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That's why we have launched a national advertising campaign to draw attention to the polar bear's struggle. Help save the polar bear by helping Greenpeace spread the word.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Boston Globe
4 slain in Dorchester house
Victims found in basement in city's deadliest shooting since '91
By Ralph Ranalli, Globe Staff December 14, 2005
Four people were shot dead in a startling attack inside the basement of a Dorchester house last night.
It appeared to be Boston's deadliest shooting since the execution-style murder of five people in an underground Chinatown gambling parlor in 1991.
Boston Police Superintendent Bobbie Johnson said the shooting occurred shortly before 10 p.m. on Bourneside Street, which is near Fields Corner. Police who responded found four men in their late teens to early 20s. Three were dead. The fourth, a 21-year-old suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, was taken to Boston Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead, according to police.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/12/14/4_slain_in_dorchester_house/
Romney aides set a meeting on future
Talks may define his political plans
By Brian C. Mooney and Frank Phillips, Globe Staff December 14, 2005
With anticipation over his political future running high, Governor Mitt Romney's out-of-state political advisers are expected to assemble for strategy meetings in Boston Friday, sources close to Romney said yesterday.
The sources stressed that no firm date had been set for Romney's announcement of whether he will run for reelection. Aides had made tentative plans for an announcement on Monday, but it was in doubt because of changes in Romney's schedule, one source close to the governor said late yesterday.
The date has been pushed back several times, but the governor recently reiterated his intention to declare his plans before the start of winter, which begins next Wednesday, Dec. 21.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/12/14/romney_aides_set_a_meeting_on_future/
EU court says Commission was right to block GE Honeywell merger
By Aoife White, AP Business Writer December 14, 2005
LUXEMBOURG --An EU court ruled Wednesday that the European Commission was right to block a proposed merger between General Electric Co. and Honeywell International Inc. in 2001, although it criticized regulators for how they made the decision.
The EU had blocked the all-American, $46 billion merger after it had been cleared by U.S. regulators.
The Court of First Instance -- the EU's second-highest court -- backed the Commission's view that the deal would have given the combined company too much power in the market for jet engines for large regional aircraft, engines for corporate jet aircraft and the market for small marine gas turbines.
"The Court has not therefore annulled the decision, even though the Commission made errors in relation to other aspects of the case, in particular in its analysis of conglomerate effects," the court said.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2005/12/14/eu_court_says_commission_was_right_to_block_ge_honeywell_merger/
City officials hope to prevent MTA strike
Transit workers are framed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's logo as they picket in front of the Kingsbridge bus depot, Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2005, in New York. City transit workers say they will strike if the MTA fails to meet their demand by Friday for a three-year contract with an annual 8 percent raise. As a strike date looms, the city transit authority has an extra billion dollars in its coffers that is complicating efforts to convince New Yorkers they can't afford to give subway and bus workers raises. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
By Pat Milton, Associated Press Writer December 14, 2005
NEW YORK --City officials planned to return to court Wednesday to put more legal pressure on subway and bus workers preparing to strike and bring the nation's largest public transit system to a halt.
In a lawsuit against the Transport Workers Union in Brooklyn, the city seeks damages for expenses already incurred in preparation for a strike. The suit also seeks lost revenues and overtime and fines of $25,000 that would double each day for those who walk out on the job.
"The way to resolve this is not on the picket line but at the bargaining table," city Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo said.
Arthur Schwartz, attorney for Local 100, called the lawsuit "total hogwash."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/12/14/city_officials_hope_to_prevent_mta_strike/
Israel to build in West Bank settlements
By Josef Federman, Associated Press Writer December 14, 2005
JERUSALEM --Israel has approved construction of hundreds of new homes in West Bank settlements, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday, confirming what would be a violation of the U.S.-backed peace plan.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon scrambled to contain a political uproar following a Newsweek report quoting a Sharon aide as saying the prime minister would be willing to cede 90 percent of the West Bank and part of Jerusalem. Sharon's aides denied the report, but his hard-line opponents said it revealed the prime minister's true intentions.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz approved the new settlement homes in the past week, a defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/12/14/israel_to_build_in_west_bank_settlements/
US envoy "worst ambassador in history": N.Korea
December 14, 2005
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said the U.S. ambassador to Seoul, who labeled Pyongyang "a criminal regime," was the worst ambassador in history and should be recalled, its official media reported on Wednesday.
Alexander Vershbow, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, said at a forum on December 7 that Pyongyang was engaged in the sale of weapons and illicit narcotics and Washington would not lift sanctions against it as long as those activities continue.
"This is a criminal regime," he said.
North Korea blasted the comments on Sunday, saying the remark was a declaration of war that had killed the spirit of six-party talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2005/12/14/us_envoy_worst_ambassador_in_history_nkorea/
EPA would ease pollution reporting rules
By John Heilprin, Associated Press Writer December 14, 2005
WASHINGTON --If the Bush administration has its way, some factories won't have to report all the pollution spewed from their smokestacks, making it harder for government scientists to calculate the health risks of the air Americans breathe.
The Environmental Protection Agency, responding to an AP analysis that found broad inequities in the racial and economic status of those who breathe the nation's most unhealthy air, says total annual emissions of 188 regulated air toxins have declined 36 percent in the past 15 years.
But the EPA wants to ease some of the Clean Air Act regulations that have contributed to those results and proposes to exempt some companies from having to tell the government about what it considers to be small releases of toxic pollutants. The EPA also plans to ask Congress for permission to require the accounting every other year instead of annually.
The agency said in September it wants to reduce its "regulatory burden" on companies by allowing some to use a "short form" when they report their pollution to the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory.
The inventory program began under a 1986 community right-to-know law. If Congress agrees, the first year the changes could be possible would be 2008.
Those changes would exempt companies from disclosing their toxic pollution if they claim to release fewer than 5,000 pounds of a specific chemical -- the current limit is 500 pounds -- or if they store it onsite but claim to release "zero" amounts of the worst pollutants. Those include mercury, DDT, PCBs and other chemicals that persist in the environment and work up the food chain. However, companies must report any storage of dioxin or dioxin-like compounds, even if none are released.
EPA officials say communities will still know about the types of toxic releases, but not some of the details about how each chemical was managed or released. Critics say it will reduce the information the public has on more than 600 chemicals put in the air, water and land, making it harder for officials, communities and interest groups to help protect public health.
http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2005/12/14/epa_would_ease_pollution_reporting_rules/
AP: More blacks live with pollution
By David Pace, Associated Press Writer December 14, 2005
CHICAGO --An Associated Press analysis of a little-known government research project shows that black Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger.
Residents in neighborhoods with the highest pollution scores also tend to be poorer, less educated and more often unemployed than those elsewhere in the country, AP found.
"Poor communities, frequently communities of color but not exclusively, suffer disproportionately," said Carol Browner, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration when the scoring system was developed. "If you look at where our industrialized facilities tend to be located, they're not in the upper middle class neighborhoods."
With help from government scientists, AP mapped the risk scores for every neighborhood counted by the Census Bureau in 2000. The scores were then used to compare risks between neighborhoods and to study the racial and economic status of those who breathe America's most unhealthy air.
President Clinton ordered the government in 1993 to ensure equality in protecting Americans from pollution, but more than a decade later, factory emissions still disproportionately place minorities and the poor at risk, AP found.
In 19 states, blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to live in neighborhoods where air pollution seems to pose the greatest health danger, the analysis showed.
More than half the blacks in Kansas and nearly half of Missouri's black population, for example, live in the 10 percent of their states' neighborhoods with the highest risk scores. Similarly, more than four out of every 10 blacks in Kentucky, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin live in high-risk neighborhoods.
And while Hispanics and Asians aren't overrepresented in high-risk neighborhoods nationally, in certain states they are. In Michigan, for example, 8.3 percent of the people living in high-risk areas are Hispanic, though Hispanics make up 3.3 percent of the statewide population.
All told, there are 12 states where Hispanics are more than twice as likely as non-Hispanics to live in neighborhoods with the highest risk scores. There are seven states where Asians are more than twice as likely as whites to live in the most polluted areas.
The average income in the highest risk neighborhoods was $18,806 when the Census last measured it, more than $3,000 less than the nationwide average.
One of every six people in the high-risk areas lived in poverty, compared with one of eight elsewhere, AP found.
Unemployment was nearly 20 percent higher than the national average in the neighborhoods with the highest risk scores, and residents there were far less likely to have college degrees.
Research over the past two decades has shown that short-term exposure to common air pollution worsens existing lung and heart disease and is linked to diseases like asthma, bronchitis and cancer. Long-term exposure increases the risks.
The Bush administration, which has tried to ease some Clean Air Act regulations, says its mission isn't to alleviate pollution among specific racial or income groups but rather to protect everyone facing the highest risk.
"We're going to get at those folks to make sure that they are going to be breathing clean air, and that's regardless of their race, creed or color," said Deputy EPA Administrator Marcus Peacock.
Peacock said industrial air pollution has declined significantly in the past 30 years as regulations and technology have improved. Since 1990, according to EPA, total annual emissions of 188 regulated toxins have declined by 36 percent.
Still, Peacock acknowledged, "there are risks, and I would assume some unacceptable risks, posed by industrial air pollution in some parts of the country."
Government scientists and contractors spent millions of dollars creating the health risk measures. They're based on air emission reports from industry, ratings of each chemical's potential health dangers, the paths pollution takes as it spreads through neighborhoods, and the number of people of different ages and genders living near plants.
The AP used EPA risk scores from 2000 so they would match the Census data and because it takes years for the government to get corrected emissions data. Some risks may have changed since then as factories opened or closed or their emissions changed. The risk scores aren't meant to calculate a citizen's precise odds of getting sick but rather to help compare communities and identify those in need of further attention.
The scores also don't include risks from other types of air pollution, such as automobile exhaust.
Kevin Brown's most feared opponent on the sandlot or basketball court while he was growing up wasn't another kid. It was the polluted air he breathed.
"I would look outside and I would see him just leaning on a tree or leaning over a pole, gasping, gasping, trying to get some breath so he could go back to playing," recalls his mother, Lana Brown.
Kevin suffered from asthma. His mother is convinced the factory air that covered their neighborhood triggered the son's attacks that sent them rushing to the emergency room week after week, his panic filling the car.
"I can't breathe! I have no air, I'm going to die!"
The air in the neighborhood where Kevin played is among the least healthy in the country, according to research that assigns risk scores for industrial air pollution in every square kilometer of the United States.
Altgeld Gardens, the housing project where Kevin spent most of his childhood staying with his grandmother and going to school, is in a virtually all-black neighborhood where more than half the people live in poverty. The two-story project is nestled among the south Chicago steel mills, which for decades turned the night skies orange with pollution.
Most of those steel mills are now closed, victims of imports. But the area still retains enough industry to rank among the nation's neighborhoods with the highest health risks.
Just across the Little Calumet River from Altgeld, the ISG Riverdale steel plant annually releases into the air tens of thousands of pounds of heavy metals like manganese, zinc, lead and nickel. Dave Allen, a spokesman for Mittal Steel, which acquired the factory this year, said his company is committed to improvements.
"The environment is a matter of focus and pride for us and we hope to be good operators," he said.
Mrs. Brown said the asthma attacks that hit Kevin, now 29, were most serious and frequent during the time he stayed in Altgeld Gardens.
"He may now get an attack maybe once a year, if that often, where he has to go to a hospital," she said. "He was having them at one point quite frequently, at least two to three times a month."
Mrs. Brown was interviewed at the home she purchased seven years ago on a tree-lined street neighborhood south of the plant, where the health risk from industrial pollution is one-fifth the level in Altgeld Gardens.
She said she never considered pollution the culprit in her son's asthma, even after she left the neighborhood. It was only after she moved back into her mother's home for several years that she began to realize how widespread breathing problems were in Altgeld Gardens. Two children who lived next door had asthma, and one used a breathing machine as many as three times a day, she said.
"You see things happening and then you say let me start investigating," she said. "I found out a lot of people either had bronchitis or some kind of respiratory problem. Someone in each household seemed to have a respiratory problem."
In Louisville, Ky., Renee Murphy blames smokestack emissions in the "Rubbertown" industrial strip near her home for the asthma attacks that trouble her five children. Her neighborhood, which is 96 percent black, ranks among the nation's highest in risk from factory pollution.
"It's hard to watch your children gasp for breath," she said.
The Murphy family lives just a few blocks from Zeon Chemicals, which released more than 25,000 pounds of a chemical called acrylonitrile into the air during 2000. The chemical is suspected of causing cancer, and the government has determined it is much more toxic to children than adults.
Tom Herman, corporate environmental manager at Zeon, said the plant is reducing its emissions and is talking with area residents concerned about air quality to show that "there are real people working here concerned for them as well as our own health."
Malcolm Wright, 43, operates power washing equipment in Camden, N.J., where several neighborhoods also rank among the worst nationally. He said he developed asthma after moving to the city in his early 30s, and he blames the city's air pollution for attacks that sent him to the hospital four times last year.
Air pollution "works with many other factors, genetics and environment, to heighten one's risk of developing asthma and chronic lung disease, and if you have it, it will make it worse," said Dr. John Brofman, director of respiratory intensive care at MacNeal Hospital in the suburban Chicago town of Berwyn.
"Evidence suggests that not only do people get hospitalized but they die at higher rates in areas with significant air pollution," he said.
Repeated studies during the 1980s and 1990s found that blacks and poor people were far more likely than whites to live near hazardous waste disposal sites, polluting power plants or industrial parks. The disparities were blamed on a lack of political clout by minorities to influence land use decisions in their neighborhoods.
The studies brought charges of racism. Clinton responded in 1993 by issuing an "environmental justice" order requiring federal agencies to ensure that minorities and poor people aren't exposed to more pollution and other environmental dangers than other Americans.
Recent reports suggest little has changed:
--The Government Accountability Office concluded earlier this year that EPA devoted little attention to environmental equality when it developed three major rules to implement the Clean Air Act between 2000 and 2004.
--The EPA's inspector general reported last year that the agency hadn't implemented Clinton's order nor "consistently integrated environmental justice into its day-to-day operations." The watchdog said EPA had not identified minority and low income groups nor developed any criteria to determine if those groups were bearing more than their share of health risks from environmental hazards.
--The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded two years ago after an investigation that "federal agencies still have neither fully incorporated environmental justice into their core missions nor established accountability and performance outcomes for programs and activities."
EPA Assistant Administrator Granta Nakayama disputed those reports, saying the agency has been choosing its enforcement initiatives to maximize the impact on minority and poor communities.
Environmental experts say most pollution inequities result from historical land use decisions and local development policies. Also, regulators too often focus on one plant or one pollutant without regard to the cumulative impact, they say.
Short of government action, citizens in high-risk neighborhoods have little legal recourse. They can file lawsuits under the 1964 Civil Rights Act but must prove intentional discrimination, a difficult burden.
And while some federal agencies have rules that ban environmental practices that result in discrimination, the Supreme Court has said private citizens can't file lawsuits to enforce those rules.
Citizen complaints to EPA have had little effect. From 1993 through last summer, the agency received 164 complaints alleging civil rights violations in environmental decisions and accepted 47 for investigation. Twenty-eight of the 47 later were dismissed; 19 are pending.
"There is no level playing field," said Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. "Any time our society says that a powerful chemical company has the same right as a low income family that's living next door, that playing field is not level, is not fair."
------
The Associated Press analyzed the health risk posed by industrial air pollution using data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Census Bureau.
EPA uses toxic chemical air releases reported by factories to calculate a health risk score for each square kilometer of the United States. The scores can be used to compare risks from long-term exposure to factory pollution from one area to another.
The scores are based on:
--The amount of toxic pollution released by each factory.
--The path the pollution takes as it spreads through the air.
--The level of danger to humans posed by each different chemical released.
--The number of males and females of different ages who live in the exposure paths.
The scores aren't meant to measure the actual risks of getting sick or the actual exposure to toxic chemicals. Instead, they are designed to help screen for polluted areas that may need additional study of potential health problems, EPA said.
