Orchard Park air carrier probed over overcharges
Firm allegedly billed for flights but used trucks
By DAN HERBECK
News Staff Reporter
7/16/2006
An Orchard Park air-freight company that delivers equipment all over the world for America's armed forces may have overcharged the government by millions of dollars, according to accusations now under investigation by federal agents.
Federal agents have been told that, on numerous occasions, National Air Cargo charged the government a premium rate for delivering equipment by airplane, when in fact, many of the deliveries were made by trucks.
The company also is alleged to have charged the government for overnight delivery service on occasions when the deliveries took several days.
National Air Cargo calls itself "the fastest and surest delivery system in the world." Last year, the federal government showed its trust in the company by hiring it to move voting balloting equipment from the United States to Iraq for the Iraqi elections.
But now, the government is questioning some of the company's delivery work for the U.S. Department of Defense.
The investigation has also raised questions about a government program that pays private companies more than $1.5 billion annually to transport equipment for the military.
According to four law enforcement officials, National Air Cargo has been under scrutiny more than a year by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office in Buffalo. A federal grand jury is examining records that the company provided to agents.
Authorities said the probe was begun by a whistle-blower, a former company employee who claims National Air Cargo overcharged the Defense Department by millions of dollars over a period of several years. The whistle-blower also claims the Defense Department did little or nothing to prevent the overcharging.
Investigators are focusing on deliveries that were made by the company within the United States. The deliveries of voting equipment to Iraq and other overseas shipments are not part of the investigation.
"The allegation is that the company has been overcharging the government by millions," said one source who is familiar with the case. "One thing that [agents] have found is that the military does very little to make sure these companies are making deliveries on time and not overcharging the government.
"Private businesses would never countenance anything like this. A private businessman would be on the phone right away, demanding a refund if something didn't arrive on time. But the military doesn't do the kind of checking and accounting that a private business would do."
The company's founder and president is Christopher J. Alf of Hamburg, who has been making political donations since at least 1998. He declined to comment on the probe, referring a reporter to one of his company's attorneys, Rodney O. Personius. Personius said National Air Cargo is involved in "lengthy and complicated" discussions with federal prosecutors.
"The company is doing its level best to be fully cooperative with the government," Personius said. "From our perspective, it's more of a fact-finding process than an investigation.
"It's a very esoteric process, because of the unique nature of transportation law and the peculiarities of doing business with the Department of Defense."
Two of Buffalo's top defense lawyers, Terrence M. Connors and Joel L. Daniels, are representing officers of National Air Cargo. The company also has a lawyer in Washington, F. Whitten Peters, a former secretary of the U.S. Air Force.
Authorities said the whistle-blower in the case, whom they would not name, has filed a lawsuit accusing National Air Cargo of fraud under the U.S. False Claims Act. The lawsuit was filed in federal court under seal, and is not available for public inspection.
Daniel C. Oliverio, a former federal prosecutor who specializes in filing and defending false claims cases, was identified by several sources as the attorney for the former employee.
"I can't confirm I represent a whistle-blower in the case, but we do handle cases under the False Claims Act," Oliverio said. "We are very interested in what's happening with National Air Cargo, and we are aware of allegations of overcharging."
Peggy McFarland, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Terrance P. Flynn, said she could not confirm or deny anything about the investigation.
Dale J. Huegen, an official of the Defense Department's Air Mobility Command, said the military does monitor and audit the fees charged by private freight companies.
National Air Cargo has been an air freight forwarder for the military since at least 2000, said Huegen, chief of the contract airlift division. He said the Orchard Park company is authorized to make both domestic and international deliveries for the department.
What kind of follow-up does the military do to make sure the deliveries are on-time and at a reasonable fee?
Huegen said there are "transportation offices" within the military that "monitor the process and the records."
Authorities estimated that will take weeks and possibly months to determine whether prosecutors should file any civil or criminal charges against National Air Cargo.
From a financial standpoint, the company has been a success since Alf started it in 1991. The company does not own cargo planes and does not physically move freight. It arranges with other carriers to move freight for the Defense Department and other customers.
The company and the Defense Department declined to say how much money National Air Cargo has been paid to arrange military shipments, but sources close to the case said it has received tens of millions of dollars for military work since 2000.
Erie County property records show that Alf and his wife, Lori, own a $475,000 home on Old Lakeshore Road. Florida property records show that, last year, they bought a $10.4 million home in Boca Raton, Fla.
Federal Election Commission records indicate that the couple has also been active in making donations to politicians since 1998. Between them, Christopher and Lori Alf have donated more than $56,000 to candidates and political committees. The recipients include PresidentBush; Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.; and Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, R-Clarence.
In 2000, National Air Cargo announced it was moving from offices in Amherst to a $2.3 million state-of-the-art headquarters in Orchard Park. At that time, the company said it hoped to double its work force to 70 within two years.
The company's expansion received government help. The Erie County Industrial Development Agency approved a plan to cut the company's taxes by $316,000 over 10 years. The Empire State Development Corp. agreed to provide a $100,000 grant for construction.
According to Personius, Alf is a hard-working, self-made businessman who has earned a reputation for being able to tackle difficult and complex transportation problems. Personius said the Alfs and National Air Cargo have been involved in numerous charitable activities in Western New York.
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060716/1047376.asp
Officials scolded for filing late reports
By BRIAN MEYER
News Staff Reporter
7/16/2006
City Hall's accountability panel scolded some department heads Friday for delays in supplying data that shed light on how well the city is delivering services.
Members of Byron W. Brown's CitiStat panel were miffed that reports requested weeks earlier from the Citizens Services and Streets Sanitation divisions didn't arrive on time.
One of the longest-tenured commissioners surprised some observers when he delivered a curt retort.
"I can spend my efforts picking up the garbage, or spend my efforts reporting on the garbage," said Public Works Commissioner Joseph N. Giambra.
But Brown had the final word.
"Commissioner, we need you to pick it up and report on it," the mayor responded.
Earlier, Brown bristled when learning that data the panel requested from the Citizens Services Division wasn't submitted on time.
"There is absolutely no excuse for that information not being provided," he said.
The admonitions were vivid examples of how some things have changed in City Hall since Buffalo ramped up its computerized tracking system last month.
In the past, it would have been a rare event when a mayor would publicly chew out members of his own administration - much less in a meeting covered by reporters and later broadcast on a public access cable television station.
Some city staffers have only half-jokingly branded CitiStat sessions "The Inquisition." But Brown makes no apologies, noting that the new system patterned after a successful program in Baltimore is built on one word: accountability. The mayor said voters hold him accountable, and he intends to make his appointees accountable.
The six-member CitiStat panel is already highlighting some improvements. They include:
The average of length of time that citizens are put on hold when they call with complaints was cut in half last month, when the typical caller waited 17 seconds. In May, the average call was on hold for 34 seconds.
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060716/1013033.asp
North Korea 'totally rejects' U.N. council vote
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - North Korea "totally rejects" the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning its recent series of missile tests, its U.N. ambassador said on Saturday.
"It is clear to everyone that there is no need for the DPRK to unilaterally put on hold the missile launches under such a situation," Ambassador Pak Gil Yon told the council following the vote, using the acronym for his country's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Pak Gil Yon, North Korea's Ambassador to the United Nations (U.N.) speaks to the U.N. Security Council, after the Council voted to unanimously to approve a resolution to impose weapons-related sanctions on North Korea in response to its flurry of missile tests earlier this month, in New York, July 15, 2006. (REUTERS/Mike Segar)
The measure had the "despicable aim" of isolating and putting pressure on his government, he said.
"It is a far-fetched assertion, grossly falsifying the reality, for them to claim that the routine missile launches conducted by the Korean People's Army for self-defense strained the regional situation and blocked the process of dialogue," Pak said.
"The DPRK's missile development, test fire, manufacture and deployment therefore serve as a key to keeping the balance of force and preserving peace and stability in Northeast Asia," he said.
The envoy's remarks prompted a sharp retort from U.S. Ambassador John Bolton.
"This has been a historic day. Not only have we unanimously adopted Resolution 1695, but North Korea has set a world record in rejecting it within 45 minutes after its adoption," Bolton said.
The United States could exercise a right of reply to respond to Pak's comments concerning Washington, Bolton said, "But on the other hand, why bother."
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/7/16/worldupdates/2006-07-16T044351Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_-259711-1&sec=Worldupdates
U.S. supports Israeli goal of eliminating Hezbollah
By ROBIN WRIGHT , The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Israel, with U.S. support, intends to resist calls for a cease-fire and continue a longer-term strategy of punishing Hezbollah, which is likely to include several weeks of precision bombings in Lebanon, according to senior Israeli and U.S. officials.
For Israel, the goal is to eliminate Hezbollah as a security threat — or altogether, the sources said. A senior Israeli official confirmed Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah is a target, on the calculation that the Shiite movement would be far less dynamic without him.
For the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East, U.S. officials say.
Whatever the outrage on the Arab streets, Washington believes it has strong behind-the-scenes support among key Arab leaders also nervous about the populist militants — with a tacit agreement that the timing is right to strike.
"What is out there is concern among conservative Arab allies that there is a hegemonic Persian threat (running) through Damascus, through the southern suburbs of Beirut and to the Palestinians in Hamas," said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity because of sensitive diplomacy. "Regional leaders want to find a way to navigate unease on their streets and deal with the strategic threats to take down Hezbollah and Hamas, to come out of the crisis where they are not as ascendant."
Hezbollah's cross-border raid that captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight has provided a "unique moment" with a "convergence of interests" among Israel, some Arab regimes and even those in Lebanon who want to rein in the country's last private army, the senior Israeli official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing conflict.
Israel and the United States would like to hold out until Hezbollah is crippled.
"It seems like we will go to the end now," said Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon. "We will not go part way and be held hostage again. We'll have to go for the kill — Hezbollah neutralization."
White House officials said Friday that President Bush has called on Israel to limit civilian casualties and avoid toppling the Lebanese government but has not pressured Israel to stop its military action. "He believes that the Israelis have a right to protect themselves," spokesman Tony Snow said in St. Petersburg, where Bush is attending the Group of Eight summit. "The president is not going to make military decisions for Israel."
