World's powers clash over raging Mideast violence
The Associated Press
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Leaders of the world's industrial powers clashed Saturday over the escalating violence in the Middle East even as the summit host, Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged, "We will find common ground on this."
The leaders opened the summit _ the first in Russia _ with a dinner at the opulent 18th century Peterhof Palace, which was extensively damaged during World War II and then painstakingly rebuilt. Formal talks were to begin Sunday at a second palace that doubles as Putin's residence while he is in St. Petersburg.
Putin had wanted this year's Group of Eight summit to focus on bolstering energy supplies, boosting education and fighting infectious diseases. But the military conflict between Israel and Lebanon is dominating the discussions. Iran's and North Korea's nuclear ambitions also are likely to overtake the agenda.
"We've got a lot to work on," President Bush acknowledged.
The G-8 countries — the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada — were expected to issue a joint declaration on Middle East crisis.
However the document's drafters were struggling to deal with sharp differences between the United States and the other countries over how to proceed. The United States is pressing for a statement that identifies Hezbollah militants as the main culprit and emphasizes the importance of maintaining a democratic Lebanon.
Bush said Israel has a right to defend itself. "The best way to stop the violence is for Hezbollah to lay down its arms and to stop attacking," he said.
Putin and other leaders criticized what they see as an overreaction by Israel that has caused dozens of civilian deaths and risked a major escalation of bloodshed in the Middle East.
"We are very concerned," said Italian Premier Romano Prodi. "We understand the right of Israel to defend itself, of course, and we understand there were provocations against Israel but we believe the use of force by Israel was disproportionate."
French President Jacques Chirac was even harsher in his comments, saying "One could ask if today there is not sort of a will to destroy Lebanon, its equipment, its roads, its communications."
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said he understood Israel's anger but urged against seeking "an eye for an eye."
Putin said it was unacceptable for Hezbollah to try to achieve its goals using force and abductions, but he also was critical of Israel's military response.
"The use of force should be balanced. And, in any case, bloodshed should stop as soon as possible," he said.
Despite the differences, he expressed optimism that common the leaders would find common ground.
The G-8 leaders were staying in guest houses on the grounds of Konstantin Palace on the Gulf of Finland, an area sealed off by heavy security. Scuba divers inspected boats ferrying people to the summit, and a surveillance blimp hovered above the sprawling grounds.
Far from the gathering, protesters — some denouncing globalization — faced off with police. They were fewer, though, than the hundreds of thousands that have sought to disrupt some previous summits.
The Kremlin restricted protesters to a stadium in a hard-to-reach part of the city.
"Russia is not a jail! No to the G-8! Rights are not given, they are taken!" protesters shouted at a double row of police — including some heavily armed for riots — surrounding the gate.
About 250 people, meanwhile, attended a rally organized by the Communist Party in the center of the city.
Waving red flags, they listened as speaker after speaker berated the G-8; musicians sang nostalgic, Soviet-era songs.
"Globalization has only one aim: exploitation and slavery," said one banner in the crowd.
Hours before the summit opened, negotiations between the United States and Russia broke down on Russia's application to join the 149-nation World Trade Organization, which sets the ground rules for global trade.
U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab and Russian Economic and Trade Minister German Gref said the few remaining differences could be resolved by the fall.
While a trade agreement was elusive, Bush and Putin said their countries would work together to detect and track terrorists trying to get their hands on nuclear and radioactive materials.
For Koizumi, whose term ends in September, the most important agenda item is North Korea's test firing of seven missiles earlier this month. At this, his final summit, Koizumi, will try to persuade his colleagues to help pressure North Korea. It has proven tricky so far.
The United States, Britain and France are among the countries supporting Tokyo's efforts before the United Nations Security Council to call for a ban on North Korean missile tests and on the country acquiring or exporting missiles, related technology, weapons of mass destruction or their components. Russia and China, which will attend the summit as an observer on the final day Monday, have balked at the possibility of such a tough stance.
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?type=bnews&id=61474&eddate=
Plame suit makes political waves
By Jeremy Cooke
BBC News, Washington
Ms Plame says Mr Cheney and others took revenge on her
It is an extraordinary development: the vice-president of the United States and a dozen other administration officials accused, in court, of deliberately leaking the identity of a classified CIA operative.
In their lawsuit Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, accuse Dick Cheney and others of endangering the lives of themselves and their children by revealing her status.
And, they allege, it was all done for revenge.
This on-going saga began in 2002, when former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson was despatched from Washington to Niger - the White House apparently hoping that he could gather detailed intelligence on reports that Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy uranium from the African country in an attempt to build a nuclear bomb.
Ambassador Wilson's investigation found that those allegations were untrue.
His findings were at odds with the administration's expectations and went largely ignored: President Bush and others continued to claim that Saddam Hussein was attempting to acquire uranium from Niger.
White House 'fury'
Mr Wilson went public by publishing a piece in the New York Times claiming the Bush administration had distorted intelligence as a pre-text for going to war in Iraq - a move which apparently infuriated the White House.
Mr Cheney is the most senior official named in the suit
And in this lawsuit Mr Wilson and his wife say that senior administration officials took revenge by leaking her status as an undercover CIA operative to the press.
The law suit names Vice President Dick Cheney, presidential adviser Karl Rove and several other administration officials, including Mr Cheney's former chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
He is already facing separate charges that he lied to officials investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's identity.
The White House is making no official comment because of the on-going legal proceedings.
But it's clear that this case has become a significant political issue.
Administration loyalists and Republicans in general claim that this law suit is politically motivated, and carefully timed, as America gears up for the November mid-term elections.
For many Democrats, though, the case represents an opportunity to expose what they see as the administration's cynical manipulation of intelligence in the run up to war.
The outcome of the legal proceedings is far from certain. But potentially much more significant than the legal aspect is the political one.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5182232.stm
US to clear citizens from Lebanon
By NATHAN GUTTMAN AND AP
Washington
The United States is working on a plan to evacuate American citizens from Lebanon to the neighboring island of Cyprus, the U.S. Embassy said Saturday.
"We are looking at how we might transport Americans to Cyprus. Once in Cyprus, Americans can then board commercial aircraft for onward travel," an embassy statement said.
One possibility is to evacuate the Americans by helicopters to Cyprus.
The US had already been calling its citizens to consider leaving Lebanon once the conditions enable such a departure.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday that the US is urging its citizens in Lebanon to "assess their personal security situation," and consider leaving the country when that becomes possible. According to McCormack, no American citizen has yet to leave Lebanon due to the closure Israel imposed on the country. "From the US government perspective, there aren't any ways to get out -- reliable ways to get out by air, land or sea," McCormack added.
Since the Beirut international airport has been taken out of commission by Israeli air strikes, the Pentagon is working on alternative plans to evacuate the American citizens from Lebanon.
One possibility that was considered was to move the helicopter carrier USS Iwo Jima and its seven ship group from the Red Sea through the Suez Canal to the shores of Lebanon. The Iwo Jima group is conducting exercises in Jordan and it will take approximately a week to gather the forces back to the ships and move the group to the shores of Lebanon.
In case there is a need for emergency evacuation the US may also ask Israel for a temporary cease fire in order to enable an air lift of the Americans from Lebanon.
The Arab American Institute (AAI) said Friday that it has received calls from many Arab Americans who are stranded both in Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip. The group called on the State Department to act promptly to evacuate American citizens from the fighting zones.
The State Department authorized the departure of all unessential personnel and family members from the US embassy in Beirut, but up to now no American citizen was able to leave.
Meanwhile, France was putting in place a special ferry to evacuate its citizens in Lebanon who wish to leave starting on Sunday, the foreign minister said.
The ferry will transport to Cyprus any of the thousands of French who want out of Lebanon following recent IDF attacks on Hizbullah targets in response to the kidnapping of two IDF soldiers on Wednesday. Special Air France flights will bring evacuees to Paris from Cyprus, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said Saturday.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150886006983&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Harris Campaign Losing More Staff
By WILLIAM MARCH The Tampa Tribune
TAMPA - Katherine Harris' U.S. Senate campaign has fallen into turmoil again as it heads toward another round of major staff losses and she faces surgery that could keep her out of action for a few weeks.
The Harris campaign announced Wednesday that its press spokesman, Chris Ingram of Tampa, is leaving.
Campaign manager Glenn Hodas has told at least one friend that he is leaving.
Field director Pat Thomas, also said by sources close to the campaign to be leaving, did not deny it when asked Wednesday.
Ingram is the second press spokesman to leave, and Hodas would be the third campaign manger to quit. Several others working on the Harris campaign - including her pollster, fundraiser and treasurer - have left during the past several months.
Paul Wilson of Wilson-Grand Communications, Harris' campaign media firm that was instrumental in Thomas' hiring, confirmed that Thomas' future with the campaign is in question, as well as Hodas'.
No one with the campaign would answer questions Wednesday about Hodas, Thomas or other staff members who are also rumored to be leaving.
No date was given for Ingram's departure.
Surgery Is Monday
Harris underwent preoperative tests earlier this week in anticipation of the removal of an ovarian mass Monday at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
The campaign quoted Harris' physician as saying the mass was unlikely to be malignant, and quoted her as saying she was "looking forward to a speedy recovery and returning to my duties in Congress and hitting the campaign trail."
At age 49, Harris is at higher risk than a younger woman, but ovarian cysts usually do not turn out to be cancerous, according to experts.
Still, Wilson suggested that Harris' health problems could raise questions about the future of the campaign, or of Hodas' and Thomas' continued employment there.
Asked whether Hodas and Thomas will be leaving, Wilson said, "I don't think that's definite yet."
"We're on a hold until Monday," he said. "Nothing right now matters except her health. Let's get past that. … All decisions are going to wait until we see how [Harris] does in the next week."
Hodas was an employee of Wilson-Grand before coming to work at the Harris campaign, and Wilson said the firm introduced Harris to Thomas.
The firm "transitioned [Hodas] to the Harris campaign," Wilson said. Since then, "Our staffing needs have changed here. … He has done the job he was brought in to do" at the Harris campaign.
Former Harris campaign manager Jamie Miller, who preceded Hodas, said Wednesday that he had talked to Hodas, who confirmed he was leaving the campaign.
Thomas, asked by a reporter Wednesday afternoon at the Harris campaign office about the possibility that she may leave the campaign, replied only, "Rumors are a dime a dozen," before walking away.
Revolving Door At Campaign
Harris' first campaign manager, Jim Dornan, quit late last year after less than six months, to be replaced by Miller, a veteran Florida GOP operative. During the next few months, her pollster, professional fundraiser and treasurer left.
In late March, all the top campaign staff - including Miller, campaign consultant Ed Rollins and media consultant Adam Goodman - quit, and Harris locked the campaign staff out of the office over a weekend.
Within days, she announced an entire new team, including Hodas, Ingram and the Wilson-Grand firm.
Harris has also sustained high turnover levels in her congressional office. Fred Asbell, who was her fourth chief of staff since her election in 2002, quit in June.
Harris has been a strong frontrunner in polls in the Republican primary, though she runs a distant second to Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson in general election polling match-ups.
Another round of turnover among major campaign staff members, and her absence from the campaign trail just before the primary, could raise questions about Harris' dominance in the race, though.
Asked whether the events could affect her status as primary frontrunner, University of South Florida political scientist Darryl Paulson responded: "I would certainly think so. It just further creates that impression of a candidate and a candidacy that's imploding and continues to do so."
"Her campaign is a national political joke at this time. She needs to get out," he said.
State Republican Party spokesman Jeff Sadosky said, "We continue to hope that come September, we have a viable candidate to take on Bill Nelson, but unfortunately, today's news will spark yet another round of tough stories about the Harris camp."
Millions Of Her Own
Her fundraising lagging, Harris has kept her campaign afloat with an infusion of $3.25 million of her own money. This week, Ingram said the campaign wouldn't announce until Saturday - the due date for federal campaign finance reports - how much money it raised in the second quarter of the year and whether Harris would contribute more.
Finance chairman Stanley Tate said campaign fundraising is "doing pretty well - not as much as I'd like and not as much as we need. I've told her she's got to be ready to write more checks, and I think she's ready to write them."
Wilson said his firm is ready to proceed with an ad campaign for Harris.
"We're full-steam ahead; we have spots written; … we're ready to go," he said. "This woman is the most tenacious animal alive. She's scrappy."
http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGB5N0PLKPE.html
jerome - if harris doesnt get elected, mebbe she might turn sides? open up about the ol' election fraud?
July 13, 2006, 7:42AM
Senate deal would open up Florida drilling
By BENNETT ROTH
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Senate GOP leaders said Wednesday they had forged an agreement to open up a potentially rich area for oil and natural gas exploration off Florida's Gulf coast.
But the proposal, which senators suggested was their final offer, may prove politically difficult to reconcile with an offshore drilling plan approved by the House. That plan could open a far larger area of the East and West Coasts for energy exploration.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, described the measure to expand exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, as "the best single energy arrangement we can make for the American people this year."
The plan would allow leasing in 8 million acres within so-called Lease Area 181, which is off the western coast of Florida, and another 6.3 million acres just south of the 181 site.
To protect the Florida coast, the plan would stipulate that drilling could not be undertaken within 125 miles of the state's shoreline through 2022.
