Herley says some facilities suspended from federal contracts
(Reuters) - Herley Industries Inc. (HRLY.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday said some of its operations have been suspended from receiving new contract awards from the U.S. Government, pending the outcome of legal proceedings.
The affected operations include facilities in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Woburn, Massachusetts and Chicago besides Herley's subsidiary in Farmingdale, New York, the maker of microwave equipment for the defense and aerospace industries said in a statement
BACKGROUND ARTICLE:
U.S. charges Herley, chairman with fraud
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Federal prosecutors Tuesday slapped a Manheim Township defense subcontractor and its chairman with a 35-count indictment that alleges the company defrauded the U.S. Department of Defense.
U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan said Herley Industries and its chairman, Lee N. Blatt, reaped profits of up to 300 percent on more than $3.9 million in sales of electronic components used by the Air Force and Navy.
Blatt, 78, is the founder and former chief executive of Herley, which develops and manufactures microwave technology for the defense, aerospace and medical industries.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyid=2006-06-13T193854Z_01_WNAS0927_RTRUKOC_0_US-ARMS-HERLEYINDUSTRIES.xml&src=rss
AP's Yost: Rove Got Away With 'Misleading' the Media
By Pete Yost, The Associated Press
Published: June 13, 2006 11:30 PM
WASHINGTON The decision not to charge Karl Rove shows there often are no consequences for misleading the public.
In 2003, while Rove allowed the White House to tell the news media that he had no role in leaking Valerie Plame's CIA identity, the presidential aide was secretly telling the FBI the truth.
It's now known that Rove had discussed Plame's CIA employment with conservative columnist Robert Novak, who exposed her identity less than a week later, citing two unidentified senior administration officials.
Rove's truth-telling to the FBI saved him from indictment.
And by misleading reporters, the White House saved itself from a political liability during the 2004 presidential campaign.
While the president and the vice president underwent questioning by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in 2004, Rove's role never surfaced. The lone blip on the radar screen was a one-day flurry of news stories the month before Election Day when Rove was brought before a federal grand jury — one of his five grand jury appearances in the probe.
The extent of Rove's involvement didn't become official until Oct. 28 of last year, when Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, was indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI about how he learned of Plame's CIA identity and what he told reporters about it.
The indictment recounted Rove's conversation with Novak about the CIA officer, as Rove later related it to Libby.
For nearly three years, the White House has refused to discuss the Plame investigation, citing the fact that it is still under way.
"The ability of this White House to stiff the press is probably better than any previous administration," said presidential scholar Stephen Hess, a former speechwriter for President Eisenhower and an adviser to Presidents Ford and Carter. "Clearly if there are no leaks, there's no damage."
FEMA cards bought diamonds, erotica
GAO finds $1 billion in potentially fraudulent disaster relief
Tuesday, June 13, 2006; Posted: 11:00 p.m. EDT (03:00 GMT)
A sign hangs in April at a temporary FEMA recovery center in New Orleans, Louisiana.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Problems with the distribution of federal disaster assistance after hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused potential fraud and waste topping $1 billion, an audit by the Government Accountability Office found.
Debit cards given to people displaced by the storms were improperly used to buy diamond jewelry, a vacation in the Dominican Republic, fireworks, a $200 bottle of champagne at a Hooters in San Antonio and $300 worth of "Girls Gone Wild" videos, the audit found.
According to the GAO, $1,000 from a FEMA debit card went to a Houston divorce lawyer, $600 was spent in a strip club and $400 was spent on "adult erotica products," all of which auditors concluded were "not necessary to satisfy legitimate disaster needs."
The GAO concluded that at least $1 billion in disaster relief payments by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were improper and potentially fraudulent because the recipients provided incomplete or incorrect information when they registered for assistance.
And the GAO said the scope of the problem may be even larger, because it only looked at the validity of registration information and not at other forms of potential fraud.
FEMA spokesman Aaron Walker on Tuesday told The Associated Press that the agency's priority in a disaster is "to get help quickly to those in desperate need of our assistance."
"Even as we put victims first, we take very seriously our responsibility to be outstanding stewards of taxpayer dollars, and we are careful to make sure that funds are distributed appropriately," Walker told the AP.