Specifically, officials said, Israel and the United States are looking to create conditions for achieving one remaining goal of U.N. Resolution 1559, adopted in 2004, which calls for the dismantling and disarming of Lebanon's militias and expanding the state's control over all its territory.
"We think part of the solution to this is the implementation of 1559, which would eliminate that (armed group operating outside the government) and help Lebanon extend all of its authority throughout the whole country," national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters with Bush in Russia yesterday.
The other part of the resolution calls for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, which was completed in April last year — after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, which was widely linked to Syria.
If Lebanon as a first step takes over Hezbollah's stockpiles, which included more than 12,000 rockets and missiles before the current strife began, then cease-fire talks could begin, the Israeli official said.
"The only way a cease-fire will even be considered is if 1559 is fully implemented," said the senior Israeli official. Lebanese troops must be deployed to take over positions in Hezbollah's southern Lebanon strongholds to ensure that there are no more cross-border raids or rocket barrages into northern Israel.
There are no guarantees, however, that this strategy will work. Israeli airstrikes could backfire, experts warn.
"Hezbollah was risking alienating not only the Lebanese public at large but, incredibly, its very own Shiite constituency. But if Israel continues with its incessant targeting of exclusively civilian targets, and, as a result, life becomes increasingly difficult for the people, I would not be surprised if there is a groundswell of support for Hezbollah, exactly opposite of what Israel is trying to achieve," said Timur Goksel, an analyst and former spokesman for the U.N. force in Lebanon who lives in Beirut.
Pressed on whether a cease-fire was possible soon, the Israeli official said it was "way, way premature" to consider an end to hostilities. "There is no sense to have a cease-fire without a fundamental change," he said. "That change is to make sure the explosiveness of the situation cannot carry over to the future. That means neutralizing Hezbollah's capabilities."
The Bush administration is also using Resolution 1559 as a barometer, U.S. officials say, acknowledging the Lebanese government has shown neither the ability nor the willingness to deploy its fledgling army to the southern border.
U.S. officials have cautioned Israel to use restraint, particularly on collateral damage and destruction of infrastructure, which might undermine the fragile government. There was some U.S. concern about attacks on the Beirut airport, but otherwise Washington is prepared to step aside and defer diplomacy unless there is a dramatic break, U.S. officials say.
"They do have space to operate for a period of time," the U.S. official said about Israel. "There's a natural dynamic to these things. When the military starts, it may be that it has to run its course."
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/07-06/07-16-06/02world-nation.htm
Envoy says Canadian soldiers 'in eye of storm'
Updated Sun. Jul. 16 2006 12:07 PM ET
Canadian soldiers in have faced intensifying Taliban aggression on their mission in southern Afghanistan. But the UN envoy in Kabul, says the troops are directly "in the eye of storm" and most of the country is relatively calm.
What we're seeing now is an intense effort to root out the remaining militants near Kandahar. Christopher Alexander told CTV's Question Period. "The resources devoted to countering the insurgency are much greater now."
Alexander has been in Afghanistan since 2003, first as Canada's ambassador, then as the United Nations deputy special representative of the secretary-general.
If efforts to counter Taliban aggression continue, "there should be a fighting chance for law and order to have the upper hand," Alexander said.
But, Alexander points out, "we can't, with any confidence, say the insurgency is diminishing."
Canadian troops are in the thick of some of the most aggressive combat seen yet in the region. "In the late winter and the spring, the insurgency hit Afghanistan's southern provinces much harder than it did in 2005," Alexander said.
This upsurge in attacks shocked many Canadians, accustomed over the years to the image of our soldiers as peacekeepers. But, Canadians stationed in Kandahar "have been in the eye of the storm," Alexander said.
"A lot of what international forces are doing in the country is more like peacekeeping and if Canadians are in combat from time to time it's because they're well-regarded among the best troops here ... Canadians are really one of the only contingencies in the country that have seen acute fighting of this kind," Alexander notes.
The intense violence is restricted to about one-quarter of Afghanistan. Life in the rest of the country is peaceful most days and people are trying to rebuild, Alexander said.
The Conservative government recently announced it will pull troops out of Afghanistan in February 2009. But many critics question if that will provide enough time to prepare the Afghanistan's police and army forces.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060712/QP_afghanistan_060716/20060716?hub=TopStories
Iran says Hizbollah will not disarm
By Gareth Smyth in Tehran
Published: July 16 2006 19:39 | Last updated: July 16 2006 19:39
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said on Sunday that Hizbollah, a key ally of Tehran, would not disarm, despite calls from the US and Israel.
His remarks, reported by state television, came as Iran was increasingly drawn into the Middle East crisis.
“The American president says Hizbollah should be disarmed,” said Ayatollah Khamenei. “But it will not happen...The Lebanese people appreciate the resistance because their powerful limbs have been responsible for not allowing the Zionists whatever they want, whenever they want in Lebanon.”
Iranian officials earlier denied Israeli and western allegations of direct military support for Hizbollah.
Hamid Reza Asefi, foreign ministry spokesman, said no Iranian Revolutionary Guards were in Lebanon and that reports of shipments of Iranian missiles were “not correct”. But Mr Asefi also warned that aggression against Syria would bring Israel “unimaginable damages”.
Stepping up Israeli charges against Iran, Major General Udi Adam said rockets that yesterday killed eight people in the Israeli city of Haifa, 30km from the Lebanese border, were Iranian-made. Israeli officials earlier claimed an Iranian-made C-802 missile had struck an Israeli warship off Lebanon on Friday, killing four sailors.
Iran’s media has given wide coverage to the mounting civilian deaths in Lebanon following Israeli attacks.
But yesterday there were differences between reformists in Iran, who urged caution on all sides, and conservatives, who questioned Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
“Israel has learned nothing from 40 years, and is using the same destructive methods of air and land strikes,” said Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former reformist vice-president. “The big powers listen only to the voice of Israel. The region needs tranquillity, so other voices can be heard.”
Mr Abtahi, who was manager of Iranian broadcasting in Lebanon in the mid-1990s, warned “war and more tension” could complicate the stand-off between the UN Security Council and Iran over its nuclear programme.
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, another prominent reformist, said Iran could help defuse the crisis through its longstanding relationship with Hizbollah. “The way forward is the release of prisoners on both sides, and the implementation of all UN resolutions, including Israeli withdrawal from Shebaa farms [territory on the Lebanese-Syria border claimed by Lebanon],” he said.
But conservatives argued Israel’s offensive showed the state was a lasting threat. An editorial in yesterday’s Kayhan newspaper said “Israel ought not to exist in the region”.
President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad said the Israelis’ treatment of the Palestinians and Lebanese showed them “acting like Hitler and behaving worse than Genghis Khan”. Addressing prayers in Tehran on Friday, Aya- tollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani said Islam taught that “if someone attacks, you have the right to counter-attack”.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/89cb4094-14f3-11db-b391-0000779e2340.html
n Haifa, a Scene of Death and Destruction
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By GREG MYRE
Published: July 16, 2006
HAIFA, Israel, July 16 — The train platform, slick with blood and littered with chunks of fallen roof, was the grim evidence confirming a prediction that Israeli security chiefs had made for years. Hezbollah, they said, had acquired larger, more powerful rockets that could soar over Israel’s thinly populated north and wreak havoc on major cities.
This morning, one of those rockets punched through the roof of a huge train maintenance hangar near the Mediterranean coast in the port city of Haifa, killing eight workers and wounding more than 20.
Twisted metal dangled from above and debris covered the site where train company employees had just arrived for the beginning of the Israeli workweek. Two trains were charred with their windows blown out.
Sliman Halaby, a railway worker, saw the missile strike and raced to help. “I saw the people spread out all over” the platform, he said.
“I talked to them so they would not panic or lose consciousness,” he told Israeli radio. “Then I ran to the entrance because I saw the ambulances were having trouble reaching the gate.”
Hezbollah has been shooting rockets at northern Israel on and off for some two decades, but today’s attack was unprecedented on two counts. It was the deadliest Hezbollah rocket attack to date and the first time the Lebanese Shiite group fired on Israel with a rocket that can carry more than 100 pounds of explosives, capable of inflicting far more damage than the Katyusha rockets that are typically used, according to the Israeli military.
Israel said it was a Fajr-3 rocket that can travel up to 30 miles, while Hezbollah said it fired Raad-2 and Raad-3 rockets. Altogether, 10 of the rockets hit in or near Haifa.
While relatives of the dead and injured wailed with grief at the emergency room of the city’s Rambam Medical Center, many Israelis called on their government to strike even harder at Hezbollah.
“We should wipe Hezbollah off the map without pity and without listening to the criticism from the rest of the world,” said Sarah Benchetrit, 57, who was at the hospital with her husband, who had come for a checkup.
Mrs. Benchetrit, who moved to Israel 22 years ago from New Jersey, said today’s attack was even more unnerving than those in the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when Iraq fired dozens of Scud missiles into Israel.
In those attacks, military radar detected the incoming missiles and issued urgent warnings that gave Israelis a minute or more to take cover. No such warning came today, though Israel has set up three Patriot antimissile batteries in Haifa.
“Our homes and families are being attacked and there is no way we will let this continue,” said Israel’s defense minister, Amir Peretz, who visited Haifa after the attack.
Mr. Peretz said that Hezbollah was firing its rockets from civilian areas, and that Israel would not hesitate to strike at such sites.
“Any source of fire that is identified will be dealt with,” Mr. Peretz said.
The fighting began with a cross-border raid by Hezbollah on Wednesday in which the group captured two Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah has fired around 500 rockets into northern Israel in the past five days, and most of the towns are now deserted.
While that has brought the region’s economy to a standstill, the impact will be far greater if Haifa, a major port and Israel’s third largest city with close to a quarter-million people, also shuts down.
The city, which is 20 miles south of the Lebanese border, was hit by rockets for the first time on Thursday, when two Katyushas caused only nominal damage. Haifa was still relatively busy today following the deadly attack, and most residents said they did not plan to disrupt their routines.