The plan would also direct 37.5 percent of the future royalties from development in this area to four energy producing Gulf states, including Texas. Another 12.5 percent of the revenue would be deposited in a federal land and water conservation fund. The remainder of the royalties would go to the federal government.
"Through federal royalty sharing, the Gulf Coast states will be provided a means to protect important national eco- systems and prepare themselves for unforeseen natural disasters," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, said.
Lawmakers said the area contains an estimated 1.1 billion barrels of crude oil and 5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Designed for support
The measure was designed to draw the support of Florida's two senators, who had previously threatened to filibuster any plan that involved drilling that could affect the state's beaches, which are a major draw for tourists.
Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., said he believed the plan would protect the state's beaches. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said that while the proposal was promising, he warned that the "devil is in the details."
While Domenici described the plan in general, he has not released details on where drilling would be allowed.
Nelson warned that he would fight any compromise with the House bill, which would end an Outer Continental Shelf drilling moratorium that Congress has renewed every year since 1981.
The House bill would allow drilling within 50 miles of the shoreline in an area that covers 85 percent of the country's coastal waters everywhere except the central and western Gulf of Mexico and some areas off Alaska. That law would allow state governments to decide to block drilling.
It is unclear whether the House and Senate could bridge differences on vastly different versions of energy legislation. Majority Leader Bill Frist said he had not talked to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., about the bill. The majority leader said he hoped to vote on the Senate measure by the end of this month, before Congress adjourns for August recess.
'Long overdue'
House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., hailed the deal, calling it "great news" and "long overdue." But drilling supporters in the House complain the Senate proposal pushes the offshore debate back to where it was years ago, when the Clinton administration proposed opening up the 181 Area to exploration.
Despite the 125-mile buffer off Florida, some environmentalists were unhappy with the Senate deal.
"Today, Sen. Mel Martinez sold out Floridians and their coastline to Big Oil," said Tiernan Sittenfeld, legislative director of the League of Conservation Voters.
From an industry perspective, Tom Kearns, director of public affairs for the National Ocean Industries Association, said that while his group was encouraged that senators were moving on legislation, it opposed the ban through 2022 on drilling 125 miles off the Florida coast.
"We don't think moratoriums are good public policy," he said.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/4043594.html
House renews Voting Rights Act provisions
Some Republicans in South say law unfairly punishes states for past mistakes
Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, July 14, 2006
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The House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act for 25 years, rejecting contentious efforts by Southern Republicans to dilute the landmark law.
Three provisions of the act are set to expire next year: requirements that states and counties with a history of discrimination clear any changes to their election process with federal authorities, that federal observers be present if there is evidence that voters have been intimidated, and that counties with significant non-English-speaking populations provide bilingual ballots.
The 390-33 vote followed hours of debate and came a day after a coalition of African American leaders called the delay of the renewal a "civil rights crisis" and started what was to be a nightly vigil on Capitol Hill.
The Senate has yet to act on the Voting Rights Act renewal.
Though the legislation -- HR9, or the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006 -- was expected to easily pass with bipartisan support, the vote was canceled last month after Republicans from some Southern states argued during a closed meeting that their states were being unfairly targeted.
Conservatives introduced four amendments to weaken the act, and all were rejected by large bipartisan majorities. One proposed eliminating the requirement for foreign-language ballots. Another would have created an easier method for states to escape federal oversight.
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., argued that his state has overcome its documented history of discrimination and asked the House to amend the act to ease requirements for states that must have all voting changes cleared in advance by the Department of Justice. He said Georgia still is being punished for racist practices that it has eliminated.
Lawmakers also rejected an amendment sponsored by Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, that would have renewed the law for a decade rather than 25 years.
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, proposed an amendment to end the bilingual ballot requirement and was supported by those who believe that all citizens should vote in English.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach (Orange County), called bilingual ballots a travesty.
"It is a horrible long-term attack on the unity of the United States of America," he said. "This is multiculturalism at its worst."
Opponents of the amendment said voters would be disenfranchised if they could not read ballots in their native language.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., the House Judiciary Committee chairman, who led the effort to renew the act, told his colleagues that no citizen should be denied the opportunity to understand the ballots, especially when confusing initiatives are involved.
Before the amendments were rejected, a number of Democrats said they would not pass the legislation if it was changed in any way.
"Do not accept any of these amendments, I beg you," said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. "We cannot afford to go back at this point."
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco said "any one of (the amendments) would be a weakening of the Voting Rights Act."
The original act, which does not expire, prohibited poll taxes and literacy tests that kept African Americans from voting. Though such practices have been outlawed, supporters of the renewal said other barriers -- such as ID card requirements, inaccessible polling places and election-day misconduct -- still suppress the non-white vote across the country.
In California, the bilingual ballot provision affects 26 of 58 counties, but the other two provisions apply to only four counties: Kings, Merced, Monterey and Yuba.
Federal oversight of election changes and election-day monitoring are required only in states and counties that used literacy tests and where less than 50 percent of eligible residents voted in the 1964, 1968 or 1972 elections, considered an indication of voter barriers.
Civil rights groups, including the NAACP, the Urban League and the ACLU, have made the renewal a priority this year and recently boosted efforts to get the House bill passed, holding protests and issuing an "urgent call to action" to pressure Congress.
"We are fed up and the nation should be fed up," Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said during a recent conference call. "This handful of shameful retrogrades tried to strike at the heart of American democracy.
"We have well-documented testimony regarding discrimination and a continuing need for the protections."
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., gave an emotional speech on the House floor Thursday about discrimination he experienced and held up photos of several black men, including himself as a young man, being beaten by Alabama state troopers in 1965 while marching for voting rights.
"We've made some progress; we have come a distance," Lewis said. "The sad truth is that discrimination still exists. That's why we still need the Voting Rights Act, and we must not go back to the dark past."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/14/MNGPGJV3N11.DTL
Why the Eavesdropping Deal May Have More Bark Than Bite
The wiretapping deal is just the latest sign of how the White House is losing ground in the fight over wartime powers
By MASSIMO CALABRESI/WASHINGTON
Posted Friday, Jul. 14, 2006
It was as much a sign of White House desperation as anything. In the final, face-to-face negotiations between President Bush and Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter on Tuesday for oversight of Bush's controversial domestic eavesdropping program, the President made one final attempt to retain near-absolute wartime powers. The White House had argued throughout the months of staff-level negotiations that Bush needed explicit acknowledgement of his wartime powers in the Specter bill at the heart of the deal. Once again, Specter rejected it, as his staff had from the start — and Bush capitulated.
Specter announced the deal Thursday, and it has not been particularly well received on Capitol Hill or among critics of the Administration. That's because it limits presidential power in only narrow, almost symbolic ways — which is surely why Bush signed on for it. But the timing of the deal is telling; in the ongoing series of negotiations between the legislative and executive branches over the balance of power in the "war on terrorism," it is just the latest sign of how the ground is slipping out from under the White House.
At the heart of the battle is the question of whether the President is above the law. The White House has repeatedly argued he is — at least when he is acting as commander-in-chief in time of war. The only constraint on his power in those circumstances, the White House has argued, is the Constitution itself; no laws passed by Congress or treaties ratified by it can limit what the President does. Back when the story of Bush's wiretapping broke in December, the Administration was still holding the line on that argument. And with the politics of the issue on Bush's side — most Americans were more concerned about security than civil liberties — it looked like he might win the fight.
But Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, took it upon himself to reassert some limited congressional and judicial oversight of the President's wartime powers. In talks with the Justice Department, the White House and the NSA , his staff pushed to have the program's constitutionality reviewed by the same secretive court, established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Congress passed in the 1970s, that is charged with approving warrants for domestic wiretapping — the same court, in fact, that the Administration had bypassed when it conducted eavesdropping without obtaining warrants.
The resulting bill would still give Bush much of the authority to pursue his eavesdropping program — something most Senators still support. Under the deal, Bush conditionally agreed that he would apply for authority to the secret FISA court which. However the specific agreement to have the program reviewed by the court, Specter and Gonzales said, is not actually written into the bill, and is valid only if the bill makes it through the House and Senate unaltered. The deal also requires in writing twice-yearly reports to the congressional intelligence committees on "any electronic surveillance programs in effect." And it would also give the Administration more time to apply for warrants retroactively after an emergency eavesdropping operation has already begun.
But in truth, the deal as a whole has been overtaken by events. While negotiations were under way, other members of Congress got the White House to agree to brief intelligence committee members on the eavesdropping as well as other anti-terror programs. More importantly, the Supreme Court has weighed in; in the case of Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, it severely limited the White House's claims of unchecked wartime powers by ruling that the special military tribunals set up for detainees at Guantanamo were unconstitutional.
In the wake of that ruling, the White House is scrambling to find a way to retain some of the powers it once claimed absolutely — which explains the timing of the agreement with Specter. Signing on to his deal was an attempt by the White House to limit just how much oversight it would have to agree to. It was, in other words, the best deal the White House was likely to get.
It may well be too late for Bush and the White House, though — just as it may be for Specter's bill as well. The deal is unlikely to make it through both houses of Congress unaltered. Already House Republican Heather Wilson of New Mexico has announced she will introduce legislation that differs from the Specter bill, and Democrats in both chambers are rallying against the new deal. Which means that instead of drawing the line in the ongoing war powers battle, the White House may end up drawing a blank.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1214862,00.html
Pa. town moves to stem influx of immigrants
By Spencer Soper and Matt Birkbeck
The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.)
(MCT)
HAZLETON, Pa. - Mayor Louis Barletta on Friday signed into law what is believed to be the toughest ordinance targeting illegal immigrants in the country. That was probably the easy part.
Over the next 60 days, the city has to figure out how it will make every person renting a home or apartment in Hazleton prove their citizenship or immigration status. It will also beef up its code enforcement division, which will enforce the law, and possibly seek help from federal officials on how to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.
How much will it cost? Who knows, Barletta said.
"Obviously, in the beginning, there will be a lot of work to check all the tenants in the city, but then it will become an ongoing program as people come and go," Barletta said. "I think it will be effective, and other cities will try to replicate this."
The new Illegal Immigration Relief Act, which will fine landlords $1,000 a day for knowingly renting to illegal immigrants and revoke the business licenses of those who employ them, won't be enforced for 60 days and opponents have vowed a legal challenge. But already it has changed the atmosphere in this coal town, which has seen explosive population growth fueled by an influx of Hispanics.
News vans and satellite trucks circled City Hall on Friday. Barletta's secretary, Cherie Homa, ordinarily fields calls from residents upset about potholes and stray garbage cans. But on Friday, the interview requests poured in from CNN, Fox News and "The O'Reilly Factor."
Barletta has found a national audience in his war against illegal immigrants, who he says overcrowd schools and hospitals and drain limited government resources.
Amilcar Arroyo, president of the Spanish-language newspaper El Mensajero, said there have been more important changes since the ordinance was introduced than making a low-profile town more visible. He described a disturbing scene outside City Hall on Thursday night, when a line of police separated Hispanic demonstrators opposed to the law and white people who support it.
"That is what (Barletta) created: division," Arroyo said. "He opened the door to hate and opened the door to people saying, `We don't want you here.'"
While Barletta envisions copy-cat ordinances sweeping through the country - and they already are in Florida and California - Arroyo predicts a voter backlash. Hispanic voters will energize and there is talk of having Hispanic candidates run for City Council, Arroyo said.
"Hispanic people have to understand they have to register to vote because that's the only way to get politicians to hear and respect our views," he said. "This is a challenge for the Hispanic community because this is our home."
The debate in Hazleton could turn into a national legal fight.
The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union will file a lawsuit to overturn the ordinance, most likely in federal court, arguing that immigration law is the domain of the federal government, said Allentown attorney David Vaida, a representative of the legal defense fund.
He questioned the city's ability to enforce the ordinance.
"How will they administer this? Can you possibly expect landlords to have to wait for the tenant to get occupancy permits to be presented to them?" Vaida said. "And what do you show them, a driver's license? Anything more would be an intrusion. This is insanity."
Barletta said landlords did not oppose the ordinance because the city would be doing the background checks. And the business community did not raise any concerns about the ordinance, said Donna Palermo, president of the Greater Hazleton Chamber of Commerce.
"I have 725 members, and I have not had one call (about the ordinance)," Palermo said. "It has not been an issue for our membership."
European settlers lured by jobs in coal mines built Hazleton, which has become a magnet for Hispanics fleeing New York City in the aftermath of Sept. 11, attracted by affordable housing and jobs in nearby industrial parks.
A stroll through the downtown reveals how cultures co-exist. Hispanic-owned groceries, restaurants and beauty salons with signs in Spanish line Wyoming Street. Red banners hanging from lamp posts say, "Welcome to Hazleton," but area Latinos say they've felt unwelcome since the ordinance was introduced.
Resident Felicia Ramos shopped for milk and melons at the Hazleton Food Supermarket, which has signs in Spanish for its clientele. She is against the ordinance.
"The Hispanic people have been good for the Hazleton economy by buying and renovating houses and opening businesses," she said. "There are people who mess it up for Hispanics, but that happens in all races. Most of us are here to better ourselves for the future."
Down the street, Don Esposito walked out of Vesuvio's pizzeria. He said Hispanics should not feel singled out if they are here legally.