The AP mapped the health risk scores to the census blocks used during the 2000 population count, using a method developed in consultation with EPA. The news service then compared racial and socio-economic makeup with risk scores in the top 5 percent to the population elsewhere.
Similar analyses were done in each state, comparing the 10 percent of neighborhoods with the highest risk scores to the rest in the state.
To match the 2000 Census data, the AP used health risk scores calculated from industrial air pollution reports that companies filed for EPA's 2000 Toxic Release Inventory. It often takes several years for EPA to learn of and correct inaccurate reports from factories, and the 2000 data were more complete than data from more recent reports that were still being corrected.
The AP adjusted the 2000 health risk scores in Census blocks around some plants that filed incorrect air release reports in 2000, after plant officials provided corrected data.
------
Counties that had the highest potential health risk from industrial air pollution in 2000, according to an AP analysis of government records. The health risk varies from year to year based on the level of factory emissions, the opening of new plants and the closing of older plants.
1. Washington County, Ohio
2. Wood County, W.Va.
3. Muscatine County, Iowa
4. Leflore County, Miss.
5. Cowlitz County, Wash.
6. Henry County, Ind.
7. Tooele County, Utah
8. Scott County, Iowa
9. Gila County, Ariz.
10. Whiteside County, Ill.
Factories whose emissions created the most potential health risk for residents in surrounding communities in 2000, according to an AP analysis of government records:
1. Eramet Marietta Inc., Marietta, Ohio
2. Titan Wheel Corp., Walcott, Iowa (closed in 2003)
3. Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, N.Y.
4. American Minerals Inc., El Paso, Texas
5. F.W. Winter Inc., Camden, N.J.
6. Meridian Rail Corp., Cicero, Ill.
7. Carpenter Tech. Corp., Reading, Pa.
8. Longview Aluminum LLC, Longview, Wash. (closed in 2001)
9. DDE Louisville, Louisville, Ky.
10. Lincoln Electric Co., Cleveland
------
On the Net:
The Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.epa.gov
Details of the EPA's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators Project at: http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/rsei/views.html
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/diseases/articles/2005/12/14/ap_more_blacks_live_with_pollution?mode=PF
Taipei Times
Keyser offers guilty plea to US court
SECRET TRIP: A former US official said he made false official statements when trying to hide a trip to Taipei and his romance with a Taiwanese spy
By Charles Snyder
STAFF REPORTER IN WASHINGTON
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005,Page 1
Donald Keyser, a former US State Department official known to be friendly to Taiwan, has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a romantic entanglement with a senior Taiwanese intelligence officer once stationed in the Taipei representative's office in Washington. The charges centered on a secret trip he took to be with her in Taipei for several days in September 2003.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2005/12/14/2003284329
China-Japan tiff overshadows ASEAN summit
AP , KUALA LUMPUR
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005,Page 1
Japan's prime minister said yesterday that he is baffled by the Chinese premier's refusal to meet one-on-one, fueling a row dating back to World War II and clouding a summit with grand visions for a pan-Asian community.
South Korea and Southeast Asian nations inked an accord during meetings yesterday to set up a free trade area, while the Philippines invited Russia and China to join a Southeast Asian anti-terror coalition.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2005/12/14/2003284330
Ang Lee's latest film tops Golden Globe nominations
AFP , LOS ANGELES
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005,Page 1
The gay cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain led nominations for the Golden Globe Awards yesterday, picking up seven nods as Hollywood launched its annual awards season and countdown to the Oscars.
As well as best dramatic picture, the film garnered nominations for director Ang Lee (李安), actor Heath Ledger and supporting actress Michelle Williams.
Other contenders for best dramatic film were Woody Allen's Match Point, conspiracy thriller The Constant Gardner, broadcast drama Good Night, and Good Luck and the psychological mob hit A History of Violence."
The seven Globe nominations for Brokeback Mountain confirm its status as an Oscar front-runner, having already been named best picture by the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2005/12/14/2003284334
China not a military force to be reckoned with, yet
By Chang Yun-ping
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005,Page 3
The rise of China and the growth of its economic and military power has not yet challenged US supremacy in maritime East and Southeast Asia as US strategic partnerships with regional allies are getting stronger and China still lacks the capability to build a powerful navy, a US scholar specializing in China-US affairs said at a conference in Taipei yesterday.
Robert Ross, executive board member and research associate of the Harvard-based John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies, made the comments yesterday at a forum entitled "The Rise of China and the Future of the Asia-Pacific Region," which was organized by the Asia Foundation in Taiwan and sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2005/12/14/2003284354
Legislature raises pensions for farmers, fishermen
By Ko Shu-ling
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005,Page 4
The legislature yesterday passed amendments to the Temporary Statute Regarding the Welfare Pension of Senior Farmers, which will increase the monthly pension of senior farmers from NT$4,000 to NT$5,000.
The revised scheme will go into effect on Jan. 1 next year and is estimated to benefit 710,000 farmers and fishermen. The government is projected to spend an additional NT$8.6 billion annually to extend the scheme. The annual cost currently is about NT$23 billion and benefits 670,000 farmers and fishermen nationwide.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2005/12/14/2003284363
Taiwan Quick Take
STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005,Page 3
Arms bill fails again
The legislature's Procedure Committee yesterday placed the government budget at the top of the next legislative agenda, while voting down the arms procurement bill for the 41st time as well as the confirmation of Control Yuan members. The Procedure Committee voted 17 to 12 in favor of a proposal filed by People First Party (PFP) Legislator Lin Te-fu not to table the long-stalled arms procurement plan, consideration of the president's nomination of Control Yuan members, draft amendments to the Referendum Law and amendments to the Organic Law of the Ministry of Justice Organization, which would establish a new department dedicated to the investigation of corruption and related crimes.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2005/12/14/2003284349
The Washington Post
For Kurds, A Surge Of Violence In Campaign
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; A01
DAHUK, Iraq -- When hundreds of rioters ransacked and torched the Kurdistan Islamic Union office in this northern Iraqi city last week, their message seemed as clear as the electric-blue graffiti left on the building's blackened shell.
Spray-painted across a stone facade dimpled with hundreds of bullet holes were the words "Long live 730," the numerical ballot designation for the political alliance led by Iraq's two largest Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Along a stairwell, someone had written "traitors."
Mobs carried out similar daylight attacks in four other cities in normally tranquil Dahuk province on Dec. 6, destroying offices of the Islamic Union, which quit the alliance last month to field its own candidates in Thursday's parliamentary elections. Four party members were killed, including two shot in the head here in the provincial capital who died of their wounds Saturday. Dozens were injured, many of them police officers.
Although U.S. officials consider the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq a model of what the rest of the country could someday become, the attacks last week were another reminder that Iraqis have been slow to discard the politics of force and intimidation in the country's lurch toward democracy. They also suggest that as Iraqis prepare to choose their first full-term government since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, some of the deepest social fissures lie not just among its large communities, but within them.
"Is there any doubt the big parties punished us for leaving the coalition? It is impossible that anything like this can happen here without their hand in it," said Omar Badi, an Islamic Union candidate for parliament, standing beside the wreckage of 21 cars set ablaze that day. "This had to be organized. It did not happen spontaneously."
Local officials and police said the KDP, the dominant power in the province, had not orchestrated the attacks. Public animosity had built for weeks against the Islamic Union, a Sunni Muslim party, for portraying the coming election as a clash of believers and nonbelievers in a region known for secularism and religious tolerance, politicians and residents said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121302119_pf.html
Marshals To Patrol Land, Sea Transport
TSA Test Includes Surveillance Teams On Metro System
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; A01
Teams of undercover air marshals and uniformed law enforcement officers will fan out to bus and train stations, ferries, and mass transit facilities across the country this week in a new test program to conduct surveillance and "counter potential criminal terrorist activity in all modes of transportation," according to internal federal documents.
According to internal Transportation Security Administration documents, the program calls for newly created "Visible Intermodal Protection and Response" teams -- called "Viper" teams -- to take positions in public areas along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and Los Angeles rail lines; ferries in Washington state; and mass transit systems in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Viper teams will also patrol the Washington Metro system.
A Viper team will consist of two air marshals, one TSA bomb-sniffing-canine team, one or two transportation security inspectors, one local law enforcement officer, and one other TSA employee. Some members of the team will be obvious to the traveling public and wear jackets bearing the TSA name on the back. Others will be plainclothes air marshals scanning the crowds for suspicious people. It is unclear how many Viper teams will be on patrol through the New Year holiday, but air marshal officials confirm that they will be at seven locations across the country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301709_pf.html
Immigration Pushes Apart GOP, Chamber
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; A01
The House Republican leadership and the nation's business lobby, usually close allies, are battling each other over the issue of immigration.
In a rare schism, employer groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are pressing to kill a Republican-sponsored measure that would require businesses to verify that all of their workers are in the United States legally and would increase penalties for hiring illegal employees.
Lobby groups including the chamber, the National Restaurant Association and the Associated General Contractors of America are so vehement in their opposition that they will consider lawmakers' votes on the bill a key measure of whether they will support them in the future.
Still, acting House majority leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) appears to welcome the chance to disagree with his normal confederates. "Congressman Blunt sees no problem with being in a different place from the chamber on this legislation," said Burson Taylor, a spokeswoman for Blunt.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301706_pf.html
PowerPoint Slides: the New Puppy-Dog Eyes
Kids Increasingly Use Tech Savvy To Sell Their Holiday Wish Lists
By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page D01
Sometimes, when children want something badly enough, miracles start to happen.
Promises of spotless rooms and perfect report cards are made. Letters to Santa are neatly typed and spellchecked. Sullen teenagers take the headphones from their ears to shower their parents with compliments.
In hopes of receiving exactly what she wants for Christmas this year, Katie Johnsen, 11, created a Power Point presentation to show her parents what's on her wish list.
In hopes of receiving exactly what she wants for Christmas this year, Katie Johnsen, 11, created a Power Point presentation to show her parents what's on her wish list.
But kids today don't stop there. They are employing their high-tech savvy to wow their parents into fulfilling their Christmas wish lists.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301826.html
Democrat on Panel Probing Abramoff to Return Tribal Donations
By Jonathan Weisman and Derek Willis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page A04
The senior Democrat on the Senate committee investigating former lobbyist Jack Abramoff announced this week that he will return $67,000 in donations from Indian tribes represented by the indicted Republican.
Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (N.D.), vice chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, said he has never met Abramoff, nor did he advocate any program backed by Abramoff's tribal clients that he would not have otherwise embraced. But his move, reported yesterday in the Forum of Fargo, N.D., illustrates how broadly the political stain of Abramoff's money is spreading on Capitol Hill.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301582.html
Guidelines Designed to Ensure Vote Accuracy
Associated Press
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; A15
Voting systems would be more secure and voter access improved for those with disabilities under voluntary guidelines approved yesterday by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
The guidelines are a result of legislation passed two years after the 2000 presidential election, with its hanging chads, complaints of inadequate polling places and problems with mistaken voting. The Help America Vote Act requires improved voting systems, improved voter access and statewide voter registration lists by Jan. 1.
The act also required the guidelines that were approved yesterday. "The voting system guidelines we've adopted are structured to make sure voting systems function properly, that they are secure, that the votes cast by voters are counted accurately, that they are accessible to all voters no matter their age, disability and level of literacy," commission Chair Gracia M. Hillman said.
Under the guidelines, those responsible for the voting systems would have to ensure that all voters can cast ballots with privacy, independence and the knowledge that their votes will be counted accurately.
These protections extend to people with disabilities, the elderly and those with limited English skills. Improvements include higher-quality audio aids, larger type for ballots for the vision-impaired and buttons and controls that are easily identifiable.
According to the new guidelines:
Voters should be able to review their choices on the ballot and change them if they want.
Voting machines should have verifiable paper trails that are reliable and secure. Those guidelines could be used by many states that require electronic voting machines that create paper trails.
Security of software and other computer technology used in voting machines should be assured.
The guidelines developed by the Election Assistance Commission will update guidelines adopted by the Federal Election Commission in 2002. By December 2007, all voting systems will be tested against the new standards, but states can adopt the guidelines earlier.
Currently, 39 states require their voting systems to meet federal standards.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301960_pf.html
Reaction to Assassination Shows Rifts in Beirut
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; A26
BEIRUT, Dec. 13 -- In the tony parts of Christian east Beirut, shops and restaurants shuttered their doors Tuesday to mourn the death of Gebran Tueni, a journalist, lawmaker and opponent of Syria assassinated Monday when a car bomb hurled his armored sport-utility vehicle over a hillside.
In the Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Ghabairi, however, it was business as usual: Mechanics hammered dents out of cars, vegetable carts plied shoddy streets and traffic crawled beneath a religious banner.
Lebanon, long a battleground for other people's conflicts, greeted Tueni's death in ways that illustrated what many see as the growing sectarian divide in the country's politics.
Across the spectrum, virtually everyone condemned Tueni's assassination, the latest in a string of attacks that have killed and wounded some of Lebanon's most prominent opponents of Syria. But more telling were the differences in who they held responsible and how they thought the government should respond.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301687_pf.html
Saudi Gives $20 Million to Georgetown
Prince Says He Wants to Promote Understanding of Islam
By Caryle Murphy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 13, 2005; B01
A prominent Saudi businessman said yesterday that he is donating $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard universities for the study of Islam and the Muslim world as part of his philanthropic efforts to promote interfaith understanding.
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a member of the Saudi royal family, said in a telephone interview from the Saudi capital of Riyadh that he also has donated $15 million to establish the Middle East's first two centers for American studies, at universities in Beirut and Cairo.
"As you know, since the 9/11 events, the image of Islam has been tarnished in the West," said Alwaleed, who is chairman of the Riyadh-based Kingdom Holding Co. and has extensive business holdings in Europe and the United States.
He said his gifts to Georgetown and Harvard will be used "to teach about the Islamic world to the United States," and the new programs at American University in Beirut and American University in Cairo will "teach the Arab world about the American situation."
The $20 million gift to Georgetown is the second-largest ever received by the Jesuit-run university, school officials said. It will be used to expand the activities of the university's 12-year-old Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
"We are deeply honored by Prince Alwaleed's generosity," said a statement from Georgetown President John J. DeGioia, who met Alwaleed Nov. 7 in a Paris hotel to sign documents formalizing the donation.
Alwaleed, a grandson of the Saudi kingdom's founder, King Abdel Aziz, tried to give $10 million to the Twin Towers Fund shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. But then-New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani rejected the donation after the prince said in a news release that the United States needed to "re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance towards the Palestinian cause."
Asked about the controversy over his New York gift, Alwaleed replied that "this is behind us and now we are working for the present and the future. . . . My love and admiration to the United States was never diminished."
The Georgetown center, part of the university's School of Foreign Service, will be renamed the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The $20 million will endow three faculty chairs, expand programs and academic outreach, provide scholarships for students and expand library facilities, Alwaleed said.
Center director John L. Esposito said in an interview that "a significant part of the money will be used to beef up the think tank part of what the center does."
Up to now, he said, the center has not had enough resources "to respond to the tremendous demand that is out there, from the government, church and religious groups, the media and corporations to address and answer issues like, 'What is the actual relationship between the West and the Muslim world? Is Islam compatible with modernization?' Now we can run workshops and conferences [on these subjects] both here and overseas."
When asked about the comments that caused the rejection of Alwaleed's gift to New York, Esposito said: "There is nothing wrong with his expressing his opinion on American foreign policy. Clearly, it was done in a constructive way. He was expressing his enormous sympathy with the United States but also trying to give people the context in which this [terrorist attack] occurred."
Alwaleed said his $20 million donation to Harvard will fund its Islamic studies program, which crosses many disciplines.
Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers expressed gratitude to Alwaleed, saying in a statement yesterday that his gift "will enable us to recruit additional faculty of the highest caliber, adding to our strong team of professors . . . [in] this important area of scholarship."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121200591_pf.html
continued ...
4 slain in Dorchester house
Victims found in basement in city's deadliest shooting since '91
By Ralph Ranalli, Globe Staff December 14, 2005
Four people were shot dead in a startling attack inside the basement of a Dorchester house last night.