But Israel’s Home Front Command called on residents in Haifa and nearby areas to stay in sheltered areas. All ships in the Haifa port were instructed to go to sea, and Haifa University canceled all activities, Israeli radio reported.
“This attack was terrible, but I feel that if we hit back the shooting will only get worse,” said Limor Avrahami, an occupational therapist at the hospital. “I know most people in Israel disagree with me, but I think this would be the best way to quiet things down.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/world/middleeast/16cnd-haifa.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Cheney Sued Over CIA-gate
Washington, Jul 14 (Prensa Latina) The suit by a former US spy brought against Vice President Richard Cheney, for his involvement in the so called CIA-Gate scandal, reflects the existence of an administration crisis.
Valerie Plame, former CIA agent, brought the lawsuit against Cheney for having leaked her identity to the media in 2003, thus ruining her professional career, Los Angeles´ La Opinion Digital reported Friday.
According to the source, Plame demands a legal punishment for Cheney; alleging conspiracy to destroy her career.
Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, also accused the White House deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and the former chief of the Cheney cabinet, Lewis Libby, of having leaked the CIA agent´s identity in reprisal for giving the lie to President George W. Bush´ justifications for invading Iraq.
Plame´s identity was revealed after her husband publicly refuted Bush claims that the Hussein government was trying to get enriched uranium in Niger, a pretext used by the Bush administration to attack and occupy Iraq.
Facing strong pressure by the US government and the public, Robert Novak, the journalist who published her identity as an agent in his column in 2003, recently disclosed the sources he used to uncover Plame´s identify.
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BDE3A88AB-3A56-495A-8CD2-59A1611431A4%7D)&language=EN
Bush agrees to eavesdropping court review
By KATHERINE SHRADER Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Bush has agreed conditionally to a court review of his antiterror eavesdropping operations under a deal that, for the first time, would open an important part of his once-secret surveillance to a constitutional test.
The disclosure of the agreement on Thursday came as the White House sought to end an impasse over a six-month-old dispute with Congress on the National Security Agency's program. It monitors the international calls and e-mails of Americans when terrorism is suspected.
Breaking with historic norms, the president had authorized the monitoring without a court warrant.
Under a deal with the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Bush has agreed to support a bill that could submit the program to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a constitutional review.
"You have here a recognition by the president that he does not have a blank check," said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. As a leading critic of the program, he had broken ranks with his party.
When the program was disclosed in December, it outraged Democrats and civil libertarians who said Bush overstepped his authority. On Thursday, advocacy groups dismissed the prospect of a judicial review as a sham.
"This new bill would codify the notion that the president is not bound by the laws passed by Congress or the Constitution," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Congress must approve the bill. Yet lawmakers have written at least a half dozen competing proposals and more are coming.
Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., who heads the House intelligence subcommittee that oversees the NSA, is introducing a measure next week aimed at modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Bush's program allowed the agency to avoid that law.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the administration supports Specter's bill, which would allow the government to continue to collect information intended to protect the country. "My understanding from the president is that the legislation could be very helpful," Gonzales said.
The administration initially resisted efforts to write a new law, contending that no legal changes were needed. But after months of pressure, officials have grown more open to legislation.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the agreement with Specter recognizes the president's constitutional authorities and updates the 1978 law to meet current threats.
"What is happening today is that the president and Congress are coming together to codify the capacity for future presidents to take action to protect our country," she said.
Gonzales said the bill gives Bush the option of submitting the NSA program to the intelligence court, rather than requiring the review.
An administration official said Bush will submit to the review as long the bill is not changed in ways that he sees as undermining security. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deliberations are internal, said the bill would preserve the right of future presidents to skip that court review.
Gonzales said the legislation would allow him to consolidate legal challenges to the eavesdropping program at the intelligence court, which he described as a one-time test of the program's constitutionality.
More than 100 lawsuits have been filed in courts across the country.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/4046094.html
Single women care for disabled kids better: Study
Raleigh(US), July 16: Children with disabilities are more likely than other children in the United States to live with a single woman, whether she is a mother, grandmother or a female foster parent, according to a new study.
The findings by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill indicate that organisations aimed at helping disabled children must also consider the particular problems faced by the single women who often care for them, said Philip Cohen, an associate professor of sociology at the university.
"In the patchwork of arrangements to care for children with disabilities, we have to realise that the system is also dealing with issues of gender equity," Cohen said.
The study -- conducted by Cohen and his former student Miruna Petrescu-Prahova, now a doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine -- was published yesterday in the quarterly `Journal of Marriage and Family`.
The study examined 2000 us census data on 2.3 million children ages 5 to 15. More than 130,000 were reported to have mental disabilities, physical disabilities, or both.
It found that while 62 per cent of American children without disabilities live with a married, biological parent, in a two-parent home, only 46 per cent of disabled children do.
Single mothers care for 17 per cent of children without disabilities, but for 24.5 per cent of those who are disabled.
Fewer than 5 per cent of disabled children live with a single father, about the same percentage of non-disabled children living with fathers.
http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=309441&ssid=204&sid=LIF
Magic mushrooms
15 July 2006
THE scientific community is going high on mushrooms — not that it developed a special taste for a fungus with a round flat head and short stem, but for their curative and mystical properties. If some researchers see the possibility of finding a natural cure for depression, anxiety and cast down feeling in them, others see a door to spirituality.
According to a study done by Dr Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University and published in the journal ‘Psychopharmacology’, the active ingredient in the mushrooms that transports the user beyond the realms of reality is a hallucinogen called psilocybin.
In fact, Native Americans are said to have been using these magic mushrooms in their rituals before hippies found their high-spirited value in the 60s. The study, conducted on 36 volunteers who had been given capsules of hallucinogen extracted from the mushrooms, claims that two-thirds of users had reported an ethereal experience, and later, most of them had positive moods such as happiness and love.
That’s because psilocybin acts like serotonin, the chemical in the brain responsible for moods. If anybody is rushing to the market to buy packs of mushrooms, hoping to have an out-of-this-world experience or get out of depression, here is a word of caution. There are hundreds of varieties of mushrooms, some of them poisonous, and possibly nobody could identify the mushroom that is supposed to contain magical properties except the researchers and Native Americans.
There is little to suggest that it holds the key to salvation and religious scholars have already discounted volunteers’ claims as hallucinations. However, the latest finding has reopened a fresh debate on hallucinogens and their positive health effects. May be, one day, eating a mushroom could become as normal as popping a pill to de-stress ourselves. Like ‘Eat an apple a day to keep the doctor away,’ ‘a mushroom a day to feel happy’ may well become the axiom!
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/editorial/2006/July/editorial_July31.xml§ion=editorial&col=
FDA warns against sexual performance drugs sold on the net
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. is warning consumers against several...
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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. is warning consumers against several products promoted as treatments for erectile dysfunction (ED) and sexual performance enhancers.
The FDA says the products are in fact illegal drugs that contain potentially harmful and undeclared ingredients.
The dangerous products are Zimaxx, Libidus, Neophase, Nasutra, Vigor-25, Actra-Rx and 4EVERON.
Such products target older adults since up to 25 percent of men 65 and older experience ED.
Zimaxx is sold as a sexual enhancer for both men and women and along with other similar products is sold on web sites as "dietary supplements," but have not been approved by FDA, so there is no guarantee of their safety and effectiveness, or of the purity of their ingredients.
The FDA says the products threaten the public health because they contain undeclared chemicals that are similar or identical to the active ingredients used in several FDA-approved prescription drug products.
Dr. Steven Galson, Director of FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research says they present a serious risk because consumers may not know that these ingredients can interact with medications and dangerously lower their blood pressure.
A chemical analysis by the FDA has revealed that Zimaxx contains Sildenafil, which is the active pharmaceutical ingredient in Viagra and Revatio, prescription drugs approved in the United States to treat ED.
The other products contain chemical ingredients that are analogues of either Sildenafil or a pharmaceutical ingredient called Vardenafil.
Vardenafil is the active ingredient in Levitra, a prescription drug that, like Viagra, is approved in the United States to treat ED but there is no mention of any of these ingredients in any of the illegal products' labeling.
The undeclared ingredients may interact with nitrates found in some prescription drugs (such as nitroglycerin) and lower blood pressure to dangerous levels.
Consumers with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or heart disease often take nitrates and ED is a common problem in this group of men.
The FDA has sent warning letters to the firms marketing the products stating that the products are illegal drugs, and the labeling is false and misleading because it fails to disclose the presence of the chemical ingredients or the potential side-effects associated with the products' consumption.
The FDA has already stopped the importation of Libidus, and a shipment of 4 EVERON from entering the United States and may take additional enforcement steps.
The actions of the FDA are the result of an innovative survey, in which the agency analyzed 17 dietary supplements marketed on the internet to treat ED and to enhance sexual performance in men.
The FDA encourages anyone experiencing ED to seek guidance from a health care provider before purchasing a product to treat the condition.
Margaret Glavin, FDA's Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs, says the FDA is committed to protecting the public health by removing such illegal and dangerous products from the market.
http://www.habersaglik.com/default.asp?Act=Dt&CatId=4&NwId=72197
Living Alone Significantly Raises Heart Disease Risk
A person who lives alone is twice as likely to suffer from serious heart disease when compared...
(Haber Sağlık - 14.07.2006 - 08:06:52 )
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A person who lives alone is twice as likely to suffer from serious heart disease when compared to a person who lives with a partner, say Danish researchers after gathering data on 138,000 adults aged 30-69, all from Aarhus, Denmark.
You can read about this study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
During 2000-2002, of the 138,000 people, 646 experienced acute coronary syndrome, e.g. severe angina, or a sustained heart attack, or a sudden heart attack.
The researchers found that susceptibility to acute coronary syndrome was slightly higher for people with lower educational qualifications as well as those who were surviving on a pension. However, susceptibility was significantly higher for people who were either living alone or/and were elderly.
Risk of acute coronary syndrome was double for women over 60 who lived alone and for men over 50 who lived alone, compared to women over 60 and men over 50 who lived with a partner. 5% of the 138,000 people were women over 60 who lived alone, 8% were men over 50 who lived alone. However, one third of all the deaths from the syndrome were women over 60 who lived alone, the other two thirds came from the men over 50 who lived alone.