The agency told the AP it has found more than 1,500 cases of potential fraud after the hurricanes and has taken those cases to the Homeland Security inspector general.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/13/fema.audit/
AMA Recommends Salt Warning Labels
Association: Americans Need To Slash Their Salt Intake
NEW YORK, June 14, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS/AP)
(CBS) A new report by the American Medical Association says Americans are eating too much salt. The nation's largest group of doctors wants to reverse this trend and they've issued several recommendations to reach their goal.
As Dr. Emily Senay reports, the AMA wants the U.S. food industry to reduce the amount of sodium in processed and restaurant foods. They are also encouraging the FDA to develop warning labels for high sodium foods such as hot dogs and some canned soups.
"The AMA is the largest body of doctors in the country. Their meeting has just ended. They called on some pretty serious changes they'd like to see to help Americans reduce the amount of salt they're consuming. This is really public health measures," Senay explains. "The first thing they want to see happen is a reduction by 50 percent over the next decade of sodium in processed and restaurant foods. That's not just fast foods."
The AMA wants the FDA to encourage warning labels for high sodium foods; one idea would be a logo with a salt shaker and an exclamation point so consumers can easily identify those foods that are too high in salt.
"They want the FDA to revoke the generally recognized as safe status of salt. Other products that are generally recognized as safe include things like pepper and sugar. So they want to see some pretty big moves to help Americans get control of salt consumption," says Senay.
How do you know if there's too much sodium in your food, since its not always easy to spot?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/14/earlyshow/contributors/emilysenay/main1710749.shtml
US scientist accused of selling tissue samples
Deal said to earn $285,000 for vials that cost millions
By Diedtra Henderson, Globe Staff | June 14, 2006
Breaking News Alerts The House Energy and Commerce Committee report, the culmination of a one-year inquiry, was released hours before a two-day hearing began to explore the government's practices for procuring human tissue samples.
According to congressional investigators, the National Institutes of Health's Dr. Trey Sunderland agreed to collaborate with Pfizer Inc. , the world's largest drug company. Sunderland, chief of the geriatric psychiatry branch of the National Institute for Mental Health , sent Pfizer 3,200 tubes of spinal fluid and 388 tubes of plasma collected for Alzheimer's research.
The government spent $6.4 million to obtain the 3,500 samples that showed how Alzheimer's disease progressed in 538 subjects.
Pfizer paid Sunderland $285,000 in consulting fees related to the samples, investigators said. In total, Pfizer paid him more than $600,000 from 1998 to 2004 for outside consulting and speaking fees. Sunderland is scheduled to testify today at the hearing.
``Contrary to the House committee report, Dr. Sunderland did not receive any payments from Pfizer for human tissue samples," said Robert F. Muse, the scientist's Washington, D.C., attorney. ``He acted properly, ethically, and legally in his relationship with Pfizer."
Pfizer spokeswoman Kate Robins said the company had a transfer agreement endorsed by the NIH that permitted Sunderland to send cerebrospinal fluid from research participants with Alzheimer's, the participant's relatives who were at higher risk of developing the neurological disease, and elderly adults with normal Alzheimer's risk.
Sunderland's consulting role tapped his Alzheimer's disease expertise to look for signals in the samples that could help identify and diagnose the disease.
``The payments over a six-year period were reasonable and customary for an expert of Dr. Sunderland's stature, and reflect the fair-market value of his consulting services," Robins said.
The report said the tissue transfers, reported by a government whistleblower, raised serious questions about how the government ensures its scientists do not abuse their positions and about the agency's ability to track the valuable samples.
``NIH tells us it has no centralized inventory system that could tell the NIH director how many vials of tissues are in freezers at a particular institute," said Representative Joe Barton , Republican of Texas and House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman . ``It would really be a shame if we find out that the National Institutes of Health has more control over its paper clips and trash cans than it has over its human tissue samples."
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/06/14/us_scientist_accused_of_selling_tissue_samples/
Extra Wrinkles a Bad Sign for Smokers
06.14.06, 12:00 AM ET
WEDNESDAY, June 14 (HealthDay News) -- British scientists have discovered a tantalizing new wrinkle in our understanding of smoking's unhealthy effects.
Middle-aged smokers whose faces were heavily wrinkled were five times as likely to have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than smokers whose faces were relatively smooth, the study found.
The authors speculated that both COPD and wrinkling may be linked by a common mechanism and that facial wrinkling might indicate susceptibility to the potentially deadly lung disease.
It's unclear, however, what kind of clinical relevance the findings hold.