It appeared to be Boston's deadliest shooting since the execution-style murder of five people in an underground Chinatown gambling parlor in 1991.
Boston Police Superintendent Bobbie Johnson said the shooting occurred shortly before 10 p.m. on Bourneside Street, which is near Fields Corner. Police who responded found four men in their late teens to early 20s. Three were dead. The fourth, a 21-year-old suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, was taken to Boston Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead, according to police.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/12/14/4_slain_in_dorchester_house/
Romney aides set a meeting on future
Talks may define his political plans
By Brian C. Mooney and Frank Phillips, Globe Staff December 14, 2005
With anticipation over his political future running high, Governor Mitt Romney's out-of-state political advisers are expected to assemble for strategy meetings in Boston Friday, sources close to Romney said yesterday.
The sources stressed that no firm date had been set for Romney's announcement of whether he will run for reelection. Aides had made tentative plans for an announcement on Monday, but it was in doubt because of changes in Romney's schedule, one source close to the governor said late yesterday.
The date has been pushed back several times, but the governor recently reiterated his intention to declare his plans before the start of winter, which begins next Wednesday, Dec. 21.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/12/14/romney_aides_set_a_meeting_on_future/
EU court says Commission was right to block GE Honeywell merger
By Aoife White, AP Business Writer December 14, 2005
LUXEMBOURG --An EU court ruled Wednesday that the European Commission was right to block a proposed merger between General Electric Co. and Honeywell International Inc. in 2001, although it criticized regulators for how they made the decision.
The EU had blocked the all-American, $46 billion merger after it had been cleared by U.S. regulators.
The Court of First Instance -- the EU's second-highest court -- backed the Commission's view that the deal would have given the combined company too much power in the market for jet engines for large regional aircraft, engines for corporate jet aircraft and the market for small marine gas turbines.
"The Court has not therefore annulled the decision, even though the Commission made errors in relation to other aspects of the case, in particular in its analysis of conglomerate effects," the court said.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2005/12/14/eu_court_says_commission_was_right_to_block_ge_honeywell_merger/
City officials hope to prevent MTA strike
Transit workers are framed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's logo as they picket in front of the Kingsbridge bus depot, Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2005, in New York. City transit workers say they will strike if the MTA fails to meet their demand by Friday for a three-year contract with an annual 8 percent raise. As a strike date looms, the city transit authority has an extra billion dollars in its coffers that is complicating efforts to convince New Yorkers they can't afford to give subway and bus workers raises. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
By Pat Milton, Associated Press Writer December 14, 2005
NEW YORK --City officials planned to return to court Wednesday to put more legal pressure on subway and bus workers preparing to strike and bring the nation's largest public transit system to a halt.
In a lawsuit against the Transport Workers Union in Brooklyn, the city seeks damages for expenses already incurred in preparation for a strike. The suit also seeks lost revenues and overtime and fines of $25,000 that would double each day for those who walk out on the job.
"The way to resolve this is not on the picket line but at the bargaining table," city Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo said.
Arthur Schwartz, attorney for Local 100, called the lawsuit "total hogwash."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/12/14/city_officials_hope_to_prevent_mta_strike/
Israel to build in West Bank settlements
By Josef Federman, Associated Press Writer December 14, 2005
JERUSALEM --Israel has approved construction of hundreds of new homes in West Bank settlements, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday, confirming what would be a violation of the U.S.-backed peace plan.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon scrambled to contain a political uproar following a Newsweek report quoting a Sharon aide as saying the prime minister would be willing to cede 90 percent of the West Bank and part of Jerusalem. Sharon's aides denied the report, but his hard-line opponents said it revealed the prime minister's true intentions.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz approved the new settlement homes in the past week, a defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/12/14/israel_to_build_in_west_bank_settlements/
US envoy "worst ambassador in history": N.Korea
December 14, 2005
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said the U.S. ambassador to Seoul, who labeled Pyongyang "a criminal regime," was the worst ambassador in history and should be recalled, its official media reported on Wednesday.
Alexander Vershbow, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, said at a forum on December 7 that Pyongyang was engaged in the sale of weapons and illicit narcotics and Washington would not lift sanctions against it as long as those activities continue.
"This is a criminal regime," he said.
North Korea blasted the comments on Sunday, saying the remark was a declaration of war that had killed the spirit of six-party talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2005/12/14/us_envoy_worst_ambassador_in_history_nkorea/
EPA would ease pollution reporting rules
By John Heilprin, Associated Press Writer December 14, 2005
WASHINGTON --If the Bush administration has its way, some factories won't have to report all the pollution spewed from their smokestacks, making it harder for government scientists to calculate the health risks of the air Americans breathe.
The Environmental Protection Agency, responding to an AP analysis that found broad inequities in the racial and economic status of those who breathe the nation's most unhealthy air, says total annual emissions of 188 regulated air toxins have declined 36 percent in the past 15 years.
But the EPA wants to ease some of the Clean Air Act regulations that have contributed to those results and proposes to exempt some companies from having to tell the government about what it considers to be small releases of toxic pollutants. The EPA also plans to ask Congress for permission to require the accounting every other year instead of annually.
The agency said in September it wants to reduce its "regulatory burden" on companies by allowing some to use a "short form" when they report their pollution to the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory.
The inventory program began under a 1986 community right-to-know law. If Congress agrees, the first year the changes could be possible would be 2008.
Those changes would exempt companies from disclosing their toxic pollution if they claim to release fewer than 5,000 pounds of a specific chemical -- the current limit is 500 pounds -- or if they store it onsite but claim to release "zero" amounts of the worst pollutants. Those include mercury, DDT, PCBs and other chemicals that persist in the environment and work up the food chain. However, companies must report any storage of dioxin or dioxin-like compounds, even if none are released.
EPA officials say communities will still know about the types of toxic releases, but not some of the details about how each chemical was managed or released. Critics say it will reduce the information the public has on more than 600 chemicals put in the air, water and land, making it harder for officials, communities and interest groups to help protect public health.
http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2005/12/14/epa_would_ease_pollution_reporting_rules/
AP: More blacks live with pollution
By David Pace, Associated Press Writer December 14, 2005
CHICAGO --An Associated Press analysis of a little-known government research project shows that black Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger.
Residents in neighborhoods with the highest pollution scores also tend to be poorer, less educated and more often unemployed than those elsewhere in the country, AP found.
"Poor communities, frequently communities of color but not exclusively, suffer disproportionately," said Carol Browner, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration when the scoring system was developed. "If you look at where our industrialized facilities tend to be located, they're not in the upper middle class neighborhoods."
With help from government scientists, AP mapped the risk scores for every neighborhood counted by the Census Bureau in 2000. The scores were then used to compare risks between neighborhoods and to study the racial and economic status of those who breathe America's most unhealthy air.
President Clinton ordered the government in 1993 to ensure equality in protecting Americans from pollution, but more than a decade later, factory emissions still disproportionately place minorities and the poor at risk, AP found.
In 19 states, blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to live in neighborhoods where air pollution seems to pose the greatest health danger, the analysis showed.
More than half the blacks in Kansas and nearly half of Missouri's black population, for example, live in the 10 percent of their states' neighborhoods with the highest risk scores. Similarly, more than four out of every 10 blacks in Kentucky, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin live in high-risk neighborhoods.
And while Hispanics and Asians aren't overrepresented in high-risk neighborhoods nationally, in certain states they are. In Michigan, for example, 8.3 percent of the people living in high-risk areas are Hispanic, though Hispanics make up 3.3 percent of the statewide population.
All told, there are 12 states where Hispanics are more than twice as likely as non-Hispanics to live in neighborhoods with the highest risk scores. There are seven states where Asians are more than twice as likely as whites to live in the most polluted areas.
The average income in the highest risk neighborhoods was $18,806 when the Census last measured it, more than $3,000 less than the nationwide average.
One of every six people in the high-risk areas lived in poverty, compared with one of eight elsewhere, AP found.
Unemployment was nearly 20 percent higher than the national average in the neighborhoods with the highest risk scores, and residents there were far less likely to have college degrees.
Research over the past two decades has shown that short-term exposure to common air pollution worsens existing lung and heart disease and is linked to diseases like asthma, bronchitis and cancer. Long-term exposure increases the risks.
The Bush administration, which has tried to ease some Clean Air Act regulations, says its mission isn't to alleviate pollution among specific racial or income groups but rather to protect everyone facing the highest risk.
"We're going to get at those folks to make sure that they are going to be breathing clean air, and that's regardless of their race, creed or color," said Deputy EPA Administrator Marcus Peacock.
Peacock said industrial air pollution has declined significantly in the past 30 years as regulations and technology have improved. Since 1990, according to EPA, total annual emissions of 188 regulated toxins have declined by 36 percent.
Still, Peacock acknowledged, "there are risks, and I would assume some unacceptable risks, posed by industrial air pollution in some parts of the country."
Government scientists and contractors spent millions of dollars creating the health risk measures. They're based on air emission reports from industry, ratings of each chemical's potential health dangers, the paths pollution takes as it spreads through neighborhoods, and the number of people of different ages and genders living near plants.
The AP used EPA risk scores from 2000 so they would match the Census data and because it takes years for the government to get corrected emissions data. Some risks may have changed since then as factories opened or closed or their emissions changed. The risk scores aren't meant to calculate a citizen's precise odds of getting sick but rather to help compare communities and identify those in need of further attention.
The scores also don't include risks from other types of air pollution, such as automobile exhaust.
Kevin Brown's most feared opponent on the sandlot or basketball court while he was growing up wasn't another kid. It was the polluted air he breathed.
"I would look outside and I would see him just leaning on a tree or leaning over a pole, gasping, gasping, trying to get some breath so he could go back to playing," recalls his mother, Lana Brown.
Kevin suffered from asthma. His mother is convinced the factory air that covered their neighborhood triggered the son's attacks that sent them rushing to the emergency room week after week, his panic filling the car.
"I can't breathe! I have no air, I'm going to die!"
The air in the neighborhood where Kevin played is among the least healthy in the country, according to research that assigns risk scores for industrial air pollution in every square kilometer of the United States.
Altgeld Gardens, the housing project where Kevin spent most of his childhood staying with his grandmother and going to school, is in a virtually all-black neighborhood where more than half the people live in poverty. The two-story project is nestled among the south Chicago steel mills, which for decades turned the night skies orange with pollution.
Most of those steel mills are now closed, victims of imports. But the area still retains enough industry to rank among the nation's neighborhoods with the highest health risks.
Just across the Little Calumet River from Altgeld, the ISG Riverdale steel plant annually releases into the air tens of thousands of pounds of heavy metals like manganese, zinc, lead and nickel. Dave Allen, a spokesman for Mittal Steel, which acquired the factory this year, said his company is committed to improvements.
"The environment is a matter of focus and pride for us and we hope to be good operators," he said.
Mrs. Brown said the asthma attacks that hit Kevin, now 29, were most serious and frequent during the time he stayed in Altgeld Gardens.
"He may now get an attack maybe once a year, if that often, where he has to go to a hospital," she said. "He was having them at one point quite frequently, at least two to three times a month."
Mrs. Brown was interviewed at the home she purchased seven years ago on a tree-lined street neighborhood south of the plant, where the health risk from industrial pollution is one-fifth the level in Altgeld Gardens.
She said she never considered pollution the culprit in her son's asthma, even after she left the neighborhood. It was only after she moved back into her mother's home for several years that she began to realize how widespread breathing problems were in Altgeld Gardens. Two children who lived next door had asthma, and one used a breathing machine as many as three times a day, she said.
"You see things happening and then you say let me start investigating," she said. "I found out a lot of people either had bronchitis or some kind of respiratory problem. Someone in each household seemed to have a respiratory problem."
In Louisville, Ky., Renee Murphy blames smokestack emissions in the "Rubbertown" industrial strip near her home for the asthma attacks that trouble her five children. Her neighborhood, which is 96 percent black, ranks among the nation's highest in risk from factory pollution.
"It's hard to watch your children gasp for breath," she said.
The Murphy family lives just a few blocks from Zeon Chemicals, which released more than 25,000 pounds of a chemical called acrylonitrile into the air during 2000. The chemical is suspected of causing cancer, and the government has determined it is much more toxic to children than adults.
Tom Herman, corporate environmental manager at Zeon, said the plant is reducing its emissions and is talking with area residents concerned about air quality to show that "there are real people working here concerned for them as well as our own health."
Malcolm Wright, 43, operates power washing equipment in Camden, N.J., where several neighborhoods also rank among the worst nationally. He said he developed asthma after moving to the city in his early 30s, and he blames the city's air pollution for attacks that sent him to the hospital four times last year.
Air pollution "works with many other factors, genetics and environment, to heighten one's risk of developing asthma and chronic lung disease, and if you have it, it will make it worse," said Dr. John Brofman, director of respiratory intensive care at MacNeal Hospital in the suburban Chicago town of Berwyn.
"Evidence suggests that not only do people get hospitalized but they die at higher rates in areas with significant air pollution," he said.
Repeated studies during the 1980s and 1990s found that blacks and poor people were far more likely than whites to live near hazardous waste disposal sites, polluting power plants or industrial parks. The disparities were blamed on a lack of political clout by minorities to influence land use decisions in their neighborhoods.
The studies brought charges of racism. Clinton responded in 1993 by issuing an "environmental justice" order requiring federal agencies to ensure that minorities and poor people aren't exposed to more pollution and other environmental dangers than other Americans.
Recent reports suggest little has changed:
--The Government Accountability Office concluded earlier this year that EPA devoted little attention to environmental equality when it developed three major rules to implement the Clean Air Act between 2000 and 2004.
--The EPA's inspector general reported last year that the agency hadn't implemented Clinton's order nor "consistently integrated environmental justice into its day-to-day operations." The watchdog said EPA had not identified minority and low income groups nor developed any criteria to determine if those groups were bearing more than their share of health risks from environmental hazards.
--The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded two years ago after an investigation that "federal agencies still have neither fully incorporated environmental justice into their core missions nor established accountability and performance outcomes for programs and activities."
EPA Assistant Administrator Granta Nakayama disputed those reports, saying the agency has been choosing its enforcement initiatives to maximize the impact on minority and poor communities.
Environmental experts say most pollution inequities result from historical land use decisions and local development policies. Also, regulators too often focus on one plant or one pollutant without regard to the cumulative impact, they say.
Short of government action, citizens in high-risk neighborhoods have little legal recourse. They can file lawsuits under the 1964 Civil Rights Act but must prove intentional discrimination, a difficult burden.
And while some federal agencies have rules that ban environmental practices that result in discrimination, the Supreme Court has said private citizens can't file lawsuits to enforce those rules.
Citizen complaints to EPA have had little effect. From 1993 through last summer, the agency received 164 complaints alleging civil rights violations in environmental decisions and accepted 47 for investigation. Twenty-eight of the 47 later were dismissed; 19 are pending.
"There is no level playing field," said Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. "Any time our society says that a powerful chemical company has the same right as a low income family that's living next door, that playing field is not level, is not fair."
------
The Associated Press analyzed the health risk posed by industrial air pollution using data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Census Bureau.
EPA uses toxic chemical air releases reported by factories to calculate a health risk score for each square kilometer of the United States. The scores can be used to compare risks from long-term exposure to factory pollution from one area to another.
The scores are based on:
--The amount of toxic pollution released by each factory.
--The path the pollution takes as it spreads through the air.
--The level of danger to humans posed by each different chemical released.
--The number of males and females of different ages who live in the exposure paths.
The scores aren't meant to measure the actual risks of getting sick or the actual exposure to toxic chemicals. Instead, they are designed to help screen for polluted areas that may need additional study of potential health problems, EPA said.
The AP mapped the health risk scores to the census blocks used during the 2000 population count, using a method developed in consultation with EPA. The news service then compared racial and socio-economic makeup with risk scores in the top 5 percent to the population elsewhere.
Similar analyses were done in each state, comparing the 10 percent of neighborhoods with the highest risk scores to the rest in the state.
