near full employment at a jobless rate that fell as low as 4.6 percent in June before rising to 4.8 percent in July.
More companies are reporting the ability to raise prices with less customer resistance, he said.
Energy prices are a factor. Some Dallas-area restaurants, for example, have seen energy prices spike by 40 percent this year, Fisher said.
"It becomes an inflation driver when you have pass-through" from headline prices to core prices, he said.
RECESSION NOT ON HORIZON
Fisher said U.S. gross domestic product growth for the second quarter was likely to be revised closer to 3 percent from its initial print of 2.5 percent, and third-quarter growth could be similar. "Recession is not visible on the horizon," he added.
Still, the U.S. housing market is in the midst of a correction notable for its "suddenness and depth," he said. That, along with high energy prices and higher interest rates, was "definitely having an impact on the consumer."
Fisher spoke at length about the impact of globalization in blurring the usual lag between Fed policy actions and their impact on the economy.
The lags "may become longer, increasing the time it takes for the consequences of Fed tightening measures to take hold," he said.
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Japan proposes 16-nation Asian trade bloc
AFP
August 17, 2006
KUALA LUMPUR - Japanese officials have proposed a sprawling 16-nation free-trade grouping with China, South Korea, Australia, India, New Zealand and the 10-nation Southeast Asian bloc.
The 16 last year formed the East Asia Summit -- seen as a precursor of a giant free-trade community embracing half the world's population.
"Minister (Toshihiro) Nikai will certainly speak out about that at the lunch of the 16 ministers next week," Ramon Vicente Kabigting, a director at the Philippines' department of trade and industry told reporters Thursday.
Kabigting said that economic officials from each of the countries meeting here this week would have to brief their ministers who are holding their annual dialogue in the Malaysian capital next week.
"When the (ASEAN) ministers meet among themselves before they meet their dialogue partners, they will have some rough dimensions of their response," he said.
This is the first time Japan has raised the proposal to ASEAN and its dialogue partners China, Japan and South Korea -- known as ASEAN Plus 3 -- who gathered here Thursday.
An ASEAN official indicated there was a cautious response to the ambitious idea, saying it was met with silence in the closed-door meetings.
"We were looking at each other. Our silence does not mean we oppose it or we welcome it," he told AFP.
India, Japan and Australia are hoping that the East Asia Summit will be the first step towards a free-trade East Asia Community but even the concept's proponents say it is decades from reality.
Immediately after the meeting, Japanese officials began lobbying for ASEAN's support for their free-trade agreement idea.
"We are telling them we lack manpower resources. This is a problem faced by some ASEAN countries. We are already working on a number of FTAs. But we will have to brief our ministers," the ASEAN official told AFP.
Japan's first FTA, with Singapore, took effect in late 2002 and Japan has since agreed on deals with Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.
It is involved in ongoing negotiations with Indonesia, South Korea and the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations as a whole.
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Zionism in Action
Talking only to ourselves
Haaretz.com
By Daniel Ben Simon
17/08/06
I am trying to recall when I last saw Israeli leaders talking with Arab leaders about peace, and finding it hard to remember. In recent years, our compulsive tendency to talk to ourselves about an agreement with the Arabs has been strengthening, as though the real conflict in the Middle East were between the right and the left. The fruitless discussions between these two tired bodies have had two goals: to neutralize any possibility of change and to freeze the reality on the ground, for fear that any step toward peace will ignite a domestic war among the Jews. And if we are already fated to go to war, say our architects to themselves, it is better to have a war against the Arabs. It is torturous to think that had similar diplomatic energy been invested vis-a-vis Palestinian leaders, Lebanese leaders and Syrian leaders, perhaps everything would look different. Perhaps we would even be living in peace with them.
Is it possible that the miserable war in Lebanon and the endless slaughter in Gaza are an outcome of the lack of willingness to talk with our neighbors? When was the last time we tried to talk to the Palestinians about their future and about our future? When was the last time we sent out probes to the Lebanese about signing a peace agreement with them? When was the last time we tried to renew the truncated negotiations with the Syrians about the possibility of arriving at a peace agreement?
For six years now Israeli politics has been at a standstill. Ever since prime minister Ehud Barak shoved Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat into the lodge at Camp David in July 2000, there has been no serious contact between an Israeli leader and an Arab leader with whom we are in conflict. The result is dreadful. Israel has slammed doors on its neighbors and has made up its mind to set arrangements on its own, in dialogue with itself, while ignoring its neighbors as though it were a lone juniper tree in the desert. It is possible that for this insult, we are now paying the price.
To a large extent both the slaughter in Gaza after the disengagement and the war in Lebanon prove the failure of the unilateral approach. How is it possible, asks every reasonable individual, that we pulled out of Lebanon and they are attacking us? How is it possible, asks every reasonable individual, that we pulled out of Gaza and they are still attacking us? Is it any wonder that the lack of gratitude on both these fronts has led many Israelis to the conclusion that hatred for Jews is imprinted in the Muslim genome and that the urge to go to war is imprinted in the Arab character?
And perhaps this outburst of aggression has its source in our egotistic nature, in our refusal to relate to our neighbors, in our unwillingness to see them from the distance of a meter. There is no such thing as unilateral peace, just as there is no such thing as unilateral war. It takes two to dance the dance of death, and to dance the dance of joy. We have decided to dance with ourselves, as though the Arabs were shapeless, transparent and not worth speaking to.
And it isn't as though in the past there haven't been bilateral contacts that aroused hope. However, they can be counted on one hand. Only two months ago a cheerful meeting was held between our new prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan. How many smiles they scattered, and how many times they clapped one another on the shoulder. Olmert was at his best. He laughed, he joked, he chummed and he demonstrated impressive communications skills. He spoke with everyone - apart from the only person at that meeting who justified a serious discussion. And indeed, Olmert's aides worked for days so that their boss would not shake the hand of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
These are the achievements of Israeli diplomacy vis-a-vis the Palestinians during the past six years: Ehud Barak pushed Arafat at Camp David, the same Barak invited Arafat to dinner at his home, prime minister Ariel Sharon invited Abbas to a meeting at the Prime Minister's Residence, Olmert bestowed a hug on Abbas. Two gestures, one conversation and one dinner party during the course of six whole years. Not a bad output for a country mired in a bloody conflict with the Palestinian people.
And during this entire time, Israel has withdrawn into itself, refusing to look sideways. It exited Lebanon in anger and it exited in similar anger from the Gaza Strip, without having attempted to coordinate the moves with those concerned. It is also planning to exit the West Bank with a similar, unilateral slam of the door.
Instead of speaking with our enemies we speak with our friends, not to say our patrons, the Americans, as though we were lowly vassals. We have adopted English almost as a mother tongue and we relate to Arabic as almost an existential threat. Thus far, the subordination of our lives, our values and our future to the Americans has not proved itself. We have never been as insecure as we are today. As part of our despair we are surrounding ourselves with a wall and turning the symbol of national rebirth into a fortified Jewish ghetto closed on all sides.
If the despair with our neighbors and with peace spreads, the Israelis are liable to deposit the reins of the state in the hands of dangerous fanatics like Yisrael Beiteinu MK Avigdor Lieberman. "For insane situations, you need insane people in charge," said an inhabitant of Kiryat Shmona last week who thus reflected the new mood and mentioned Lieberman as a wonder drug.
If Olmert does not hold out any hope soon and does not start talking with the Lebanese and the Palestinians and the Syrians, the despair is liable to push the Israelis toward extreme solutions.
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"The US and Israel Stand Alone"
Spiegel
15/08/06
Former US president Jimmy Carter speaks with DER SPIEGEL about the danger posed to American values by George W. Bush, the difficult situation in the Middle East and Cuba's ailing Fidel Castro.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Carter, in your new book you write that only the American people can ensure that the US government returns to the country's old moral principles. Are you suggesting that the current US administration of George W. Bush of acting immorally?
Carter: There's no doubt that this administration has made a radical and unpressured departure from the basic policies of all previous administrations including those of both Republican and Democratic presidents.
SPIEGEL: For example?
Carter: Under all of its predecessors there was a commitment to peace instead of preemptive war. Our country always had a policy of not going to war unless our own security was directly threatened and now we have a new policy of going to war on a preemptive basis. Another very serious departure from past policies is the separation of church and state, which I describe in the book. This has been a policy since the time of Thomas Jefferson and my own religious beliefs are compatible with this. The other principle that I described in the book is basic justice. We've never had an administration before that so overtly and clearly and consistently passed tax reform bills that were uniquely targeted to benefit the richest people in our country at the expense or the detriment of the working families of America.
SPIEGEL: You also mentioned the hatred for the United States throughout the Arab world which has ensued as a result of the invasion of Iraq. Given this circumstance, does it come as any surprise that Washington's call for democracy in the Middle East has been discredited?
Carter: No, as a matter of fact, the concerns I exposed have gotten even worse now with the United States supporting and encouraging Israel in its unjustified attack on Lebanon.
SPIEGEL: But wasn't Israel the first to get attacked?
Carter: I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.
SPIEGEL: Do you think the United States is still an important factor in securing a peaceful solution to the Middle East crisis?
Carter: Yes, as a matter of fact as you know ever since Israel has been a nation the United States has provided the leadership. Every president down to the ages has done this in a fairly balanced way, including George Bush senior, Gerald Ford, and others including myself and Bill Clinton. This administration has not attempted at all in the last six years to negotiate or attempt to negotiate a settlement between Israel and any of its neighbors or the Palestinians.
SPIEGEL: What makes you personally so optimistic about the effectiveness of diplomacy? You are, so to speak, the father of Camp David negotiations.