"It's certainly biologically plausible," said Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association. "This may be of use in educating patients but, in terms of detection of lung disease, we [already] have a simple breathing test. We don't have to look for wrinkles."
The research appears in the June 14 online edition of Thorax, which is published by the British Medical Journal.
COPD refers to a group of progressive chronic lung diseases, including emphysema and bronchitis, that block the airways and restrict oxygen flow.
Some 13.5 million Americans suffer from COPD, and the World Health Organization predicts that the condition will become the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2020.
Smoking is the biggest risk factor for COPD, and dermatologist have long noted that smoking causes premature aging of the skin.
However, not all smokers go on to develop COPD. "Obviously, people vary in their response to what's in the smoke," Edelman said.
http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2006/06/14/hscout533241.html
Net neutrality is about relationships and barriers
By Stan Beer
Wednesday, 14 June 2006
The issue of so-called Net neutrality is a sticky one. Not only is it difficult to understand, it cuts across political boundaries and it is not at all clear at first glance who the good guys are and who are the baddies. However, when you look at the issue closely it becomes crystal clear why Net neutrality is essential.
A lot of left leaning liberals support Net neutrality but so do a lot of gun-toting red necks and conservatives. You can’t even delineate the issue along the lines of the big guys versus the little guys. It’s true that the rich and powerful telecommunications and cable carriers oppose Net neutrality. However, the equally rich and powerful large IT and internet players support Net neutrality, alongside nearly penniless bloggers and small web players.
Both sides claim to support online innovation and the free flow of information. And it is at this point where it is possible to glimpse the issue with some semblance of clarity. What the carriers wish to do is introduce a tiered pricing structure, where larger content providers will pay more and in return receive a superior level of access.
Under a tiered-system of internet access, the likes of Google, Yahoo, eBay and Microsoft, who can afford to pay, will be able to deliver richer content to consumers at lightning speed. Meanwhile, the lesser lights of the web could very well find themselves on the outer, only able to provide sites with relatively small bandwidth content and with much slower access for consumers.
In effect, what this would create is a barrier to entry to the delivery of rich internet content, similar to the huge barriers to entry to TV and radio broadcasting. There would be high performance broadcast quality internet that only the biggest players could afford to deliver and the feature poor, low performance internet for the rest of the content providers.
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4639/106/
(Reuters) - Herley Industries Inc. (HRLY.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Tuesday said some of its operations have been suspended from receiving new contract awards from the U.S. Government, pending the outcome of legal proceedings.
The affected operations include facilities in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Woburn, Massachusetts and Chicago besides Herley's subsidiary in Farmingdale, New York, the maker of microwave equipment for the defense and aerospace industries said in a statement
BACKGROUND ARTICLE:
U.S. charges Herley, chairman with fraud
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Federal prosecutors Tuesday slapped a Manheim Township defense subcontractor and its chairman with a 35-count indictment that alleges the company defrauded the U.S. Department of Defense.
U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan said Herley Industries and its chairman, Lee N. Blatt, reaped profits of up to 300 percent on more than $3.9 million in sales of electronic components used by the Air Force and Navy.
Blatt, 78, is the founder and former chief executive of Herley, which develops and manufactures microwave technology for the defense, aerospace and medical industries.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyid=2006-06-13T193854Z_01_WNAS0927_RTRUKOC_0_US-ARMS-HERLEYINDUSTRIES.xml&src=rss
AP's Yost: Rove Got Away With 'Misleading' the Media
By Pete Yost, The Associated Press
Published: June 13, 2006 11:30 PM
WASHINGTON The decision not to charge Karl Rove shows there often are no consequences for misleading the public.
In 2003, while Rove allowed the White House to tell the news media that he had no role in leaking Valerie Plame's CIA identity, the presidential aide was secretly telling the FBI the truth.
It's now known that Rove had discussed Plame's CIA employment with conservative columnist Robert Novak, who exposed her identity less than a week later, citing two unidentified senior administration officials.
Rove's truth-telling to the FBI saved him from indictment.
And by misleading reporters, the White House saved itself from a political liability during the 2004 presidential campaign.
While the president and the vice president underwent questioning by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in 2004, Rove's role never surfaced. The lone blip on the radar screen was a one-day flurry of news stories the month before Election Day when Rove was brought before a federal grand jury — one of his five grand jury appearances in the probe.
The extent of Rove's involvement didn't become official until Oct. 28 of last year, when Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, was indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI about how he learned of Plame's CIA identity and what he told reporters about it.