To match the 2000 Census data, the AP used health risk scores calculated from industrial air pollution reports that companies filed for EPA's 2000 Toxic Release Inventory. It often takes several years for EPA to learn of and correct inaccurate reports from factories, and the 2000 data were more complete than data from more recent reports that were still being corrected.
The AP adjusted the 2000 health risk scores in Census blocks around some plants that filed incorrect air release reports in 2000, after plant officials provided corrected data.
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Counties that had the highest potential health risk from industrial air pollution in 2000, according to an AP analysis of government records. The health risk varies from year to year based on the level of factory emissions, the opening of new plants and the closing of older plants.
1. Washington County, Ohio
2. Wood County, W.Va.
3. Muscatine County, Iowa
4. Leflore County, Miss.
5. Cowlitz County, Wash.
6. Henry County, Ind.
7. Tooele County, Utah
8. Scott County, Iowa
9. Gila County, Ariz.
10. Whiteside County, Ill.
Factories whose emissions created the most potential health risk for residents in surrounding communities in 2000, according to an AP analysis of government records:
1. Eramet Marietta Inc., Marietta, Ohio
2. Titan Wheel Corp., Walcott, Iowa (closed in 2003)
3. Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, N.Y.
4. American Minerals Inc., El Paso, Texas
5. F.W. Winter Inc., Camden, N.J.
6. Meridian Rail Corp., Cicero, Ill.
7. Carpenter Tech. Corp., Reading, Pa.
8. Longview Aluminum LLC, Longview, Wash. (closed in 2001)
9. DDE Louisville, Louisville, Ky.
10. Lincoln Electric Co., Cleveland
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On the Net:
The Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.epa.gov
Details of the EPA's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators Project at: http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/rsei/views.html
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/diseases/articles/2005/12/14/ap_more_blacks_live_with_pollution?mode=PF
Taipei Times
Keyser offers guilty plea to US court
SECRET TRIP: A former US official said he made false official statements when trying to hide a trip to Taipei and his romance with a Taiwanese spy
By Charles Snyder
STAFF REPORTER IN WASHINGTON
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005,Page 1
Donald Keyser, a former US State Department official known to be friendly to Taiwan, has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a romantic entanglement with a senior Taiwanese intelligence officer once stationed in the Taipei representative's office in Washington. The charges centered on a secret trip he took to be with her in Taipei for several days in September 2003.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2005/12/14/2003284329
China-Japan tiff overshadows ASEAN summit
AP , KUALA LUMPUR
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005,Page 1
Japan's prime minister said yesterday that he is baffled by the Chinese premier's refusal to meet one-on-one, fueling a row dating back to World War II and clouding a summit with grand visions for a pan-Asian community.
South Korea and Southeast Asian nations inked an accord during meetings yesterday to set up a free trade area, while the Philippines invited Russia and China to join a Southeast Asian anti-terror coalition.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2005/12/14/2003284330
Ang Lee's latest film tops Golden Globe nominations
AFP , LOS ANGELES
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005,Page 1
The gay cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain led nominations for the Golden Globe Awards yesterday, picking up seven nods as Hollywood launched its annual awards season and countdown to the Oscars.
As well as best dramatic picture, the film garnered nominations for director Ang Lee (李安), actor Heath Ledger and supporting actress Michelle Williams.
Other contenders for best dramatic film were Woody Allen's Match Point, conspiracy thriller The Constant Gardner, broadcast drama Good Night, and Good Luck and the psychological mob hit A History of Violence."
The seven Globe nominations for Brokeback Mountain confirm its status as an Oscar front-runner, having already been named best picture by the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2005/12/14/2003284334
China not a military force to be reckoned with, yet
By Chang Yun-ping
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005,Page 3
The rise of China and the growth of its economic and military power has not yet challenged US supremacy in maritime East and Southeast Asia as US strategic partnerships with regional allies are getting stronger and China still lacks the capability to build a powerful navy, a US scholar specializing in China-US affairs said at a conference in Taipei yesterday.
Robert Ross, executive board member and research associate of the Harvard-based John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies, made the comments yesterday at a forum entitled "The Rise of China and the Future of the Asia-Pacific Region," which was organized by the Asia Foundation in Taiwan and sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2005/12/14/2003284354
Legislature raises pensions for farmers, fishermen
By Ko Shu-ling
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005,Page 4
The legislature yesterday passed amendments to the Temporary Statute Regarding the Welfare Pension of Senior Farmers, which will increase the monthly pension of senior farmers from NT$4,000 to NT$5,000.
The revised scheme will go into effect on Jan. 1 next year and is estimated to benefit 710,000 farmers and fishermen. The government is projected to spend an additional NT$8.6 billion annually to extend the scheme. The annual cost currently is about NT$23 billion and benefits 670,000 farmers and fishermen nationwide.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2005/12/14/2003284363
Taiwan Quick Take
STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2005,Page 3
Arms bill fails again
The legislature's Procedure Committee yesterday placed the government budget at the top of the next legislative agenda, while voting down the arms procurement bill for the 41st time as well as the confirmation of Control Yuan members. The Procedure Committee voted 17 to 12 in favor of a proposal filed by People First Party (PFP) Legislator Lin Te-fu not to table the long-stalled arms procurement plan, consideration of the president's nomination of Control Yuan members, draft amendments to the Referendum Law and amendments to the Organic Law of the Ministry of Justice Organization, which would establish a new department dedicated to the investigation of corruption and related crimes.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2005/12/14/2003284349
The Washington Post
For Kurds, A Surge Of Violence In Campaign
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; A01
DAHUK, Iraq -- When hundreds of rioters ransacked and torched the Kurdistan Islamic Union office in this northern Iraqi city last week, their message seemed as clear as the electric-blue graffiti left on the building's blackened shell.
Spray-painted across a stone facade dimpled with hundreds of bullet holes were the words "Long live 730," the numerical ballot designation for the political alliance led by Iraq's two largest Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Along a stairwell, someone had written "traitors."
Mobs carried out similar daylight attacks in four other cities in normally tranquil Dahuk province on Dec. 6, destroying offices of the Islamic Union, which quit the alliance last month to field its own candidates in Thursday's parliamentary elections. Four party members were killed, including two shot in the head here in the provincial capital who died of their wounds Saturday. Dozens were injured, many of them police officers.
Although U.S. officials consider the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq a model of what the rest of the country could someday become, the attacks last week were another reminder that Iraqis have been slow to discard the politics of force and intimidation in the country's lurch toward democracy. They also suggest that as Iraqis prepare to choose their first full-term government since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, some of the deepest social fissures lie not just among its large communities, but within them.
"Is there any doubt the big parties punished us for leaving the coalition? It is impossible that anything like this can happen here without their hand in it," said Omar Badi, an Islamic Union candidate for parliament, standing beside the wreckage of 21 cars set ablaze that day. "This had to be organized. It did not happen spontaneously."
Local officials and police said the KDP, the dominant power in the province, had not orchestrated the attacks. Public animosity had built for weeks against the Islamic Union, a Sunni Muslim party, for portraying the coming election as a clash of believers and nonbelievers in a region known for secularism and religious tolerance, politicians and residents said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121302119_pf.html
Marshals To Patrol Land, Sea Transport
TSA Test Includes Surveillance Teams On Metro System
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; A01
Teams of undercover air marshals and uniformed law enforcement officers will fan out to bus and train stations, ferries, and mass transit facilities across the country this week in a new test program to conduct surveillance and "counter potential criminal terrorist activity in all modes of transportation," according to internal federal documents.
According to internal Transportation Security Administration documents, the program calls for newly created "Visible Intermodal Protection and Response" teams -- called "Viper" teams -- to take positions in public areas along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and Los Angeles rail lines; ferries in Washington state; and mass transit systems in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Viper teams will also patrol the Washington Metro system.
A Viper team will consist of two air marshals, one TSA bomb-sniffing-canine team, one or two transportation security inspectors, one local law enforcement officer, and one other TSA employee. Some members of the team will be obvious to the traveling public and wear jackets bearing the TSA name on the back. Others will be plainclothes air marshals scanning the crowds for suspicious people. It is unclear how many Viper teams will be on patrol through the New Year holiday, but air marshal officials confirm that they will be at seven locations across the country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301709_pf.html
Immigration Pushes Apart GOP, Chamber
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; A01
The House Republican leadership and the nation's business lobby, usually close allies, are battling each other over the issue of immigration.
In a rare schism, employer groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are pressing to kill a Republican-sponsored measure that would require businesses to verify that all of their workers are in the United States legally and would increase penalties for hiring illegal employees.
Lobby groups including the chamber, the National Restaurant Association and the Associated General Contractors of America are so vehement in their opposition that they will consider lawmakers' votes on the bill a key measure of whether they will support them in the future.
Still, acting House majority leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) appears to welcome the chance to disagree with his normal confederates. "Congressman Blunt sees no problem with being in a different place from the chamber on this legislation," said Burson Taylor, a spokeswoman for Blunt.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301706_pf.html
PowerPoint Slides: the New Puppy-Dog Eyes
Kids Increasingly Use Tech Savvy To Sell Their Holiday Wish Lists
By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page D01
Sometimes, when children want something badly enough, miracles start to happen.
Promises of spotless rooms and perfect report cards are made. Letters to Santa are neatly typed and spellchecked. Sullen teenagers take the headphones from their ears to shower their parents with compliments.
In hopes of receiving exactly what she wants for Christmas this year, Katie Johnsen, 11, created a Power Point presentation to show her parents what's on her wish list.
In hopes of receiving exactly what she wants for Christmas this year, Katie Johnsen, 11, created a Power Point presentation to show her parents what's on her wish list.
But kids today don't stop there. They are employing their high-tech savvy to wow their parents into fulfilling their Christmas wish lists.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301826.html
Democrat on Panel Probing Abramoff to Return Tribal Donations
By Jonathan Weisman and Derek Willis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page A04
The senior Democrat on the Senate committee investigating former lobbyist Jack Abramoff announced this week that he will return $67,000 in donations from Indian tribes represented by the indicted Republican.
Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (N.D.), vice chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, said he has never met Abramoff, nor did he advocate any program backed by Abramoff's tribal clients that he would not have otherwise embraced. But his move, reported yesterday in the Forum of Fargo, N.D., illustrates how broadly the political stain of Abramoff's money is spreading on Capitol Hill.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301582.html
Guidelines Designed to Ensure Vote Accuracy
Associated Press
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; A15
Voting systems would be more secure and voter access improved for those with disabilities under voluntary guidelines approved yesterday by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
The guidelines are a result of legislation passed two years after the 2000 presidential election, with its hanging chads, complaints of inadequate polling places and problems with mistaken voting. The Help America Vote Act requires improved voting systems, improved voter access and statewide voter registration lists by Jan. 1.
The act also required the guidelines that were approved yesterday. "The voting system guidelines we've adopted are structured to make sure voting systems function properly, that they are secure, that the votes cast by voters are counted accurately, that they are accessible to all voters no matter their age, disability and level of literacy," commission Chair Gracia M. Hillman said.
Under the guidelines, those responsible for the voting systems would have to ensure that all voters can cast ballots with privacy, independence and the knowledge that their votes will be counted accurately.
These protections extend to people with disabilities, the elderly and those with limited English skills. Improvements include higher-quality audio aids, larger type for ballots for the vision-impaired and buttons and controls that are easily identifiable.
According to the new guidelines:
Voters should be able to review their choices on the ballot and change them if they want.
Voting machines should have verifiable paper trails that are reliable and secure. Those guidelines could be used by many states that require electronic voting machines that create paper trails.
Security of software and other computer technology used in voting machines should be assured.
The guidelines developed by the Election Assistance Commission will update guidelines adopted by the Federal Election Commission in 2002. By December 2007, all voting systems will be tested against the new standards, but states can adopt the guidelines earlier.
Currently, 39 states require their voting systems to meet federal standards.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301960_pf.html
Reaction to Assassination Shows Rifts in Beirut
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; A26
BEIRUT, Dec. 13 -- In the tony parts of Christian east Beirut, shops and restaurants shuttered their doors Tuesday to mourn the death of Gebran Tueni, a journalist, lawmaker and opponent of Syria assassinated Monday when a car bomb hurled his armored sport-utility vehicle over a hillside.
In the Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Ghabairi, however, it was business as usual: Mechanics hammered dents out of cars, vegetable carts plied shoddy streets and traffic crawled beneath a religious banner.
Lebanon, long a battleground for other people's conflicts, greeted Tueni's death in ways that illustrated what many see as the growing sectarian divide in the country's politics.
Across the spectrum, virtually everyone condemned Tueni's assassination, the latest in a string of attacks that have killed and wounded some of Lebanon's most prominent opponents of Syria. But more telling were the differences in who they held responsible and how they thought the government should respond.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301687_pf.html
Saudi Gives $20 Million to Georgetown
Prince Says He Wants to Promote Understanding of Islam
By Caryle Murphy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 13, 2005; B01
A prominent Saudi businessman said yesterday that he is donating $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard universities for the study of Islam and the Muslim world as part of his philanthropic efforts to promote interfaith understanding.
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a member of the Saudi royal family, said in a telephone interview from the Saudi capital of Riyadh that he also has donated $15 million to establish the Middle East's first two centers for American studies, at universities in Beirut and Cairo.
"As you know, since the 9/11 events, the image of Islam has been tarnished in the West," said Alwaleed, who is chairman of the Riyadh-based Kingdom Holding Co. and has extensive business holdings in Europe and the United States.
He said his gifts to Georgetown and Harvard will be used "to teach about the Islamic world to the United States," and the new programs at American University in Beirut and American University in Cairo will "teach the Arab world about the American situation."
The $20 million gift to Georgetown is the second-largest ever received by the Jesuit-run university, school officials said. It will be used to expand the activities of the university's 12-year-old Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
"We are deeply honored by Prince Alwaleed's generosity," said a statement from Georgetown President John J. DeGioia, who met Alwaleed Nov. 7 in a Paris hotel to sign documents formalizing the donation.
Alwaleed, a grandson of the Saudi kingdom's founder, King Abdel Aziz, tried to give $10 million to the Twin Towers Fund shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. But then-New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani rejected the donation after the prince said in a news release that the United States needed to "re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance towards the Palestinian cause."
Asked about the controversy over his New York gift, Alwaleed replied that "this is behind us and now we are working for the present and the future. . . . My love and admiration to the United States was never diminished."
The Georgetown center, part of the university's School of Foreign Service, will be renamed the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The $20 million will endow three faculty chairs, expand programs and academic outreach, provide scholarships for students and expand library facilities, Alwaleed said.
Center director John L. Esposito said in an interview that "a significant part of the money will be used to beef up the think tank part of what the center does."
Up to now, he said, the center has not had enough resources "to respond to the tremendous demand that is out there, from the government, church and religious groups, the media and corporations to address and answer issues like, 'What is the actual relationship between the West and the Muslim world? Is Islam compatible with modernization?' Now we can run workshops and conferences [on these subjects] both here and overseas."
When asked about the comments that caused the rejection of Alwaleed's gift to New York, Esposito said: "There is nothing wrong with his expressing his opinion on American foreign policy. Clearly, it was done in a constructive way. He was expressing his enormous sympathy with the United States but also trying to give people the context in which this [terrorist attack] occurred."
Alwaleed said his $20 million donation to Harvard will fund its Islamic studies program, which crosses many disciplines.
Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers expressed gratitude to Alwaleed, saying in a statement yesterday that his gift "will enable us to recruit additional faculty of the highest caliber, adding to our strong team of professors . . . [in] this important area of scholarship."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121200591_pf.html
continued ...
Morning Papers - continued
The Guardian
Investigator links Europe's spy agencies to CIA flights
Jon Henley in Paris and Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
CIA prisoners in Europe were apparently abducted and moved between countries illegally, possibly with the aid of national secret services who did not tell their governments, according to the first official report on the so-called "renditions" scandal. Dick Marty, a Swiss senator investigating allegations of secret CIA prisons for the Council of Europe, said that he did not think the US was still holding prisoners in Europe, but had probably moved them to north Africa last month.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1666824,00.html
Calls for mass protest as Syria critic's murder plunges Lebanon into crisis
Rory McCarthy in Beirut and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
Political leaders called for a large demonstration in Beirut today in protest at the murder of a leading newspaper journalist and critic of Syria, as Lebanon was plunged into political crisis.