Carter: When I became president we had had four terrible wars between the Arabs and Israelis (behind us). And I under great difficulty, particularly because Menachim Begin was elected, decided to try negotiation and it worked and we have a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt for 27 years that has never been violated. You never can be certain in advance that negotiations on difficult circumstances will be successful, but you can be certain in advance if you don't negotiate that your problem is going to continue and maybe even get worse.
SPIEGEL: But negotiations failed to prevent the burning of Beirut and bombardment of Haifa.
Carter: I'm distressed. But I think that the proposals that have been made in the last few days by the (Lebanese) Prime Minister (Fuoad) Siniora are quite reasonable. And I think they should declare an immediate cease-fire on both sides, Hezbollah said they would comply, I hope Israel will comply, and then do the long, slow, tedious negotiation that is necessary to stabilize the northern border of Israel completely. There has to be some exchange of prisoners. There have been successful exchanges of prisoners between Israel and the Palestinians in the past and that's something that can be done right now.
SPIEGEL: Should there be an international peacekeeping force along the Lebanese-Israeli border?
Carter: Yes.
SPIEGEL: And can you imagine Germans soldiers taking part?
Carter: Yes, I can imagine Germans taking part.
SPIEGEL: ... even with their history?
Carter: Yes. That would be certainly satisfactory to me personally, and I think most people believe that enough time has passed so that historical facts can be ignored.
SPIEGEL: One main points of your book is the rather strange coalition between Christian fundamentalists and the Republican Party. How can such a coalition of the pious lead to moral catastrophes like the Iraqi prison scandal in Abu Ghraib and torture in Guantanamo?
Carter: The fundamentalists believe they have a unique relationship with God, and that they and their ideas are God's ideas and God's premises on the particular issue. Therefore, by definition since they are speaking for God anyone who disagrees with them is inherently wrong. And the next step is: Those who disagree with them are inherently inferior, and in extreme cases -- as is the case with some fundamentalists around the world -- it makes your opponents sub-humans, so that their lives are not significant. Another thing is that a fundamentalist can't bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality. And so this administration, for instance, has a policy of just refusing to talk to someone who is in strong disagreement with them -- which is also a radical departure from past history. So these are the kinds of things that cause me concern. And, of course, fundamentalists don't believe they can make mistakes, so when we permit the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, it's just impossible for a fundamentalist to admit that a mistake was made.
SPIEGEL: So how does this proximity to Christian fundamentalism manifest itself politically?
Carter: Unfortunately, after Sept., there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism, and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous. For three years, I'd say, the major news media in our country were complicit in this subservience to the Bush administration out of fear that they would be accused of being disloyal. I think in the last six months or so some of the media have now begun to be critical. But it's a long time coming.
SPIEGEL: Take your fellow Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton. These days she is demanding the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But she, like many others, allowed President Bush to invade Iraq under a false pretext.
Carter: That's correct.
SPIEGEL: Was the whole country in danger of losing its core values?
Carter: For a while, yes. As you possibly know, historically, our country has had the capability of self-correcting our own mistakes. This applied to slavery in 1865, it applied to legal racial segregation a hundred years later or so. It applied to the Joe McCarthy era when anti-communism was in a fearsome phase in the country like terrorism now. So we have an ability to correct ourselves and I believe that nowadays there is a self-correction taking place. In my opinion the election results in Connecticut (Eds: The primary loss of war supporter Senator Joseph Lieberman) were an indication that Americans realized very clearly that we made a mistake in going into Iraq and staying there too long.
SPIEGEL: Now even President Bush appears to have learned something from the catastrophe in Iraq. During his second term he has taken a more multilateral approach and has seemed to return to international cooperation.
Carter: I think the administration learned a lesson, but I don't see any indication that the administration would ever admit that it did make a mistake and needed to learn a lesson. I haven't seen much indication, by the way, of your premise that this administration is now reconciling itself to other countries. I think that at this moment the United States and Israel probably stand more alone than our country has in generations.
SPIEGEL: You've written about your meeting with Fidel Castro. He appears seriously ill now and Cuban exiles are partying already in the streets of Miami. You are probably not in the mood to join them.
Carter: No, that's true. Just because someone is ill I don't think there should be a celebration of potential death. And my own belief is that Fidel Castro will recover. He is two years younger than I am, so he's not beyond hope.
SPIEGEL: You sought to normalize relations with Castro, but that never happened. Has anything been achieved through Cuba's isolation?
Carter: In my opinion, the embargo strengthens Castro and perpetuates communism in Cuba. A maximum degree of trade, tourism, commerce, visitation between our country and Cuba would bring an earlier end to Castro's regime.
SPIEGEL: You've been called the moral conscience of your country. How do you look at it yourself? Are you an outsider in American politics these days or do you represent a political demographic that could maybe elect the next US president?
Carter: I think I represent the vast majority of Democrats in this country. I think there is a substantial portion of American people that completely agree with me. I can't say a majority because we have fragmented portions in our country and divisions concerning gun control and the death penalty and abortion and gay marriage.
SPIEGEL: As president, your performance was often criticized. But the work you did after leaving office to promote human rights has been widely praised. Has life been unfair to you?
Carter: I've been lucky in my life. Everything that I've done has brought great pleasure and gratification to me and my wife. I had four years in the White House -- it was not a failure. For someone to serve as president of the United States you can't say it is a political failure. And we have had the best years of our lives since we left the White House. We've had a very full life.
SPIEGEL: Do you feel you achieved even more out of office than you did as president?
Carter: Well, I've used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I've still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.
SPIEGEL: Does America need a regime change?
Carter: As I've said before, there is a self-corrective aspect to our country. And I think that the first step is going to be in the November election this year. This year, the Democrats have good chance of capturing one of the houses of Congress. I think the Senate is going to be a very close decision. My oldest son is running for the US Senate in the state of Nevada. And if just he and a few others can be successful then you have the US Senate in Democratic hands and that will make a profound and immediate difference.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Carter, thank you for the interview.
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Olmert may not survive this disastrous war
Indormation clearing house
By Gwynne Dyer
16/08/06
The ceasefire in southern Lebanon will not hold. Israel will probably lose more soldiers killed in combat in the next month than in the past month (119). Ehud Olmert will probably no longer be prime minister of Israel by the end of this year. And it is all too likely that Binyamin Netanyahu will take his place.
The UN-sponsored ceasefire will not hold because Hezbollah has not been defeated. Despite a month of pounding by Israeli bombs and artillery, it still holds at least 80 percent of the territory south of the Litani river: in most places, Israeli forces have advanced no more than a few miles (kilometers) from the frontier. In the last few days before the ceasefire, Hezbollah was launching twice as many rockets into northern Israel as its daily average in the first week of the war.
So why would it now agree to be disarmed and removed from all of southern Lebanon, the home of its own Shia supporters? Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, was quite frank: "As long as there is Israeli military movement, Israeli field aggression and Israeli soldiers occupying our land...it is our natural right to confront them, fight them, and defend our land, our homes and ourselves." Besides, the Israelis have now offered him an irresistibly tempting target.
Israel's assault on Hezbollah was as much a "war of choice" as the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Seymour Hersh claims in this week's "New Yorker" that the Bush administration approved it in order to deprive Iran of a means of retaliation after U.S. air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, and the San Francisco Chronicle reports that a senior Israeli army officer made Power-Point presentations on the planned operation to selected Western audiences over a year ago.
"By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out," Professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University told the Chronicle, "and in the last year or two it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board."
Ehud Olmert was seduced by the plan because, lacking military experience himself, he needed the credibility that comes in Israel only from having led a successful military operation. Otherwise, he would lack support for his plan to impose unilateral borders in the occupied West Bank that would keep the major settlement blocks within Israel, while handing the rest to the Palestinians. So he seized on the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of three others by Hezbollah on 12 July, the latest in an endless string of back-and-forth attacks along the northern border, as the pretext for an all-out onslaught on the organization.
Olmert's lack of military experience also led him to trust the promises of General Dan Halutz, Israel's chief of staff, that Hezbollah's destruction could be accomplished mainly from the air, with Israeli ground troops only going in at the end to mop up. But Rule Number One for aspiring national leaders is: never believe air force promises.
Olmert launched his war, bombed lavishly all across Lebanon, pounded the south -- and a month later Hezbollah still controlled almost all the territory and was launching several hundred missiles a day at Israel. Time for a ceasefire -- but if he had no more than that to show for his war, he would be out of power very fast. So AFTER the UN resolution was passed on Friday, but BEFORE the ceasefire that formally took effect Monday morning, he launched an airborne invasion that scattered packets of Israeli troops all over southern Lebanon right up to the Litani.
Israel has not smashed the Hezbollah's strong-points in southern Lebanon and driven its fighters out. It has deposited its own troops among them checkerboard-fashion, in some cases without any ground line of supply, in order to claim that it now controls the region. And it is counting on the UN resolution decreeing the disarming and withdrawal of Hezbollah, and an eventual hand-over by Israel to the Lebanese army and foreign peacekeepers, to protect its soldiers from severe embarrassment. This is probably Olmert's last mistake.
It is hard to imagine that Hezbollah will resist the temptation to attack all the easy targets that Olmert has now given it in southern Lebanon. It is inconceivable that either the Lebanese army (itself mostly Shia) or the French and Italians (the core of the proposed peacekeeping force) will try to fight their way into southern Lebanon on Israel's behalf. There is the potential here for Israel's first serious operational defeat since the 1948 war.