"Illegal is illegal," he said. "They weren't just picking on Hispanics. The rules are the rules."
Barletta defended his ordinance, saying small cities feel the burden of illegal immigrants more than larger cities and action is needed to stem the flow.
"I did this for the citizens of Hazleton, and I've been watching our quality of life be destroyed," he said. "The people of Hazleton don't want to hear someone in Washington is working on it."
But Arroyo said he expects the ordinance will be overturned through legal channels and the Hispanic influx will continue.
"I'm sorry to see what has happened," he said. "Hazleton will survive. More and more Hispanics are coming to buy homes and open businesses, because, despite a few guys who don't like diversity, it's a nice place."
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/nation/15043690.htm
Approval Of Atripla For HIV Called 'Extraordinary'
By Michael Smith, MedPage Today Staff Writer
Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
July 13, 2006
Also covered by: BBC News, Chicago Tribune, MSNBC, New York Times
MedPage Today Action Points
Advise patients who ask that Atripla contains three of the most common and effective anti-retroviral medications in use today in a single pill meant to be taken once a day on an empty stomach, preferably at bedtime.
Note that Atripla is indicated for use in patients who are new to HIV treatment, or who do not have resistance or sensitivity to any of the components of the combination.
Caution that preventing HIV is still more effective than treating the virus; emphasize that there is still no cure for HIV infection.
Review
ROCKVILLE, Md., July 13 -- The FDA has approved a once-daily tablet called Atripla for HIV, a simple regimen that is being hailed as an "extraordinary accomplishment."
Each Atripla pill contains 600 mg of Sustiva (efavirenz), 200 mg of Emtriva (emtricitabine), and 300 mg of Viread (tenofovir DF), which are three of the most commonly used anti-HIV medications.
The development of single-pill, once-daily dosing has long been a goal of HIV researchers, because taking antiretroviral medication faithfully is a key factor in keeping the virus in check. However, some of the early regimens of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) mean that patients were taking dozens of different pills, many times a day, either with food or without.
The co-formulation required the cooperation of three major pharmaceutical companies -- Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead Sciences, and Merck. Atripla was approved in less than three months, under the FDA's fast track program, and the medication is expected to be available in the U.S. within days, the FDA said.
The drug will also be eligible for use in 15 other countries included under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the agency said.
The three medications in combination have been shown over the past few years to be the safest and the most effective regimen for HIV patients, especially those who are beginning treatment.
"It's not simply that we found three pills that could be squished together into one tablet," commented Cal Cohen, M.D., research director of the Community Research Initiative of New England. "We found three of the best medications that could be co-formulated."
But Dr. Cohen stressed that even though the Atripla regimen is simple and safe -- "one pill is not that scary," he said -- it shouldn't be interpreted as a sign that prevention efforts should be relaxed.
"We don't want people to think that HIV is no longer worth avoiding," he said.
"To the extent that pill burden is one of the factors that contributed to people not taking their pills as they needed to control the virus, this is a big step forward," Dr. Cohen said.
Atripla will mainly be useful for patients who are treatment-naïve, he said, since resistance to one of the components will make it less effective. But treatment-experienced patients who have no resistance to Sustiva, Emtriva, and Viread will be able to take Atripla.
The co-formulation has not been tested in the presence of food, so patients are advised to take it on an empty stomach. Also, since Sustiva is known for neurological disturbances in the first few weeks of therapy -- vivid dreams, dizziness, and impaired concentration -- the drug should be taken at bedtime.
The Atripla labeling includes a warning that the drug's use can cause lactic acidosis. It is not approved for patients with chronic Hepatitis B infection, but if they are taking Atripla, discontinuation can result in severe flare-ups of Hepatitis B. The labeling also warns that serious adverse events reported for Atripla's ingredients include liver toxicity, renal impairment, and depression.
In the combination, Sustiva is a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitor, while Emtriva and Viread are nucleoside RFT inhibitors. The combination does not include a member of the third major class of anti-HIV drugs, the protease inhibitors.
The FDA said Atripla is meant to be taken alone or "in combination with other antiretroviral products." But Dr. Cohen said it's unlikely that Atripla will form the basis of a super-HAART, with many drugs instead of just three. "At this point, we have no information that suggests we need more than three drugs," he said.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/HIVAIDS/tb/3727
Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist
Biologist Who Underwent Sex Change Describes Biases Against Women
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 13, 2006; Page A10
Neurobiologist Ben Barres has a unique perspective on former Harvard president Lawrence Summers's assertion that innate differences between the sexes might explain why many fewer women than men reach the highest echelons of science.
That's because Barres used to be a woman himself.
Ben Barres, a neurobiologist at Stanford University's Medical Center, looks through a microscope in his lab on Tuesday, July 11, 2006. Barres switched sexes from female to male with a round of hormones in 1997. Barres has recently written an opinion piece which attributes institutional bias as the reason for the shortage of women in the sciences. (Marcio Jose Sanchez - AP)
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In a highly unusual critique published yesterday, the Stanford University biologist -- who used to be Barbara -- said his experience as both a man and a woman had given him an intensely personal insight into the biases that make it harder for women to succeed in science.
After he underwent a sex change nine years ago at the age of 42, Barres recalled, another scientist who was unaware of it was heard to say, "Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's."
And as a female undergraduate at MIT, Barres once solved a difficult math problem that stumped many male classmates, only to be told by a professor: "Your boyfriend must have solved it for you."
"By far," Barres wrote, "the main difference I have noticed is that people who don't know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect" than when he was a woman. "I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man."
Barres said the switch had given him access to conversations that would have excluded him previously: "I had a conversation with a male surgeon and he told me he had never met a woman surgeon who was as good as a man."
Barres's salvo, bolstered with scientific studies, marks a dramatic twist in a controversy that began with Summers's suggestion last year that "intrinsic aptitude" may explain why there are relatively few tenured female scientists at Harvard. After a lengthy feud with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Summers resigned earlier this year.
The episode triggered a fierce fight between those who say talk of intrinsic differences reflects sexism that has held women back and those who argue that political correctness is keeping scientists from frankly discussing the issue.
While there are men and women on both sides of the argument, the debate has exposed fissures along gender lines, which is what makes Barres so unusual. Barres said he has realized from personal experience that many men are unconscious of the privileges that come with being male, which leaves them unable to countenance talk of glass ceilings and discrimination.
Barres's commentary was published yesterday in the journal Nature. The scientist has also recently taken his argument to the highest reaches of American science, crusading to make access to prestigious awards more equitable.
In an interview, Nancy Andreasen, a well-known psychiatrist at the University of Iowa, agreed with Barres. She said it took her a long time to convince her husband that he got more respect when he approached an airline ticket counter than she did. When she stopped sending out research articles under her full name and used the initials N.C. Andreasen instead, she said, the acceptance rate of her publications soared.
Andreasen, one of the comparatively few women who have won the National Medal of Science, said she is still regularly reminded she is female. "Often, I will be standing in a group of men, and another person will come up and say hello to all the men and just will not see me, because in a professional setting, men are not programmed to see women," she said. "Finally, one of the men will say, 'I guess you haven't met Nancy Andreasen,' and then the person will turn bright red and say, 'Oh Nancy, nice to see you!' "
Summers did not respond to a request for an interview. But two scientists Barres lambasted along with Summers said the Stanford neurobiologist had misrepresented their views and unfairly tarred those who disagree with crude assertions of racism and sexism. Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker and Peter Lawrence, a biologist at Britain's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, said convincing data show there are differences between men and women in a host of mental abilities.
While bias could be a factor in why there were fewer women at the pinnacles of science, both argued that this was not a primary factor.
Pinker, who said he is a feminist, said experiments have shown, on average, that women are better than men at mathematical calculation and verbal fluency, and that men are better at spatial visualization and mathematical reasoning. It is hardly surprising, he said, that in his own field of language development, the number of women outstrips men, while in mechanical engineering, there are far more men.
"Is it essential to women's progress that women be indistinguishable from men?" he asked. "It confuses the issue of fairness with sameness. Let's say the data shows sex differences. Does it become okay to discriminate against women? The moral issue of treating individuals fairly should be kept separate from the empirical issues."
Lawrence said it is a "utopian" idea that "one fine day, there will be an equal number of men and women in all jobs, including those in scientific research."
He said a range of cognitive differences could partly account for stark disparities, such as at his own institute, which has 56 male and six female scientists. But even as he played down the role of sexism, Lawrence said the "rat race" in science is skewed in favor of pushy, aggressive people -- most of whom, he said, happen to be men.
"We should try and look for the qualities we actually need," he said. "I believe if we did, that we would choose more women and more gentle men. It is gentle people of all sorts who are discriminated against in our struggle to survive."
Barres and Elizabeth Spelke, a Harvard psychologist who has publicly debated Pinker on the issue, say they have little trouble with the idea that there are differences between the sexes, although some differences, especially among children, involve biases among adults in interpreting the same behavior in boys and girls.
And both argue it is difficult to tease apart nature from nurture. "Does anyone doubt if you study harder you will do better on a test?" Barres asked. "The mere existence of an IQ difference does not say it is innate. . . . Why do Asian girls do better on math tests than American boys? No one thinks they are innately better."
In her debate with Pinker last year, Spelke said arguments about innate differences as explanations for disparities become absurd if applied to previous eras. "You won't see a Chinese face or an Indian face in 19th-century science," she said. "It would have been tempting to apply this same pattern of statistical reasoning and say, there must be something about European genes that give rise to greater mathematical talent than Asian genes."
"I think we want to step back and ask, why is it that almost all Nobel Prize winners are men today?" she concluded. "The answer to that question may be the same reason why all the great scientists in Florence were Christian."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071201883.html
Smoking Linked to Higher Death Rate Among Poorer Men
07.13.06, 12:00 AM ET
THURSDAY, July 13 (HealthDay News) -- Poorer, less-educated men are more than twice as likely to die as their wealthier, better-educated counterparts, and smoking is to blame for more than half the difference in those mortality rates.
It has been known that poorer and poorly educated men have higher death rates than those who are richer and more educated, although the reason why had not been well documented, said study co-author Dr. Prabhat Jha, an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto and director of the university's Centre for Global Health Research.
But, the new study found that "the key reason is that poorer and less educated men smoke more. They have higher smoking-related deaths and are less likely to quit," Jha said.
"If you look at differences in the social inequalities between rich and poor men and their risk of death, more than half the risk is attributable to smoking-related diseases," he said.
Reporting in the July 15 issue of The Lancet, Jha and his colleagues based their finding on data collected on the deaths of 564,626 men, ages 35 to 69, in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Poland.
Jha believes the findings hold true for other countries as well. "Poor men and less educated men are more likely to smoke," he said. "That's true in China, Brazil, India and many places. The consequences of smoking are contributing to deaths worldwide," Jha added.
One of the reasons for the higher death rate among poorer men is that they're not quitting smoking at the same rates as richer, more educated men, Jha said. To solve this problem, Jha thinks cigarette taxes should be raised.
"Taxing cigarettes more aggressively would lead to higher quitting rates among the poor," Jha said. "We know that quitting smoking works. To extend these benefits to the poorest segments of society, we need even more widespread control, particularly with taxes, which would be most effective in reducing the inequalities between rich and poor."
One expert thinks that smoking is only one sign of the health inequities between rich and poor.
"These findings are that much more compelling, following on the heels of a World Health Organization projection that tobacco will kill more than a billion people in the 21st Century," said Dr. David L. Katz, an associate professor of public health and director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine.
Taken together, these reports establish tobacco both as a modern plague and a cause of profound health disparities, Katz said. "But it is also a symptom of disadvantages in everything from education to recreational opportunity. Tobacco may be a singularly important cause of the health hazards of poverty, but it is certainly not the only one," he said.
http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2006/07/13/hscout533803.html
Humidity raises heart attack risk in elderly
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - High humidity can increase the risk of a heart attack in the elderly even in relatively mild climates, according to research published on Thursday.
Scientists who studied deaths from heart attacks in Athens, Greece in 2001 found that humidity was one of the most important factors influencing average monthly death rates from heart attacks for people over 70 years old.
"It was linearly associated with heart attack deaths," said Dr Georgios Giannopoulos, of the University of Athens. "It means that higher humidity values were related to higher death rates," he told Reuters.
The research published in the journal Heart is thought to be the first study to identify a relationship between humidity and heart attacks, which are a leading cause of death in developed countries.
The scientists analysed the link between weather conditions including temperature, pressure levels and humidity with the 3,126 heart attack deaths that occurred in Athens in 2001.
They found that in the elderly age group the average daily temperature during the previous week was also a significant factor in daily death rates.
The researchers believe consistent high temperatures could have a cumulative effect on the body which raises the risk of heart attack.
"We know that increased humidity, especially combined with temperature, increases physiological stress on the body especially the circulatory system," Giannopoulos said.
A heart attack occurs when coronary arteries which carry blood to the heart are restricted, reducing supply. Each year in the United States alone more than a million people suffer heart attacks, many of them fatal.
Smoking, high blood pressure, raised cholesterol, obesity, lack of exercise and diabetes raise the risk of a heart attack.
A family history of heart disease and age also increases the likelihood. Heart attacks are more common in men over 45 years old and women over 55.
The researchers also found a peak in heart attack deaths in December, which they attributed to the "Merry Christmas Syndrome" or over-indulging in food, alcohol and emotional stress during the holiday season.