Those at lowest risk were people who did not live alone, had a job and had a high level of education.
http://www.habersaglik.com/default.asp?Act=Dt&CatId=4&NwId=72194
U.S. stocks sink as Mideast woes spark flight to safety
July 15, 2006
By Emily Chasan
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks dropped for the third straight day on Friday as rapidly escalating violence in the Middle East drove oil prices to a record high, and investors fled stocks to move money into safer assets.
Manufacturer General Electric Co. was the biggest drag on the Standard & Poor's 500 index after its quarterly outlook disappointed Wall Street.
Shares of home builders fell a day after D.R. Horton Inc., the largest U.S. home builder, cut its yearly forecast for new orders.
"No one wants to be long on the market ahead of the weekend. A lot of cash is sitting on the sidelines because the Middle East is on the boil," said Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at Banc of America Capital Management.
The Dow Jones industrial average was down 106.94 points, or 0.99 percent, to end at 10,739.35. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 6.09 points, or 0.49 percent, to finish at 1,236.20. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 16.76 points, or 0.82 percent, to close at 2,037.35.
For the week, the Dow fell 3.2 percent, the S&P 500 lost 2.3 percent and the Nasdaq shed 4.4 percent.
For the Dow and the Nasdaq, it was the worst three-day decline since April 2005 when worries about a soft patch in the U.S. economy and anti-Japan protests in China hit stocks.
The energy sector helped keep the S&P 500 afloat, with the S&P energy sector index climbing 1.2 percent as crude oil hit a record high above $78 a barrel.
U.S. crude oil for August delivery gained 33 cents to settle at $77.03 a barrel, a record close on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after Israel struck Hizbollah targets in Lebanon and Hizbollah's chief vowed an open war against Israel.
Earlier, oil hit $78.40, the highest price for front-month crude since NYMEX started trading oil futures in 1983.
http://www.ndtvprofit.com/homepage/news.asp?id=259598
Report: Ford Expected to Shed Up To 24,000 Jobs By 2007
Saturday, July 15, 2006
STORIES
•
Moody's Cuts Ford Further into Junk
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Ford Halves Dividend; Shares Dip
•
Renault, Nissan Exec: Stake in General Motors Important
DEARBORN, Mich. — Ford Motor Co. expects to shed 22,000 to 24,000 hourly jobs in North America by the end of next year as part of its turnaround effort, according to published reports.
The automaker also will likely exceed its goal of cutting up to 30,000 hourly workers by 2012, The Detroit News reported Saturday, citing company sources it didn't identify.
Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans told The Associated Press on Saturday that she couldn't discuss estimates for how many jobs might be cut by the end of 2007 because Ford has released estimates only through the end of this year.
"I think that we are doing quite well," she said.
Ford expects 10,000 to 11,000 of its hourly workers will take early retirement or buyout offers this year, Evans said. Including workers leaving through attrition will bring that to about 12,000, she said.
So far, about 5,750 workers have accepted buyouts, she said.
Ford is about six months into a North American turnaround plan announced in January that calls for closing 14 plants by 2012 and cutting up to 30,000 hourly workers. At the time, the automaker had about 87,000 hourly workers and 35,000 salaried workers in North America.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,203831,00.html
IRS computer glitch costs U.S. millions
By MARY DALRYMPLE
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service cost the government $200 million to $300 million this year because a computer program that screens tax returns for fraudulent refunds wasn't operating.
The tax agency said Friday that a contractor promised to deliver by January a new version of a program, used since 1996, that searches for signs of fraud in every tax return claiming a refund.
The contractor, Computer Sciences Corp., did not produce a working program by the deadline, and IRS officials could not put the old program back into operation in time for this spring's tax filing deadline.
As a result, the IRS has stopped only 34 percent of the fraudulent refund claims that it had caught by this time last year, the tax collectors said. It estimates the loss to the government at $200 million to $300 million.
IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said the performance of the IRS and the contractor "were insufficient and are unacceptable."
Everson said he is reviewing the agency's options with the contractor and has begun punishing or firing IRS employees.
The IRS has spent almost $21 million on the project.
Computer Sciences Corp. issued a statement Friday saying the company is working with the IRS to make sure the old system works before taxpayers file their returns next year.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the IRS should not have trusted a contractor that repeatedly missed deadlines, eventually costing the government millions. "That's money down the drain," he said.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4048276.html
Internet `tubes' speech turns spotlight, ridicule onto Sen. Stevens
By Liz Ruskin
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)
WASHINGTON - Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, is enduring no end of ridicule in the blogosphere for his recent explanation, in a Commerce Committee debate, of how the Internet works.
Snorting loudest are bloggers who are angry at Stevens for not adding a nondiscrimination provision - known as "net neutrality" - to the communications bill that he wants Congress to pass this year.
"The Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes," Stevens said during a June 28 committee session.
"And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled. And if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."
At another point in his 11-minute discourse, he said he'd seen these delays firsthand: "I just the other day got - an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially."
Internet pundits greeted his explanations with a nonstop snigger fest, with extra helpings of derision, on sites such as boingboing, Daily Kos, Fark, MySpace and YouTube.
"Ted Stevens, unfrozen caveman senator," was the pronouncement on Wonkette.
Stevens' staff director on the Commerce Committee, Lisa Sutherland, said the bloggers were making fun of Stevens for a pretty minor mistake: saying "tubes" rather than "pipes." The latter is common slang in the telecom industry, especially when discussing the Internet carrying capacity of phone lines or cable.
Stevens, as the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, is pushing a rewrite of the nation's fundamental communications act. His online critics say his speech shows he's not the right person to make modern communications policy. He's had few defenders in the blog world, and the episode has been mentioned in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Times of London. The Stevens entry in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia now includes a lengthy recap of the tube speech and its aftermath.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/15041562.htm
Paralyzed Man Uses Thoughts to Move a Cursor
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By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: July 13, 2006
A paralyzed man with a small sensor implanted in his brain was able to control a computer, a television set and a robot using only his thoughts, scientists reported yesterday.
Enlarge this Image
Rick Friedman
Matthew Nagle, left paralyzed when he was stabbed five years ago, and the circle he drew on a computer screen by using only his thoughts.
Related
Neuronal Ensemble Control of Prosthetic Devices by a Human with Tetraplegia (Nature)
Video From Nature
Seven Films Showing Matt Nagle Controlling Electronic Devices Using Thought
Those results offer hope that in the future, people with spinal cord injuries, Lou Gehrig’s disease or other conditions that impair movement may be able to communicate or better control their world.
“If your brain can do it, we can tap into it,” said John P. Donoghue, a professor of neuroscience at Brown University who has led development of the system and was the senior author of a report on it being published in today’s issue of the journal Nature.
In a variety of experiments, the first person to receive the implant, Matthew Nagle, moved a cursor, opened e-mail, played a simple video game called Pong and drew a crude circle on the screen. He could change the channel or volume on a television set, move a robot arm somewhat, and open and close a prosthetic hand.
Although his cursor control was sometimes wobbly, the basic movements were not hard to learn.
“I pretty much had that mastered in four days,” Mr. Nagle, 26, said in a telephone interview from the New England Sinai Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Stoughton, Mass. He said the implant did not cause any pain.
Mr. Nagle, a former high school football star in Weymouth, Mass., was paralyzed below the shoulders after being stabbed in the neck during a melee at a beach in July 2001. He said he had not been involved in starting the brawl and did not even know what had sparked it. The man who stabbed him is now serving 10 years in prison, he said.
Implants like the one he received had previously worked in monkeys. There have also been some tests of a simpler sensor implant in people, as well as systems using electrodes outside the scalp. And Mr. Nagle has talked before about his experience.
But the paper in Nature is the first peer-reviewed publication of an experiment in people with a more sophisticated implant, able to monitor many more brain neurons than earlier devices. The paper helps “shift the notion of such ‘implantable neuromotor prosthetics’ from science fiction towards reality,” Stephen H. Scott, professor of anatomy and cell biology at Queen’s University in Ontario, wrote in a commentary in the journal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/science/13brain.html?ex=1153022400&en=96e022f3d15fcc46&ei=5087%0A
By Jack Schofield / Apple/ PC 04:21pm
"Everyone knows that Apple's Intel powered portable lineup gets hot, but this is insane! An enterprising fellow figured out that it would be possible to actually fry an egg on the bottom of his black MacBook," says The Unofficial Apple Weblog, with picture.
In a comment, Patrick Haney says: "that's nothing. Try cooking up some bacon on a MacBook Pro!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/splat/177826218/ (I think I'd want to see the video before swallowing that one.)
Presumably the Mac that's auditoning for a job at Mac-Donalds (groan) is one that suffers from the overheating problem tackled by Interrupting Moss at the Something Awful forum. He made his system run dramatically cooler by opening it up and correcting the manufacturing defect -- the application of too much thermal paste, as illustrated on page 106 of Apple's Service Manual.
Warning: these pictures are not suitable for those with what the BBC used to call a "nervous disposition".
So Steve Jobs sent him a thankyou letter and a case of wine, right?
Nope. The forum got the usual threatening letter from Apple's overbusy legal staff saying: "The Service Source manual for the MacBook Pro is Apple's intellectual property and is protected by U.S. copyright law."
Gizmodo commented:
Of course the real problem isn't the single excerpted page being linked from Something Awful, but instead the fact that the image shows the extremely sloppy manufacturing process that is causing the MacBook Pro to run at temperatures as high as a 95 degrees Celcius [sic] under full load. (A temperature so high that the processor is at risk of malfunctioning.) Rather than addressing the problem of the shoddy workmanship, documented not only by those who purchased Apple's $2,500 laptop but by Apple's own service manual, Apple is trying to silence those from the Macintosh community who are trying to help other Mac users fix Apple's mistake.
Note: I'd assume Apple can tell the difference between egg-frying discoloratons and the palm-rest discoloration that results from a manufacturing defect that has affected some white MacBooks. Apple's lawyers will probably grill you if you try it.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2006/07/14/fry_an_egg_on_your_macbook.html
Firm allegedly billed for flights but used trucks
By DAN HERBECK
News Staff Reporter
7/16/2006
An Orchard Park air-freight company that delivers equipment all over the world for America's armed forces may have overcharged the government by millions of dollars, according to accusations now under investigation by federal agents.