The indictment recounted Rove's conversation with Novak about the CIA officer, as Rove later related it to Libby.
For nearly three years, the White House has refused to discuss the Plame investigation, citing the fact that it is still under way.
"The ability of this White House to stiff the press is probably better than any previous administration," said presidential scholar Stephen Hess, a former speechwriter for President Eisenhower and an adviser to Presidents Ford and Carter. "Clearly if there are no leaks, there's no damage."
FEMA cards bought diamonds, erotica
GAO finds $1 billion in potentially fraudulent disaster relief
Tuesday, June 13, 2006; Posted: 11:00 p.m. EDT (03:00 GMT)
A sign hangs in April at a temporary FEMA recovery center in New Orleans, Louisiana.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Problems with the distribution of federal disaster assistance after hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused potential fraud and waste topping $1 billion, an audit by the Government Accountability Office found.
Debit cards given to people displaced by the storms were improperly used to buy diamond jewelry, a vacation in the Dominican Republic, fireworks, a $200 bottle of champagne at a Hooters in San Antonio and $300 worth of "Girls Gone Wild" videos, the audit found.
According to the GAO, $1,000 from a FEMA debit card went to a Houston divorce lawyer, $600 was spent in a strip club and $400 was spent on "adult erotica products," all of which auditors concluded were "not necessary to satisfy legitimate disaster needs."
The GAO concluded that at least $1 billion in disaster relief payments by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were improper and potentially fraudulent because the recipients provided incomplete or incorrect information when they registered for assistance.
And the GAO said the scope of the problem may be even larger, because it only looked at the validity of registration information and not at other forms of potential fraud.
FEMA spokesman Aaron Walker on Tuesday told The Associated Press that the agency's priority in a disaster is "to get help quickly to those in desperate need of our assistance."
"Even as we put victims first, we take very seriously our responsibility to be outstanding stewards of taxpayer dollars, and we are careful to make sure that funds are distributed appropriately," Walker told the AP.
The agency told the AP it has found more than 1,500 cases of potential fraud after the hurricanes and has taken those cases to the Homeland Security inspector general.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/13/fema.audit/
AMA Recommends Salt Warning Labels
Association: Americans Need To Slash Their Salt Intake
NEW YORK, June 14, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS/AP)
(CBS) A new report by the American Medical Association says Americans are eating too much salt. The nation's largest group of doctors wants to reverse this trend and they've issued several recommendations to reach their goal.
As Dr. Emily Senay reports, the AMA wants the U.S. food industry to reduce the amount of sodium in processed and restaurant foods. They are also encouraging the FDA to develop warning labels for high sodium foods such as hot dogs and some canned soups.
"The AMA is the largest body of doctors in the country. Their meeting has just ended. They called on some pretty serious changes they'd like to see to help Americans reduce the amount of salt they're consuming. This is really public health measures," Senay explains. "The first thing they want to see happen is a reduction by 50 percent over the next decade of sodium in processed and restaurant foods. That's not just fast foods."
The AMA wants the FDA to encourage warning labels for high sodium foods; one idea would be a logo with a salt shaker and an exclamation point so consumers can easily identify those foods that are too high in salt.
"They want the FDA to revoke the generally recognized as safe status of salt. Other products that are generally recognized as safe include things like pepper and sugar. So they want to see some pretty big moves to help Americans get control of salt consumption," says Senay.
How do you know if there's too much sodium in your food, since its not always easy to spot?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/14/earlyshow/contributors/emilysenay/main1710749.shtml
US scientist accused of selling tissue samples
Deal said to earn $285,000 for vials that cost millions
By Diedtra Henderson, Globe Staff | June 14, 2006
Breaking News Alerts The House Energy and Commerce Committee report, the culmination of a one-year inquiry, was released hours before a two-day hearing began to explore the government's practices for procuring human tissue samples.
According to congressional investigators, the National Institutes of Health's Dr. Trey Sunderland agreed to collaborate with Pfizer Inc. , the world's largest drug company. Sunderland, chief of the geriatric psychiatry branch of the National Institute for Mental Health , sent Pfizer 3,200 tubes of spinal fluid and 388 tubes of plasma collected for Alzheimer's research.
The government spent $6.4 million to obtain the 3,500 samples that showed how Alzheimer's disease progressed in 538 subjects.