(c) Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1022322006
Finches named for Darwin are evolving
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Finches on the Galapagos Islands that inspired Charles Darwin to develop the concept of evolution are now helping confirm it -- by evolving.
A medium sized species of Darwin's finch has evolved a smaller beak to take advantage of different seeds just two decades after the arrival of a larger rival for its original food source.
The altered beak size shows that species competing for food can undergo evolutionary change, said Peter Grant of Princeton University, lead author of the report appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Grant has been studying Darwin's finches for decades and previously recorded changes responding to a drought that altered what foods were available.
It's rare for scientists to be able to document changes in the appearance of an animal in response to competition. More often it is seen when something moves into a new habitat or the climate changes and it has to find new food or resources, explained Robert C. Fleischer, a geneticist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and National Zoo.
This was certainly a documented case of microevolution, added Fleischer, who was not part of Grant's research.
Grant studied the finches on the Galapagos island Daphne, where the medium ground finch, Geospiza fortis, faced no competition for food, eating both small and large seeds.
In 1982 a breeding population of large ground finches, Geospiza magnirostris, arrived on the island and began competing for the large seeds of the Tribulus plants. G. magnirostris was able to break open and eat these seeds three times faster than G. fortis, depleting the supply of these seeds.
In 2003 and 2004 little rain fell, further reducing the food supply. The result was high mortality among G. fortis with larger beaks, leaving a breeding population of small-beaked G. fortis that could eat the seeds from smaller plants and didn't have to compete with the larger G. magnirostris for large seeds.
That's a form of evolution known as character displacement, where natural selection produces an evolutionary change in the next generation, Grant explained in a recorded statement made available by Science.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/07/14/darwin.finches.ap/
Analysts: $80 oil as early as next week
Futures end up 4% on week; Mideast conflict in focus
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Analysts predict that front-month, crude-oil futures will reach $80 a barrel as early as next week, following a four-session gain of more than $3 and a record close Friday.
Violence between Israel and Lebanon and the West's quarrels with Iran and North Korea fueled traders' anxiety over the state of oil supplies, as countries begin to take sides on the various conflicts around the world.
If Israel proposes to blame Iran for instigating the attacks, there could be an escalation in military operations, said John Person, president of National Futures Advisory Service. "This is putting in a new price 'terror premium' in crude oil, which could take oil past $80 by late next week."
That's much earlier than many analysts expected, and that means prices could climb beyond $80, Person added, noting the he "would not rule out $100 to $120 given a supply disruption event, such as an oil-line sabotage or a hurricane in the Gulf region." See Commodities Corner on hurricane-related commodity bets.
'This is putting in a new price "terror premium" in crude oil, which could take oil past $80 by late next week. ... I would not rule out $100 to $120 given a supply disruption event.'
— John Person, National Futures Advisory Service
Crude for August delivery climbed as high as $77.95 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a record intraday level for a front-month contract in the regular session. That was below the all-time high of $78.40 reached in the electronic-trading session Friday morning.
The contract pulled back a bit, but still closed at a record $77.03, up 33 cents. It was up 4% from last Friday's close of $74.09 after tallying a gain of $3.42 in four days.
Also Friday, August unleaded gasoline closed up 2.36 cents at $2.3249 a gallon after a contract high of $2.345. Last week, it closed at $2.2394.
At the retail level, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline stood at $2.958 Friday, up 27% from the same time a year ago, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge report. See the latest data.
Heating oil for August delivery finished down 0.39 cents Friday at $2.076 a gallon, after touching $2.111, its highest levels since mid-May. It closed last Friday at $2.0104.
The violence in Lebanon; uncertainty over the conflict between Western nations and Iran's nuclear program; North Korea's departure from talks with South Korea on Pyongyang's missile tests; and new attacks on oil infrastructure in Nigeria have all helped bring oil prices to all-time highs.
"We seldom remember a week in which so much has happened so quickly in the energy markets," said Edward Meir, analyst at Man Financial.
Man is expecting prices to continue to climb, with little chance of an easing of the situation in Lebanon before next week.
The U.N. Security Council met in an emergency session on the fighting Friday, and governments around the world urged both sides to act with restraint. Lebanon has called on the United Nations to adopt a resolution that would lead to a ceasefire. See full story.
The Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said President Bush has pledged to pressure Israel to halt the attacks, which were sparked by the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers along the Israel-Lebanon border by the Hezbollah group earlier this week, the Associated Press reported.
Finding the links
"Traders are simply terrified of what unknowns are lurking out there," said Kevin Kerr, editor of Global Resources Trader, a newsletter of MarketWatch (the publisher of this report).
"Major violence in the Middle East, even hundreds of miles away from the oil fields, will naturally raise the blood pressure of traders in New York," added Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research.
'Traders are simply terrified of what unknowns are lurking out there.'
— Kevin Kerr, MarketWatch's Global Resources Trader
The nations currently involved have little oil production, according to James Williams, an economist at WTRG Economics. "Lebanon, Israel and Palestine have almost zero production, and even if neighboring Syria is tossed into the mix, the total is still under a half-million barrels per day.
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?dist=newsfinder&siteid=google&guid=%7BEBA5E96C-92F5-43E0-BCF5-35DFB4862BB1%7D&keyword=
Israeli attack kills 20 fleeing civilians
An Israeli missile has hit a van near Lebanon's southern port of Tyre, killing 20 people, including 15 children. Seven of the dead were from the same family. The vehicle was carrying families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes. Residents say they tried to take refuge at a UN position but were turned away.
Many of the bodies were charred. Israel has bombed roads, bridges and petrol stations across Lebanon since Hizbollah militants in the south captured two Israeli soldiers on Wednesday. The four-day campaign has killed about 100 people, nearly all civilians. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora demanded an immediate UN-backed ceasefire, denouncing Israel for turning his country into a "disaster zone". He has appealed for foreign aid.
http://euronews.net/create_html.php?page=detail_info&article=369591&lng=1
Israel: Iran aided Hezbollah ship attack
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
JERUSALEM — Elite Iranian troops helped Hezbollah fire a sophisticated radar-guided missile at an Israeli warship in a surprise blow by militants who had been using only low-tech weapons, Israeli officials said Saturday.
Israel initially believed that an aerial drone armed with explosives hit the warship, but it became clear that Hezbollah had used an Iranian-made C-802 missile to strike the vessel late Friday, an Israeli intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.
Tehran did not respond to the charge, which was not mentioned in Iranian media reports Saturday.
One Israeli sailor was killed and three were missing after the attack. The ship was returning to its home port in Israel, the army said.
About 100 fighters from Iran's Revolutionary Guard helped import, equip and fire the missile at the Spear, a missile ship cruising off the coast of Lebanon, which is under an Israeli naval blockade, Israeli officials said.
Hezbollah was founded by the Revolutionary Guard during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The Islamic republic's elite corps of more than 200,000 fighters is independent of the regular armed forces and directly controlled by Iran's supreme leader.
"We can confirm that it (the ship) was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hezbollah. We see this as a very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah," Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan told The Associated Press.
The Shiite militant group had been firing only highly inaccurate Katyusha rockets at Israeli targets. Israel appeared surprised that the guerrilla group had more high-tech weapons.
Israeli officials speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information said that Hezbollah also has Iranian-made drones that are more accurate than missiles, as well as longer-range projectiles that could hit Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial hub.
An Israeli military official said the Spear's missile detection and deflection system was not on during the attack, apparently because the sailors did not anticipate such an attack.
The military official said the ship is one of the most technologically advanced in the Israeli fleet, boasting an array of high-tech missiles and a system for electronically jamming incoming missiles and other threats.
Nehushtan said another Hezbollah radar-guided anti-ship missile hit and sank a nearby Cambodian merchant ship around the time the Spear was struck. Twelve Egyptian sailors were pulled from the water by passing ships, Brig. Gen. Noam Fieg said.
Nehushtan said the body of one of the four Israeli soldiers missing in the attack was found on the damaged warship. Other Israeli military officials said two bodies had been found.
Israel launched an offensive after Hezbollah guerrillas crossed the Israel-Lebanon border on Wednesday and captured two Israeli soldiers. Israel has bombarded Lebanon's airport and main roads in the most intensive offensive against the country in 24 years, while Hezbollah has launched hundreds of rockets into Israel.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4049270.html
Hezbollah rockets hit ancient Israeli town
Saturday 15 July 2006, 15:37 Makka Time, 12:37 GMT
Hezbollah rockets hit towns in northern Israel
Rockets fired by Hezbollah in Lebanon have hit the town of Tiberias, a major Christian pilgrimage site in northern Israel.
Military officials said several people were injured on Saturday when at least three rockets hit the ancient town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.
"The Islamic Resistance fires dozens of rockets for the first time on Tiberias," said an announcement on Hezbollah's television station Al-Manar.
The Israeli military said another dozen rockets were fired into northern Israel at dawn on Saturday.
Rockets struck several towns, including the coastal resort of Nahariya, but caused no casualties or damage, a military source told AFP.
Syrian support
Two Israeli civilians, an elderly woman and her five-year-old grandson, were killed on Friday in the deadliest rocket attack in three days, taking the Israeli civilian death toll to four.
More than 40 people were taken to hospital on Friday, three in a serious condition, as about 90 rockets hit about 15 northern Israeli towns.
Syria's ruling Baath Party has said it would support Hezbollah and Lebanon against the "barbaric Israeli aggression".
The pledge came despite the sometimes hostile relations between Damascus and Beirut since Syria ended its 29-year military presence in Lebanon last year.
The Beirut government, led by an anti-Syrian coalition, is unable or unwilling to disarm Hezbollah, the only Lebanese faction to keep its guns after the 1975-90 civil war.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B4F15016-C88B-4A67-BD27-C1C822539FD8.htm
Harper, Putin promote Russia-Canada natural gas joint ventures in G8 prelude
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (CP) - A massive Canada-Russia joint venture in liquefied natural gas appeared to get nudged closer to reality Saturday as Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrived at the G8 conference and immediately set to work with the host president.
Harper had delivered a cautionary speech on the need for open energy markets and Canada's pre-eminent position as an energy investment magnet before his arrival at this, his first major international summit.
But the prime minister hadn't yet checked into his hotel in St. Petersburg before he and Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a joint statement promoting LNG co-operation that could see Russian gas coming through Canada to North American markets.
"We welcome close co-operation between Canadian and Russian energy industry players and will work to facilitate these relationships with a view to promoting international trade, particularly in the area of liquefied natural gas," said the statement, released after an hour-long bilateral meeting between Harper and Putin.
The G8 leaders were to attend a formal opening dinner with their wives on Saturday evening before the summit officially gets underway Sunday morning.
Energy security is one of Putin's chosen priority items for the conference and he and Harper wasted little time in setting the tone.
Currently, Petro-Canada is seeking regulatory approval in Quebec for a $1.5 billion US LNG project with Russian state-controlled OAO Gazprom. The project would ship gas liquefied in St. Petersburg to a regasification terminal in Gros-Cacouna, Que.
Canada's ambassador to Russia, Christopher Westdal, said following the Harper-Putin meeting that the venture has support from Russian authorities and both the public and officials in Canada.
"It looks as though it will go forward," said Westdal.
A senior Canadian official added that Putin expressed an interest in doing more deals with his northern G8 neighbour.
"He thought that given Canadian expertise and interest, there are opportunities for more such business in the energy field."
The cozy business talk came less than 24 hours after Harper delivered a speech in London touting Canada as the world's most attractive destination for energy investment capital. Harper also chided "self-serving monopolistic political strategies" in a clear shot at Russia's heavily state-controlled oil and gas sector.
In March, Petro-Canada CEO Ron Brenneman said the Gazprom LNG venture was "notionally" a 50-50 shared interest.
But Petro-Canada is looking for an ownership stake in Gazprom's Russian gas fields, not just the downstream distribution.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=572fd5ab-167f-419f-85b6-68ac319c7d5c&k=13460
UN Council edges closer to N. Korea vote
Sat Jul 15, 2006 7:36 PM BST
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By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Japan and the United States said they expected adoption on Saturday of a U.N. resolution imposing weapons-related sanctions on North Korea but cautioned that the text was not yet complete.
Japan was still waiting for final instructions, a council diplomat told Reuters after informal talks among key members.
Both countries are aiming for a unanimous U.N. Security Council vote, without either a veto or an abstention from China and Russia, which had produced a rival text on Wednesday.
"We had a lot of progress but there are still last-minute important things that need to be cleared up," Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said after informal talks among key council members.
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said negotiations were continuing "but we are getting close" and he expected a vote by afternoon. Japanese Ambassador Kenzo Oshima, who had drafted the original resolution, said he too hoped for a vote but noted there was "no final decision yet."
The Security Council has wrangled for days over the response to North Korea's seven missile tests on July 5, which raised international tensions, mainly because of Pyongang's development of nuclear weapons.
The key obstacle is whether the resolution should invoke Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which can lay the groundwork for military force if a follow-up resolution is adopted.
China and Russia reject any mention of Chapter 7, recalling the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which did not get specific council authorization. Beijing's U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, had threatened a veto if those words were included.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-07-15T183636Z_01_N15215320_RTRUKOC_0_UK-KOREA-NORTH.xml
The Associated Press
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Leaders of the world's industrial powers clashed Saturday over the escalating violence in the Middle East even as the summit host, Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged, "We will find common ground on this."