Federal agents have been told that, on numerous occasions, National Air Cargo charged the government a premium rate for delivering equipment by airplane, when in fact, many of the deliveries were made by trucks.
The company also is alleged to have charged the government for overnight delivery service on occasions when the deliveries took several days.
National Air Cargo calls itself "the fastest and surest delivery system in the world." Last year, the federal government showed its trust in the company by hiring it to move voting balloting equipment from the United States to Iraq for the Iraqi elections.
But now, the government is questioning some of the company's delivery work for the U.S. Department of Defense.
The investigation has also raised questions about a government program that pays private companies more than $1.5 billion annually to transport equipment for the military.
According to four law enforcement officials, National Air Cargo has been under scrutiny more than a year by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office in Buffalo. A federal grand jury is examining records that the company provided to agents.
Authorities said the probe was begun by a whistle-blower, a former company employee who claims National Air Cargo overcharged the Defense Department by millions of dollars over a period of several years. The whistle-blower also claims the Defense Department did little or nothing to prevent the overcharging.
Investigators are focusing on deliveries that were made by the company within the United States. The deliveries of voting equipment to Iraq and other overseas shipments are not part of the investigation.
"The allegation is that the company has been overcharging the government by millions," said one source who is familiar with the case. "One thing that [agents] have found is that the military does very little to make sure these companies are making deliveries on time and not overcharging the government.
"Private businesses would never countenance anything like this. A private businessman would be on the phone right away, demanding a refund if something didn't arrive on time. But the military doesn't do the kind of checking and accounting that a private business would do."
The company's founder and president is Christopher J. Alf of Hamburg, who has been making political donations since at least 1998. He declined to comment on the probe, referring a reporter to one of his company's attorneys, Rodney O. Personius. Personius said National Air Cargo is involved in "lengthy and complicated" discussions with federal prosecutors.
"The company is doing its level best to be fully cooperative with the government," Personius said. "From our perspective, it's more of a fact-finding process than an investigation.
"It's a very esoteric process, because of the unique nature of transportation law and the peculiarities of doing business with the Department of Defense."
Two of Buffalo's top defense lawyers, Terrence M. Connors and Joel L. Daniels, are representing officers of National Air Cargo. The company also has a lawyer in Washington, F. Whitten Peters, a former secretary of the U.S. Air Force.
Authorities said the whistle-blower in the case, whom they would not name, has filed a lawsuit accusing National Air Cargo of fraud under the U.S. False Claims Act. The lawsuit was filed in federal court under seal, and is not available for public inspection.
Daniel C. Oliverio, a former federal prosecutor who specializes in filing and defending false claims cases, was identified by several sources as the attorney for the former employee.
"I can't confirm I represent a whistle-blower in the case, but we do handle cases under the False Claims Act," Oliverio said. "We are very interested in what's happening with National Air Cargo, and we are aware of allegations of overcharging."
Peggy McFarland, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Terrance P. Flynn, said she could not confirm or deny anything about the investigation.
Dale J. Huegen, an official of the Defense Department's Air Mobility Command, said the military does monitor and audit the fees charged by private freight companies.
National Air Cargo has been an air freight forwarder for the military since at least 2000, said Huegen, chief of the contract airlift division. He said the Orchard Park company is authorized to make both domestic and international deliveries for the department.
What kind of follow-up does the military do to make sure the deliveries are on-time and at a reasonable fee?
Huegen said there are "transportation offices" within the military that "monitor the process and the records."
Authorities estimated that will take weeks and possibly months to determine whether prosecutors should file any civil or criminal charges against National Air Cargo.
From a financial standpoint, the company has been a success since Alf started it in 1991. The company does not own cargo planes and does not physically move freight. It arranges with other carriers to move freight for the Defense Department and other customers.
The company and the Defense Department declined to say how much money National Air Cargo has been paid to arrange military shipments, but sources close to the case said it has received tens of millions of dollars for military work since 2000.
Erie County property records show that Alf and his wife, Lori, own a $475,000 home on Old Lakeshore Road. Florida property records show that, last year, they bought a $10.4 million home in Boca Raton, Fla.
Federal Election Commission records indicate that the couple has also been active in making donations to politicians since 1998. Between them, Christopher and Lori Alf have donated more than $56,000 to candidates and political committees. The recipients include PresidentBush; Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.; and Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, R-Clarence.
In 2000, National Air Cargo announced it was moving from offices in Amherst to a $2.3 million state-of-the-art headquarters in Orchard Park. At that time, the company said it hoped to double its work force to 70 within two years.
The company's expansion received government help. The Erie County Industrial Development Agency approved a plan to cut the company's taxes by $316,000 over 10 years. The Empire State Development Corp. agreed to provide a $100,000 grant for construction.
According to Personius, Alf is a hard-working, self-made businessman who has earned a reputation for being able to tackle difficult and complex transportation problems. Personius said the Alfs and National Air Cargo have been involved in numerous charitable activities in Western New York.
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060716/1047376.asp
Officials scolded for filing late reports
By BRIAN MEYER
News Staff Reporter
7/16/2006
City Hall's accountability panel scolded some department heads Friday for delays in supplying data that shed light on how well the city is delivering services.
Members of Byron W. Brown's CitiStat panel were miffed that reports requested weeks earlier from the Citizens Services and Streets Sanitation divisions didn't arrive on time.
One of the longest-tenured commissioners surprised some observers when he delivered a curt retort.
"I can spend my efforts picking up the garbage, or spend my efforts reporting on the garbage," said Public Works Commissioner Joseph N. Giambra.
But Brown had the final word.
"Commissioner, we need you to pick it up and report on it," the mayor responded.
Earlier, Brown bristled when learning that data the panel requested from the Citizens Services Division wasn't submitted on time.
"There is absolutely no excuse for that information not being provided," he said.
The admonitions were vivid examples of how some things have changed in City Hall since Buffalo ramped up its computerized tracking system last month.
In the past, it would have been a rare event when a mayor would publicly chew out members of his own administration - much less in a meeting covered by reporters and later broadcast on a public access cable television station.
Some city staffers have only half-jokingly branded CitiStat sessions "The Inquisition." But Brown makes no apologies, noting that the new system patterned after a successful program in Baltimore is built on one word: accountability. The mayor said voters hold him accountable, and he intends to make his appointees accountable.
The six-member CitiStat panel is already highlighting some improvements. They include:
The average of length of time that citizens are put on hold when they call with complaints was cut in half last month, when the typical caller waited 17 seconds. In May, the average call was on hold for 34 seconds.
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060716/1013033.asp
North Korea 'totally rejects' U.N. council vote
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - North Korea "totally rejects" the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning its recent series of missile tests, its U.N. ambassador said on Saturday.
"It is clear to everyone that there is no need for the DPRK to unilaterally put on hold the missile launches under such a situation," Ambassador Pak Gil Yon told the council following the vote, using the acronym for his country's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Pak Gil Yon, North Korea's Ambassador to the United Nations (U.N.) speaks to the U.N. Security Council, after the Council voted to unanimously to approve a resolution to impose weapons-related sanctions on North Korea in response to its flurry of missile tests earlier this month, in New York, July 15, 2006. (REUTERS/Mike Segar)
The measure had the "despicable aim" of isolating and putting pressure on his government, he said.
"It is a far-fetched assertion, grossly falsifying the reality, for them to claim that the routine missile launches conducted by the Korean People's Army for self-defense strained the regional situation and blocked the process of dialogue," Pak said.
"The DPRK's missile development, test fire, manufacture and deployment therefore serve as a key to keeping the balance of force and preserving peace and stability in Northeast Asia," he said.
The envoy's remarks prompted a sharp retort from U.S. Ambassador John Bolton.
"This has been a historic day. Not only have we unanimously adopted Resolution 1695, but North Korea has set a world record in rejecting it within 45 minutes after its adoption," Bolton said.
The United States could exercise a right of reply to respond to Pak's comments concerning Washington, Bolton said, "But on the other hand, why bother."
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/7/16/worldupdates/2006-07-16T044351Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_-259711-1&sec=Worldupdates
U.S. supports Israeli goal of eliminating Hezbollah
By ROBIN WRIGHT , The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Israel, with U.S. support, intends to resist calls for a cease-fire and continue a longer-term strategy of punishing Hezbollah, which is likely to include several weeks of precision bombings in Lebanon, according to senior Israeli and U.S. officials.
For Israel, the goal is to eliminate Hezbollah as a security threat — or altogether, the sources said. A senior Israeli official confirmed Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah is a target, on the calculation that the Shiite movement would be far less dynamic without him.
For the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East, U.S. officials say.
Whatever the outrage on the Arab streets, Washington believes it has strong behind-the-scenes support among key Arab leaders also nervous about the populist militants — with a tacit agreement that the timing is right to strike.
"What is out there is concern among conservative Arab allies that there is a hegemonic Persian threat (running) through Damascus, through the southern suburbs of Beirut and to the Palestinians in Hamas," said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity because of sensitive diplomacy. "Regional leaders want to find a way to navigate unease on their streets and deal with the strategic threats to take down Hezbollah and Hamas, to come out of the crisis where they are not as ascendant."
Hezbollah's cross-border raid that captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight has provided a "unique moment" with a "convergence of interests" among Israel, some Arab regimes and even those in Lebanon who want to rein in the country's last private army, the senior Israeli official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing conflict.
Israel and the United States would like to hold out until Hezbollah is crippled.
"It seems like we will go to the end now," said Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon. "We will not go part way and be held hostage again. We'll have to go for the kill — Hezbollah neutralization."
White House officials said Friday that President Bush has called on Israel to limit civilian casualties and avoid toppling the Lebanese government but has not pressured Israel to stop its military action. "He believes that the Israelis have a right to protect themselves," spokesman Tony Snow said in St. Petersburg, where Bush is attending the Group of Eight summit. "The president is not going to make military decisions for Israel."