That might be a blessing in disguise for Israel, if it persuaded enough Israeli voters that exclusive reliance on military force to smash and subdue their Arab neighbors is a political dead-end. There is little chance of that. The likeliest beneficiary of this mess is Israel's archetypal hard-liner, Binyamin Netanyahu, who flamboyantly quit the Likud Party last year in protest at former prime minister Ariel Sharon's policy of pulling out of the occupied Gaza Strip.
That split Likud and forced Sharon to launch a new party, Kadima, which now dominates the centre-right of Israeli politics and is the nucleus of Olmert's coalition government. But Kadima may not survive this disastrous war, and the heir apparent, at the head of a resurgent Likud, is Netanyahu. The last opinion poll in Israel gave him an approval rating of 58 percent.
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Mossad missed Hezbollah threat
The Washington Times
By Bill Gertz
16/08/06
Israel's storied foreign-intelligence service failed to fully understand the threat posed by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, based on a view among many analysts that the guerrilla organization was an evolving political group, according to U.S. officials and private intelligence specialists.
The Mossad had intelligence about most Hezbollah weapons, including rockets fired into Israel and other hardware. But the service knew little about the military and intelligence side of Hezbollah, a diverse organization made up of Islamic terrorists, conventionally armed militia forces, a charity wing and a political movement.
Mossad is famous for past exploits, including the global campaign in the 1970s to track down and kill Palestinian terrorists in retaliation for the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Its specialty has been recruiting agents inside terrorist groups and using their information to effectively counter or limit attacks.
However, the recent fighting in southern Lebanon revealed major shortcomings in the agency's intelligence on the precise locations of Hezbollah leaders and rocket launchers, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"This was an intelligence failure, but not on the same scale as those of the United States prior to 9/11," said one U.S. official long involved in intelligence matters.
The U.S. official said Mossad's lack of intelligence about Hezbollah dates back to 1998, when the terrorist group began a strategy of conducting clandestine attacks while also seeking public support through charitable work and joining the political process in Lebanon.
The bias regarding Hezbollah's evolving nature had an effect on the activities of Israeli spies and agents in the field, which contributed to misperceptions about the group, the officials said.
Robert Baer, a former CIA operations officer who is familiar with Mossad, said the Israeli intelligence agency failed to gather good intelligence on Hezbollah, in stark contrast to its very successful efforts against Palestinian terrorists.
Israeli intelligence, mainly the Shin Bet domestic service, thoroughly penetrated many Palestinian terrorist groups. But Hezbollah employs extremely tight operational security to prevent penetration by Mossad or other intelligence services, Mr. Baer said.
Hezbollah operates its military and intelligence wings in utmost secrecy, and they are completely separate from the charitable and political wings, he said.
"Military-intelligence people do not talk to political leadership or rank-and-file people who do social work," he said.
Dennis Pluchinsky, a former State Department intelligence analyst, said Mossad may have been "counting on the Lebanese population and government to turn on Hezbollah."
Mr. Pluchinsky said the government in Beirut failed to take on the group, and there was a reluctance to "delegitimize Hezbollah."
"I do not believe that the fault lies with Israeli military strategic and tactical failures, as much as a political strategic failure," he said.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney said Mossad knew details three years ago about Hezbollah's Katyusha and other rockets.
"They knew what they had," he said.
He said Israel's war plan was undermined by political leaders, not by a lack of intelligence.
"Israel's plan was that if they were fired upon, they would respond with a [leadership] decapitation program and massive air and ground campaigns into Lebanon," Gen. McInerney said.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did not order the decapitation plan and was slow to carry out the ground campaign.
"It was not the intelligence," he said. "There's no question they did not take the heart out of Hezbollah."
Although they are technically not intelligence components, Israeli special-operations commandos were effective in conducting covert attacks against Hezbollah leaders and fighters, but failed to kill or capture the group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, mainly because of a lack of intelligence.
About 20 Hezbollah leaders were captured by Israeli commandos.
An Israeli air force officer told the Jerusalem Post that a lack of real-time intelligence hindered efforts to target Hezbollah leaders.
For example, Israel bombed a car last week in Lebanon that was thought to be carrying a senior Hezbollah leader. The bombing, however, killed three Lebanese soldiers.
In one air strike, the Israelis dropped 23 tons of bombs on a Beirut bunker thought to be a hide-out for Sheik Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders, but the leaders were not there.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined to comment in a recent television interview on whether Mossad and the CIA failed to understand Hezbollah's military capability. However, she told the Fox News Channel that "if you think about how these terrorist organizations operate, they go in with the population, they hide their capabilities inside of villages. They're very hard to detect."
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Haaretz photographer beaten by IDF troops on Lebanese border
Haaretz.com
By Assaf Carmel
17/08/06
Haaretz photographer Yaron Kaminsky was beaten Tuesday by three Israel Defense Forces officers near the community of Zar'it on the northern border with Lebanon.
The photographer was taking pictures of soldiers who were on their way into the country after fighting ceased in Lebanon.
The officers also confiscated the photographer's equipment. "I arrived at the site at 6:30 A.M. and reserve soldiers who belonged to the battalion I myself served in until a year ago were arriving.
"I hugged and kissed the soldiers, since I know most of them well, and began to photograph. Suddenly, a major leapt out at me and told me, 'Stop shooting!' and began to choke me.
"Shortly thereafter, two more officers joined him - one was a lieutenant colonel and the other a colonel - and they all pushed me, tried to shove me to the floor and take my equipment. Eventually they succeeded," Kaminsky said.
After Kaminsky's equipment was confiscated, the soldiers showed him orders they had received apparently prohibiting civilians from entering the area.
"They showed it to me briefly. I barely got a glance at what was actually written in the orders," Kaminsky said.
He said there were three other photographers from foreign news agencies present at the time, and all of their cameras were taken as well. "Half an hour after they beat me, military police officers arrived and 40 minutes later we were all transported to the northern border road.
"There we met with a field security official. He took a look at the pictures left in the cameras and said to one of the battlion's officers, 'What do you want from them, anyway?'"
Kaminsky added that on his way to Zar'it he had crossed through a military checkpoint and no one had told him that he could not take pictures in the area.
"If the army did not want us to take pictures, all they had to do was ask us. Do you know how embarrassing it was to stand in front of members of my battalion and get beat up by the officers?"
An IDF spokesperson said in response that the IDF views seriously any use of force against journalists and members of the media.
"The event will be examined and dealt with. However, we call on the media and its representatives to respect the IDF's guidelines regarding areas that are designated as closed military zones," the spokesperson said.
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Fighting in the north leaves behind severe environmental damage
Haaretz.com
By Zafrir Rinat
17/08/06
Israel and Lebanon will long bear the environmental scars left behind by the fighting in the North, with the Galilee region in Israel and the Lebanese coastline, both major tourism locations, now requiring urgent rehabilitation: The Galilee has been blackened by fires caused by rockets hitting the region; and the Lebanese coastline is under threat from a large oil spill caused by Israeli air strikes on a fuel installation south of Beirut.
Lebanese officials say the country's coastline was under threat from the worst ecological disaster in its history as a result of the Israeli airstrikes on the fuel installation. "The contamination that has accumulated, some of it on the seabed, is threatening animals such as turtles and tuna," the Lebanese environmental organization, Green Line, noted this week. "The beautiful white sands that we will need for tourism so that the country can recover have become toxic and useless."
Some 10,000 tons of fuel have leaked from the tank hit in the Israeli air strike; the spill initially stretched some 70 kilometers, but the latest figures from the United Nations speak of a 150-kilometer-long oil slick that is threatening the Syrian coast too.
The UN notes, too, that a change in weather conditions could see the spill move southward in the direction of the Israeli coastline. UN and European Union experts are expected in the region soon to put together a plan to deal with the contamination.
In Israel, meanwhile, officials from the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority and the Jewish National Fund have yet to fully assess the extent of the damage caused by fires in the Galilee as the result of Hezbollah rocket strikes. Clearly, however, tens of thousands of dunams of forest and woodland have been destroyed by fire, causing severe ecological and landscape damage.
During the course of the fighting, JNF personnel dealt with some 600 incidents of fire; and the organization is preparing to allocate tens of millions of shekels to a campaign to rehabilitate and replant forests on the Naftali Mountains (west of Kiryat Shmona), in Beit Keshet (Central Galilee) and in Biriya (near Safed).
Officials at the INNPPA, on the other hand, are adopting a different approach, and plan to allow the natural woodlands and brush to rehabilitate themselves. "Natural woodlands require dozens of years to recover," says Didi Kaplan, the INNPPA's ecologist for the North. "The Katyushas' fires also damages areas of the Har Meron Reserve that were burned in 1978 and have yet to recover to this day."
According to Kaplan, "It is not just a matter of direct damage during the course of the fire. Tens of thousands of dunams of grassland were burned on the edges of the Golan Heights. I assume that the antelope that live in the area fled, but their source of food for the coming months has been damaged."
Kaplan believes that the grasslands on the Golan Heights will recover quickly, already after the coming winter. Regarding the woodlands, the INNPPA has no plans to intervene in their recovery but will have to take measures to prevent landslides in the winter.
During the course of the fighting, there were concerns in Israel regarding severe ecological damage as a result of rockets strikes on installations in the Haifa Bay area that contain hazardous materials, ammonia in particular. While no rockets struck such installations, Environment Ministry and Haifa region officials have noted the need to set up a number of protected sites for storing the ammonia, which, they say, is needed by many industries around the country.
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War of Terror
Britain releases one suspect in planes plot
by Prashant Rao
AFP
August 17, 2006
LONDON - Britain released one suspect and gained permission to hold 23 others for more questioning as the investigation into the alleged plot to blow up US-bound passenger jets mid-flight entered a second week.