The leaders opened the summit _ the first in Russia _ with a dinner at the opulent 18th century Peterhof Palace, which was extensively damaged during World War II and then painstakingly rebuilt. Formal talks were to begin Sunday at a second palace that doubles as Putin's residence while he is in St. Petersburg.
Putin had wanted this year's Group of Eight summit to focus on bolstering energy supplies, boosting education and fighting infectious diseases. But the military conflict between Israel and Lebanon is dominating the discussions. Iran's and North Korea's nuclear ambitions also are likely to overtake the agenda.
"We've got a lot to work on," President Bush acknowledged.
The G-8 countries — the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada — were expected to issue a joint declaration on Middle East crisis.
However the document's drafters were struggling to deal with sharp differences between the United States and the other countries over how to proceed. The United States is pressing for a statement that identifies Hezbollah militants as the main culprit and emphasizes the importance of maintaining a democratic Lebanon.
Bush said Israel has a right to defend itself. "The best way to stop the violence is for Hezbollah to lay down its arms and to stop attacking," he said.
Putin and other leaders criticized what they see as an overreaction by Israel that has caused dozens of civilian deaths and risked a major escalation of bloodshed in the Middle East.
"We are very concerned," said Italian Premier Romano Prodi. "We understand the right of Israel to defend itself, of course, and we understand there were provocations against Israel but we believe the use of force by Israel was disproportionate."
French President Jacques Chirac was even harsher in his comments, saying "One could ask if today there is not sort of a will to destroy Lebanon, its equipment, its roads, its communications."
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said he understood Israel's anger but urged against seeking "an eye for an eye."
Putin said it was unacceptable for Hezbollah to try to achieve its goals using force and abductions, but he also was critical of Israel's military response.
"The use of force should be balanced. And, in any case, bloodshed should stop as soon as possible," he said.
Despite the differences, he expressed optimism that common the leaders would find common ground.
The G-8 leaders were staying in guest houses on the grounds of Konstantin Palace on the Gulf of Finland, an area sealed off by heavy security. Scuba divers inspected boats ferrying people to the summit, and a surveillance blimp hovered above the sprawling grounds.
Far from the gathering, protesters — some denouncing globalization — faced off with police. They were fewer, though, than the hundreds of thousands that have sought to disrupt some previous summits.
The Kremlin restricted protesters to a stadium in a hard-to-reach part of the city.
"Russia is not a jail! No to the G-8! Rights are not given, they are taken!" protesters shouted at a double row of police — including some heavily armed for riots — surrounding the gate.
About 250 people, meanwhile, attended a rally organized by the Communist Party in the center of the city.
Waving red flags, they listened as speaker after speaker berated the G-8; musicians sang nostalgic, Soviet-era songs.
"Globalization has only one aim: exploitation and slavery," said one banner in the crowd.
Hours before the summit opened, negotiations between the United States and Russia broke down on Russia's application to join the 149-nation World Trade Organization, which sets the ground rules for global trade.
U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab and Russian Economic and Trade Minister German Gref said the few remaining differences could be resolved by the fall.
While a trade agreement was elusive, Bush and Putin said their countries would work together to detect and track terrorists trying to get their hands on nuclear and radioactive materials.
For Koizumi, whose term ends in September, the most important agenda item is North Korea's test firing of seven missiles earlier this month. At this, his final summit, Koizumi, will try to persuade his colleagues to help pressure North Korea. It has proven tricky so far.
The United States, Britain and France are among the countries supporting Tokyo's efforts before the United Nations Security Council to call for a ban on North Korean missile tests and on the country acquiring or exporting missiles, related technology, weapons of mass destruction or their components. Russia and China, which will attend the summit as an observer on the final day Monday, have balked at the possibility of such a tough stance.
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?type=bnews&id=61474&eddate=
Plame suit makes political waves
By Jeremy Cooke
BBC News, Washington
Ms Plame says Mr Cheney and others took revenge on her
It is an extraordinary development: the vice-president of the United States and a dozen other administration officials accused, in court, of deliberately leaking the identity of a classified CIA operative.
In their lawsuit Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, accuse Dick Cheney and others of endangering the lives of themselves and their children by revealing her status.
And, they allege, it was all done for revenge.
This on-going saga began in 2002, when former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson was despatched from Washington to Niger - the White House apparently hoping that he could gather detailed intelligence on reports that Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy uranium from the African country in an attempt to build a nuclear bomb.
Ambassador Wilson's investigation found that those allegations were untrue.
His findings were at odds with the administration's expectations and went largely ignored: President Bush and others continued to claim that Saddam Hussein was attempting to acquire uranium from Niger.
White House 'fury'
Mr Wilson went public by publishing a piece in the New York Times claiming the Bush administration had distorted intelligence as a pre-text for going to war in Iraq - a move which apparently infuriated the White House.
Mr Cheney is the most senior official named in the suit
And in this lawsuit Mr Wilson and his wife say that senior administration officials took revenge by leaking her status as an undercover CIA operative to the press.
The law suit names Vice President Dick Cheney, presidential adviser Karl Rove and several other administration officials, including Mr Cheney's former chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
He is already facing separate charges that he lied to officials investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's identity.
The White House is making no official comment because of the on-going legal proceedings.
But it's clear that this case has become a significant political issue.
Administration loyalists and Republicans in general claim that this law suit is politically motivated, and carefully timed, as America gears up for the November mid-term elections.
For many Democrats, though, the case represents an opportunity to expose what they see as the administration's cynical manipulation of intelligence in the run up to war.
The outcome of the legal proceedings is far from certain. But potentially much more significant than the legal aspect is the political one.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5182232.stm
US to clear citizens from Lebanon
By NATHAN GUTTMAN AND AP
Washington
The United States is working on a plan to evacuate American citizens from Lebanon to the neighboring island of Cyprus, the U.S. Embassy said Saturday.
"We are looking at how we might transport Americans to Cyprus. Once in Cyprus, Americans can then board commercial aircraft for onward travel," an embassy statement said.
One possibility is to evacuate the Americans by helicopters to Cyprus.
The US had already been calling its citizens to consider leaving Lebanon once the conditions enable such a departure.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday that the US is urging its citizens in Lebanon to "assess their personal security situation," and consider leaving the country when that becomes possible. According to McCormack, no American citizen has yet to leave Lebanon due to the closure Israel imposed on the country. "From the US government perspective, there aren't any ways to get out -- reliable ways to get out by air, land or sea," McCormack added.
Since the Beirut international airport has been taken out of commission by Israeli air strikes, the Pentagon is working on alternative plans to evacuate the American citizens from Lebanon.
One possibility that was considered was to move the helicopter carrier USS Iwo Jima and its seven ship group from the Red Sea through the Suez Canal to the shores of Lebanon. The Iwo Jima group is conducting exercises in Jordan and it will take approximately a week to gather the forces back to the ships and move the group to the shores of Lebanon.
In case there is a need for emergency evacuation the US may also ask Israel for a temporary cease fire in order to enable an air lift of the Americans from Lebanon.
The Arab American Institute (AAI) said Friday that it has received calls from many Arab Americans who are stranded both in Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip. The group called on the State Department to act promptly to evacuate American citizens from the fighting zones.
The State Department authorized the departure of all unessential personnel and family members from the US embassy in Beirut, but up to now no American citizen was able to leave.
Meanwhile, France was putting in place a special ferry to evacuate its citizens in Lebanon who wish to leave starting on Sunday, the foreign minister said.
The ferry will transport to Cyprus any of the thousands of French who want out of Lebanon following recent IDF attacks on Hizbullah targets in response to the kidnapping of two IDF soldiers on Wednesday. Special Air France flights will bring evacuees to Paris from Cyprus, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said Saturday.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150886006983&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Harris Campaign Losing More Staff
By WILLIAM MARCH The Tampa Tribune
TAMPA - Katherine Harris' U.S. Senate campaign has fallen into turmoil again as it heads toward another round of major staff losses and she faces surgery that could keep her out of action for a few weeks.
The Harris campaign announced Wednesday that its press spokesman, Chris Ingram of Tampa, is leaving.
Campaign manager Glenn Hodas has told at least one friend that he is leaving.
Field director Pat Thomas, also said by sources close to the campaign to be leaving, did not deny it when asked Wednesday.
Ingram is the second press spokesman to leave, and Hodas would be the third campaign manger to quit. Several others working on the Harris campaign - including her pollster, fundraiser and treasurer - have left during the past several months.
Paul Wilson of Wilson-Grand Communications, Harris' campaign media firm that was instrumental in Thomas' hiring, confirmed that Thomas' future with the campaign is in question, as well as Hodas'.
No one with the campaign would answer questions Wednesday about Hodas, Thomas or other staff members who are also rumored to be leaving.
No date was given for Ingram's departure.
Surgery Is Monday
Harris underwent preoperative tests earlier this week in anticipation of the removal of an ovarian mass Monday at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
The campaign quoted Harris' physician as saying the mass was unlikely to be malignant, and quoted her as saying she was "looking forward to a speedy recovery and returning to my duties in Congress and hitting the campaign trail."
At age 49, Harris is at higher risk than a younger woman, but ovarian cysts usually do not turn out to be cancerous, according to experts.
Still, Wilson suggested that Harris' health problems could raise questions about the future of the campaign, or of Hodas' and Thomas' continued employment there.
Asked whether Hodas and Thomas will be leaving, Wilson said, "I don't think that's definite yet."
"We're on a hold until Monday," he said. "Nothing right now matters except her health. Let's get past that. … All decisions are going to wait until we see how [Harris] does in the next week."
Hodas was an employee of Wilson-Grand before coming to work at the Harris campaign, and Wilson said the firm introduced Harris to Thomas.
The firm "transitioned [Hodas] to the Harris campaign," Wilson said. Since then, "Our staffing needs have changed here. … He has done the job he was brought in to do" at the Harris campaign.
Former Harris campaign manager Jamie Miller, who preceded Hodas, said Wednesday that he had talked to Hodas, who confirmed he was leaving the campaign.
Thomas, asked by a reporter Wednesday afternoon at the Harris campaign office about the possibility that she may leave the campaign, replied only, "Rumors are a dime a dozen," before walking away.
Revolving Door At Campaign
Harris' first campaign manager, Jim Dornan, quit late last year after less than six months, to be replaced by Miller, a veteran Florida GOP operative. During the next few months, her pollster, professional fundraiser and treasurer left.
In late March, all the top campaign staff - including Miller, campaign consultant Ed Rollins and media consultant Adam Goodman - quit, and Harris locked the campaign staff out of the office over a weekend.
Within days, she announced an entire new team, including Hodas, Ingram and the Wilson-Grand firm.
Harris has also sustained high turnover levels in her congressional office. Fred Asbell, who was her fourth chief of staff since her election in 2002, quit in June.
Harris has been a strong frontrunner in polls in the Republican primary, though she runs a distant second to Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson in general election polling match-ups.
Another round of turnover among major campaign staff members, and her absence from the campaign trail just before the primary, could raise questions about Harris' dominance in the race, though.
Asked whether the events could affect her status as primary frontrunner, University of South Florida political scientist Darryl Paulson responded: "I would certainly think so. It just further creates that impression of a candidate and a candidacy that's imploding and continues to do so."
"Her campaign is a national political joke at this time. She needs to get out," he said.
State Republican Party spokesman Jeff Sadosky said, "We continue to hope that come September, we have a viable candidate to take on Bill Nelson, but unfortunately, today's news will spark yet another round of tough stories about the Harris camp."
Millions Of Her Own
Her fundraising lagging, Harris has kept her campaign afloat with an infusion of $3.25 million of her own money. This week, Ingram said the campaign wouldn't announce until Saturday - the due date for federal campaign finance reports - how much money it raised in the second quarter of the year and whether Harris would contribute more.
Finance chairman Stanley Tate said campaign fundraising is "doing pretty well - not as much as I'd like and not as much as we need. I've told her she's got to be ready to write more checks, and I think she's ready to write them."
Wilson said his firm is ready to proceed with an ad campaign for Harris.
"We're full-steam ahead; we have spots written; … we're ready to go," he said. "This woman is the most tenacious animal alive. She's scrappy."
http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGB5N0PLKPE.html
jerome - if harris doesnt get elected, mebbe she might turn sides? open up about the ol' election fraud?
July 13, 2006, 7:42AM
Senate deal would open up Florida drilling
By BENNETT ROTH
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Senate GOP leaders said Wednesday they had forged an agreement to open up a potentially rich area for oil and natural gas exploration off Florida's Gulf coast.
But the proposal, which senators suggested was their final offer, may prove politically difficult to reconcile with an offshore drilling plan approved by the House. That plan could open a far larger area of the East and West Coasts for energy exploration.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, described the measure to expand exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, as "the best single energy arrangement we can make for the American people this year."
The plan would allow leasing in 8 million acres within so-called Lease Area 181, which is off the western coast of Florida, and another 6.3 million acres just south of the 181 site.
To protect the Florida coast, the plan would stipulate that drilling could not be undertaken within 125 miles of the state's shoreline through 2022.