Specifically, officials said, Israel and the United States are looking to create conditions for achieving one remaining goal of U.N. Resolution 1559, adopted in 2004, which calls for the dismantling and disarming of Lebanon's militias and expanding the state's control over all its territory.
"We think part of the solution to this is the implementation of 1559, which would eliminate that (armed group operating outside the government) and help Lebanon extend all of its authority throughout the whole country," national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters with Bush in Russia yesterday.
The other part of the resolution calls for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, which was completed in April last year — after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, which was widely linked to Syria.
If Lebanon as a first step takes over Hezbollah's stockpiles, which included more than 12,000 rockets and missiles before the current strife began, then cease-fire talks could begin, the Israeli official said.
"The only way a cease-fire will even be considered is if 1559 is fully implemented," said the senior Israeli official. Lebanese troops must be deployed to take over positions in Hezbollah's southern Lebanon strongholds to ensure that there are no more cross-border raids or rocket barrages into northern Israel.
There are no guarantees, however, that this strategy will work. Israeli airstrikes could backfire, experts warn.
"Hezbollah was risking alienating not only the Lebanese public at large but, incredibly, its very own Shiite constituency. But if Israel continues with its incessant targeting of exclusively civilian targets, and, as a result, life becomes increasingly difficult for the people, I would not be surprised if there is a groundswell of support for Hezbollah, exactly opposite of what Israel is trying to achieve," said Timur Goksel, an analyst and former spokesman for the U.N. force in Lebanon who lives in Beirut.
Pressed on whether a cease-fire was possible soon, the Israeli official said it was "way, way premature" to consider an end to hostilities. "There is no sense to have a cease-fire without a fundamental change," he said. "That change is to make sure the explosiveness of the situation cannot carry over to the future. That means neutralizing Hezbollah's capabilities."
The Bush administration is also using Resolution 1559 as a barometer, U.S. officials say, acknowledging the Lebanese government has shown neither the ability nor the willingness to deploy its fledgling army to the southern border.
U.S. officials have cautioned Israel to use restraint, particularly on collateral damage and destruction of infrastructure, which might undermine the fragile government. There was some U.S. concern about attacks on the Beirut airport, but otherwise Washington is prepared to step aside and defer diplomacy unless there is a dramatic break, U.S. officials say.
"They do have space to operate for a period of time," the U.S. official said about Israel. "There's a natural dynamic to these things. When the military starts, it may be that it has to run its course."
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/07-06/07-16-06/02world-nation.htm
Envoy says Canadian soldiers 'in eye of storm'
Updated Sun. Jul. 16 2006 12:07 PM ET
Canadian soldiers in have faced intensifying Taliban aggression on their mission in southern Afghanistan. But the UN envoy in Kabul, says the troops are directly "in the eye of storm" and most of the country is relatively calm.
What we're seeing now is an intense effort to root out the remaining militants near Kandahar. Christopher Alexander told CTV's Question Period. "The resources devoted to countering the insurgency are much greater now."
Alexander has been in Afghanistan since 2003, first as Canada's ambassador, then as the United Nations deputy special representative of the secretary-general.
If efforts to counter Taliban aggression continue, "there should be a fighting chance for law and order to have the upper hand," Alexander said.
But, Alexander points out, "we can't, with any confidence, say the insurgency is diminishing."
Canadian troops are in the thick of some of the most aggressive combat seen yet in the region. "In the late winter and the spring, the insurgency hit Afghanistan's southern provinces much harder than it did in 2005," Alexander said.
This upsurge in attacks shocked many Canadians, accustomed over the years to the image of our soldiers as peacekeepers. But, Canadians stationed in Kandahar "have been in the eye of the storm," Alexander said.
"A lot of what international forces are doing in the country is more like peacekeeping and if Canadians are in combat from time to time it's because they're well-regarded among the best troops here ... Canadians are really one of the only contingencies in the country that have seen acute fighting of this kind," Alexander notes.
The intense violence is restricted to about one-quarter of Afghanistan. Life in the rest of the country is peaceful most days and people are trying to rebuild, Alexander said.
The Conservative government recently announced it will pull troops out of Afghanistan in February 2009. But many critics question if that will provide enough time to prepare the Afghanistan's police and army forces.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060712/QP_afghanistan_060716/20060716?hub=TopStories
Iran says Hizbollah will not disarm
By Gareth Smyth in Tehran
Published: July 16 2006 19:39 | Last updated: July 16 2006 19:39
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said on Sunday that Hizbollah, a key ally of Tehran, would not disarm, despite calls from the US and Israel.
His remarks, reported by state television, came as Iran was increasingly drawn into the Middle East crisis.
“The American president says Hizbollah should be disarmed,” said Ayatollah Khamenei. “But it will not happen...The Lebanese people appreciate the resistance because their powerful limbs have been responsible for not allowing the Zionists whatever they want, whenever they want in Lebanon.”
Iranian officials earlier denied Israeli and western allegations of direct military support for Hizbollah.
Hamid Reza Asefi, foreign ministry spokesman, said no Iranian Revolutionary Guards were in Lebanon and that reports of shipments of Iranian missiles were “not correct”. But Mr Asefi also warned that aggression against Syria would bring Israel “unimaginable damages”.
Stepping up Israeli charges against Iran, Major General Udi Adam said rockets that yesterday killed eight people in the Israeli city of Haifa, 30km from the Lebanese border, were Iranian-made. Israeli officials earlier claimed an Iranian-made C-802 missile had struck an Israeli warship off Lebanon on Friday, killing four sailors.
Iran’s media has given wide coverage to the mounting civilian deaths in Lebanon following Israeli attacks.
But yesterday there were differences between reformists in Iran, who urged caution on all sides, and conservatives, who questioned Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
“Israel has learned nothing from 40 years, and is using the same destructive methods of air and land strikes,” said Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former reformist vice-president. “The big powers listen only to the voice of Israel. The region needs tranquillity, so other voices can be heard.”
Mr Abtahi, who was manager of Iranian broadcasting in Lebanon in the mid-1990s, warned “war and more tension” could complicate the stand-off between the UN Security Council and Iran over its nuclear programme.
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, another prominent reformist, said Iran could help defuse the crisis through its longstanding relationship with Hizbollah. “The way forward is the release of prisoners on both sides, and the implementation of all UN resolutions, including Israeli withdrawal from Shebaa farms [territory on the Lebanese-Syria border claimed by Lebanon],” he said.
But conservatives argued Israel’s offensive showed the state was a lasting threat. An editorial in yesterday’s Kayhan newspaper said “Israel ought not to exist in the region”.
President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad said the Israelis’ treatment of the Palestinians and Lebanese showed them “acting like Hitler and behaving worse than Genghis Khan”. Addressing prayers in Tehran on Friday, Aya- tollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani said Islam taught that “if someone attacks, you have the right to counter-attack”.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/89cb4094-14f3-11db-b391-0000779e2340.html
n Haifa, a Scene of Death and Destruction
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By GREG MYRE
Published: July 16, 2006
HAIFA, Israel, July 16 — The train platform, slick with blood and littered with chunks of fallen roof, was the grim evidence confirming a prediction that Israeli security chiefs had made for years. Hezbollah, they said, had acquired larger, more powerful rockets that could soar over Israel’s thinly populated north and wreak havoc on major cities.
This morning, one of those rockets punched through the roof of a huge train maintenance hangar near the Mediterranean coast in the port city of Haifa, killing eight workers and wounding more than 20.
Twisted metal dangled from above and debris covered the site where train company employees had just arrived for the beginning of the Israeli workweek. Two trains were charred with their windows blown out.
Sliman Halaby, a railway worker, saw the missile strike and raced to help. “I saw the people spread out all over” the platform, he said.
“I talked to them so they would not panic or lose consciousness,” he told Israeli radio. “Then I ran to the entrance because I saw the ambulances were having trouble reaching the gate.”
Hezbollah has been shooting rockets at northern Israel on and off for some two decades, but today’s attack was unprecedented on two counts. It was the deadliest Hezbollah rocket attack to date and the first time the Lebanese Shiite group fired on Israel with a rocket that can carry more than 100 pounds of explosives, capable of inflicting far more damage than the Katyusha rockets that are typically used, according to the Israeli military.
Israel said it was a Fajr-3 rocket that can travel up to 30 miles, while Hezbollah said it fired Raad-2 and Raad-3 rockets. Altogether, 10 of the rockets hit in or near Haifa.
While relatives of the dead and injured wailed with grief at the emergency room of the city’s Rambam Medical Center, many Israelis called on their government to strike even harder at Hezbollah.
“We should wipe Hezbollah off the map without pity and without listening to the criticism from the rest of the world,” said Sarah Benchetrit, 57, who was at the hospital with her husband, who had come for a checkup.
Mrs. Benchetrit, who moved to Israel 22 years ago from New Jersey, said today’s attack was even more unnerving than those in the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when Iraq fired dozens of Scud missiles into Israel.
In those attacks, military radar detected the incoming missiles and issued urgent warnings that gave Israelis a minute or more to take cover. No such warning came today, though Israel has set up three Patriot antimissile batteries in Haifa.
“Our homes and families are being attacked and there is no way we will let this continue,” said Israel’s defense minister, Amir Peretz, who visited Haifa after the attack.
Mr. Peretz said that Hezbollah was firing its rockets from civilian areas, and that Israel would not hesitate to strike at such sites.
“Any source of fire that is identified will be dealt with,” Mr. Peretz said.
The fighting began with a cross-border raid by Hezbollah on Wednesday in which the group captured two Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah has fired around 500 rockets into northern Israel in the past five days, and most of the towns are now deserted.
While that has brought the region’s economy to a standstill, the impact will be far greater if Haifa, a major port and Israel’s third largest city with close to a quarter-million people, also shuts down.
The city, which is 20 miles south of the Lebanese border, was hit by rockets for the first time on Thursday, when two Katyushas caused only nominal damage. Haifa was still relatively busy today following the deadly attack, and most residents said they did not plan to disrupt their routines.
But Israel’s Home Front Command called on residents in Haifa and nearby areas to stay in sheltered areas. All ships in the Haifa port were instructed to go to sea, and Haifa University canceled all activities, Israeli radio reported.