Schools and universities were closed, many shops were shut and television stations broadcast sombre footage of crowds praying in memory of Gibran Tueni, an outspoken politician and publisher of the respected An Nahar newspaper.
The Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, led calls for an international investigation into his death and into the spate of attacks on prominent Lebanese figures in recent months.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,1666894,00.html
Clarke may reveal secret intelligence on July 7 bombers
Rosie Cowan, crime correspondent
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
The government is considering the unprecedented step of making public secret intelligence on the July 7 bombings, it was revealed yesterday.
Charles Clarke, the home secretary, is consulting the prime minister, police and the security services about producing an edited version of what is known about the four London suicide bombers.
There were demands for an independent judicial inquiry after the attacks, which killed 52 innocent people on three underground trains at Aldgate, Edgware Road and King's Cross, and a bus in Tavistock Square.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,,1666776,00.html
Quiet death of a man condemned
Dan Glaister in San Quentin
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
The moment, when it came, was gentle and dignified. The crowd of more than 1,000 who had been gathered outside the gates of San Quentin prison for four hours was meandering through a rendition of We Shall Overcome when news reached the speakers, on a makeshift stage beneath a yellow anti-death penalty banner, that Stanley "Tookie" Williams was dead.
"Long live Tookie Williams," came a solitary cry. Then another, "Long live Tookie Williams." Then more, ringing through the night air, piercing the stillness, overcoming the sound of helicopters overhead.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1666850,00.html
Bush friend linked to top job in Russian oil industry
Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
A former cabinet minister and close personal friend of George Bush may be appointed head of Russia's leading state oil company, it was reported yesterday.
Donald Evans, who was until early this year US commerce secretary, has been offered the position of head of the board of directors of Rosneft by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the respected business daily, Kommersant, reported yesterday.
If the appointment is confirmed, Mr Evans would be the second former senior foreign official to join the Kremlin's expanding energy empire. Last week, the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder accepted a job as chairman of the North European Gas Pipeline, a project to ferry gas between Russia and Germany that he helped broker.
A source close to Mr Evans in Washington last night declined to confirm the report, but said the former US official had met President Putin during his visit to Moscow last week. "He does not disclose the contents of private meetings," the source said, adding that Mr Evans had met other officials in the hope of improving business ties. Kommersant reported that Mr Evans also met the head of Rosneft, Sergei Bogdanchikov.
When asked about the report hours after it was published, the deputy minister for economic development, Andrei Sharonov, said the appointment of well-known foreign specialists to head Russian companies was "a positive fact that kills several birds with one stone".
Since Mr Putin's re-election in 2004 the Kremlin has been hastily expanding the state's energy companies. Rosneft recently bought part of Yukos's production arm for what some regarded as a low price after state bailiffs seized it in their assault on the business empire of Kremlin critic and billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Gazprom, Russia's biggest company, which is valued at £55bn, has also seen rapid expansion, including the NEGP.
Analysts believe the Kremlin is seeking to re-establish its position as a superpower by placing Russia's massive energy resources directly under its political control. Yesterday Moscow flexed its muscles over one unruly pro-western neighbour, Ukraine, with Gazprom saying it could cut gas off from January 1 if price negotiations were not resolved.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1666840,00.html
CIA flights reports 'credible'
Agencies
Tuesday December 13, 2005
An investigator looking into claims of secret CIA prisons in Europe today said that people were apparently abducted and transferred between countries illegally.
Swiss senator Dick Marty told a news conference that he believed the United States was no longer holding prisoners clandestinely in Europe but that claims about "extraordinary renditions" of prisoners, some of whom allegedly faced torture, had "credibility".
He said he believes any prisoners who were held in eastern Europe - there have been claims about secret prisons in Romania and Poland - were moved to North Africa in early November, when reports about the secret detention centres appeared in the Washington Post.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1666433,00.html
No record of rendition flights in UK, says Straw
Staff and agencies
Monday December 12, 2005
The foreign secretary today said there was no evidence that US "extraordinary rendition" flights had passed through the UK.
Jack Straw said the Foreign Office had checked flight records and could not find anything relating to a rendition flight.
"Careful research has been unable to identify any occasion ... when we have received a request for permission by the United States for a rendition through the United Kingdom territory or airspace," Mr Straw told BBC Radio Four's Today Programme.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1665399,00.html
Refusal to question US over 'torture flights' may be illegal
· Straw finally admits CIA planes landed in Britain
· Calls grow for inquiry into use of UK in 'renditions'
Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday December 13, 2005
The Guardian
The government may be breaking the law by refusing to question the US about "torture flights", senior MPs said yesterday, as it admitted for the first time that CIA aircraft had landed at British airports.
Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said yesterday "careful research by officials" had failed to identify any request from the Bush administration for the passage through Britain of aircraft taking terrorist suspects to secret interrogation centres - described in the US as "extraordinary rendition". He said two such requests were approved under the Clinton administration for flights taking suspects to the US for trial. Another case, also under president Clinton, was still being investigated but might have been refused, Mr Straw said. In answers to Commons questions from Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Straw also said no records had been found of any later requests from Washington.
But ministers have said that no relevant records exist of such flights because the government does not need to keep them. The Ministry of Defence has said no records of passengers are needed if they do not leave the airfield. And yesterday Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, refused to say how many times a Boeing 737 and a Gulfstream identified by the Guardian as being used by the CIA - registered N313P and N379P - had landed in Britain. Such information could only be provided at "disproportionate cost", he said. The Department of Transport says it does not need a record of the two aircraft unless they were involved in "civil commercial" operations. It also says it needed no record if the aircraft landed to refuel.
Mr Straw and Mr Ingram yesterday refused to say what MI5 and MI6 knew about such flights, or about "rendering" suspects. It was the government's policy "never to comment on intelligence matters", they said. In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday Mr Straw admitted CIA flights came to Britain. Asked if he was saying that aircraft - first identified by the Guardian - were not CIA planes, Mr Straw replied: "I am not telling you that."
Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP for Chichester and chairman of a parliamentary committee set up to investigate the CIA flights, told the Guardian: "Turning a blind eye is not good enough. There is enough weight in the evidence which requires the UK to investigate and ask the US categorically what is going on.
"Until that is done and we have a clearer and frank answer the British government will remain exposed to the possibility they may be breaking the law."
Sir Menzies said it now seemed "self-evident that a system of inspections is required". He added: "The government's legal obligations - both domestic and international - make it imperative that we can be satisfied in all cases that no extraordinary rendition is taking place".
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "Few would be naive enough to expect a foreign power to ask specific permission to use Britain for the shameful and shadowy business of kidnap and torture. We need a proactive investigation rather than a [Foreign Office] file-check."
Charles Clarke, the home secretary, writes in today's Guardian that while the law lords last week precluded the use in court of evidence obtained by torture, they "held it perfectly lawful for such information to be relied on operationally, and also by the home secretary in making executive decisions".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1665910,00.html
How planespotters turned into the scourge of the CIA
Gerard Seenan and Giles Tremlett
Saturday December 10, 2005
The Guardian
Paul last saw the Gulfstream V about 18 months ago. He comes down to Glasgow airport's planespotters' club most days. He had not seen the plane before so he marked the serial number down in his book. At the time, he did not think there was anything unusual about the Gulfstream being ushered to a stand away from public view, one that could not be seen from the airport terminal or the club's prime view.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1664149,00.html
Soviet air bases in Poland are labelled secret CIA sites
Ian Traynor, central Europe correspondent
Saturday December 10, 2005
The Guardian
The CIA operated two secret "black sites" for terrorism suspects in Poland, the main European location for the clandestine operation, according to a Polish press report yesterday.
The military expert with Human Rights Watch, which said last month that US intelligence had been using facilities in Poland and Romania to incarcerate and interrogate senior al-Qaida suspects, told the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper that about a quarter of 100 prisoners had been held secretly at two former Soviet air bases in Poland.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1664084,00.html
Extraordinary and unacceptable
Leader
Tuesday December 6, 2005
The Guardian
Condoleezza Rice does not seem prepared to explain very much when she meets European leaders facing mounting pressure about the US policy of "extraordinary rendition" - flying terrorist suspects round the world to secret jails where they are allegedly tortured beyond the reach of any legal system. Broadly speaking, the message from the secretary of state as she embarked on her trip to Berlin, Brussels and points east yesterday was a blunt "trust and cooperate" on the basis that we are all in the same boat in the "war on terror". The sovereignty of US allies is respected, Dr Rice insisted, adding that if they were failing to inform their own citizens that was a matter for them. If that clever hint is true there may be much embarrassment. The best Jack Straw could manage was to welcome her carefully-constructed denial of torture. The Foreign Office says it has "no evidence to corroborate media allegations about the use of UK territory in rendition operations." But taken the strong circumstantial evidence about US executive aircraft owned by CIA front companies transiting this country (and Ireland) this smacks of lawyerly evasion. Is there really no information? Do British intelligence officers working with the US just look the other way or make sure no questions are asked when these aircraft (210 since 9/11) land? It will be the task of the all-party committee which began work yesterday to provide full and honest answers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1659241,00.html
Human rights group to sue CIA
Staff and agencies
Tuesday December 6, 2005
A US human rights group is suing the CIA over claims a man was kidnapped and tortured after being wrongly suspected of links to al-Qaida.
The news came on the day Condoleezza Rice hinted that the US had made mistakes with its policy of rendition.
Khaled al-Masri claims he was abducted by CIA operatives during a trip to Macedonia in 2004, taken to a prison in Afghanistan and tortured. He also says he was held incommunicado for five months.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1660182,00.html
Last oil tank extinguished amid union calls for inquiry
Sandra Laville
Wednesday December 14, 2005
Firefighters survey one of the destroyed fuel storage tanks at the Buncefield oil depot near Hemel Hempstead. Photograph: Reuters
The last burning fuel tank at one of Britain's biggest oil depots was extinguished last night after 59 hours of fire fighting on a scale not witnessed for more than half a century. But the firefighters' success was overshadowed by a dispute between the Fire Brigades Union and Hertfordshire fire authority.
Roy Wilsher, the chief fire officer for Hertfordshire, said the heroic efforts of more than 650 firefighters from 16 brigades had succeeded in quenching an inferno which had destroyed the Buncefield oil depot in Hemel Hempstead, closed hundreds of schools, forced thousands of residents from their homes and shut down motorways.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/buncefieldfueldepotblaze/story/0,,1666779,00.html
Gay cowboy film receives seven Golden Globe nominations
· Blockbusters lose out as independents steal show
· Match Point brings Woody Allen back in from cold
Dan Glaister
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
The belief that Hollywood loves nothing more than a minority was given a boost yesterday when the gay cowboy drama Brokeback Mountain topped the list of nominations for the Golden Globe awards. The film, made by the genre-hopping director Ang Lee, received seven nominations, including best drama, director, actor, supporting actress, screenplay, score and song.
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1666804,00.html
The New York Times
Palestinian Gunmen Storm Election Offices in Gaza and West Bank
By GREG MYRE
JERUSALEM, Dec. 13 - Palestinian gunmen stormed four election offices in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on Tuesday, adding to the political instability in advance of parliamentary elections planned for next month.
Dozens of masked gunmen belonging to the Fatah movement of the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, fired into the air and burst into election offices in Gaza City. The gunmen said they were upset with the candidates Mr. Abbas and the Fatah leadership planned to enter in the election. The gunmen eventually left.
Armed Fatah agents also charged into two other election offices in Gaza and one in Nablus in the West Bank, where they stole a computer and a television set. No injuries were reported in the incidents.
"This is a peaceful step to protest the policy of appointments within Fatah," Abu Eyad, a spokesman for the gunmen, told Reuters.
The chief Palestinian election official, Amar Dwik, ordered all election offices closed and their activities suspended. Wednesday night is the deadline for parties to submit candidates for the elections, on Jan. 25.
The gunmen "asked our staff to leave the offices; they started to shout and even shoot inside the offices," Mr. Dwik told The Associated Press in Ramallah in the West Bank. "We call upon the Palestinian Authority to assume its responsibilities and to provide security."
Mr. Abbas's office released a statement calling on the security forces "to take the necessary measures to arrest the perpetrators."
He also urged the election commission to "resume its work to save the elections and ensure the success of the Palestinian democratic process."
Although Palestinian factions have clashed with the Palestinian Authority, the turmoil reflected worsening tensions in Fatah, which has dominated Palestinian politics for decades.
The gunmen said they were upset by reports that the candidate list would be made up mostly of old-guard Fatah members with close ties to the leadership, rather than younger members who have been demanding prominent positions. The official list has not been announced.
Fatah held primary elections in recent weeks, and younger leaders fared better than the veterans. But gunmen disrupted the balloting several times, and in some areas the primaries were canceled.
As a result, Mr. Abbas and other Fatah leaders plan to select their candidates in a private meeting, bringing new cries of protest from younger members.
The generational split within Fatah has been developing for years.
Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader who died a year ago at age 75, surrounded himself with close aides of his generation, including Mr. Abbas, 70. Mr. Abbas has removed a few members of the older generation, but most have retained prominent posts.
Most of the gunmen in the incidents on Tuesday were believed to be members of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group that is part of Fatah. In a statement, Al Aksa demanded that Marwan Barghouti, the jailed leader of the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, be atop the Fatah candidate list.
In another development, Israeli troops entered Nablus and clashed repeatedly with stone-throwing youths and gunmen. One Palestinian was killed and more than 20 were wounded, Palestinian medical workers said. Two soldiers were slightly wounded, the military said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/international/middleeast/14mideast.html?pagewanted=print
China Struggling to Control Protests
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:43 a.m. ET
SHENZHEN, China (AP) -- Increasingly violent protests throughout China over land, taxes and other disputes are forcing the government to strike a difficult balance, trying to maintain order while letting the public vent frustrations to prevent a larger explosion, analysts say.
In the latest incident, police last week shot and killed villagers protesting land seizures in Dongzhou, a coastal village northeast of Hong Kong. The government says three people were killed, while residents put the death toll at up to 20.
On Tuesday, activists issued a letter calling on the government to allow an independent investigation of the shootings and publish the names of the dead.
''The government now finds itself with a dilemma,'' said Murray Scot Tanner, a political scientist with the RAND Corp., a Washington think tank. ''How to contain these sorts of things without either excessive violence or without sending the signal that people are free to protest is very, very difficult.''
Beijing's biggest fear is that ''the misuse of violence ... could cause a small protest to turn into a huge riot,'' he added.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-Protest-Control.html?pagewanted=print
Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coercion Claim
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Editors' Note Appended
WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 - The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.
The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.
The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.
The fact that Mr. Libi recanted after the American invasion of Iraq and that intelligence based on his remarks was withdrawn by the C.I.A. in March 2004 has been public for more than a year. But American officials had not previously acknowledged either that Mr. Libi made the false statements in foreign custody or that Mr. Libi contended that his statements had been coerced.
A government official said that some intelligence provided by Mr. Libi about Al Qaeda had been accurate, and that Mr. Libi's claims that he had been treated harshly in Egyptian custody had not been corroborated.
A classified Defense Intelligence Agency report issued in February 2002 that expressed skepticism about Mr. Libi's credibility on questions related to Iraq and Al Qaeda was based in part on the knowledge that he was no longer in American custody when he made the detailed statements, and that he might have been subjected to harsh treatment, the officials said. They said the C.I.A.'s decision to withdraw the intelligence based on Mr. Libi's claims had been made because of his later assertions, beginning in January 2004, that he had fabricated them to obtain better treatment from his captors.
At the time of his capture in Pakistan in late 2001, Mr. Libi, a Libyan, was the highest-ranking Qaeda leader in American custody. A Nov. 6 report in The New York Times, citing the Defense Intelligence Agency document, said he had made the assertions about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda involving illicit weapons while in American custody.
Mr. Libi was indeed initially held by the United States military in Afghanistan, and was debriefed there by C.I.A. officers, according to the new account provided by the current and former government officials. But despite his high rank, he was transferred to Egypt for further interrogation in January 2002 because the White House had not yet provided detailed authorization for the C.I.A. to hold him.