The plan would also direct 37.5 percent of the future royalties from development in this area to four energy producing Gulf states, including Texas. Another 12.5 percent of the revenue would be deposited in a federal land and water conservation fund. The remainder of the royalties would go to the federal government.
"Through federal royalty sharing, the Gulf Coast states will be provided a means to protect important national eco- systems and prepare themselves for unforeseen natural disasters," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, said.
Lawmakers said the area contains an estimated 1.1 billion barrels of crude oil and 5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Designed for support
The measure was designed to draw the support of Florida's two senators, who had previously threatened to filibuster any plan that involved drilling that could affect the state's beaches, which are a major draw for tourists.
Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., said he believed the plan would protect the state's beaches. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said that while the proposal was promising, he warned that the "devil is in the details."
While Domenici described the plan in general, he has not released details on where drilling would be allowed.
Nelson warned that he would fight any compromise with the House bill, which would end an Outer Continental Shelf drilling moratorium that Congress has renewed every year since 1981.
The House bill would allow drilling within 50 miles of the shoreline in an area that covers 85 percent of the country's coastal waters everywhere except the central and western Gulf of Mexico and some areas off Alaska. That law would allow state governments to decide to block drilling.
It is unclear whether the House and Senate could bridge differences on vastly different versions of energy legislation. Majority Leader Bill Frist said he had not talked to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., about the bill. The majority leader said he hoped to vote on the Senate measure by the end of this month, before Congress adjourns for August recess.
'Long overdue'
House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., hailed the deal, calling it "great news" and "long overdue." But drilling supporters in the House complain the Senate proposal pushes the offshore debate back to where it was years ago, when the Clinton administration proposed opening up the 181 Area to exploration.
Despite the 125-mile buffer off Florida, some environmentalists were unhappy with the Senate deal.
"Today, Sen. Mel Martinez sold out Floridians and their coastline to Big Oil," said Tiernan Sittenfeld, legislative director of the League of Conservation Voters.
From an industry perspective, Tom Kearns, director of public affairs for the National Ocean Industries Association, said that while his group was encouraged that senators were moving on legislation, it opposed the ban through 2022 on drilling 125 miles off the Florida coast.
"We don't think moratoriums are good public policy," he said.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/4043594.html
House renews Voting Rights Act provisions
Some Republicans in South say law unfairly punishes states for past mistakes
Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, July 14, 2006
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The House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act for 25 years, rejecting contentious efforts by Southern Republicans to dilute the landmark law.
Three provisions of the act are set to expire next year: requirements that states and counties with a history of discrimination clear any changes to their election process with federal authorities, that federal observers be present if there is evidence that voters have been intimidated, and that counties with significant non-English-speaking populations provide bilingual ballots.
The 390-33 vote followed hours of debate and came a day after a coalition of African American leaders called the delay of the renewal a "civil rights crisis" and started what was to be a nightly vigil on Capitol Hill.
The Senate has yet to act on the Voting Rights Act renewal.
Though the legislation -- HR9, or the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006 -- was expected to easily pass with bipartisan support, the vote was canceled last month after Republicans from some Southern states argued during a closed meeting that their states were being unfairly targeted.
Conservatives introduced four amendments to weaken the act, and all were rejected by large bipartisan majorities. One proposed eliminating the requirement for foreign-language ballots. Another would have created an easier method for states to escape federal oversight.
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., argued that his state has overcome its documented history of discrimination and asked the House to amend the act to ease requirements for states that must have all voting changes cleared in advance by the Department of Justice. He said Georgia still is being punished for racist practices that it has eliminated.
Lawmakers also rejected an amendment sponsored by Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, that would have renewed the law for a decade rather than 25 years.
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, proposed an amendment to end the bilingual ballot requirement and was supported by those who believe that all citizens should vote in English.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach (Orange County), called bilingual ballots a travesty.
"It is a horrible long-term attack on the unity of the United States of America," he said. "This is multiculturalism at its worst."
Opponents of the amendment said voters would be disenfranchised if they could not read ballots in their native language.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., the House Judiciary Committee chairman, who led the effort to renew the act, told his colleagues that no citizen should be denied the opportunity to understand the ballots, especially when confusing initiatives are involved.
Before the amendments were rejected, a number of Democrats said they would not pass the legislation if it was changed in any way.
"Do not accept any of these amendments, I beg you," said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. "We cannot afford to go back at this point."
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco said "any one of (the amendments) would be a weakening of the Voting Rights Act."
The original act, which does not expire, prohibited poll taxes and literacy tests that kept African Americans from voting. Though such practices have been outlawed, supporters of the renewal said other barriers -- such as ID card requirements, inaccessible polling places and election-day misconduct -- still suppress the non-white vote across the country.
In California, the bilingual ballot provision affects 26 of 58 counties, but the other two provisions apply to only four counties: Kings, Merced, Monterey and Yuba.
Federal oversight of election changes and election-day monitoring are required only in states and counties that used literacy tests and where less than 50 percent of eligible residents voted in the 1964, 1968 or 1972 elections, considered an indication of voter barriers.
Civil rights groups, including the NAACP, the Urban League and the ACLU, have made the renewal a priority this year and recently boosted efforts to get the House bill passed, holding protests and issuing an "urgent call to action" to pressure Congress.
"We are fed up and the nation should be fed up," Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said during a recent conference call. "This handful of shameful retrogrades tried to strike at the heart of American democracy.
"We have well-documented testimony regarding discrimination and a continuing need for the protections."
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., gave an emotional speech on the House floor Thursday about discrimination he experienced and held up photos of several black men, including himself as a young man, being beaten by Alabama state troopers in 1965 while marching for voting rights.
"We've made some progress; we have come a distance," Lewis said. "The sad truth is that discrimination still exists. That's why we still need the Voting Rights Act, and we must not go back to the dark past."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/14/MNGPGJV3N11.DTL
Why the Eavesdropping Deal May Have More Bark Than Bite
The wiretapping deal is just the latest sign of how the White House is losing ground in the fight over wartime powers
By MASSIMO CALABRESI/WASHINGTON
Posted Friday, Jul. 14, 2006
It was as much a sign of White House desperation as anything. In the final, face-to-face negotiations between President Bush and Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter on Tuesday for oversight of Bush's controversial domestic eavesdropping program, the President made one final attempt to retain near-absolute wartime powers. The White House had argued throughout the months of staff-level negotiations that Bush needed explicit acknowledgement of his wartime powers in the Specter bill at the heart of the deal. Once again, Specter rejected it, as his staff had from the start — and Bush capitulated.
Specter announced the deal Thursday, and it has not been particularly well received on Capitol Hill or among critics of the Administration. That's because it limits presidential power in only narrow, almost symbolic ways — which is surely why Bush signed on for it. But the timing of the deal is telling; in the ongoing series of negotiations between the legislative and executive branches over the balance of power in the "war on terrorism," it is just the latest sign of how the ground is slipping out from under the White House.
At the heart of the battle is the question of whether the President is above the law. The White House has repeatedly argued he is — at least when he is acting as commander-in-chief in time of war. The only constraint on his power in those circumstances, the White House has argued, is the Constitution itself; no laws passed by Congress or treaties ratified by it can limit what the President does. Back when the story of Bush's wiretapping broke in December, the Administration was still holding the line on that argument. And with the politics of the issue on Bush's side — most Americans were more concerned about security than civil liberties — it looked like he might win the fight.
But Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, took it upon himself to reassert some limited congressional and judicial oversight of the President's wartime powers. In talks with the Justice Department, the White House and the NSA , his staff pushed to have the program's constitutionality reviewed by the same secretive court, established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Congress passed in the 1970s, that is charged with approving warrants for domestic wiretapping — the same court, in fact, that the Administration had bypassed when it conducted eavesdropping without obtaining warrants.
The resulting bill would still give Bush much of the authority to pursue his eavesdropping program — something most Senators still support. Under the deal, Bush conditionally agreed that he would apply for authority to the secret FISA court which. However the specific agreement to have the program reviewed by the court, Specter and Gonzales said, is not actually written into the bill, and is valid only if the bill makes it through the House and Senate unaltered. The deal also requires in writing twice-yearly reports to the congressional intelligence committees on "any electronic surveillance programs in effect." And it would also give the Administration more time to apply for warrants retroactively after an emergency eavesdropping operation has already begun.
But in truth, the deal as a whole has been overtaken by events. While negotiations were under way, other members of Congress got the White House to agree to brief intelligence committee members on the eavesdropping as well as other anti-terror programs. More importantly, the Supreme Court has weighed in; in the case of Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, it severely limited the White House's claims of unchecked wartime powers by ruling that the special military tribunals set up for detainees at Guantanamo were unconstitutional.
In the wake of that ruling, the White House is scrambling to find a way to retain some of the powers it once claimed absolutely — which explains the timing of the agreement with Specter. Signing on to his deal was an attempt by the White House to limit just how much oversight it would have to agree to. It was, in other words, the best deal the White House was likely to get.
It may well be too late for Bush and the White House, though — just as it may be for Specter's bill as well. The deal is unlikely to make it through both houses of Congress unaltered. Already House Republican Heather Wilson of New Mexico has announced she will introduce legislation that differs from the Specter bill, and Democrats in both chambers are rallying against the new deal. Which means that instead of drawing the line in the ongoing war powers battle, the White House may end up drawing a blank.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1214862,00.html
Pa. town moves to stem influx of immigrants
By Spencer Soper and Matt Birkbeck
The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.)
(MCT)
HAZLETON, Pa. - Mayor Louis Barletta on Friday signed into law what is believed to be the toughest ordinance targeting illegal immigrants in the country. That was probably the easy part.
Over the next 60 days, the city has to figure out how it will make every person renting a home or apartment in Hazleton prove their citizenship or immigration status. It will also beef up its code enforcement division, which will enforce the law, and possibly seek help from federal officials on how to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.
How much will it cost? Who knows, Barletta said.
"Obviously, in the beginning, there will be a lot of work to check all the tenants in the city, but then it will become an ongoing program as people come and go," Barletta said. "I think it will be effective, and other cities will try to replicate this."
The new Illegal Immigration Relief Act, which will fine landlords $1,000 a day for knowingly renting to illegal immigrants and revoke the business licenses of those who employ them, won't be enforced for 60 days and opponents have vowed a legal challenge. But already it has changed the atmosphere in this coal town, which has seen explosive population growth fueled by an influx of Hispanics.
News vans and satellite trucks circled City Hall on Friday. Barletta's secretary, Cherie Homa, ordinarily fields calls from residents upset about potholes and stray garbage cans. But on Friday, the interview requests poured in from CNN, Fox News and "The O'Reilly Factor."
Barletta has found a national audience in his war against illegal immigrants, who he says overcrowd schools and hospitals and drain limited government resources.
Amilcar Arroyo, president of the Spanish-language newspaper El Mensajero, said there have been more important changes since the ordinance was introduced than making a low-profile town more visible. He described a disturbing scene outside City Hall on Thursday night, when a line of police separated Hispanic demonstrators opposed to the law and white people who support it.
"That is what (Barletta) created: division," Arroyo said. "He opened the door to hate and opened the door to people saying, `We don't want you here.'"
While Barletta envisions copy-cat ordinances sweeping through the country - and they already are in Florida and California - Arroyo predicts a voter backlash. Hispanic voters will energize and there is talk of having Hispanic candidates run for City Council, Arroyo said.
"Hispanic people have to understand they have to register to vote because that's the only way to get politicians to hear and respect our views," he said. "This is a challenge for the Hispanic community because this is our home."
The debate in Hazleton could turn into a national legal fight.
The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union will file a lawsuit to overturn the ordinance, most likely in federal court, arguing that immigration law is the domain of the federal government, said Allentown attorney David Vaida, a representative of the legal defense fund.
He questioned the city's ability to enforce the ordinance.
"How will they administer this? Can you possibly expect landlords to have to wait for the tenant to get occupancy permits to be presented to them?" Vaida said. "And what do you show them, a driver's license? Anything more would be an intrusion. This is insanity."
Barletta said landlords did not oppose the ordinance because the city would be doing the background checks. And the business community did not raise any concerns about the ordinance, said Donna Palermo, president of the Greater Hazleton Chamber of Commerce.
"I have 725 members, and I have not had one call (about the ordinance)," Palermo said. "It has not been an issue for our membership."
European settlers lured by jobs in coal mines built Hazleton, which has become a magnet for Hispanics fleeing New York City in the aftermath of Sept. 11, attracted by affordable housing and jobs in nearby industrial parks.
A stroll through the downtown reveals how cultures co-exist. Hispanic-owned groceries, restaurants and beauty salons with signs in Spanish line Wyoming Street. Red banners hanging from lamp posts say, "Welcome to Hazleton," but area Latinos say they've felt unwelcome since the ordinance was introduced.
Resident Felicia Ramos shopped for milk and melons at the Hazleton Food Supermarket, which has signs in Spanish for its clientele. She is against the ordinance.
"The Hispanic people have been good for the Hazleton economy by buying and renovating houses and opening businesses," she said. "There are people who mess it up for Hispanics, but that happens in all races. Most of us are here to better ourselves for the future."
Down the street, Don Esposito walked out of Vesuvio's pizzeria. He said Hispanics should not feel singled out if they are here legally.
"Illegal is illegal," he said. "They weren't just picking on Hispanics. The rules are the rules."