The released suspect had been arrested on Tuesday in the Thames Valley area outside London, and is the second to be released since British police and intelligence services carried out pre-dawn raids on the suspects' homes.
Police were late Wednesday granted more time to question 23 suspects, a spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police told AFP. Police were allowed to detain 21 of the suspects until August 23, and the other two until August 21.
They were all arrested in raids in London and other British cities and towns a week ago. Under anti-terrorist laws, they can all be held without charge for no more than 28 days, subject to regular court approval.
Few details have been released about the alleged plot, but it appears that the plot involved suicide bombers smuggling liquid explosive disguised as drinks on to US airliners, then detonating them with electronic devices in mid-air.
Meanwhile, British Home Secretary John Reid warned Wednesday that Europe as a whole is facing a "very real" and "persistent" risk of a devastating attack, in a meeting with
European Union interior ministers in London to map out a common strategy.
"What's clear to all of us is that we face a persistent and very real threat across Europe," said Reid after the talks, at which the European Commission promised to introduce a series of measures to strengthen airport security, boost cross-border intelligence sharing and tighten controls on explosives.
Those taking part in Wednesday's talks in London included the French and German interior ministers, Nicolas Sarkozy and Wolfgang Schaeuble, as well as Kari Rajamaki from Finland, which holds the rotating EU presidency.
European Commission Vice President Franco Frattini, who was also present, said Brussels would draft new measures to enhance airport security and cross-border cooperation before the Finnish presidency ends in December.
He suggested steps to encourage what he called "a European Islam", including the training of imams, and the blocking of Internet websites deemed to be inciting terrorism.
Frattini also said the European Commission -- the executive arm of the 25-nation EU -- would be bringing forward new proposals in the coming days relating to controls on liquid explosives and commercial detonators.
European ministers also released 350,000 euros (450,000 dollars) for urgent research into technology for detecting liquid explosives following Wednesday's meeting, a Home Office spokeswoman told AFP.
Sarkozy, the French interior minister and likely presidential candidate, meanwhile said there was "a pile of elements that make one think that the Al-Qaeda connection is not far removed from what could have happened."
Reid and Sarkozy on Wednesday signed a text pledging cooperation between their countries in the fight against terrorist activity in Europe.
The threat of terrorism is "heightened and permanent" said the French text of the agreement, a copy of which was obtained by AFP ahead of publication in French daily Le Figaro.
They agreed their efforts should aim to prevent terror attacks and protect the public, as well as pursue and arrest terrorists, following the talks in London.
In Islamabad, officials said Pakistan was holding a man who is "apparently related" to one of the British suspects, and that a senior Al-Qaeda figure in
Afghanistan is thought to have planned the foiled attacks.
Reid refused to confirm or deny if Britain was seeking the extradition of suspects -- two British and five Pakistani -- from Pakistan, but he expressed his "gratitude" to Islamabad for its role in the investigation.
Security worries escalated later Wednesday on news that a United Airlines flight from London to Washington was diverted to Boston, and its passengers and baggage searched, because of what officials called an "unruly" traveller on board, though the incident did not seem to be related to terrorism.
London's main Heathrow airport, the busiest international airport in the world, and other facilities were running almost normally again Wednesday, after prolonged chaos and disruption.
However, British Airways cancelled 35 flights at Heathrow and 11 at Gatwick -- and it also emerged that 20,000 pieces of baggage have gone astray at Heathrow over the past seven days.
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Majority of British voters support air passenger profiling: poll
AFP
August 17, 2006
LONDON - A majority of British voters support profiling air passengers in the wake of an alleged plot to bomb US-bound planes in mid-flight, according to a poll.
In a poll of 1,696 respondents by YouGov published in The Spectator magazine, 55 percent backed the idea of security screenings at airports, focusing on the passengers who pose the greatest risk.
Some 60 percent of those surveyed also said they expected the threat from terrorist groups to worsen, and 79 percent felt the government was not winning the so-called war on terror.
According to The Times on Tuesday, the Department for Transport was considering a system to single out people behaving suspiciously, who have an unusual travel pattern, or a certain ethnic or religious background.
But the plan -- similar to a system operated by Israeli airline El Al -- was immediately condemned by one of Britain's most senior Muslim police officers, who said that could lead to a new offence of "travelling whilst Asian".
The debate was sparked after British police and intelligence services staged pre-dawn raids on the homes of 24 people, the majority of whom appear to be British Muslims, to disrupt what they believed was a plot to blow up US-bound passenger jets in mid-flight.
Half of the respondents said they thought most British Muslims were moderates, but more than a quarter disagreed.
Only 12 percent of those surveyed said they thought Britain's foreign policy should be made more conciliatory in response to terrorism.
By contrast, 80 percent of those polled wanted British Prime Minister Tony Blair to distance himself from US President George W. Bush and either work more closely with European countries or blaze his own path.
Blair was heavily criticised in Britain during the conflict between Israel and the Shiite militia Hezbollah over the past month as he sided with the US president in declining to call for an immediate ceasefire.
Some 69 percent of those surveyed also felt that police should be allowed to hold suspects in anti-terrorism investigations for 90 days, as opposed to the 28 days allowed under current legislation.
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Germany May Permit Terror Shootdowns
Associated press
16/08/06
Germany's government plans to change the constitution so that security forces can shoot down airliners hijacked by terrorists as a last resort, the interior minister said in comments published Wednesday.
Wolfgang Schaeuble said officials will draw up new legislation and an amendment to the constitution after the country's supreme court rejected an earlier air-safety law, the Saechsische Zeitung newspaper reported.
Shooting down hijacked passenger planes could be justified if the threat to Germany was considered severe, Schaeuble said, according to the paper. "In the case of Sept. 11, the shooting down (of the hijacked planes) would have been necessary as well as legally admissible," he was quoted as saying.
The Federal Constitutional Court struck down the 2005 air safety law in March, saying authorities had no right to kill innocent civilians. It also found that allowing the military to shoot down civilian airliners violates a constitutional bar on the military being deployed for domestic security.
With reference to the latest alleged plot to blow up passenger planes taking off from Britain, Schaeuble said Germany also faces a growing threat from suicide attackers, according to the report.
"We must recognize that there are also here more such people than we can imagine who are ready to sacrifice their own lives in madness or as fanatics," he was quoted as saying.
Also Wednesday, the Interior Ministry said officials will next week begin finalizing plans for a national database on terror suspects, despite a dispute over whether individuals' religious affiliation should be included.
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Seattle port terminal evacuated under explosives alert
AFP
Wed Aug 16, 2006
LOS ANGELES - US authorities evacuated part of the Port of Seattle in the Pacific northwestern state of Washington after bomb-sniffing dogs detected explosives inside two containers from abroad, police said.
"Terminal 18 is temporarily closed to truck traffic; all non-essential personnel have left the terminal," the Port of Seattle police said in a statement.
US Customs and Border Patrol pulled aside two shipping containers for inspection after its bomb-sniffing dogs "detected something unusual," the police said.
The Seattle Times newspaper reported that the two suspicious containers had arrived from Pakistan.
The spokesman for the customs authorities was not immediately available for comment to AFP.
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For Your Health
Staph skin infections on rise in U.S.
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP Medical Writer
August 17, 2006
A once-rare drug-resistant germ now appears to cause more than half of all skin infections treated in U.S. emergency rooms, say researchers who documented the superbug's startling spread in the general population.
Many victims mistakenly thought they just had spider bites that wouldn't heal, not drug-resistant staph bacteria. Only a decade ago, these germs were hardly ever seen outside of hospitals and nursing homes.
Doctors also were caught off-guard - most of them unwittingly prescribed medicines that do not work against the bacteria.
"It is time for physicians to realize just how prevalent this is," said Dr. Gregory Moran of Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, who led the study.
Another author, Dr. Rachel Gorwitz of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said: "I think no one was aware of the extent of the problem."
Skin infections can be life-threatening if bacteria get into the bloodstream. Drug-resistant strains can also cause a vicious type of pneumonia and even "flesh-eating" wounds.
The CDC paid for the study, published in Thursday's
New England Journal of Medicine. Several authors have consulted for companies that make antibiotics.
Researchers analyzed all skin infections among adults who went to hospital emergency rooms in 11 U.S. cities in August 2004. Of the 422 cases, 249, or 59 percent, were caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. Such bacteria are impervious to the penicillin family of drugs long used for treatment.
The proportion of infections due to MRSA ranged from 15 percent to as high as 74 percent in some hospitals.
"This completely matches what our experience at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital has been," said Dr. Buddy Creech, an infectious-disease specialist whose hospital was not included in the study. "Usually what we see is a mom or dad brings their child in with what they describe as a spider bite that's not getting better or a pimple that's not getting better," and it turns out to be MRSA.
The germ typically thrives in health-care settings where people have open wounds and tubes. But in recent years, outbreaks have occurred among prisoners, children and athletes, with the germ spreading through skin contact or shared items such as towels. Dozens of people in Ohio, Kentucky and Vermont recently got MRSA skin infections from tattoos.
The good news: MRSA infections contracted outside a hospital are easier to treat. The study found that several antibiotics work against them, including some sulfa drugs that have been around for decades. A separate study in the journal reports the effectiveness of Cubicin, an antibiotic recently approved to treat bloodstream infections and heart inflammation caused by MRSA.
However, doctors need to test skin infections to see what germ is causing them, and to treat each one as if it were MRSA until test results prove otherwise, researchers said.