“This attack was terrible, but I feel that if we hit back the shooting will only get worse,” said Limor Avrahami, an occupational therapist at the hospital. “I know most people in Israel disagree with me, but I think this would be the best way to quiet things down.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/world/middleeast/16cnd-haifa.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Cheney Sued Over CIA-gate
Washington, Jul 14 (Prensa Latina) The suit by a former US spy brought against Vice President Richard Cheney, for his involvement in the so called CIA-Gate scandal, reflects the existence of an administration crisis.
Valerie Plame, former CIA agent, brought the lawsuit against Cheney for having leaked her identity to the media in 2003, thus ruining her professional career, Los Angeles´ La Opinion Digital reported Friday.
According to the source, Plame demands a legal punishment for Cheney; alleging conspiracy to destroy her career.
Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, also accused the White House deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and the former chief of the Cheney cabinet, Lewis Libby, of having leaked the CIA agent´s identity in reprisal for giving the lie to President George W. Bush´ justifications for invading Iraq.
Plame´s identity was revealed after her husband publicly refuted Bush claims that the Hussein government was trying to get enriched uranium in Niger, a pretext used by the Bush administration to attack and occupy Iraq.
Facing strong pressure by the US government and the public, Robert Novak, the journalist who published her identity as an agent in his column in 2003, recently disclosed the sources he used to uncover Plame´s identify.
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BDE3A88AB-3A56-495A-8CD2-59A1611431A4%7D)&language=EN
Bush agrees to eavesdropping court review
By KATHERINE SHRADER Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Bush has agreed conditionally to a court review of his antiterror eavesdropping operations under a deal that, for the first time, would open an important part of his once-secret surveillance to a constitutional test.
The disclosure of the agreement on Thursday came as the White House sought to end an impasse over a six-month-old dispute with Congress on the National Security Agency's program. It monitors the international calls and e-mails of Americans when terrorism is suspected.
Breaking with historic norms, the president had authorized the monitoring without a court warrant.
Under a deal with the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Bush has agreed to support a bill that could submit the program to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a constitutional review.
"You have here a recognition by the president that he does not have a blank check," said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. As a leading critic of the program, he had broken ranks with his party.
When the program was disclosed in December, it outraged Democrats and civil libertarians who said Bush overstepped his authority. On Thursday, advocacy groups dismissed the prospect of a judicial review as a sham.
"This new bill would codify the notion that the president is not bound by the laws passed by Congress or the Constitution," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Congress must approve the bill. Yet lawmakers have written at least a half dozen competing proposals and more are coming.
Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., who heads the House intelligence subcommittee that oversees the NSA, is introducing a measure next week aimed at modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Bush's program allowed the agency to avoid that law.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the administration supports Specter's bill, which would allow the government to continue to collect information intended to protect the country. "My understanding from the president is that the legislation could be very helpful," Gonzales said.
The administration initially resisted efforts to write a new law, contending that no legal changes were needed. But after months of pressure, officials have grown more open to legislation.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the agreement with Specter recognizes the president's constitutional authorities and updates the 1978 law to meet current threats.
"What is happening today is that the president and Congress are coming together to codify the capacity for future presidents to take action to protect our country," she said.
Gonzales said the bill gives Bush the option of submitting the NSA program to the intelligence court, rather than requiring the review.
An administration official said Bush will submit to the review as long the bill is not changed in ways that he sees as undermining security. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deliberations are internal, said the bill would preserve the right of future presidents to skip that court review.
Gonzales said the legislation would allow him to consolidate legal challenges to the eavesdropping program at the intelligence court, which he described as a one-time test of the program's constitutionality.
More than 100 lawsuits have been filed in courts across the country.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/4046094.html
Single women care for disabled kids better: Study
Raleigh(US), July 16: Children with disabilities are more likely than other children in the United States to live with a single woman, whether she is a mother, grandmother or a female foster parent, according to a new study.
The findings by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill indicate that organisations aimed at helping disabled children must also consider the particular problems faced by the single women who often care for them, said Philip Cohen, an associate professor of sociology at the university.
"In the patchwork of arrangements to care for children with disabilities, we have to realise that the system is also dealing with issues of gender equity," Cohen said.
The study -- conducted by Cohen and his former student Miruna Petrescu-Prahova, now a doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine -- was published yesterday in the quarterly `Journal of Marriage and Family`.
The study examined 2000 us census data on 2.3 million children ages 5 to 15. More than 130,000 were reported to have mental disabilities, physical disabilities, or both.
It found that while 62 per cent of American children without disabilities live with a married, biological parent, in a two-parent home, only 46 per cent of disabled children do.
Single mothers care for 17 per cent of children without disabilities, but for 24.5 per cent of those who are disabled.
Fewer than 5 per cent of disabled children live with a single father, about the same percentage of non-disabled children living with fathers.
http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=309441&ssid=204&sid=LIF
Magic mushrooms
15 July 2006
THE scientific community is going high on mushrooms — not that it developed a special taste for a fungus with a round flat head and short stem, but for their curative and mystical properties. If some researchers see the possibility of finding a natural cure for depression, anxiety and cast down feeling in them, others see a door to spirituality.
According to a study done by Dr Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University and published in the journal ‘Psychopharmacology’, the active ingredient in the mushrooms that transports the user beyond the realms of reality is a hallucinogen called psilocybin.
In fact, Native Americans are said to have been using these magic mushrooms in their rituals before hippies found their high-spirited value in the 60s. The study, conducted on 36 volunteers who had been given capsules of hallucinogen extracted from the mushrooms, claims that two-thirds of users had reported an ethereal experience, and later, most of them had positive moods such as happiness and love.
That’s because psilocybin acts like serotonin, the chemical in the brain responsible for moods. If anybody is rushing to the market to buy packs of mushrooms, hoping to have an out-of-this-world experience or get out of depression, here is a word of caution. There are hundreds of varieties of mushrooms, some of them poisonous, and possibly nobody could identify the mushroom that is supposed to contain magical properties except the researchers and Native Americans.
There is little to suggest that it holds the key to salvation and religious scholars have already discounted volunteers’ claims as hallucinations. However, the latest finding has reopened a fresh debate on hallucinogens and their positive health effects. May be, one day, eating a mushroom could become as normal as popping a pill to de-stress ourselves. Like ‘Eat an apple a day to keep the doctor away,’ ‘a mushroom a day to feel happy’ may well become the axiom!
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/editorial/2006/July/editorial_July31.xml§ion=editorial&col=
FDA warns against sexual performance drugs sold on the net
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. is warning consumers against several...
(Haber Sağlık - 14.07.2006 - 08:09:56 )
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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. is warning consumers against several products promoted as treatments for erectile dysfunction (ED) and sexual performance enhancers.
The FDA says the products are in fact illegal drugs that contain potentially harmful and undeclared ingredients.
The dangerous products are Zimaxx, Libidus, Neophase, Nasutra, Vigor-25, Actra-Rx and 4EVERON.
Such products target older adults since up to 25 percent of men 65 and older experience ED.
Zimaxx is sold as a sexual enhancer for both men and women and along with other similar products is sold on web sites as "dietary supplements," but have not been approved by FDA, so there is no guarantee of their safety and effectiveness, or of the purity of their ingredients.
The FDA says the products threaten the public health because they contain undeclared chemicals that are similar or identical to the active ingredients used in several FDA-approved prescription drug products.
Dr. Steven Galson, Director of FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research says they present a serious risk because consumers may not know that these ingredients can interact with medications and dangerously lower their blood pressure.
A chemical analysis by the FDA has revealed that Zimaxx contains Sildenafil, which is the active pharmaceutical ingredient in Viagra and Revatio, prescription drugs approved in the United States to treat ED.
The other products contain chemical ingredients that are analogues of either Sildenafil or a pharmaceutical ingredient called Vardenafil.
Vardenafil is the active ingredient in Levitra, a prescription drug that, like Viagra, is approved in the United States to treat ED but there is no mention of any of these ingredients in any of the illegal products' labeling.
The undeclared ingredients may interact with nitrates found in some prescription drugs (such as nitroglycerin) and lower blood pressure to dangerous levels.
Consumers with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or heart disease often take nitrates and ED is a common problem in this group of men.
The FDA has sent warning letters to the firms marketing the products stating that the products are illegal drugs, and the labeling is false and misleading because it fails to disclose the presence of the chemical ingredients or the potential side-effects associated with the products' consumption.
The FDA has already stopped the importation of Libidus, and a shipment of 4 EVERON from entering the United States and may take additional enforcement steps.
The actions of the FDA are the result of an innovative survey, in which the agency analyzed 17 dietary supplements marketed on the internet to treat ED and to enhance sexual performance in men.
The FDA encourages anyone experiencing ED to seek guidance from a health care provider before purchasing a product to treat the condition.
Margaret Glavin, FDA's Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs, says the FDA is committed to protecting the public health by removing such illegal and dangerous products from the market.
http://www.habersaglik.com/default.asp?Act=Dt&CatId=4&NwId=72197
Living Alone Significantly Raises Heart Disease Risk
A person who lives alone is twice as likely to suffer from serious heart disease when compared...
(Haber Sağlık - 14.07.2006 - 08:06:52 )
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A person who lives alone is twice as likely to suffer from serious heart disease when compared to a person who lives with a partner, say Danish researchers after gathering data on 138,000 adults aged 30-69, all from Aarhus, Denmark.
You can read about this study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
During 2000-2002, of the 138,000 people, 646 experienced acute coronary syndrome, e.g. severe angina, or a sustained heart attack, or a sudden heart attack.
The researchers found that susceptibility to acute coronary syndrome was slightly higher for people with lower educational qualifications as well as those who were surviving on a pension. However, susceptibility was significantly higher for people who were either living alone or/and were elderly.
Risk of acute coronary syndrome was double for women over 60 who lived alone and for men over 50 who lived alone, compared to women over 60 and men over 50 who lived with a partner. 5% of the 138,000 people were women over 60 who lived alone, 8% were men over 50 who lived alone. However, one third of all the deaths from the syndrome were women over 60 who lived alone, the other two thirds came from the men over 50 who lived alone.