Barletta defended his ordinance, saying small cities feel the burden of illegal immigrants more than larger cities and action is needed to stem the flow.
"I did this for the citizens of Hazleton, and I've been watching our quality of life be destroyed," he said. "The people of Hazleton don't want to hear someone in Washington is working on it."
But Arroyo said he expects the ordinance will be overturned through legal channels and the Hispanic influx will continue.
"I'm sorry to see what has happened," he said. "Hazleton will survive. More and more Hispanics are coming to buy homes and open businesses, because, despite a few guys who don't like diversity, it's a nice place."
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/nation/15043690.htm
Approval Of Atripla For HIV Called 'Extraordinary'
By Michael Smith, MedPage Today Staff Writer
Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
July 13, 2006
Also covered by: BBC News, Chicago Tribune, MSNBC, New York Times
MedPage Today Action Points
Advise patients who ask that Atripla contains three of the most common and effective anti-retroviral medications in use today in a single pill meant to be taken once a day on an empty stomach, preferably at bedtime.
Note that Atripla is indicated for use in patients who are new to HIV treatment, or who do not have resistance or sensitivity to any of the components of the combination.
Caution that preventing HIV is still more effective than treating the virus; emphasize that there is still no cure for HIV infection.
Review
ROCKVILLE, Md., July 13 -- The FDA has approved a once-daily tablet called Atripla for HIV, a simple regimen that is being hailed as an "extraordinary accomplishment."
Each Atripla pill contains 600 mg of Sustiva (efavirenz), 200 mg of Emtriva (emtricitabine), and 300 mg of Viread (tenofovir DF), which are three of the most commonly used anti-HIV medications.
The development of single-pill, once-daily dosing has long been a goal of HIV researchers, because taking antiretroviral medication faithfully is a key factor in keeping the virus in check. However, some of the early regimens of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) mean that patients were taking dozens of different pills, many times a day, either with food or without.
The co-formulation required the cooperation of three major pharmaceutical companies -- Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead Sciences, and Merck. Atripla was approved in less than three months, under the FDA's fast track program, and the medication is expected to be available in the U.S. within days, the FDA said.
The drug will also be eligible for use in 15 other countries included under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the agency said.
The three medications in combination have been shown over the past few years to be the safest and the most effective regimen for HIV patients, especially those who are beginning treatment.
"It's not simply that we found three pills that could be squished together into one tablet," commented Cal Cohen, M.D., research director of the Community Research Initiative of New England. "We found three of the best medications that could be co-formulated."
But Dr. Cohen stressed that even though the Atripla regimen is simple and safe -- "one pill is not that scary," he said -- it shouldn't be interpreted as a sign that prevention efforts should be relaxed.
"We don't want people to think that HIV is no longer worth avoiding," he said.
"To the extent that pill burden is one of the factors that contributed to people not taking their pills as they needed to control the virus, this is a big step forward," Dr. Cohen said.
Atripla will mainly be useful for patients who are treatment-naïve, he said, since resistance to one of the components will make it less effective. But treatment-experienced patients who have no resistance to Sustiva, Emtriva, and Viread will be able to take Atripla.
The co-formulation has not been tested in the presence of food, so patients are advised to take it on an empty stomach. Also, since Sustiva is known for neurological disturbances in the first few weeks of therapy -- vivid dreams, dizziness, and impaired concentration -- the drug should be taken at bedtime.
The Atripla labeling includes a warning that the drug's use can cause lactic acidosis. It is not approved for patients with chronic Hepatitis B infection, but if they are taking Atripla, discontinuation can result in severe flare-ups of Hepatitis B. The labeling also warns that serious adverse events reported for Atripla's ingredients include liver toxicity, renal impairment, and depression.
In the combination, Sustiva is a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitor, while Emtriva and Viread are nucleoside RFT inhibitors. The combination does not include a member of the third major class of anti-HIV drugs, the protease inhibitors.
The FDA said Atripla is meant to be taken alone or "in combination with other antiretroviral products." But Dr. Cohen said it's unlikely that Atripla will form the basis of a super-HAART, with many drugs instead of just three. "At this point, we have no information that suggests we need more than three drugs," he said.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/HIVAIDS/tb/3727
Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist
Biologist Who Underwent Sex Change Describes Biases Against Women
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 13, 2006; Page A10
Neurobiologist Ben Barres has a unique perspective on former Harvard president Lawrence Summers's assertion that innate differences between the sexes might explain why many fewer women than men reach the highest echelons of science.
That's because Barres used to be a woman himself.
Ben Barres, a neurobiologist at Stanford University's Medical Center, looks through a microscope in his lab on Tuesday, July 11, 2006. Barres switched sexes from female to male with a round of hormones in 1997. Barres has recently written an opinion piece which attributes institutional bias as the reason for the shortage of women in the sciences. (Marcio Jose Sanchez - AP)
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In a highly unusual critique published yesterday, the Stanford University biologist -- who used to be Barbara -- said his experience as both a man and a woman had given him an intensely personal insight into the biases that make it harder for women to succeed in science.
After he underwent a sex change nine years ago at the age of 42, Barres recalled, another scientist who was unaware of it was heard to say, "Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's."
And as a female undergraduate at MIT, Barres once solved a difficult math problem that stumped many male classmates, only to be told by a professor: "Your boyfriend must have solved it for you."
"By far," Barres wrote, "the main difference I have noticed is that people who don't know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect" than when he was a woman. "I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man."
Barres said the switch had given him access to conversations that would have excluded him previously: "I had a conversation with a male surgeon and he told me he had never met a woman surgeon who was as good as a man."
Barres's salvo, bolstered with scientific studies, marks a dramatic twist in a controversy that began with Summers's suggestion last year that "intrinsic aptitude" may explain why there are relatively few tenured female scientists at Harvard. After a lengthy feud with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Summers resigned earlier this year.
The episode triggered a fierce fight between those who say talk of intrinsic differences reflects sexism that has held women back and those who argue that political correctness is keeping scientists from frankly discussing the issue.
While there are men and women on both sides of the argument, the debate has exposed fissures along gender lines, which is what makes Barres so unusual. Barres said he has realized from personal experience that many men are unconscious of the privileges that come with being male, which leaves them unable to countenance talk of glass ceilings and discrimination.
Barres's commentary was published yesterday in the journal Nature. The scientist has also recently taken his argument to the highest reaches of American science, crusading to make access to prestigious awards more equitable.
In an interview, Nancy Andreasen, a well-known psychiatrist at the University of Iowa, agreed with Barres. She said it took her a long time to convince her husband that he got more respect when he approached an airline ticket counter than she did. When she stopped sending out research articles under her full name and used the initials N.C. Andreasen instead, she said, the acceptance rate of her publications soared.
Andreasen, one of the comparatively few women who have won the National Medal of Science, said she is still regularly reminded she is female. "Often, I will be standing in a group of men, and another person will come up and say hello to all the men and just will not see me, because in a professional setting, men are not programmed to see women," she said. "Finally, one of the men will say, 'I guess you haven't met Nancy Andreasen,' and then the person will turn bright red and say, 'Oh Nancy, nice to see you!' "
Summers did not respond to a request for an interview. But two scientists Barres lambasted along with Summers said the Stanford neurobiologist had misrepresented their views and unfairly tarred those who disagree with crude assertions of racism and sexism. Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker and Peter Lawrence, a biologist at Britain's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, said convincing data show there are differences between men and women in a host of mental abilities.
While bias could be a factor in why there were fewer women at the pinnacles of science, both argued that this was not a primary factor.
Pinker, who said he is a feminist, said experiments have shown, on average, that women are better than men at mathematical calculation and verbal fluency, and that men are better at spatial visualization and mathematical reasoning. It is hardly surprising, he said, that in his own field of language development, the number of women outstrips men, while in mechanical engineering, there are far more men.
"Is it essential to women's progress that women be indistinguishable from men?" he asked. "It confuses the issue of fairness with sameness. Let's say the data shows sex differences. Does it become okay to discriminate against women? The moral issue of treating individuals fairly should be kept separate from the empirical issues."
Lawrence said it is a "utopian" idea that "one fine day, there will be an equal number of men and women in all jobs, including those in scientific research."
He said a range of cognitive differences could partly account for stark disparities, such as at his own institute, which has 56 male and six female scientists. But even as he played down the role of sexism, Lawrence said the "rat race" in science is skewed in favor of pushy, aggressive people -- most of whom, he said, happen to be men.
"We should try and look for the qualities we actually need," he said. "I believe if we did, that we would choose more women and more gentle men. It is gentle people of all sorts who are discriminated against in our struggle to survive."
Barres and Elizabeth Spelke, a Harvard psychologist who has publicly debated Pinker on the issue, say they have little trouble with the idea that there are differences between the sexes, although some differences, especially among children, involve biases among adults in interpreting the same behavior in boys and girls.
And both argue it is difficult to tease apart nature from nurture. "Does anyone doubt if you study harder you will do better on a test?" Barres asked. "The mere existence of an IQ difference does not say it is innate. . . . Why do Asian girls do better on math tests than American boys? No one thinks they are innately better."
In her debate with Pinker last year, Spelke said arguments about innate differences as explanations for disparities become absurd if applied to previous eras. "You won't see a Chinese face or an Indian face in 19th-century science," she said. "It would have been tempting to apply this same pattern of statistical reasoning and say, there must be something about European genes that give rise to greater mathematical talent than Asian genes."
"I think we want to step back and ask, why is it that almost all Nobel Prize winners are men today?" she concluded. "The answer to that question may be the same reason why all the great scientists in Florence were Christian."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071201883.html
Smoking Linked to Higher Death Rate Among Poorer Men
07.13.06, 12:00 AM ET
THURSDAY, July 13 (HealthDay News) -- Poorer, less-educated men are more than twice as likely to die as their wealthier, better-educated counterparts, and smoking is to blame for more than half the difference in those mortality rates.
It has been known that poorer and poorly educated men have higher death rates than those who are richer and more educated, although the reason why had not been well documented, said study co-author Dr. Prabhat Jha, an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto and director of the university's Centre for Global Health Research.
But, the new study found that "the key reason is that poorer and less educated men smoke more. They have higher smoking-related deaths and are less likely to quit," Jha said.
"If you look at differences in the social inequalities between rich and poor men and their risk of death, more than half the risk is attributable to smoking-related diseases," he said.
Reporting in the July 15 issue of The Lancet, Jha and his colleagues based their finding on data collected on the deaths of 564,626 men, ages 35 to 69, in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Poland.
Jha believes the findings hold true for other countries as well. "Poor men and less educated men are more likely to smoke," he said. "That's true in China, Brazil, India and many places. The consequences of smoking are contributing to deaths worldwide," Jha added.
One of the reasons for the higher death rate among poorer men is that they're not quitting smoking at the same rates as richer, more educated men, Jha said. To solve this problem, Jha thinks cigarette taxes should be raised.
"Taxing cigarettes more aggressively would lead to higher quitting rates among the poor," Jha said. "We know that quitting smoking works. To extend these benefits to the poorest segments of society, we need even more widespread control, particularly with taxes, which would be most effective in reducing the inequalities between rich and poor."
One expert thinks that smoking is only one sign of the health inequities between rich and poor.
"These findings are that much more compelling, following on the heels of a World Health Organization projection that tobacco will kill more than a billion people in the 21st Century," said Dr. David L. Katz, an associate professor of public health and director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine.
Taken together, these reports establish tobacco both as a modern plague and a cause of profound health disparities, Katz said. "But it is also a symptom of disadvantages in everything from education to recreational opportunity. Tobacco may be a singularly important cause of the health hazards of poverty, but it is certainly not the only one," he said.
http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2006/07/13/hscout533803.html
Humidity raises heart attack risk in elderly
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - High humidity can increase the risk of a heart attack in the elderly even in relatively mild climates, according to research published on Thursday.
Scientists who studied deaths from heart attacks in Athens, Greece in 2001 found that humidity was one of the most important factors influencing average monthly death rates from heart attacks for people over 70 years old.
"It was linearly associated with heart attack deaths," said Dr Georgios Giannopoulos, of the University of Athens. "It means that higher humidity values were related to higher death rates," he told Reuters.
The research published in the journal Heart is thought to be the first study to identify a relationship between humidity and heart attacks, which are a leading cause of death in developed countries.
The scientists analysed the link between weather conditions including temperature, pressure levels and humidity with the 3,126 heart attack deaths that occurred in Athens in 2001.
They found that in the elderly age group the average daily temperature during the previous week was also a significant factor in daily death rates.
The researchers believe consistent high temperatures could have a cumulative effect on the body which raises the risk of heart attack.
"We know that increased humidity, especially combined with temperature, increases physiological stress on the body especially the circulatory system," Giannopoulos said.
A heart attack occurs when coronary arteries which carry blood to the heart are restricted, reducing supply. Each year in the United States alone more than a million people suffer heart attacks, many of them fatal.
Smoking, high blood pressure, raised cholesterol, obesity, lack of exercise and diabetes raise the risk of a heart attack.
A family history of heart disease and age also increases the likelihood. Heart attacks are more common in men over 45 years old and women over 55.
The researchers also found a peak in heart attack deaths in December, which they attributed to the "Merry Christmas Syndrome" or over-indulging in food, alcohol and emotional stress during the holiday season.