While he made some statements about Iraq and Al Qaeda when in American custody, the officials said, it was not until after he was handed over to Egypt that he made the most specific assertions, which were later used by the Bush administration as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons.
Beginning in March 2002, with the capture of a Qaeda operative named Abu Zubaydah, the C.I.A. adopted a practice of maintaining custody itself of the highest-ranking captives, a practice that became the main focus of recent controversy related to detention of suspected terrorists.
The agency currently holds between two and three dozen high-ranking terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world. Reports that the prisons have included locations in Eastern Europe have stirred intense discomfort on the continent and have dogged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit there this week.
Mr. Libi was returned to American custody in February 2003, when he was transferred to the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to the current and former government officials. He withdrew his claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda in January 2004, and his current location is not known. A C.I.A. spokesman refused Thursday to comment on Mr. Libi's case. The current and former government officials who agreed to discuss the case were granted anonymity because most details surrounding Mr. Libi's case remain classified.
During his time in Egyptian custody, Mr. Libi was among a group of what American officials have described as about 150 prisoners sent by the United States from one foreign country to another since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks for the purposes of interrogation. American officials including Ms. Rice have defended the practice, saying it draws on language and cultural expertise of American allies, particularly in the Middle East, and provides an important tool for interrogation. They have said that the United States carries out the renditions only after obtaining explicit assurances from the receiving countries that the prisoners will not be tortured.
Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador to the United States, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that he had no specific knowledge of Mr. Libi's case. Mr. Fahmy acknowledged that some prisoners had been sent to Egypt by mutual agreement between the United States and Egypt. "We do interrogations based on our understanding of the culture," Mr. Fahmy said. "We're not in the business of torturing anyone."
In statements before the war, and without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, and other officials repeatedly cited the information provided by Mr. Libi as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons. Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases."
The question of why the administration relied so heavily on the statements by Mr. Libi has long been a subject of contention. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, made public last month unclassified passages from the February 2002 document, which said it was probable that Mr. Libi "was intentionally misleading the debriefers."
The document showed that the Defense Intelligence Agency had identified Mr. Libi as a probable fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda involving illicit weapons.
Mr. Levin has since asked the agency to declassify four other intelligence reports, three of them from February 2002, to see if they also expressed skepticism about Mr. Libi's credibility. On Thursday, a spokesman for Mr. Levin said he could not comment on the circumstances surrounding Mr. Libi's detention because the matter was classified.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/politics/09intel.html?emc=eta1&pagewanted=print
New Army Rules May Snarl Talks With McCain on Detainee Issue
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - The Army has approved a new, classified set of interrogation methods that may complicate negotiations over legislation proposed by Senator John McCain to bar cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees in American custody, military officials said Tuesday.
The techniques are included in a 10-page classified addendum to a new Army field manual that was forwarded this week to Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence policy, for final approval, they said.
The addendum provides dozens of examples and goes into exacting detail on what procedures may or may not be used, and in what circumstances. Army interrogators have never had a set of such specific guidelines that would help teach them how to walk right up to the line between legal and illegal interrogations.
Some military officials said the new guidelines could give the impression that the Army was pushing the limits on legal interrogation at the very moment when Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, is involved in intense three-way negotiations with the House and the Bush administration to prohibit the cruel treatment of prisoners.
In a high-level meeting at the Pentagon on Tuesday, some Army and other Pentagon officials raised concerns that Mr. McCain would be furious at what could appear to be a back-door effort to circumvent his intentions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/politics/14detain.html?ei=5094&en=82c2f1a581e2e2c8&hp=&ex=1134622800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
Post-Soviet Voting, and Dogging the Watchdogs
By C. J. CHIVERS
MOSCOW, Dec. 13 -- Early this year, as President Bush began his new term, he declared a vision with allure for many people living within the stunted democracies or autocratic governments in the former Soviet Union.
"The policy of the United States," Mr. Bush said, "is to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
Eleven months on, Mr. Bush's inaugural challenge is facing an oblique but determined attack in territory once under Moscow's sway. The battlegrounds are elections, which offer a glimpse into an emerging nation's political health. At issue are perceptions. What exactly is democratic progress? And who gets to define it?
In much of the former Soviet Union, a patchwork of corrupt and semi-functional states where authoritarianism has proven durable and political liberalization has been uneven or thwarted, elections are routinely flawed or stolen, making rigged polls as sure a feature of the political landscape as the remaining statues of Lenin.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/international/europe/14letter.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
Death of an American City
We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.
We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.
There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.
At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a death warrant requiring no signature.
The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost of better levees is too much has grown louder. Pretending we are going to do the necessary work eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless some clear, quick commitments are made, the displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in the alien communities where they landed.
The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives.
Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent?
Losing a major American city.
"We'll not just rebuild, we'll build higher and better," President Bush said that night in September. Our feeling, strongly, is that he was right and should keep to his word. We in New York remember well what it was like for the country to rally around our city in a desperate hour. New York survived and has flourished. New Orleans can too.
Of course, New Orleans's local and state officials must do their part as well, and demonstrate the political and practical will to rebuild the city efficiently and responsibly. They must, as quickly as possible, produce a comprehensive plan for putting New Orleans back together. Which schools will be rebuilt and which will be absorbed? Which neighborhoods will be shored up? Where will the roads go? What about electricity and water lines? So far, local and state officials have been derelict at producing anything that comes close to a coherent plan. That is unacceptable.
The city must rise to the occasion. But it will not have that opportunity without the levees, and only the office of the president is strong enough to goad Congress to take swift action. Only his voice is loud enough to call people home and convince them that commitments will be met.
Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too large and the money too scarce, and that it is better just to look the other way until the city withers and disappears. If that is truly the case, then it is incumbent on President Bush and Congress to admit it, and organize a real plan to help the dislocated residents resettle into new homes. The communities that opened their hearts to the Katrina refugees need to know that their short-term act of charity has turned into a permanent commitment.
If the rest of the nation has decided it is too expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities.
Our nation would then look like a feeble giant indeed. But whether we admit it or not, this is our choice to make. We decide whether New Orleans lives or dies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/opinion/11sun1.html?emc=eta1&pagewanted=print
Pentagon May Be Spying on Anti - War Activists: NBC
By REUTERS
Filed at 2:09 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has a secret database that indicates the U.S. military may be collecting information on Americans who oppose the Iraq war and may be also monitoring peace demonstrations, NBC reported on Tuesday.
The database, obtained by the network, lists 1,500 ''suspicious incidents'' across the United States over a 10-month period and includes four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, some aimed at military recruiting, NBC's Nightly News said.
The network said the document was the first inside look at how the Pentagon has stepped up intelligence collection in the United States since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The report quoted what it said was a secret briefing document as concluding: ``We have noted increased communication between protest groups using the Internet,'' but not a ''significant connection'' between incidents.
Americans have been wary of any monitoring of anti-war activities since the Vietnam era when it was learned that the Pentagon spied on anti-war and civil rights groups and individuals. Congress held hearings in the 1970s and recommended strict limits on military spying inside the United States.
A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the NBC report about the database. However, he said: ``The Department of Defense uses counterintelligence and law enforcement information properly collected by law enforcement agencies.
``The use of this information is subject to strict limitations, particularly the information must be related to missions relating to protection of DoD installations, interests and personnel,'' he added.
The Pentagon has already acknowledged the existence of a counterintelligence program known as the ``Threat and Local Observation Notice'' (TALON) reporting system.
This system, the Pentagon said, is designed to gather ''non-validated threat information and security anomalies indicative of possible terrorist pre-attack activity.''
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-security-pentagon-spying.html?pagewanted=print
Politician, US Soldiers Killed Before Iraq Poll
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:09 p.m. ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Four U.S. soldiers died in a bomb attack and gunmen assassinated a high-profile Sunni Muslim politician on Tuesday, in a stark reminder of Iraq's insecurity two days before a watershed election.
The American soldiers were killed in a bomb attack on their patrol northwest of Baghdad, the military said. No other details were immediately available.
Mizhar al-Dulaimi, who ran his own political party, was shot dead as he campaigned in Ramadi, a violent city west of Baghdad, police said. Three of his bodyguards were wounded.
He was the latest of several influential Sunni Muslims, including a top cleric, to be killed ahead of Thursday's poll, as militants try to sabotage the U.S.-backed political process.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, condemned Dulaimi's murder and urged Iraqis to go ahead and vote on Thursday for the first full-term parliament since Saddam Hussein's fall.
``This is a defining moment,'' Khalilzad told reporters. ''While I encourage participation from all, the United States does not endorse any candidate.''
The deaths of Dulaimi and the U.S. soldiers came a day after the first votes were cast in the election -- detainees, Iraqi security forces and hospital patients voted on Monday -- and as Iraqis abroad also began to vote.
More than 15 million Iraqis are registered to vote in what the poll's supporters hope will be a turning point, ushering in a four-year, 275-seat parliament and a new government to tackle rampant violence as foreign forces begin to withdraw.
Security for the election will be stringent with Iraq's borders and airspace closed and travel between provinces banned. More than 150,000 Iraqi police and soldiers will ring 6,000 polling sites and the next five days are a national holiday.
Campaigning officially ends on Tuesday, leaving a day of reflection for voters ahead of the poll.
Militant groups have told Iraqis not toport in central and western Iraq, even if some elements remain adamantly opposed to the process.
BUSH ENCOURAGES VOTE
U.S. President George W. Bush offered encouragement to Iraqi voters in a speech on Monday, but also ackof the population.
``This government never helped us and the next one won't either,'' said Haider Moussawi, a casual laborer who said he had worked only a few days in the past three months.
ALLAWI FACTOR
A poll commiselection politics.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq.html?pagewanted=print
U.S. Ranks Sixth Among Countries Jailing Journalists, Report Says
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
The United States has tied with Myanmar, the former Burma, for sixth place among countries that are holding the most journalists behind bars, according to a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Each country is jailing five journalists. The United States is holding four Iraqi journalists in detention centers in Iraq and one Sudanese, a cameraman who works for Al Jazeera, at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. None of the five have been charged with a specific crime.
This year, China topped the list of countries with the most journalists - 32 - in jail, many of them for activity on the Internet. This is the seventh year in a row in which China has led the list.
Fifteen of the Chinese journalists are being held under national security legislation for writing critically about the Communist Party online, the report said.
A total of 125 writers, editors and photojournalists were held in jails around the world on Dec. 1, 2005, the report said. The tally is 3 higher than were held on Dec. 1, 2004, but it is not the highest number in the 25 years that the committee has been keeping track. The highest was 182 journalists jailed in 1995.
Cuba ranked second with 24, Eritrea was third with 15, Ethiopia was fourth with 13 and Uzbekistan ranked fifth, with 6 journalists in jail.
No American journalists are being held in jails anywhere in the world, the committee said. The survey is taken on a single day each year and does not count those who may have been held and released at other points during the year. Thus, Judith Miller, a former reporter for The New York Times who served 85 days in jail this summer for refusing to reveal a confidential source, was not included because she was not incarcerated on Dec. 1.
The United States has made the list before because other journalists have been in jail on Dec. 1 for refusing to reveal their sources. But Ann Cooper, executive director of the committee, said this was the first year in which the United States had been on the list for cases in which journalists had been held without specific charges being filed against them.
"This is a country where we are trying to foster democracy," Ms. Cooper said, referring to Iraq. "Detaining people in this fashion and holding them for weeks and months with no charges against them - that is not a lesson in democracy."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/business/media/14journalists.html?pagewanted=print
Names of the Dead
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Department of Defense has identified 2,138 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:
CASICA, Kenith, 32, Sgt., Army; Virginia Beach; 101st Airborne Division.
NELSON, Travis L., 41, Staff Sgt., Army; Anniston, Ala.; 101st Airborne Division.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/national/14list.html?pagewanted=print
Sydney Morning Herald
Whale stranding: last survivor dies
December 14, 2005 - 10:29AM
The last surviving whale stranded on a beach in northern Tasmania has died.
The 10-metre female sperm whale died early this morning, despite a concerted rescue effort.
The whale was one of four female sub-adult sperm whales discovered on a 100-metre stretch of Bakers Beach in Narawntapu National Park yesterday morning.
A marine biologist is taking scientific samples from the four carcasses before they're buried.
Tasmania has the highest number of marine strandings in the world.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/whale-stranding-last-survivor-dies/2005/12/14/1134500886141.html
Both sides of the Iraqi street
Little has changed for a powerful family empire that played a big part in Saddam Hussein's corrupt dealings, reports Paul McGeough.
Sheik Hatam Al-Khawam
IRAQIS dare not utter the sisters' names. But through their marriages, the Al-Khawam women delivered the keys of the vaults of Baghdad for their four businessman brothers.
This wealthy quartet was virtually unknown beyond Iraq and the Middle East until late in October, when a global corruption report revealed their business empire as a vital conduit for huge kickbacks to Saddam Hussein - including $US221.7 million ($300 million) from the Australian Wheat Board.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/both-sides-of-the-iraqi-street/2005/12/13/1134236063780.html
Final pleas fail to save reformed gang leader
By Gerard Wright
December 14, 2005
Silent vigil ... Queen Mother Dr Delois Blakely, the community mayor of Harlem, protests outside San Quentin, where about 2000 people gathered at the time of execution for Williams, inset.
Photo: AP
STANLEY Tookie Williams, convicted murderer and the latest cause celebre in America's 30-year debate over the death penalty, was executed yesterday.
The execution - by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison, north of San Francisco, at 12.35am - followed a frenzied effort to reopen the case by supporters of Williams.
The 51-year-old's fate was sealed on Monday by the refusal of the California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to grant clemency, and the denial of a last minute judicial hearing at state, regional, and, finally, the United States Supreme Court level.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/final-pleas-fail-to-save-reformed-gang-leader/2005/12/13/1134236063743.html
Time dumps senior executives in shake-up
December 14, 2005 - 11:59AM
Magazine publisher Time Inc cut 105 employees on Tuesday, including several senior executives, as part of a management overhaul.
Among those losing their jobs are advertising sales chief Jack Haire and Richard Atkinson, who had formerly been the chief financial officer, spokeswoman Dawn Bridges said.
Former Time magazine president Eileen Naughton and other business-side executives will also go, Bridges said.
Fewer than 10 editorial employees at Time's magazines will lose their jobs.
The reorganisation will streamline Time's management structure, which had grown "organically" in recent years with several acquisitions, Bridges said.
She said the new organisational chart would clarify reporting lines, leaving CEO Ann Moore with only six direct reports as against 10 under the old system.
The shake-up will also result in two executives - John Squires and Nora McAniff - being named to the new position of co-chief operating officers.
Time has about 13,000 employees and publishes more than 150 magazines including Time, Sports Illustrated, People, InStyle and Entertainment Weekly. It is part of the media conglomerate Time Warner Inc.
AFP chooses new agency head
Agence France-Presse on Tuesday chose a member of its senior management, Pierre Louette, as the news agency's new head.
AFP's board elected Louette, 42, to replace Bertrand Eveno, who said last month he was resigning for personal reasons.
His announcement came as staff approved a no-confidence motion in management after a decision to hand news photographs over to police.
The new chairman and chief executive was the only candidate approved by the selection committee to replace Eveno, said AFP's information director, Pierre Taillefer.
Louette has been the agency's executive vice-president since 2003.
He also served in the cabinet of former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur and worked for state broadcaster France Televisions. His private-sector jobs included posts in Havas Advertising and at an investment fund run by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Group's chairman, Bernard Arnault.
Louette was elected by AFP's board, which includes representatives from personnel, the national and regional press and the French state. He has a three-year renewable contract, Taillefer said.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/time-dumps-senior-executives-in-shakeup/2005/12/14/1134500891925.html
Howard quizzed on riots over cocktails
December 14, 2005 - 1:44PM
Leaders at the East Asia Summit have asked Prime Minister John Howard about Sydney's race riots following global news coverage of the violence.