Those at lowest risk were people who did not live alone, had a job and had a high level of education.
http://www.habersaglik.com/default.asp?Act=Dt&CatId=4&NwId=72194
U.S. stocks sink as Mideast woes spark flight to safety
July 15, 2006
By Emily Chasan
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks dropped for the third straight day on Friday as rapidly escalating violence in the Middle East drove oil prices to a record high, and investors fled stocks to move money into safer assets.
Manufacturer General Electric Co. was the biggest drag on the Standard & Poor's 500 index after its quarterly outlook disappointed Wall Street.
Shares of home builders fell a day after D.R. Horton Inc., the largest U.S. home builder, cut its yearly forecast for new orders.
"No one wants to be long on the market ahead of the weekend. A lot of cash is sitting on the sidelines because the Middle East is on the boil," said Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at Banc of America Capital Management.
The Dow Jones industrial average was down 106.94 points, or 0.99 percent, to end at 10,739.35. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 6.09 points, or 0.49 percent, to finish at 1,236.20. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 16.76 points, or 0.82 percent, to close at 2,037.35.
For the week, the Dow fell 3.2 percent, the S&P 500 lost 2.3 percent and the Nasdaq shed 4.4 percent.
For the Dow and the Nasdaq, it was the worst three-day decline since April 2005 when worries about a soft patch in the U.S. economy and anti-Japan protests in China hit stocks.
The energy sector helped keep the S&P 500 afloat, with the S&P energy sector index climbing 1.2 percent as crude oil hit a record high above $78 a barrel.
U.S. crude oil for August delivery gained 33 cents to settle at $77.03 a barrel, a record close on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after Israel struck Hizbollah targets in Lebanon and Hizbollah's chief vowed an open war against Israel.
Earlier, oil hit $78.40, the highest price for front-month crude since NYMEX started trading oil futures in 1983.
http://www.ndtvprofit.com/homepage/news.asp?id=259598
Report: Ford Expected to Shed Up To 24,000 Jobs By 2007
Saturday, July 15, 2006
STORIES
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Moody's Cuts Ford Further into Junk
•
Ford Halves Dividend; Shares Dip
•
Renault, Nissan Exec: Stake in General Motors Important
DEARBORN, Mich. — Ford Motor Co. expects to shed 22,000 to 24,000 hourly jobs in North America by the end of next year as part of its turnaround effort, according to published reports.
The automaker also will likely exceed its goal of cutting up to 30,000 hourly workers by 2012, The Detroit News reported Saturday, citing company sources it didn't identify.
Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans told The Associated Press on Saturday that she couldn't discuss estimates for how many jobs might be cut by the end of 2007 because Ford has released estimates only through the end of this year.
"I think that we are doing quite well," she said.
Ford expects 10,000 to 11,000 of its hourly workers will take early retirement or buyout offers this year, Evans said. Including workers leaving through attrition will bring that to about 12,000, she said.
So far, about 5,750 workers have accepted buyouts, she said.
Ford is about six months into a North American turnaround plan announced in January that calls for closing 14 plants by 2012 and cutting up to 30,000 hourly workers. At the time, the automaker had about 87,000 hourly workers and 35,000 salaried workers in North America.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,203831,00.html
IRS computer glitch costs U.S. millions
By MARY DALRYMPLE
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service cost the government $200 million to $300 million this year because a computer program that screens tax returns for fraudulent refunds wasn't operating.
The tax agency said Friday that a contractor promised to deliver by January a new version of a program, used since 1996, that searches for signs of fraud in every tax return claiming a refund.
The contractor, Computer Sciences Corp., did not produce a working program by the deadline, and IRS officials could not put the old program back into operation in time for this spring's tax filing deadline.
As a result, the IRS has stopped only 34 percent of the fraudulent refund claims that it had caught by this time last year, the tax collectors said. It estimates the loss to the government at $200 million to $300 million.
IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said the performance of the IRS and the contractor "were insufficient and are unacceptable."
Everson said he is reviewing the agency's options with the contractor and has begun punishing or firing IRS employees.
The IRS has spent almost $21 million on the project.
Computer Sciences Corp. issued a statement Friday saying the company is working with the IRS to make sure the old system works before taxpayers file their returns next year.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the IRS should not have trusted a contractor that repeatedly missed deadlines, eventually costing the government millions. "That's money down the drain," he said.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4048276.html
Internet `tubes' speech turns spotlight, ridicule onto Sen. Stevens
By Liz Ruskin
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)
WASHINGTON - Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, is enduring no end of ridicule in the blogosphere for his recent explanation, in a Commerce Committee debate, of how the Internet works.
Snorting loudest are bloggers who are angry at Stevens for not adding a nondiscrimination provision - known as "net neutrality" - to the communications bill that he wants Congress to pass this year.
"The Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes," Stevens said during a June 28 committee session.
"And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled. And if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."
At another point in his 11-minute discourse, he said he'd seen these delays firsthand: "I just the other day got - an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially."
Internet pundits greeted his explanations with a nonstop snigger fest, with extra helpings of derision, on sites such as boingboing, Daily Kos, Fark, MySpace and YouTube.
"Ted Stevens, unfrozen caveman senator," was the pronouncement on Wonkette.
Stevens' staff director on the Commerce Committee, Lisa Sutherland, said the bloggers were making fun of Stevens for a pretty minor mistake: saying "tubes" rather than "pipes." The latter is common slang in the telecom industry, especially when discussing the Internet carrying capacity of phone lines or cable.
Stevens, as the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, is pushing a rewrite of the nation's fundamental communications act. His online critics say his speech shows he's not the right person to make modern communications policy. He's had few defenders in the blog world, and the episode has been mentioned in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Times of London. The Stevens entry in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia now includes a lengthy recap of the tube speech and its aftermath.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/15041562.htm
Paralyzed Man Uses Thoughts to Move a Cursor
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By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: July 13, 2006
A paralyzed man with a small sensor implanted in his brain was able to control a computer, a television set and a robot using only his thoughts, scientists reported yesterday.
Enlarge this Image
Rick Friedman
Matthew Nagle, left paralyzed when he was stabbed five years ago, and the circle he drew on a computer screen by using only his thoughts.
Related
Neuronal Ensemble Control of Prosthetic Devices by a Human with Tetraplegia (Nature)
Video From Nature
Seven Films Showing Matt Nagle Controlling Electronic Devices Using Thought
Those results offer hope that in the future, people with spinal cord injuries, Lou Gehrig’s disease or other conditions that impair movement may be able to communicate or better control their world.
“If your brain can do it, we can tap into it,” said John P. Donoghue, a professor of neuroscience at Brown University who has led development of the system and was the senior author of a report on it being published in today’s issue of the journal Nature.
In a variety of experiments, the first person to receive the implant, Matthew Nagle, moved a cursor, opened e-mail, played a simple video game called Pong and drew a crude circle on the screen. He could change the channel or volume on a television set, move a robot arm somewhat, and open and close a prosthetic hand.
Although his cursor control was sometimes wobbly, the basic movements were not hard to learn.
“I pretty much had that mastered in four days,” Mr. Nagle, 26, said in a telephone interview from the New England Sinai Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Stoughton, Mass. He said the implant did not cause any pain.
Mr. Nagle, a former high school football star in Weymouth, Mass., was paralyzed below the shoulders after being stabbed in the neck during a melee at a beach in July 2001. He said he had not been involved in starting the brawl and did not even know what had sparked it. The man who stabbed him is now serving 10 years in prison, he said.
Implants like the one he received had previously worked in monkeys. There have also been some tests of a simpler sensor implant in people, as well as systems using electrodes outside the scalp. And Mr. Nagle has talked before about his experience.
But the paper in Nature is the first peer-reviewed publication of an experiment in people with a more sophisticated implant, able to monitor many more brain neurons than earlier devices. The paper helps “shift the notion of such ‘implantable neuromotor prosthetics’ from science fiction towards reality,” Stephen H. Scott, professor of anatomy and cell biology at Queen’s University in Ontario, wrote in a commentary in the journal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/science/13brain.html?ex=1153022400&en=96e022f3d15fcc46&ei=5087%0A
By Jack Schofield / Apple/ PC 04:21pm
"Everyone knows that Apple's Intel powered portable lineup gets hot, but this is insane! An enterprising fellow figured out that it would be possible to actually fry an egg on the bottom of his black MacBook," says The Unofficial Apple Weblog, with picture.
In a comment, Patrick Haney says: "that's nothing. Try cooking up some bacon on a MacBook Pro!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/splat/177826218/ (I think I'd want to see the video before swallowing that one.)
Presumably the Mac that's auditoning for a job at Mac-Donalds (groan) is one that suffers from the overheating problem tackled by Interrupting Moss at the Something Awful forum. He made his system run dramatically cooler by opening it up and correcting the manufacturing defect -- the application of too much thermal paste, as illustrated on page 106 of Apple's Service Manual.
Warning: these pictures are not suitable for those with what the BBC used to call a "nervous disposition".
So Steve Jobs sent him a thankyou letter and a case of wine, right?
Nope. The forum got the usual threatening letter from Apple's overbusy legal staff saying: "The Service Source manual for the MacBook Pro is Apple's intellectual property and is protected by U.S. copyright law."
Gizmodo commented:
Of course the real problem isn't the single excerpted page being linked from Something Awful, but instead the fact that the image shows the extremely sloppy manufacturing process that is causing the MacBook Pro to run at temperatures as high as a 95 degrees Celcius [sic] under full load. (A temperature so high that the processor is at risk of malfunctioning.) Rather than addressing the problem of the shoddy workmanship, documented not only by those who purchased Apple's $2,500 laptop but by Apple's own service manual, Apple is trying to silence those from the Macintosh community who are trying to help other Mac users fix Apple's mistake.
Note: I'd assume Apple can tell the difference between egg-frying discoloratons and the palm-rest discoloration that results from a manufacturing defect that has affected some white MacBooks. Apple's lawyers will probably grill you if you try it.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2006/07/14/fry_an_egg_on_your_macbook.html
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