"We have made a fundamental shift in pediatrics in our area" and now assume that every such case is the drug-resistant type, Creech said.
And, doctors need to lance the wound to get rid of bacteria rather than relying on a drug to do the job.
"The most important treatment is actually draining the pus," Gorwitz said. Many times that is a cure all by itself, she said.
The study was done in Albuquerque, N.M.; Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Kansas City, Mo.; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; New Orleans; New York; Philadelphia; Phoenix; and Portland, Ore.
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"Elite" HIV patients mystify doctors
By Maggie Fox
Reuters
August 16, 2006
TORONTO - As many as one in 300 HIV patients never get sick and never suffer damage to their immune systems and AIDS experts said on Wednesday they want to know why.
Most have gone unnoticed by the top researchers, because they are well, do not need treatment and do not want attention, said Dr. Bruce Walker of Harvard Medical School.
But Walker and colleagues want to study these so-called "elite" patients in the hope that their cases can help in the search for a vaccine or treatments.
"What in the heck is going on in people that successfully control this virus?" Walker asked a news conference held at the 16th International Conference on AIDS.
"If we can figure out how people are doing that, we can try to replicate it."
So far Walker and colleagues have not been able to find out why certain people can live for 15 years and longer with the virus and never get ill. The AIDS virus usually kills patients within two years if they are not treated.
Some even appear to have weak immune responses, he noted. "Is it just that these people got infected with a wimpy virus? The answer to that is no," Walker said.
"Some of the people know who infected them," he added, and in those cases, the person who infected the "elite" patients always went on to become ill.
A few years into the AIDS epidemic, researchers identified people who were called "long-term non-progressors." These were patients infected with HIV who did not become ill.
Many have become ill as the years have gone by, and required treatment.
Walker said a few of the long-term non-progressors were now classified as "elite" patients. But the difference is that the "elite" status is clearly defined by how much virus they have circulating in their blood.
Loreen Willenberg, of Diamond Springs, California, is a newly designated "elite." Now 52 and healthy, she said she became infected in 1992.
BAD DREAM
"I dreamed that I was HIV positive," Willenberg told the news conference.
"I was really going through a very bad flu." She sought testing, and after getting an inconclusive result was later declared HIV positive.
HIV patients are not immediately put onto drugs that can keep them healthy, but wait until the virus reaches a certain level in the blood or until the virus kills a certain number of immune system cells called CD4 T-cells.
Willenberg, a landscape designer, never got to that point.
"I am in perfect health. I think I have had maybe only one cold in the past 14 years," she said.
Walker has tracked down 200 elite patients and has now joined up with other prominent AIDS researchers to find at least 1,000 "elites" in North America and as many as possible globally.
Based on research done so far, Walker estimates there are 2,000 of them in the United States.
His team wants to take blood and DNA samples to see what might be different about them. Confidentiality is promised.
The recently published map of the human genome will make this possible.
They will compare key genetic sequences of the "elite" patients to genetic readouts from healthy people and from other HIV patients. Maybe a few genetic variations can explain what is happening, Walker hopes.
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'Urgent' action needed on AIDS: Clinton
Globe and Mail
By Andre Picard
15/08/06
Toronto - The world has the tools it needs to combat the HIV-AIDS, but needs to overcome its squeamishness and act, says former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
"We know how to overcome AIDS. We know how to prevent millions of needless deaths," he told delegates to the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto on Tuesday.
"It can be done with urgent sustained action."
In an hour-long address, Mr. Clinton said politicians and policy-makers need to commit more money to the cause but, more importantly, the dollars need to be spent effectively.
"Every single dollar wasted puts a life at risk."
He called for balanced spending on prevention and treatment. In particular, he said it is necessary to get more people tested.
"Ninety per cent of those infected don't know their status," Mr. Clinton said, and that prevents them from getting prompt treatment, even where drugs are available.
Mr. Clinton did not hesitate to wade into some controversial areas, notably a call for public health officials to act on evidence that circumcision can sharply reduce the risks of transmission of HIV-AIDS. "If this saves lives, we have to get after it," he said, regardless of how uncomfortable the issue might make men.
He also criticized the U.S. administration for their support of abstinence-based program, which he deemed ineffectual and spoke out in favour of harm reduction measures like needle exchange programs and safe injection sites to reduce infections among intravenous drug users.
This is notable because as President he largely opposed harm reduction measures. "I think I was wrong," Mr. Clinton said candidly.
He also made another strong plug for investing more research dollars in developing effective microbicides.
The charismatic ex-politician, who now heads the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, said that to dealing with HIV-AIDS requires improving the health infrastructure in the developing world, notably training more nurses.
"Empowering people to protect themselves seems elemental," Mr. Clinton said.
Noting that he was about to turn 60, Mr. Clinton said: "I hate it, but it's true." After his speech, he was serenaded by delegates with a warbly version of Happy Birthday.
Stephen Lewis, United Nations special envoy for HIV-AIDS in Africa, introduced Mr. Clinton, and spoke of his work in glowing terms.
He said that most international groups in the field work with "supernatural acceleration - from inertia to paralysis" but Mr. Clinton was a man of action, who delivers programs as well as he speaks.
"What has filled my soul with admiration for the Clinton Foundation is their belief that in the battle against the virus, every minute lost is a life lost. That quality of urgently is desperately needed," Mr. Lewis said.
Mr. Clinton lavished praise on the Canadian icon, calling him the conscience of the world on HIV-AIDS and telling Mr. Lewis: "The world is in your debt."
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Study: Human Brain Evolved Quickly
Associated Press
By Seth Borenstein
17/08/06
Scientists believe they have found a key genetic change that helped the human brain evolve from our chimp-like ancestors.
In just a few million years, one area of the human genome seems to have evolved about 70 times faster than the rest of our genetic code since humans and chimps diverged from their common ancestor.
That change appears to have played a role in a rapid tripling of the size of the brain's crucial cerebral cortex, according to research published Thursday in the journal Nature.
Study co-author David Haussler, director of the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said his team found strong but still circumstantial evidence that a certain gene, called HAR1F, may provide an important answer to the question: "What makes humans brainier than other primates?"
Looking at 49 areas of the genome that have changed the most between the human and chimpanzee genomes, Haussler zeroed in on an area with "a very dramatic change in a relatively short period of time."
That one gene didn't exist until 300 million years ago and is present only in mammals and birds, not fish or animals without backbones. But across nearly all of the animals in which it exists, that gene looks alike from one species to the next.
For example, there are only two differences in the gene between a chimp and a chicken, Haussler said.
But there are 18 differences in the gene between humans and chimps, and they all seem to have occurred in the time since humans and chimps diverged from their common ancestor, according to the researchers.
"It looks like in fact it is important in the development of brain," said co-author Sofie Salama, a research biologist at Santa Cruz who led the efforts to identify where the gene is active in the body.
Andrew Clark, a Cornell University professor molecular biology who was not part of Haussler's team, said that if true, that quickly paced genetic change would be "terrifically exciting."
However, the reported genetic change is so fast that Clark said he has a hard time believing it, unless something unusual happened in a mutation. It's not part of normal evolution, he said.
The scientists still don't know specifically what the gene does. But they know that this same gene turns on in human fetuses at seven weeks after conception and then shuts down at 19 weeks, Haussler said.
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Stroke risk peaks every 12 hours
BBC
17/08/06
Strokes are most likely to occur during two two-hour periods, one in the morning, and the other in the evening, research suggests.
Japanese scientists, who examined 12,957 cases, found the risk peaked between 6am and 8am and 6pm and 8pm. Risk was lowest during sleep.
They said the key was likely to be changes to the blood and circulation governed by internal body clock.
The study appears in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
The researchers, from Iwate Medical University, looked a patients suffering three different types of stroke.
Most common was an ischaemic stroke, caused by restricted blood flow to the arteries in the brain.
Haemorrhagic strokes, which are less common, occur when a blood vessel bursts inside the brain. There are two types: bleeding directly into the brain tissue (intracerebral), and bleeding in the arteries on the brain's surface (subarachnoid).
In all three cases, the researchers found that the risk peaked during the morning and early evening.
Ischaemic strokes were particularly likely to occur in the morning, and slightly less likely to occur during the evening peak slot.
Haemorrhagic strokes showed less of a peak in the morning, but a higher peak in the evening.
Sleep
The researchers suggest that fluctuation in blood pressure is likely to be a significant cause of the peaks and troughs in risk.
Previous studies have shown that blood pressure tends to be highest during the morning, and often peaks again during the evening.
However, they believe other properties of the blood may increase the risk of an ischaemic stroke, and decrease the risk of a haemorrhagic stroke in the morning.
For instance, platelets, the tiny solid particles found in blood are known to stick together more easily - and possibly form a clot - in the morning. The blood also tends to be thicker at this time.
When blood is less thick and sticky, excessive bleeding is more likely, raising the risk of a haemorrhagic stroke.
The study also found that one type of stroke - ischaemic strokes -were much more likely to occur during sleep than haemorrhagic strokes.
Around a fifth of ischaemic strokes occurred during sleep.
Most were concentrated in the period immediately before waking up, although the stroke would probably have begun earlier.
Joe Korner, of the Stroke Association said: "Previous studies have shown that stroke risk does vary over the 24 hour cycle and that occurrence during sleep is most common for ischaemic strokes.
"This new study confirms that finding. However, more information is required about the different subtypes of ischaemic stroke - there are several different types, each with very different causes."
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Robotic Bear Offers More Than Hugs
Discovery News
Tracy Staedter
15/08/06
An electronic teddy bear inspired by therapeutic companion animals could offer hospital and nursing home patients a meaningful form of treatment without the worry of allergies, bites or maintenance.