Pfizer paid Sunderland $285,000 in consulting fees related to the samples, investigators said. In total, Pfizer paid him more than $600,000 from 1998 to 2004 for outside consulting and speaking fees. Sunderland is scheduled to testify today at the hearing.
``Contrary to the House committee report, Dr. Sunderland did not receive any payments from Pfizer for human tissue samples," said Robert F. Muse, the scientist's Washington, D.C., attorney. ``He acted properly, ethically, and legally in his relationship with Pfizer."
Pfizer spokeswoman Kate Robins said the company had a transfer agreement endorsed by the NIH that permitted Sunderland to send cerebrospinal fluid from research participants with Alzheimer's, the participant's relatives who were at higher risk of developing the neurological disease, and elderly adults with normal Alzheimer's risk.
Sunderland's consulting role tapped his Alzheimer's disease expertise to look for signals in the samples that could help identify and diagnose the disease.
``The payments over a six-year period were reasonable and customary for an expert of Dr. Sunderland's stature, and reflect the fair-market value of his consulting services," Robins said.
The report said the tissue transfers, reported by a government whistleblower, raised serious questions about how the government ensures its scientists do not abuse their positions and about the agency's ability to track the valuable samples.
``NIH tells us it has no centralized inventory system that could tell the NIH director how many vials of tissues are in freezers at a particular institute," said Representative Joe Barton , Republican of Texas and House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman . ``It would really be a shame if we find out that the National Institutes of Health has more control over its paper clips and trash cans than it has over its human tissue samples."
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/06/14/us_scientist_accused_of_selling_tissue_samples/
Extra Wrinkles a Bad Sign for Smokers
06.14.06, 12:00 AM ET
WEDNESDAY, June 14 (HealthDay News) -- British scientists have discovered a tantalizing new wrinkle in our understanding of smoking's unhealthy effects.
Middle-aged smokers whose faces were heavily wrinkled were five times as likely to have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than smokers whose faces were relatively smooth, the study found.
The authors speculated that both COPD and wrinkling may be linked by a common mechanism and that facial wrinkling might indicate susceptibility to the potentially deadly lung disease.
It's unclear, however, what kind of clinical relevance the findings hold.
"It's certainly biologically plausible," said Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association. "This may be of use in educating patients but, in terms of detection of lung disease, we [already] have a simple breathing test. We don't have to look for wrinkles."
The research appears in the June 14 online edition of Thorax, which is published by the British Medical Journal.
COPD refers to a group of progressive chronic lung diseases, including emphysema and bronchitis, that block the airways and restrict oxygen flow.
Some 13.5 million Americans suffer from COPD, and the World Health Organization predicts that the condition will become the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2020.
Smoking is the biggest risk factor for COPD, and dermatologist have long noted that smoking causes premature aging of the skin.
However, not all smokers go on to develop COPD. "Obviously, people vary in their response to what's in the smoke," Edelman said.
http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2006/06/14/hscout533241.html
Net neutrality is about relationships and barriers
By Stan Beer
Wednesday, 14 June 2006
The issue of so-called Net neutrality is a sticky one. Not only is it difficult to understand, it cuts across political boundaries and it is not at all clear at first glance who the good guys are and who are the baddies. However, when you look at the issue closely it becomes crystal clear why Net neutrality is essential.
A lot of left leaning liberals support Net neutrality but so do a lot of gun-toting red necks and conservatives. You can’t even delineate the issue along the lines of the big guys versus the little guys. It’s true that the rich and powerful telecommunications and cable carriers oppose Net neutrality. However, the equally rich and powerful large IT and internet players support Net neutrality, alongside nearly penniless bloggers and small web players.
Both sides claim to support online innovation and the free flow of information. And it is at this point where it is possible to glimpse the issue with some semblance of clarity. What the carriers wish to do is introduce a tiered pricing structure, where larger content providers will pay more and in return receive a superior level of access.
Under a tiered-system of internet access, the likes of Google, Yahoo, eBay and Microsoft, who can afford to pay, will be able to deliver richer content to consumers at lightning speed. Meanwhile, the lesser lights of the web could very well find themselves on the outer, only able to provide sites with relatively small bandwidth content and with much slower access for consumers.
In effect, what this would create is a barrier to entry to the delivery of rich internet content, similar to the huge barriers to entry to TV and radio broadcasting. There would be high performance broadcast quality internet that only the biggest players could afford to deliver and the feature poor, low performance internet for the rest of the content providers.
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4639/106/
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