Mr Howard today said it was too early to discuss the long-term reasons for the riots, which should be viewed right now as a law and order problem.
He said several leaders raised the issue at a gala dinner last night ahead of today's 16-nation meeting, which aims to open talks on a pan-Asia free-trade zone.
"It was mentioned informally, yes," Mr Howard told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/howard-quizzed-on-riots-over-cocktails/2005/12/14/1134500896575.html
continued …
Investigator links Europe's spy agencies to CIA flights
Jon Henley in Paris and Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
CIA prisoners in Europe were apparently abducted and moved between countries illegally, possibly with the aid of national secret services who did not tell their governments, according to the first official report on the so-called "renditions" scandal. Dick Marty, a Swiss senator investigating allegations of secret CIA prisons for the Council of Europe, said that he did not think the US was still holding prisoners in Europe, but had probably moved them to north Africa last month.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1666824,00.html
Calls for mass protest as Syria critic's murder plunges Lebanon into crisis
Rory McCarthy in Beirut and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
Political leaders called for a large demonstration in Beirut today in protest at the murder of a leading newspaper journalist and critic of Syria, as Lebanon was plunged into political crisis.
Schools and universities were closed, many shops were shut and television stations broadcast sombre footage of crowds praying in memory of Gibran Tueni, an outspoken politician and publisher of the respected An Nahar newspaper.
The Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, led calls for an international investigation into his death and into the spate of attacks on prominent Lebanese figures in recent months.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,1666894,00.html
Clarke may reveal secret intelligence on July 7 bombers
Rosie Cowan, crime correspondent
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
The government is considering the unprecedented step of making public secret intelligence on the July 7 bombings, it was revealed yesterday.
Charles Clarke, the home secretary, is consulting the prime minister, police and the security services about producing an edited version of what is known about the four London suicide bombers.
There were demands for an independent judicial inquiry after the attacks, which killed 52 innocent people on three underground trains at Aldgate, Edgware Road and King's Cross, and a bus in Tavistock Square.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,,1666776,00.html
Quiet death of a man condemned
Dan Glaister in San Quentin
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
The moment, when it came, was gentle and dignified. The crowd of more than 1,000 who had been gathered outside the gates of San Quentin prison for four hours was meandering through a rendition of We Shall Overcome when news reached the speakers, on a makeshift stage beneath a yellow anti-death penalty banner, that Stanley "Tookie" Williams was dead.
"Long live Tookie Williams," came a solitary cry. Then another, "Long live Tookie Williams." Then more, ringing through the night air, piercing the stillness, overcoming the sound of helicopters overhead.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1666850,00.html
Bush friend linked to top job in Russian oil industry
Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
A former cabinet minister and close personal friend of George Bush may be appointed head of Russia's leading state oil company, it was reported yesterday.
Donald Evans, who was until early this year US commerce secretary, has been offered the position of head of the board of directors of Rosneft by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the respected business daily, Kommersant, reported yesterday.
If the appointment is confirmed, Mr Evans would be the second former senior foreign official to join the Kremlin's expanding energy empire. Last week, the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder accepted a job as chairman of the North European Gas Pipeline, a project to ferry gas between Russia and Germany that he helped broker.
A source close to Mr Evans in Washington last night declined to confirm the report, but said the former US official had met President Putin during his visit to Moscow last week. "He does not disclose the contents of private meetings," the source said, adding that Mr Evans had met other officials in the hope of improving business ties. Kommersant reported that Mr Evans also met the head of Rosneft, Sergei Bogdanchikov.
When asked about the report hours after it was published, the deputy minister for economic development, Andrei Sharonov, said the appointment of well-known foreign specialists to head Russian companies was "a positive fact that kills several birds with one stone".
Since Mr Putin's re-election in 2004 the Kremlin has been hastily expanding the state's energy companies. Rosneft recently bought part of Yukos's production arm for what some regarded as a low price after state bailiffs seized it in their assault on the business empire of Kremlin critic and billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Gazprom, Russia's biggest company, which is valued at £55bn, has also seen rapid expansion, including the NEGP.
Analysts believe the Kremlin is seeking to re-establish its position as a superpower by placing Russia's massive energy resources directly under its political control. Yesterday Moscow flexed its muscles over one unruly pro-western neighbour, Ukraine, with Gazprom saying it could cut gas off from January 1 if price negotiations were not resolved.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1666840,00.html
CIA flights reports 'credible'
Agencies
Tuesday December 13, 2005
An investigator looking into claims of secret CIA prisons in Europe today said that people were apparently abducted and transferred between countries illegally.
Swiss senator Dick Marty told a news conference that he believed the United States was no longer holding prisoners clandestinely in Europe but that claims about "extraordinary renditions" of prisoners, some of whom allegedly faced torture, had "credibility".
He said he believes any prisoners who were held in eastern Europe - there have been claims about secret prisons in Romania and Poland - were moved to North Africa in early November, when reports about the secret detention centres appeared in the Washington Post.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1666433,00.html
No record of rendition flights in UK, says Straw
Staff and agencies
Monday December 12, 2005
The foreign secretary today said there was no evidence that US "extraordinary rendition" flights had passed through the UK.
Jack Straw said the Foreign Office had checked flight records and could not find anything relating to a rendition flight.
"Careful research has been unable to identify any occasion ... when we have received a request for permission by the United States for a rendition through the United Kingdom territory or airspace," Mr Straw told BBC Radio Four's Today Programme.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1665399,00.html
Refusal to question US over 'torture flights' may be illegal
· Straw finally admits CIA planes landed in Britain
· Calls grow for inquiry into use of UK in 'renditions'
Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday December 13, 2005
The Guardian
The government may be breaking the law by refusing to question the US about "torture flights", senior MPs said yesterday, as it admitted for the first time that CIA aircraft had landed at British airports.
Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said yesterday "careful research by officials" had failed to identify any request from the Bush administration for the passage through Britain of aircraft taking terrorist suspects to secret interrogation centres - described in the US as "extraordinary rendition". He said two such requests were approved under the Clinton administration for flights taking suspects to the US for trial. Another case, also under president Clinton, was still being investigated but might have been refused, Mr Straw said. In answers to Commons questions from Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Straw also said no records had been found of any later requests from Washington.
But ministers have said that no relevant records exist of such flights because the government does not need to keep them. The Ministry of Defence has said no records of passengers are needed if they do not leave the airfield. And yesterday Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, refused to say how many times a Boeing 737 and a Gulfstream identified by the Guardian as being used by the CIA - registered N313P and N379P - had landed in Britain. Such information could only be provided at "disproportionate cost", he said. The Department of Transport says it does not need a record of the two aircraft unless they were involved in "civil commercial" operations. It also says it needed no record if the aircraft landed to refuel.
Mr Straw and Mr Ingram yesterday refused to say what MI5 and MI6 knew about such flights, or about "rendering" suspects. It was the government's policy "never to comment on intelligence matters", they said. In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday Mr Straw admitted CIA flights came to Britain. Asked if he was saying that aircraft - first identified by the Guardian - were not CIA planes, Mr Straw replied: "I am not telling you that."
Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP for Chichester and chairman of a parliamentary committee set up to investigate the CIA flights, told the Guardian: "Turning a blind eye is not good enough. There is enough weight in the evidence which requires the UK to investigate and ask the US categorically what is going on.
"Until that is done and we have a clearer and frank answer the British government will remain exposed to the possibility they may be breaking the law."
Sir Menzies said it now seemed "self-evident that a system of inspections is required". He added: "The government's legal obligations - both domestic and international - make it imperative that we can be satisfied in all cases that no extraordinary rendition is taking place".
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "Few would be naive enough to expect a foreign power to ask specific permission to use Britain for the shameful and shadowy business of kidnap and torture. We need a proactive investigation rather than a [Foreign Office] file-check."
Charles Clarke, the home secretary, writes in today's Guardian that while the law lords last week precluded the use in court of evidence obtained by torture, they "held it perfectly lawful for such information to be relied on operationally, and also by the home secretary in making executive decisions".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1665910,00.html
How planespotters turned into the scourge of the CIA
Gerard Seenan and Giles Tremlett
Saturday December 10, 2005
The Guardian
Paul last saw the Gulfstream V about 18 months ago. He comes down to Glasgow airport's planespotters' club most days. He had not seen the plane before so he marked the serial number down in his book. At the time, he did not think there was anything unusual about the Gulfstream being ushered to a stand away from public view, one that could not be seen from the airport terminal or the club's prime view.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1664149,00.html
Soviet air bases in Poland are labelled secret CIA sites
Ian Traynor, central Europe correspondent
Saturday December 10, 2005
The Guardian
The CIA operated two secret "black sites" for terrorism suspects in Poland, the main European location for the clandestine operation, according to a Polish press report yesterday.
The military expert with Human Rights Watch, which said last month that US intelligence had been using facilities in Poland and Romania to incarcerate and interrogate senior al-Qaida suspects, told the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper that about a quarter of 100 prisoners had been held secretly at two former Soviet air bases in Poland.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1664084,00.html
Extraordinary and unacceptable
Leader
Tuesday December 6, 2005
The Guardian
Condoleezza Rice does not seem prepared to explain very much when she meets European leaders facing mounting pressure about the US policy of "extraordinary rendition" - flying terrorist suspects round the world to secret jails where they are allegedly tortured beyond the reach of any legal system. Broadly speaking, the message from the secretary of state as she embarked on her trip to Berlin, Brussels and points east yesterday was a blunt "trust and cooperate" on the basis that we are all in the same boat in the "war on terror". The sovereignty of US allies is respected, Dr Rice insisted, adding that if they were failing to inform their own citizens that was a matter for them. If that clever hint is true there may be much embarrassment. The best Jack Straw could manage was to welcome her carefully-constructed denial of torture. The Foreign Office says it has "no evidence to corroborate media allegations about the use of UK territory in rendition operations." But taken the strong circumstantial evidence about US executive aircraft owned by CIA front companies transiting this country (and Ireland) this smacks of lawyerly evasion. Is there really no information? Do British intelligence officers working with the US just look the other way or make sure no questions are asked when these aircraft (210 since 9/11) land? It will be the task of the all-party committee which began work yesterday to provide full and honest answers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1659241,00.html
Human rights group to sue CIA
Staff and agencies
Tuesday December 6, 2005
A US human rights group is suing the CIA over claims a man was kidnapped and tortured after being wrongly suspected of links to al-Qaida.
The news came on the day Condoleezza Rice hinted that the US had made mistakes with its policy of rendition.
Khaled al-Masri claims he was abducted by CIA operatives during a trip to Macedonia in 2004, taken to a prison in Afghanistan and tortured. He also says he was held incommunicado for five months.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1660182,00.html
Last oil tank extinguished amid union calls for inquiry
Sandra Laville
Wednesday December 14, 2005
Firefighters survey one of the destroyed fuel storage tanks at the Buncefield oil depot near Hemel Hempstead. Photograph: Reuters
The last burning fuel tank at one of Britain's biggest oil depots was extinguished last night after 59 hours of fire fighting on a scale not witnessed for more than half a century. But the firefighters' success was overshadowed by a dispute between the Fire Brigades Union and Hertfordshire fire authority.
Roy Wilsher, the chief fire officer for Hertfordshire, said the heroic efforts of more than 650 firefighters from 16 brigades had succeeded in quenching an inferno which had destroyed the Buncefield oil depot in Hemel Hempstead, closed hundreds of schools, forced thousands of residents from their homes and shut down motorways.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/buncefieldfueldepotblaze/story/0,,1666779,00.html
Gay cowboy film receives seven Golden Globe nominations
· Blockbusters lose out as independents steal show
· Match Point brings Woody Allen back in from cold
Dan Glaister
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
The belief that Hollywood loves nothing more than a minority was given a boost yesterday when the gay cowboy drama Brokeback Mountain topped the list of nominations for the Golden Globe awards. The film, made by the genre-hopping director Ang Lee, received seven nominations, including best drama, director, actor, supporting actress, screenplay, score and song.
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1666804,00.html
The New York Times
Palestinian Gunmen Storm Election Offices in Gaza and West Bank
By GREG MYRE
JERUSALEM, Dec. 13 - Palestinian gunmen stormed four election offices in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on Tuesday, adding to the political instability in advance of parliamentary elections planned for next month.
Dozens of masked gunmen belonging to the Fatah movement of the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, fired into the air and burst into election offices in Gaza City. The gunmen said they were upset with the candidates Mr. Abbas and the Fatah leadership planned to enter in the election. The gunmen eventually left.
Armed Fatah agents also charged into two other election offices in Gaza and one in Nablus in the West Bank, where they stole a computer and a television set. No injuries were reported in the incidents.
"This is a peaceful step to protest the policy of appointments within Fatah," Abu Eyad, a spokesman for the gunmen, told Reuters.
The chief Palestinian election official, Amar Dwik, ordered all election offices closed and their activities suspended. Wednesday night is the deadline for parties to submit candidates for the elections, on Jan. 25.
The gunmen "asked our staff to leave the offices; they started to shout and even shoot inside the offices," Mr. Dwik told The Associated Press in Ramallah in the West Bank. "We call upon the Palestinian Authority to assume its responsibilities and to provide security."
Mr. Abbas's office released a statement calling on the security forces "to take the necessary measures to arrest the perpetrators."
He also urged the election commission to "resume its work to save the elections and ensure the success of the Palestinian democratic process."
Although Palestinian factions have clashed with the Palestinian Authority, the turmoil reflected worsening tensions in Fatah, which has dominated Palestinian politics for decades.
The gunmen said they were upset by reports that the candidate list would be made up mostly of old-guard Fatah members with close ties to the leadership, rather than younger members who have been demanding prominent positions. The official list has not been announced.
Fatah held primary elections in recent weeks, and younger leaders fared better than the veterans. But gunmen disrupted the balloting several times, and in some areas the primaries were canceled.
As a result, Mr. Abbas and other Fatah leaders plan to select their candidates in a private meeting, bringing new cries of protest from younger members.
The generational split within Fatah has been developing for years.
Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader who died a year ago at age 75, surrounded himself with close aides of his generation, including Mr. Abbas, 70. Mr. Abbas has removed a few members of the older generation, but most have retained prominent posts.
Most of the gunmen in the incidents on Tuesday were believed to be members of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group that is part of Fatah. In a statement, Al Aksa demanded that Marwan Barghouti, the jailed leader of the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, be atop the Fatah candidate list.
In another development, Israeli troops entered Nablus and clashed repeatedly with stone-throwing youths and gunmen. One Palestinian was killed and more than 20 were wounded, Palestinian medical workers said. Two soldiers were slightly wounded, the military said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/international/middleeast/14mideast.html?pagewanted=print
China Struggling to Control Protests
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:43 a.m. ET
SHENZHEN, China (AP) -- Increasingly violent protests throughout China over land, taxes and other disputes are forcing the government to strike a difficult balance, trying to maintain order while letting the public vent frustrations to prevent a larger explosion, analysts say.
In the latest incident, police last week shot and killed villagers protesting land seizures in Dongzhou, a coastal village northeast of Hong Kong. The government says three people were killed, while residents put the death toll at up to 20.
On Tuesday, activists issued a letter calling on the government to allow an independent investigation of the shootings and publish the names of the dead.
''The government now finds itself with a dilemma,'' said Murray Scot Tanner, a political scientist with the RAND Corp., a Washington think tank. ''How to contain these sorts of things without either excessive violence or without sending the signal that people are free to protest is very, very difficult.''
Beijing's biggest fear is that ''the misuse of violence ... could cause a small protest to turn into a huge riot,'' he added.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-Protest-Control.html?pagewanted=print
Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coercion Claim
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Editors' Note Appended
WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 - The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.
The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.
The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.
The fact that Mr. Libi recanted after the American invasion of Iraq and that intelligence based on his remarks was withdrawn by the C.I.A. in March 2004 has been public for more than a year. But American officials had not previously acknowledged either that Mr. Libi made the false statements in foreign custody or that Mr. Libi contended that his statements had been coerced.
A government official said that some intelligence provided by Mr. Libi about Al Qaeda had been accurate, and that Mr. Libi's claims that he had been treated harshly in Egyptian custody had not been corroborated.