The Huggable, designed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is based on a traditional stuffed animal but is actually much more.
It will be loaded with full-body sensors, motors, microphones, a video camera, software, and wireless communication technology to produce an engaging response to the human presence.
The bear is also designed to monitor the patient, alert nearby nurses when the person may need help or more intensive, long-term care and even gather information about the interaction that can be used to better understand the relationship later.
"We are designing the Huggable to be much more than a fun, interactive robotic companion, but rather to function as a team member that works with both the patient or resident and the hospital or nursing home staff with the ultimate goal of promoting the well-being of the person," said Walter Dan Stiehl, a PhD candidate at the Institute and team leader for the project.
The first Huggable prototype, which Stiehl and his team plan on finishing in the next few months, will have more than 1,000 sensors located beneath the fur and a soft layer of silicone skin.
The temperature, force, and electric field sensors will work together to distinguish the presence of a human, pick up some of the physiological signs of the patient's condition, and discern whether the person is petting, scratching, slapping, or hugging the bear.
Cameras in the eyes will be used to scan the room, while face recognition technology in the robot's computer will help the Huggable detect familiar people. Microphones in the ears will allow it to hear and face the direction of a sound.
Stiehl and his team are programming the bear to exhibit different behaviors based on what it sees, hears, and senses.
If it sees someone familiar, it can raise its eyebrows in an expressive greeting and say hello. While being rocked or bounded, it will wear and expression of happiness and when being cuddled, it will nuzzle into the person.
But the concept for the Huggable does not focus on simply providing companionship. The technology will be designed to work with a separate computer located at a nurse's station, where video, audio, or other data collected by the bear's sensors could alert caregivers in times of potential crisis.
For example, if a patient is hugging the bear and then it falls to the floor, that action could prompt a nurse to check that all's well.
The Huggable can also collect information about the patient-bear interaction over a long period of time. Any changes, such as the patient suddenly becoming aggressive or showing far less activity, may offer subtle indications of a more serious problems.
"We've not adequately used technology to help older people and this is one potential in which we could do that," said Rebecca Johnson, professor of gerontological nursing at the University of Missouri in Columbia.
Stiehl's group is finalizing the first prototype and hopes to have at least 10, if not 20, Huggables available for pilot trials by the summer of 2007.
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New drunken driving crackdown set
By KEN THOMAS
Associated Press
Wed Aug 17, 2006
ROCKVILLE, Md. - Drunken drivers beware: Police say they are starting a crackdown this month and the government is promising arrests for those who drink and drive.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Wednesday it hoped new advertising would help lower alcohol-involved fatalities, which have barely budged in a decade. The government said 39 percent of all traffic deaths last year involved alcohol.
"We do mean business. If they don't get off the streets voluntarily, we're going to take them off the streets," said Acting Transportation Secretary Maria Cino.
The $11 million advertising campaign targets male drivers ages 21-34, who had the highest percentage of drivers in fatal drunken driving crashes. The ads show authorities pulling over three men driving in vehicles filled with beer, wine or liquor, telling viewers: "Make no mistake: You will get caught and you will be arrested. Drunk Driving: Over the Limit. Under Arrest."
Law enforcement is stepping up its searches for drunk drivers through Labor Day, using sobriety checkpoints and additional patrols that target problem roads and sporting events, festivals or concerts where people may be drinking excessively.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving, an advocacy group, estimated that more than 11,000 law enforcement agencies would be participating in the patrols.
A total of 16,885 people died in alcohol-related crashes in 2005, including pedestrians and cyclists, down just 0.2 percent from 16,919 in 2004. The figures have shown little improvement in recent years - in 1997, for example, 16,711 people were killed under those circumstances.
Alcohol-related traffic deaths increased between 2004 and 2005 in 25 states and the District of Columbia, including California, Florida and Pennsylvania. Twenty-three states had decreases, including Texas, New York and Illinois. North Carolina and Rhode Island figures were unchanged.
In 2005, fatal crashes involving at least one driver or motorcyclist with an illegal blood-alcohol level of 0.08 dropped more than 1 percent. But traffic deaths in crashes involving a blood-alcohol level of 0.15 - nearly twice the legal limit - were up nearly 1 percent.
Some critics contend that tactics such as sobriety checkpoints fail to catch repeat offenders and problem drinkers because those motorists typically know where the roadblocks are located, while those who have a glass of wine with a meal fall into the dragnet.
"It scares responsible adults who had a drink prior to driving," said John Doyle, executive director of the American Beverage Institute, which represents restaurants.
But law enforcement officials say they have struggled to fight drunken driving in recent years because alcohol seemingly goes hand-in-hand with sporting events, concerts and celebrations.
"It seems like it's fallen off the last few years. The public as a whole, I think, is starting to consider it acceptable behavior again, and that's certainly not the direction we want to go," said Wisconsin State Patrol Major Dan Lonsdorf, director of the state's Bureau of Transportation Safety.
Lonsdorf noted that Wisconsin authorities typically arrest more than 40,000 drunk drivers a year "and we barely think we are making a dent in the total number that are on our highways."
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Nine Years For Junkie Mum
Skynews
17/08/06
A drug addict who gave her son heroin and crack cocaine from the age of nine has been jailed for nine years.
Emma Kelly, 31, was even seen giving the youngster heroin at the school gates, Hove Crown Court heard.
Shr also took him with her when she went to meet her own suppliers.
Judge Anthony Niblett told Kelly she had betrayed the boy in the worst possible way.
"You did nothing to help him and everything to harm him," he said.
Kelly realised her son had been helping himself to her drugs yet did nothing to stop him, the judge added.
She failed to tell her psychiatrist about it and she lied to social workers and schoolteachers.
The boy was finally treated for his addiction after Kelly was arrested for shoplifting in January last year.
Judge Niblett also criticised East Sussex social services for failing to act.
He said: "Despite an increasing number of warning signs, no direct action or intervention was taken in relation to X until police intervened."
This was despite a social services case conference in 2004.
Kelly showed no emotion when she was sentenced.
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Bush's Blunders
Bush rejects calls for early withdrawal from Iraq
AFP
August 17, 2006
LANCASTER, United States - President George W. Bush rejected calls by opposition Democrats for an early withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, warning such a move could result in a "terrorist state" with vast oil reserves.
Those who say the United States should leave Iraq are "wrong," Bush said.
"Leaving before we complete our mission would create a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, a country with huge oil reserves that the terrorist network would be willing to use to extract economic pain from those of us who believe in freedom," the president said at a fundraising event for the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, former football star Lynn Swann.
The war in Iraq is a major political issue for the November 7 legislative and gubernatorial elections, with opposition Democrats calling for the start of a US withdrawal and opinion polls showing public disquiet over the US presence in Iraq.
Bush's Republican party, anxious to retain its majority in Congress, and his administration have set out to persuade American voters that Iraq is part of the "war on terror." They hope to repeat previous successes in elections in 2002 and 2004 when voters expressed more confidence in Bush and the Republicans to safeguard the country against possible terrorist attack.
"The central front on the war on terror, now, is Iraq," Bush told the partisan audience.
"If we were to leave before the mission is complete, it would hurt US credibility," he added. "Who would want to stand with the United States of America if we didn't complete the mission, and a mission that can be completed and will be completed?"
Earlier on Wednesday, the White House flatly denied reports that Bush was frustrated with Iraqis and their prime minister, and rejected the notion that Iraq has plunged into civil war.
The New York Times, citing anonymous participants in Bush's closed-door meeting with Iraq experts this week, reported earlier that the US president had expressed frustration with the pace of progress in Iraq and with Maliki.
"We don't expect him to be an overnight success in dealing with all these problems -- nobody can be. But the president certainly supports Prime Minister Maliki," countered White House spokesman Tony Snow.
"You've got a government that is brand new," Snow told reporters. "This is a guy who has a series of challenges before him with his government, and the president is impressed not only by his determination to get the job done, but the fact is that he is working aggressively to do these things."
Bush believes that "when you're facing a situation, you don't sit around and get frustrated. You figure out how to get the job done," said Snow. "The president is somebody who's intensely practical about these things."
Opposition Democratic lawmakers have accused Bush's government of diverting resources from the hunt for
Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network, which carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks, to the 2003 invasion to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
But Bush insisted that the war in Iraq was part of the broader battle against terrorist threats.
"It's important to understand this is a global war on terror, not an isolated moment of law enforcement. This is the first war of the 21st century and the United States of America must lead that war, and we must be firm, and we must be resolved."
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Baghdad bombs kill 21
By Alister Bull
Reuters
Wed Aug 16, 2006
BAGHDAD - Security forces battled armed gangs and insurgents in two Iraqi cities on Wednesday as bomb attacks killed 21 in the capital, highlighting the precarious task facing U.S.-led forces trying to stem sectarian violence.
British troops and a column of armored personnel carriers rushed to Basra as armed gangs fought with Iraqi forces for more than an hour in the mainly Shi'ite city, where Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki declared a state of emergency in June.
Police killed six insurgents in Mosul, a religiously divided city 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad and the scene of considerable recent violence, including a suicide attack on a Kurdish political party on Tuesday in which nine died.
U.S. officers have warned that Iraq could descend into civil war unless violence was curbed. Last week, Washington poured thousands more U.S. troops in Baghdad to calm the capital.
Washington says Baghdad is key to stability in the entire country and stressed it was keeping faith with Maliki.
"(President George W Bush) is impressed not only by his determination to get the job done, but the fact is that he is working aggressively to do these things," said White House spokesman Tony Snow in Washington.