(c) Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1022322006
Finches named for Darwin are evolving
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Finches on the Galapagos Islands that inspired Charles Darwin to develop the concept of evolution are now helping confirm it -- by evolving.
A medium sized species of Darwin's finch has evolved a smaller beak to take advantage of different seeds just two decades after the arrival of a larger rival for its original food source.
The altered beak size shows that species competing for food can undergo evolutionary change, said Peter Grant of Princeton University, lead author of the report appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Grant has been studying Darwin's finches for decades and previously recorded changes responding to a drought that altered what foods were available.
It's rare for scientists to be able to document changes in the appearance of an animal in response to competition. More often it is seen when something moves into a new habitat or the climate changes and it has to find new food or resources, explained Robert C. Fleischer, a geneticist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and National Zoo.
This was certainly a documented case of microevolution, added Fleischer, who was not part of Grant's research.
Grant studied the finches on the Galapagos island Daphne, where the medium ground finch, Geospiza fortis, faced no competition for food, eating both small and large seeds.
In 1982 a breeding population of large ground finches, Geospiza magnirostris, arrived on the island and began competing for the large seeds of the Tribulus plants. G. magnirostris was able to break open and eat these seeds three times faster than G. fortis, depleting the supply of these seeds.
In 2003 and 2004 little rain fell, further reducing the food supply. The result was high mortality among G. fortis with larger beaks, leaving a breeding population of small-beaked G. fortis that could eat the seeds from smaller plants and didn't have to compete with the larger G. magnirostris for large seeds.
That's a form of evolution known as character displacement, where natural selection produces an evolutionary change in the next generation, Grant explained in a recorded statement made available by Science.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/07/14/darwin.finches.ap/
Analysts: $80 oil as early as next week
Futures end up 4% on week; Mideast conflict in focus
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Analysts predict that front-month, crude-oil futures will reach $80 a barrel as early as next week, following a four-session gain of more than $3 and a record close Friday.
Violence between Israel and Lebanon and the West's quarrels with Iran and North Korea fueled traders' anxiety over the state of oil supplies, as countries begin to take sides on the various conflicts around the world.
If Israel proposes to blame Iran for instigating the attacks, there could be an escalation in military operations, said John Person, president of National Futures Advisory Service. "This is putting in a new price 'terror premium' in crude oil, which could take oil past $80 by late next week."
That's much earlier than many analysts expected, and that means prices could climb beyond $80, Person added, noting the he "would not rule out $100 to $120 given a supply disruption event, such as an oil-line sabotage or a hurricane in the Gulf region." See Commodities Corner on hurricane-related commodity bets.
'This is putting in a new price "terror premium" in crude oil, which could take oil past $80 by late next week. ... I would not rule out $100 to $120 given a supply disruption event.'
— John Person, National Futures Advisory Service
Crude for August delivery climbed as high as $77.95 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a record intraday level for a front-month contract in the regular session. That was below the all-time high of $78.40 reached in the electronic-trading session Friday morning.
The contract pulled back a bit, but still closed at a record $77.03, up 33 cents. It was up 4% from last Friday's close of $74.09 after tallying a gain of $3.42 in four days.
Also Friday, August unleaded gasoline closed up 2.36 cents at $2.3249 a gallon after a contract high of $2.345. Last week, it closed at $2.2394.
At the retail level, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline stood at $2.958 Friday, up 27% from the same time a year ago, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge report. See the latest data.
Heating oil for August delivery finished down 0.39 cents Friday at $2.076 a gallon, after touching $2.111, its highest levels since mid-May. It closed last Friday at $2.0104.
The violence in Lebanon; uncertainty over the conflict between Western nations and Iran's nuclear program; North Korea's departure from talks with South Korea on Pyongyang's missile tests; and new attacks on oil infrastructure in Nigeria have all helped bring oil prices to all-time highs.
"We seldom remember a week in which so much has happened so quickly in the energy markets," said Edward Meir, analyst at Man Financial.
Man is expecting prices to continue to climb, with little chance of an easing of the situation in Lebanon before next week.
The U.N. Security Council met in an emergency session on the fighting Friday, and governments around the world urged both sides to act with restraint. Lebanon has called on the United Nations to adopt a resolution that would lead to a ceasefire. See full story.
The Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said President Bush has pledged to pressure Israel to halt the attacks, which were sparked by the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers along the Israel-Lebanon border by the Hezbollah group earlier this week, the Associated Press reported.
Finding the links
"Traders are simply terrified of what unknowns are lurking out there," said Kevin Kerr, editor of Global Resources Trader, a newsletter of MarketWatch (the publisher of this report).
"Major violence in the Middle East, even hundreds of miles away from the oil fields, will naturally raise the blood pressure of traders in New York," added Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research.
'Traders are simply terrified of what unknowns are lurking out there.'
— Kevin Kerr, MarketWatch's Global Resources Trader
The nations currently involved have little oil production, according to James Williams, an economist at WTRG Economics. "Lebanon, Israel and Palestine have almost zero production, and even if neighboring Syria is tossed into the mix, the total is still under a half-million barrels per day.
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?dist=newsfinder&siteid=google&guid=%7BEBA5E96C-92F5-43E0-BCF5-35DFB4862BB1%7D&keyword=
Israeli attack kills 20 fleeing civilians
An Israeli missile has hit a van near Lebanon's southern port of Tyre, killing 20 people, including 15 children. Seven of the dead were from the same family. The vehicle was carrying families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes. Residents say they tried to take refuge at a UN position but were turned away.
Many of the bodies were charred. Israel has bombed roads, bridges and petrol stations across Lebanon since Hizbollah militants in the south captured two Israeli soldiers on Wednesday. The four-day campaign has killed about 100 people, nearly all civilians. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora demanded an immediate UN-backed ceasefire, denouncing Israel for turning his country into a "disaster zone". He has appealed for foreign aid.
http://euronews.net/create_html.php?page=detail_info&article=369591&lng=1
Israel: Iran aided Hezbollah ship attack
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
JERUSALEM — Elite Iranian troops helped Hezbollah fire a sophisticated radar-guided missile at an Israeli warship in a surprise blow by militants who had been using only low-tech weapons, Israeli officials said Saturday.
Israel initially believed that an aerial drone armed with explosives hit the warship, but it became clear that Hezbollah had used an Iranian-made C-802 missile to strike the vessel late Friday, an Israeli intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.
Tehran did not respond to the charge, which was not mentioned in Iranian media reports Saturday.
One Israeli sailor was killed and three were missing after the attack. The ship was returning to its home port in Israel, the army said.
About 100 fighters from Iran's Revolutionary Guard helped import, equip and fire the missile at the Spear, a missile ship cruising off the coast of Lebanon, which is under an Israeli naval blockade, Israeli officials said.
Hezbollah was founded by the Revolutionary Guard during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The Islamic republic's elite corps of more than 200,000 fighters is independent of the regular armed forces and directly controlled by Iran's supreme leader.
"We can confirm that it (the ship) was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hezbollah. We see this as a very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah," Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan told The Associated Press.
The Shiite militant group had been firing only highly inaccurate Katyusha rockets at Israeli targets. Israel appeared surprised that the guerrilla group had more high-tech weapons.
Israeli officials speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information said that Hezbollah also has Iranian-made drones that are more accurate than missiles, as well as longer-range projectiles that could hit Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial hub.
An Israeli military official said the Spear's missile detection and deflection system was not on during the attack, apparently because the sailors did not anticipate such an attack.
The military official said the ship is one of the most technologically advanced in the Israeli fleet, boasting an array of high-tech missiles and a system for electronically jamming incoming missiles and other threats.
Nehushtan said another Hezbollah radar-guided anti-ship missile hit and sank a nearby Cambodian merchant ship around the time the Spear was struck. Twelve Egyptian sailors were pulled from the water by passing ships, Brig. Gen. Noam Fieg said.
Nehushtan said the body of one of the four Israeli soldiers missing in the attack was found on the damaged warship. Other Israeli military officials said two bodies had been found.
Israel launched an offensive after Hezbollah guerrillas crossed the Israel-Lebanon border on Wednesday and captured two Israeli soldiers. Israel has bombarded Lebanon's airport and main roads in the most intensive offensive against the country in 24 years, while Hezbollah has launched hundreds of rockets into Israel.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4049270.html
Hezbollah rockets hit ancient Israeli town
Saturday 15 July 2006, 15:37 Makka Time, 12:37 GMT
Hezbollah rockets hit towns in northern Israel
Rockets fired by Hezbollah in Lebanon have hit the town of Tiberias, a major Christian pilgrimage site in northern Israel.
Military officials said several people were injured on Saturday when at least three rockets hit the ancient town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.
"The Islamic Resistance fires dozens of rockets for the first time on Tiberias," said an announcement on Hezbollah's television station Al-Manar.
The Israeli military said another dozen rockets were fired into northern Israel at dawn on Saturday.
Rockets struck several towns, including the coastal resort of Nahariya, but caused no casualties or damage, a military source told AFP.
Syrian support
Two Israeli civilians, an elderly woman and her five-year-old grandson, were killed on Friday in the deadliest rocket attack in three days, taking the Israeli civilian death toll to four.
More than 40 people were taken to hospital on Friday, three in a serious condition, as about 90 rockets hit about 15 northern Israeli towns.
Syria's ruling Baath Party has said it would support Hezbollah and Lebanon against the "barbaric Israeli aggression".
The pledge came despite the sometimes hostile relations between Damascus and Beirut since Syria ended its 29-year military presence in Lebanon last year.
The Beirut government, led by an anti-Syrian coalition, is unable or unwilling to disarm Hezbollah, the only Lebanese faction to keep its guns after the 1975-90 civil war.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B4F15016-C88B-4A67-BD27-C1C822539FD8.htm
Harper, Putin promote Russia-Canada natural gas joint ventures in G8 prelude
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (CP) - A massive Canada-Russia joint venture in liquefied natural gas appeared to get nudged closer to reality Saturday as Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrived at the G8 conference and immediately set to work with the host president.
Harper had delivered a cautionary speech on the need for open energy markets and Canada's pre-eminent position as an energy investment magnet before his arrival at this, his first major international summit.
But the prime minister hadn't yet checked into his hotel in St. Petersburg before he and Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a joint statement promoting LNG co-operation that could see Russian gas coming through Canada to North American markets.
"We welcome close co-operation between Canadian and Russian energy industry players and will work to facilitate these relationships with a view to promoting international trade, particularly in the area of liquefied natural gas," said the statement, released after an hour-long bilateral meeting between Harper and Putin.
The G8 leaders were to attend a formal opening dinner with their wives on Saturday evening before the summit officially gets underway Sunday morning.
Energy security is one of Putin's chosen priority items for the conference and he and Harper wasted little time in setting the tone.
Currently, Petro-Canada is seeking regulatory approval in Quebec for a $1.5 billion US LNG project with Russian state-controlled OAO Gazprom. The project would ship gas liquefied in St. Petersburg to a regasification terminal in Gros-Cacouna, Que.
Canada's ambassador to Russia, Christopher Westdal, said following the Harper-Putin meeting that the venture has support from Russian authorities and both the public and officials in Canada.
"It looks as though it will go forward," said Westdal.
A senior Canadian official added that Putin expressed an interest in doing more deals with his northern G8 neighbour.
"He thought that given Canadian expertise and interest, there are opportunities for more such business in the energy field."
The cozy business talk came less than 24 hours after Harper delivered a speech in London touting Canada as the world's most attractive destination for energy investment capital. Harper also chided "self-serving monopolistic political strategies" in a clear shot at Russia's heavily state-controlled oil and gas sector.
In March, Petro-Canada CEO Ron Brenneman said the Gazprom LNG venture was "notionally" a 50-50 shared interest.
But Petro-Canada is looking for an ownership stake in Gazprom's Russian gas fields, not just the downstream distribution.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=572fd5ab-167f-419f-85b6-68ac319c7d5c&k=13460
UN Council edges closer to N. Korea vote
Sat Jul 15, 2006 7:36 PM BST
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By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Japan and the United States said they expected adoption on Saturday of a U.N. resolution imposing weapons-related sanctions on North Korea but cautioned that the text was not yet complete.
Japan was still waiting for final instructions, a council diplomat told Reuters after informal talks among key members.
Both countries are aiming for a unanimous U.N. Security Council vote, without either a veto or an abstention from China and Russia, which had produced a rival text on Wednesday.
"We had a lot of progress but there are still last-minute important things that need to be cleared up," Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said after informal talks among key council members.
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said negotiations were continuing "but we are getting close" and he expected a vote by afternoon. Japanese Ambassador Kenzo Oshima, who had drafted the original resolution, said he too hoped for a vote but noted there was "no final decision yet."
The Security Council has wrangled for days over the response to North Korea's seven missile tests on July 5, which raised international tensions, mainly because of Pyongang's development of nuclear weapons.
The key obstacle is whether the resolution should invoke Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which can lay the groundwork for military force if a follow-up resolution is adopted.
China and Russia reject any mention of Chapter 7, recalling the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which did not get specific council authorization. Beijing's U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, had threatened a veto if those words were included.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-07-15T183636Z_01_N15215320_RTRUKOC_0_UK-KOREA-NORTH.xml
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