The new Shi'ite-led government has promised to reconcile Iraq's rival sects but almost three months after Maliki took power, the bloodshed continues.
Simultaneous car bombs killed 13 and injured 43 in a busy commercial area of central Baghdad, police said.
Earlier on Wednesday, a roadside bomb in a small flea market in east Baghdad killed eight and wounded up to 28.
"The bomb exploded beside those people who were just here to earn their living. They were just selling junk," said Mohamed Karin, standing amid the scattered debris of old televisions and household utensils.
"An old man with his two kids were killed. What did they do? They were innocent," he said.
STREET FIGHTING
Fighting in Basra began with an attack on the office of the governor and governing council. Basra Governor Mohamed Alwaili said they were mainly from the powerful Bani-Asad tribe and police sources said they were avenging the killing of a leader.
"There were men from this tribe and others from Basra. They started shooting at the governor's building. We will stand firm against those who carry weapons," he said.
Aqil al-Furaiji, a member of the Shi'ite-led governing council, said one policeman was killed and five wounded. Television pictures showed Iraqi forces exchanging heavy fire while two British armored personnel carriers passed.
The British military said up to 180 British soldiers and 16 Warrior armored personnel carriers had been dispatched to back up Iraqi troops and police on the ground.
Major Charlie Burbridge said that British forces exchanged several minutes of fire with some of the armed fighters as they departed Basra, but no soldiers were wounded.
Wednesday's fighting followed violence in the normally quiet southern shrine town of Kerbala on Tuesday between the Iraqi Army and followers of a radical Shi'ite cleric.
The Iraqi Defense Ministry said on Wednesday 12 people were killed in the incident, including two policemen.
Kerbala police deployed more than 10,000 troops and officers in a security cordon around the city to stop several thousand followers of the cleric, Mahmoud al-Hasani, from returning after a march in the nearby town of Hilla.
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Bombs Aimed at G.I.'s in Iraq Are Increasing
New York Times
By Michael R. Gordon, Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker.
17/08/06
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - The number of roadside bombs planted in Iraq rose in July to the highest monthly total of the war, offering more evidence that the anti-American insurgency has continued to strengthen despite the killing of the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Along with a sharp increase in sectarian attacks, the number of daily strikes against American and Iraqi security forces has doubled since January. The deadliest means of attack, roadside bombs, made up much of that increase. In July, of 2,625 explosive devices, 1,666 exploded and 959 were discovered before they went off. In January, 1,454 bombs exploded or were found.
The bomb statistics - compiled by American military authorities in Baghdad and made available at the request of The New York Times - are part of a growing body of data and intelligence analysis about the violence in Iraq that has produced somber public assessments from military commanders, administration officials and lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
"The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels," said a senior Defense Department official who agreed to discuss the issue only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution. "The insurgency has more public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time."
A separate, classified report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, dated Aug. 3, details worsening security conditions inside the country and describes how Iraq risks sliding toward civil war, according to several officials who have read the document or who have received a briefing on its contents.
The nine-page D.I.A. study, titled "Iraq Update," compiles the most recent empirical data on the number of attacks, bombings, murders and other violent acts, as well as diagrams of the groups carrying out insurgent and sectarian attacks, the officials said.
The report's contents are being widely discussed among Pentagon officials, military commanders and, in particular, on Capitol Hill, where concern among senior lawmakers of both parties is growing over a troubling dichotomy: even as Iraq takes important steps toward democracy - including the election of a permanent government this spring - the violence has gotten worse.
Senior Bush administration officials reject the idea that Iraq is on the verge of civil war, and state with unwavering confidence that the broad American strategy in Iraq remains on course. But American commanders in Iraq have shifted thousands of soldiers from outlying provinces to Baghdad to combat increased violence in the Iraqi capital.
The increased attacks have taken their toll. While the number of Americans killed in action per month has declined slightly - to 38 killed in action in July, from 42 in January, in part reflecting improvements in armor and other defenses - the number of Americans wounded has soared, to 518 in July from 287 in January. Explosive devices accounted for slightly more than half the deaths.
An analysis of the 1,666 bombs that exploded in July shows that 70 percent were directed against the American-led military force, according to a spokesman for the military command in Baghdad. Twenty percent struck Iraqi security forces, up from 9 percent in 2005. And 10 percent of the blasts struck civilians, twice the rate from last year.
Taken together, the new assessments by the military and the intelligence community provide evidence that violence in Iraq is at its highest level yet. And they describe twin dangers facing the country: insurgent violence against Americans and Iraqi security forces, which has continued to increase since the killing on June 7 of Mr. Zarqawi, the leader of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and the primarily sectarian violence seen in Iraqi-on-Iraqi attacks being aimed at civilians.
Iraq is now locked in a cycle in which strikes by Sunni Arab militants have prompted the rise of Shiite militias, which have in turn aggravated Sunni fears. Beyond that, many Sunnis say they believe that the new Shiite-dominated government has not made sufficient efforts to create a genuine unity government. As a result, Sunni attitudes appear to have hardened.
As the politics in Iraq have grown more polarized since the elections in December, in which many Sunni Arabs voted, attacks have soared, including sectarian clashes that have killed an average of more than 100 Iraqi civilians per day over the past two months.
In addition to bombs, attacks with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and small-caliber weapons against American and Iraqi military forces have also increased, according to American military officials. But the number of roadside bombs - or improvised explosive devices as they are known by the military - is an especially important indicator of enemy activity. Bomb attacks are the largest killer of American troops. They also require a network: a bomb maker; financiers to pay for the effort; and operatives to dig holes in the road, plant the explosives, watch for approaching American and Iraqi forces and set off the blast when troops approach.
With the violence growing in Iraq, American intelligence agencies are working to produce a National Intelligence Estimate about the security conditions there - the first such formal governmentwide assessment about the situation in Iraq since the summer of 2004.
In late July, D.I.A. officials briefed several Senate committees about the insurgent and sectarian violence. The presentation was based on a draft version of what became the Aug. 3 study, and one recipient described it as "extremely negative." That presentation was followed by public testimony on Aug. 3 by Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American military commander in the Middle East, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the sectarian violence was "probably as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular" and said if it was not stopped, "it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war." General Abizaid later emphasized that he was "optimistic" that the slide toward civil war could be prevented.
Officials who have read or been briefed on the new D.I.A. analysis said its assessments paralleled both aspects of General Abizaid's testimony.
The newest accounts of the risks of civil war may already be altering the political dynamic in Washington. After General Abizaid's testimony, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, said that if Iraq fell into civil war, the committee might need to examine whether the authorization provided by Congress for the use of American force in Iraq would still be valid. The comments by Senator Warner, a senior Republican who is a staunch supporter of the president, have reverberated loudly across Congress.
Bush administration officials now admit that Iraqi government's original plan to rein in the violence in Baghdad, announced in June, has failed. The Pentagon has decided to rush more American troops into the capital, and the new military operation to restore security there is expected to begin in earnest next month.
Yet some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq's democratically elected government might not survive.
"Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy," said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.
"Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect," the expert said, "but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy."
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Huh?
'Hybrid Mutant' Found Dead in Maine
AP
Aug 16, 2006
TURNER, Maine - Residents are wondering if an animal found dead over the weekend may be the mysterious creature that has mauled dogs, frightened residents and been the subject of local legend for half a generation.
The animal was found near power lines along Route 4 on Saturday, apparently struck by a car while chasing a cat. The carcass was photographed and inspected by several people who live in the area, but nobody is sure exactly what it is.
Michelle O'Donnell of Turner spotted the animal near her yard about a week before it was killed. She called it a "hybrid mutant of something."
"It was evil, evil looking. And it had a horrible stench I will never forget," she told the Sun Journal of Lewiston. "We locked eyes for a few seconds and then it took off. I've lived in Maine my whole life and I've never seen anything like it."
For the past 15 years, residents across Androscoggin County have reported seeing and hearing a mysterious animal with chilling monstrous cries and eyes that glow in the night. The animal has been blamed for attacking and killing a Doberman pinscher and a Rottweiler the past couple of years.
People from Litchfield, Sabattus, Greene, Turner, Lewiston and Auburn have come forward to speak of a mystery monster that roams the woods. Nobody knows for sure what it is, and theories have ranged from a hyena or dingo to a fisher or coydog, an offspring of a coyote and a wild dog.
Now, people are asking if the mystery beast and the animal killed over the weekend are one and the same.
Wildlife officials and animal control officers declined to go to Turner to examine the remains. By Tuesday, the carcass had been picked clean by vultures and there was not much left of the dead animal.
Loren Coleman, a Portland author and cryptozoologist, said it's unlikely that the animal was anybody's pet.
After reviewing photos of the carcass, Coleman said he was bothered by the animal's ears and snout. It reminded him of a case years ago in northern Maine in which an animal shot by a hunter could not be identified. In the end, wildlife officials got a DNA analysis that showed the animal was a rare wolf-dog hybrid, he said.
Mike O'Donnell, who is married to Michelle O'Donnell, said the animal looked "half-rodent, half-dog" to him.
It was charcoal gray, weighed between 40 and 50 pounds and had a bushy tail, a short snout, short ears and curled fangs hanging over its lips, he said. It looked like "something out of a Stephen King story."
"This is something I've never seen before. It's an evil-looking thing," he said.
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Backward Sunspot
August 15, 2006
On July 31st, a tiny sunspot was born. It popped up from the sun's interior, floated around a bit, and vanished again in a few hours. On the sun this sort of thing happens all the time and, ordinarily, it wouldn't be worth mentioning. But this sunspot was special: It was backward.
"We've been waiting for this," says David Hathaway, a solar physicist at the Marshall Space Flight in Huntsville, Alabama. "A backward sunspot is a sign that the next solar cycle is beginning."
"Backward" means magnetically backward. Hathaway explains:
Sunspots are planet-sized magnets created by the sun's inner magnetic dynamo. Like all magnets in the Universe, sunspots have north (N) and south (S) magnetic poles. The sunspot of July 31st popped up at solar longitude 65o W, latitude 13o S. Sunspots in that area are normally oriented N-S. The newcomer, however, was S-N, opposite the norm.
A picture is worth a 1000 words. In the magnetic map of the sun, below, N is white and S is black. The backward sunspot is circled:
Solar activity rises and falls in 11-year cycles, swinging back and forth between times of quiet and storminess. Right now the sun is quiet. "We're near the end of Solar Cycle 23, which peaked way back in 2001," explains Hathaway. The next cycle, Solar Cycle 24, should begin "any time now," returning the sun to a stormy state.
Satellite operators and NASA mission planners are bracing for this next solar cycle because it is expected to be exceptionally stormy, perhaps the stormiest in decades. Sunspots and solar flares will return in abundance, producing bright auroras on Earth and dangerous proton storms in space: full story.
"Maybe it already did--on July 31st," says Hathaway. The first spot of a new solar cycle is always backwards. Solar physicists have long known that sunspot magnetic fields reverse polarity from cycle to cycle. N-S becomes S-N and vice versa. "The backward sunspot may be the first sunspot of Cycle 24."
It sounds exciting, but Hathaway is cautious on several fronts:
First, the sunspot lasted only three hours. Typically, sunspots last days, weeks or even months. Three hours is fleeting in the extreme. "It came and went so fast, it was not given an official sunspot number," says Hathaway. The astronomers who number sunspots didn't think it worthy!
Second, the latitude of the spot is suspicious. New-cycle sunspots almost always pop up at mid-latitudes, around 30o N or 30o S. The backward sunspot popped up at 13o S. "That's strange."
These odd-isms stop Hathaway short of declaring the onset of a new solar cycle. "But it looks promising," he says.
Even if Cycle 24 has truly begun, "don't expect any great storms right away." Solar cycles last 11 years and take time to build up to fever pitch. For a while, perhaps one or two years, Cycle 23 and Cycle 24 will actually share the sun, making it a hodgepodge of backward and forward spots. Eventually, Cycle 24 will take over completely; then the fireworks will really begin.
Meanwhile, Hathaway plans to keep an eye out for more backward sunspots.
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Spanish man lived in park loo for 15 years
Guardian
By Dale Fuchs
17/08/06
Care in the community took on a new meaning in the southern Spanish town of Carcaixent after a 66-year-old man was discovered to have lived in a park toilet for 15 years - with the blessing of the town hall. José Tormo was allowed to move into the small space adjoining the toilet as an emergency measure in the early 1990s, when he lost his job and separated from his wife. In exchange, he cleaned the toilet and did odd jobs for the town during the first eight years of his stay.
The mayor, Lola Botella, said she did not find out Mr Tormo was still living in the toilet - with a camping stove, bed, cluttered shelves and donated furnishings - until last month.
"I had no idea," Ms Botella told the Guardian. "Sometimes he would ask me for money when I passed the park and I would give it to him without knowing who he was."
But many of the town's 20,000 residents were familiar with Mr Tormo's makeshift home, giving him food, clothes and tobacco and calling him by the nickname "Pepé".
His habit of scolding children who splashed about the washroom, however, caused parents to complain to the town hall. But when local media reported he would be evicted, there were protests from local youths.
Ms Botella said Mr Tormo would be allowed to remain in the toilet until the city could house him or he went to live with one of his five children. Mr Tormo told a local newspaper, El Mercantil Valenciano: "I wake up at seven and open the restroom, then spend the day in the park, making sure everything is more or less in order, even though I don't work for the city any more."
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Today's SOTT Award
British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott says Bush is crap
By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
The Independent
17 August 2006
John Prescott has given vent to his private feelings about the Bush presidency, summing up George Bush's administration in a single word: crap.
The Deputy Prime Minister's condemnation of President Bush and his approach to the Middle East could cause a diplomatic row but it will please Labour MPs who are furious about Tony Blair's backing of the United States over the bombing of Lebanon.
The remark is said to have been made at a private meeting in Mr Prescott's Whitehall office on Tuesday with Muslim MPs and other Labour MPs with constituencies representing large Muslim communities. Muslim MPs wanted to press home their objections to British foreign policy and discuss ways of improving relations with the Muslim communities.
Some of the MPs present said yesterday they could not remember Mr Prescott making the remark. He has been at pains to avoid breaking ranks with Mr Blair in public although he is believed to have raised concern about the bombing of Lebanon at a private meeting of the Cabinet. But Harry Cohen, the MP whose constituency includes Walthamstow, scene of some of the police raids in the alleged "terror plot" investigation, said Mr Prescott had definitely used the word "crap" about the Bush administration.
"He was talking in the context of the 'road map' in the Middle East. He said he only gave support to the war on Iraq because they were promised the road map. But he said the Bush administration had been crap on that. We all laughed and he said to an official, 'Don't minute that'." Mr Cohen added: "We also had a laugh when he said old Bush is just a cowboy with his Stetson on. But then he said, 'I can hardly talk about that can I?'
Last night, an official from the Deputy Prime Minister's office said: " These discussions are intended to be private and remain within the four walls. They are private so that there may be frank discussions."
And today Mr Prescott denied that he called George Bush "crap" and "a cowboy". Mr Prescott issued a statement in which he said: " This is an inaccurate report of a private conversation and it is not my view. "
Told that others at the meeting could not recall the words, Mr Cohen said: " He did. I stand by that."
Many Labour MPs have been infuriated by the spectacle of Mr Bush and Mr Blair jointly supporting the Israeli action. The Labour MPs went to see Mr Prescott to lodge their criticism of the Government's foreign policy and some said last night that they would be delighted if he did break ranks over the Bush administration following the outcry at the bombing of the Lebanon.
In the private discussions with Mr Prescott, the Labour MPs representing large Muslim communities pulled no punches in their criticism of Mr Blair for giving his backing to Mr Bush. Another of those who was contacted about the conversations did not deny Mr Prescott's words, but laughed and said: " I can't discuss that." When asked whether he had heard Mr Prescott use the "C-word", he said: "I don't remember that."
The Deputy Prime Minister is said to have made it clear he strongly backed the efforts by Mr Blair to persuade the Bush administration to revive the road map for Palestine and Israel. Mr Blair has given a commitment that he will give the peace process his priority when he returns from his holiday in the Caribbean.
"There was a very robust exchange of views," said the MP. " We had a row about community relations. The Deputy Prime Minister was told in no uncertain terms that the Government was relying too much on the elders in the Muslim community who didn't have the credibility that was needed."
Muslim Labour MPs also told Mr Prescott that they needed to retain their own credibility in their communities, which was one of the reasons why they had signed a controversial letter calling for a change in British foreign policy. They said it was not helpful for the Government to have attacked their letter.
Mr Prescott has been accused in the past of making his feelings known about the Republican administration in the White House. He became friendly with Al Gore, the unsuccessful Democrat presidential candidate in 2000, during the negotiations on the Kyoto treaty and allegedly told Mr Gore after his defeat that he was sorry he lost the race to Mr Bush.
Mr Prescott is also known to have used the word "crap" in relation to political events before. Earlier this month, he angrily rejected claims that he could resign over the row about his links to the bid by the tycoon Philip Anschutz for a super-casino at the Millennium Dome as "a load of crap".
Mr Prescott was left in charge by Mr Blair when the Prime Minister went on his delayed holiday but has largely taken a back seat while John Reid, the Home Secretary, has led for the Government on security and the alleged terror plot to blow up planes across the Atlantic.
Behind the scenes, Mr Prescott had to contend with growing backbench demands for Parliament to be recalled to debate the crisis in the Middle East. It remains an option, in spite of the ceasefire in the Lebanon. Campaigners claimed they had the signatures of more than 150 MPs from all parties for a recall. Significantly, they included Ann Keen, the parliamentary private secretary to Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, who is on paternity leave following the birth of his second child. Jim Sheridan, the Labour MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, resigned as the parliamentary private secretary to the defence ministers over the bombing of Lebanon.
Mr Prescott has been keen to show Labour MPs that he is prepared to listen to their grievances but has insisted on party discipline to avoid splits. He will be furious at his alleged remarks being repeated, but the signs of dissent within the Cabinet are becoming greater.
Straight-talker's way with words
* Posing with a crab in a jar at the Millennium Dome, while Peter Mandelson was standing for election to Labour's ruling national executive committee, he said to cameramen: "You know what his name is? He's called Peter. Do you think you will get on the executive, Peter?"
* When asked why a car was transporting him and his wife 200 yards to the Labour Party Conference in 1999:
"Because of the security reasons for one thing and second, my wife doesn't like to have her hair blown about. Have you got another silly question?"
* On the Millennium Dome: "If we can't make this work, we're not much of a government."
* "The green belt is a Labour achievement, and we mean to build on it." (Radio interview, January 1998)
* On the Tories at the 1996 Labour conference: "They are up to their necks in sleaze. The best slogan for their conference next week is "Life's better under the Tories" - sounds like one of Steven Norris's chat-up lines."
* When asked by a journalist about Peter Law's decision to quit the Labour Party after 35 years: "Why are you asking me about this? I don't care, it's a Welsh situation, I'm a national politician."
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