A classified Defense Intelligence Agency report issued in February 2002 that expressed skepticism about Mr. Libi's credibility on questions related to Iraq and Al Qaeda was based in part on the knowledge that he was no longer in American custody when he made the detailed statements, and that he might have been subjected to harsh treatment, the officials said. They said the C.I.A.'s decision to withdraw the intelligence based on Mr. Libi's claims had been made because of his later assertions, beginning in January 2004, that he had fabricated them to obtain better treatment from his captors.
At the time of his capture in Pakistan in late 2001, Mr. Libi, a Libyan, was the highest-ranking Qaeda leader in American custody. A Nov. 6 report in The New York Times, citing the Defense Intelligence Agency document, said he had made the assertions about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda involving illicit weapons while in American custody.
Mr. Libi was indeed initially held by the United States military in Afghanistan, and was debriefed there by C.I.A. officers, according to the new account provided by the current and former government officials. But despite his high rank, he was transferred to Egypt for further interrogation in January 2002 because the White House had not yet provided detailed authorization for the C.I.A. to hold him.
While he made some statements about Iraq and Al Qaeda when in American custody, the officials said, it was not until after he was handed over to Egypt that he made the most specific assertions, which were later used by the Bush administration as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons.
Beginning in March 2002, with the capture of a Qaeda operative named Abu Zubaydah, the C.I.A. adopted a practice of maintaining custody itself of the highest-ranking captives, a practice that became the main focus of recent controversy related to detention of suspected terrorists.
The agency currently holds between two and three dozen high-ranking terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world. Reports that the prisons have included locations in Eastern Europe have stirred intense discomfort on the continent and have dogged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit there this week.
Mr. Libi was returned to American custody in February 2003, when he was transferred to the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to the current and former government officials. He withdrew his claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda in January 2004, and his current location is not known. A C.I.A. spokesman refused Thursday to comment on Mr. Libi's case. The current and former government officials who agreed to discuss the case were granted anonymity because most details surrounding Mr. Libi's case remain classified.
During his time in Egyptian custody, Mr. Libi was among a group of what American officials have described as about 150 prisoners sent by the United States from one foreign country to another since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks for the purposes of interrogation. American officials including Ms. Rice have defended the practice, saying it draws on language and cultural expertise of American allies, particularly in the Middle East, and provides an important tool for interrogation. They have said that the United States carries out the renditions only after obtaining explicit assurances from the receiving countries that the prisoners will not be tortured.
Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian ambassador to the United States, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that he had no specific knowledge of Mr. Libi's case. Mr. Fahmy acknowledged that some prisoners had been sent to Egypt by mutual agreement between the United States and Egypt. "We do interrogations based on our understanding of the culture," Mr. Fahmy said. "We're not in the business of torturing anyone."
In statements before the war, and without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, and other officials repeatedly cited the information provided by Mr. Libi as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons. Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases."
The question of why the administration relied so heavily on the statements by Mr. Libi has long been a subject of contention. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, made public last month unclassified passages from the February 2002 document, which said it was probable that Mr. Libi "was intentionally misleading the debriefers."
The document showed that the Defense Intelligence Agency had identified Mr. Libi as a probable fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda involving illicit weapons.
Mr. Levin has since asked the agency to declassify four other intelligence reports, three of them from February 2002, to see if they also expressed skepticism about Mr. Libi's credibility. On Thursday, a spokesman for Mr. Levin said he could not comment on the circumstances surrounding Mr. Libi's detention because the matter was classified.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/politics/09intel.html?emc=eta1&pagewanted=print
New Army Rules May Snarl Talks With McCain on Detainee Issue
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - The Army has approved a new, classified set of interrogation methods that may complicate negotiations over legislation proposed by Senator John McCain to bar cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees in American custody, military officials said Tuesday.
The techniques are included in a 10-page classified addendum to a new Army field manual that was forwarded this week to Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence policy, for final approval, they said.
The addendum provides dozens of examples and goes into exacting detail on what procedures may or may not be used, and in what circumstances. Army interrogators have never had a set of such specific guidelines that would help teach them how to walk right up to the line between legal and illegal interrogations.
Some military officials said the new guidelines could give the impression that the Army was pushing the limits on legal interrogation at the very moment when Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, is involved in intense three-way negotiations with the House and the Bush administration to prohibit the cruel treatment of prisoners.
In a high-level meeting at the Pentagon on Tuesday, some Army and other Pentagon officials raised concerns that Mr. McCain would be furious at what could appear to be a back-door effort to circumvent his intentions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/politics/14detain.html?ei=5094&en=82c2f1a581e2e2c8&hp=&ex=1134622800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
Post-Soviet Voting, and Dogging the Watchdogs
By C. J. CHIVERS
MOSCOW, Dec. 13 -- Early this year, as President Bush began his new term, he declared a vision with allure for many people living within the stunted democracies or autocratic governments in the former Soviet Union.
"The policy of the United States," Mr. Bush said, "is to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
Eleven months on, Mr. Bush's inaugural challenge is facing an oblique but determined attack in territory once under Moscow's sway. The battlegrounds are elections, which offer a glimpse into an emerging nation's political health. At issue are perceptions. What exactly is democratic progress? And who gets to define it?
In much of the former Soviet Union, a patchwork of corrupt and semi-functional states where authoritarianism has proven durable and political liberalization has been uneven or thwarted, elections are routinely flawed or stolen, making rigged polls as sure a feature of the political landscape as the remaining statues of Lenin.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/international/europe/14letter.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
Death of an American City
We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.
We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.
There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.
At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a death warrant requiring no signature.
The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost of better levees is too much has grown louder. Pretending we are going to do the necessary work eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless some clear, quick commitments are made, the displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in the alien communities where they landed.
The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives.
Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent?
Losing a major American city.
"We'll not just rebuild, we'll build higher and better," President Bush said that night in September. Our feeling, strongly, is that he was right and should keep to his word. We in New York remember well what it was like for the country to rally around our city in a desperate hour. New York survived and has flourished. New Orleans can too.
Of course, New Orleans's local and state officials must do their part as well, and demonstrate the political and practical will to rebuild the city efficiently and responsibly. They must, as quickly as possible, produce a comprehensive plan for putting New Orleans back together. Which schools will be rebuilt and which will be absorbed? Which neighborhoods will be shored up? Where will the roads go? What about electricity and water lines? So far, local and state officials have been derelict at producing anything that comes close to a coherent plan. That is unacceptable.
The city must rise to the occasion. But it will not have that opportunity without the levees, and only the office of the president is strong enough to goad Congress to take swift action. Only his voice is loud enough to call people home and convince them that commitments will be met.
Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too large and the money too scarce, and that it is better just to look the other way until the city withers and disappears. If that is truly the case, then it is incumbent on President Bush and Congress to admit it, and organize a real plan to help the dislocated residents resettle into new homes. The communities that opened their hearts to the Katrina refugees need to know that their short-term act of charity has turned into a permanent commitment.
If the rest of the nation has decided it is too expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities.
Our nation would then look like a feeble giant indeed. But whether we admit it or not, this is our choice to make. We decide whether New Orleans lives or dies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/opinion/11sun1.html?emc=eta1&pagewanted=print
Pentagon May Be Spying on Anti - War Activists: NBC
By REUTERS
Filed at 2:09 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has a secret database that indicates the U.S. military may be collecting information on Americans who oppose the Iraq war and may be also monitoring peace demonstrations, NBC reported on Tuesday.
The database, obtained by the network, lists 1,500 ''suspicious incidents'' across the United States over a 10-month period and includes four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, some aimed at military recruiting, NBC's Nightly News said.
The network said the document was the first inside look at how the Pentagon has stepped up intelligence collection in the United States since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The report quoted what it said was a secret briefing document as concluding: ``We have noted increased communication between protest groups using the Internet,'' but not a ''significant connection'' between incidents.
Americans have been wary of any monitoring of anti-war activities since the Vietnam era when it was learned that the Pentagon spied on anti-war and civil rights groups and individuals. Congress held hearings in the 1970s and recommended strict limits on military spying inside the United States.
A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the NBC report about the database. However, he said: ``The Department of Defense uses counterintelligence and law enforcement information properly collected by law enforcement agencies.
``The use of this information is subject to strict limitations, particularly the information must be related to missions relating to protection of DoD installations, interests and personnel,'' he added.
The Pentagon has already acknowledged the existence of a counterintelligence program known as the ``Threat and Local Observation Notice'' (TALON) reporting system.
This system, the Pentagon said, is designed to gather ''non-validated threat information and security anomalies indicative of possible terrorist pre-attack activity.''
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-security-pentagon-spying.html?pagewanted=print
Politician, US Soldiers Killed Before Iraq Poll
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:09 p.m. ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Four U.S. soldiers died in a bomb attack and gunmen assassinated a high-profile Sunni Muslim politician on Tuesday, in a stark reminder of Iraq's insecurity two days before a watershed election.
The American soldiers were killed in a bomb attack on their patrol northwest of Baghdad, the military said. No other details were immediately available.
Mizhar al-Dulaimi, who ran his own political party, was shot dead as he campaigned in Ramadi, a violent city west of Baghdad, police said. Three of his bodyguards were wounded.
He was the latest of several influential Sunni Muslims, including a top cleric, to be killed ahead of Thursday's poll, as militants try to sabotage the U.S.-backed political process.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, condemned Dulaimi's murder and urged Iraqis to go ahead and vote on Thursday for the first full-term parliament since Saddam Hussein's fall.
``This is a defining moment,'' Khalilzad told reporters. ''While I encourage participation from all, the United States does not endorse any candidate.''
The deaths of Dulaimi and the U.S. soldiers came a day after the first votes were cast in the election -- detainees, Iraqi security forces and hospital patients voted on Monday -- and as Iraqis abroad also began to vote.
More than 15 million Iraqis are registered to vote in what the poll's supporters hope will be a turning point, ushering in a four-year, 275-seat parliament and a new government to tackle rampant violence as foreign forces begin to withdraw.
Security for the election will be stringent with Iraq's borders and airspace closed and travel between provinces banned. More than 150,000 Iraqi police and soldiers will ring 6,000 polling sites and the next five days are a national holiday.
Campaigning officially ends on Tuesday, leaving a day of reflection for voters ahead of the poll.
Militant groups have told Iraqis not toport in central and western Iraq, even if some elements remain adamantly opposed to the process.
BUSH ENCOURAGES VOTE
U.S. President George W. Bush offered encouragement to Iraqi voters in a speech on Monday, but also ackof the population.
``This government never helped us and the next one won't either,'' said Haider Moussawi, a casual laborer who said he had worked only a few days in the past three months.
ALLAWI FACTOR
A poll commiselection politics.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq.html?pagewanted=print
U.S. Ranks Sixth Among Countries Jailing Journalists, Report Says
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
The United States has tied with Myanmar, the former Burma, for sixth place among countries that are holding the most journalists behind bars, according to a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Each country is jailing five journalists. The United States is holding four Iraqi journalists in detention centers in Iraq and one Sudanese, a cameraman who works for Al Jazeera, at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. None of the five have been charged with a specific crime.
This year, China topped the list of countries with the most journalists - 32 - in jail, many of them for activity on the Internet. This is the seventh year in a row in which China has led the list.
Fifteen of the Chinese journalists are being held under national security legislation for writing critically about the Communist Party online, the report said.
A total of 125 writers, editors and photojournalists were held in jails around the world on Dec. 1, 2005, the report said. The tally is 3 higher than were held on Dec. 1, 2004, but it is not the highest number in the 25 years that the committee has been keeping track. The highest was 182 journalists jailed in 1995.
Cuba ranked second with 24, Eritrea was third with 15, Ethiopia was fourth with 13 and Uzbekistan ranked fifth, with 6 journalists in jail.
No American journalists are being held in jails anywhere in the world, the committee said. The survey is taken on a single day each year and does not count those who may have been held and released at other points during the year. Thus, Judith Miller, a former reporter for The New York Times who served 85 days in jail this summer for refusing to reveal a confidential source, was not included because she was not incarcerated on Dec. 1.
The United States has made the list before because other journalists have been in jail on Dec. 1 for refusing to reveal their sources. But Ann Cooper, executive director of the committee, said this was the first year in which the United States had been on the list for cases in which journalists had been held without specific charges being filed against them.
"This is a country where we are trying to foster democracy," Ms. Cooper said, referring to Iraq. "Detaining people in this fashion and holding them for weeks and months with no charges against them - that is not a lesson in democracy."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/business/media/14journalists.html?pagewanted=print
Names of the Dead
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Department of Defense has identified 2,138 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:
CASICA, Kenith, 32, Sgt., Army; Virginia Beach; 101st Airborne Division.
NELSON, Travis L., 41, Staff Sgt., Army; Anniston, Ala.; 101st Airborne Division.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/national/14list.html?pagewanted=print
Sydney Morning Herald
Whale stranding: last survivor dies
December 14, 2005 - 10:29AM
The last surviving whale stranded on a beach in northern Tasmania has died.
The 10-metre female sperm whale died early this morning, despite a concerted rescue effort.
The whale was one of four female sub-adult sperm whales discovered on a 100-metre stretch of Bakers Beach in Narawntapu National Park yesterday morning.
A marine biologist is taking scientific samples from the four carcasses before they're buried.
Tasmania has the highest number of marine strandings in the world.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/whale-stranding-last-survivor-dies/2005/12/14/1134500886141.html
Both sides of the Iraqi street
Little has changed for a powerful family empire that played a big part in Saddam Hussein's corrupt dealings, reports Paul McGeough.
Sheik Hatam Al-Khawam
IRAQIS dare not utter the sisters' names. But through their marriages, the Al-Khawam women delivered the keys of the vaults of Baghdad for their four businessman brothers.
This wealthy quartet was virtually unknown beyond Iraq and the Middle East until late in October, when a global corruption report revealed their business empire as a vital conduit for huge kickbacks to Saddam Hussein - including $US221.7 million ($300 million) from the Australian Wheat Board.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/both-sides-of-the-iraqi-street/2005/12/13/1134236063780.html
Final pleas fail to save reformed gang leader
By Gerard Wright
December 14, 2005
Silent vigil ... Queen Mother Dr Delois Blakely, the community mayor of Harlem, protests outside San Quentin, where about 2000 people gathered at the time of execution for Williams, inset.
Photo: AP
STANLEY Tookie Williams, convicted murderer and the latest cause celebre in America's 30-year debate over the death penalty, was executed yesterday.
The execution - by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison, north of San Francisco, at 12.35am - followed a frenzied effort to reopen the case by supporters of Williams.
The 51-year-old's fate was sealed on Monday by the refusal of the California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to grant clemency, and the denial of a last minute judicial hearing at state, regional, and, finally, the United States Supreme Court level.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/final-pleas-fail-to-save-reformed-gang-leader/2005/12/13/1134236063743.html
Time dumps senior executives in shake-up
December 14, 2005 - 11:59AM
Magazine publisher Time Inc cut 105 employees on Tuesday, including several senior executives, as part of a management overhaul.
Among those losing their jobs are advertising sales chief Jack Haire and Richard Atkinson, who had formerly been the chief financial officer, spokeswoman Dawn Bridges said.
Former Time magazine president Eileen Naughton and other business-side executives will also go, Bridges said.
Fewer than 10 editorial employees at Time's magazines will lose their jobs.
The reorganisation will streamline Time's management structure, which had grown "organically" in recent years with several acquisitions, Bridges said.
She said the new organisational chart would clarify reporting lines, leaving CEO Ann Moore with only six direct reports as against 10 under the old system.
The shake-up will also result in two executives - John Squires and Nora McAniff - being named to the new position of co-chief operating officers.
Time has about 13,000 employees and publishes more than 150 magazines including Time, Sports Illustrated, People, InStyle and Entertainment Weekly. It is part of the media conglomerate Time Warner Inc.
AFP chooses new agency head
Agence France-Presse on Tuesday chose a member of its senior management, Pierre Louette, as the news agency's new head.
AFP's board elected Louette, 42, to replace Bertrand Eveno, who said last month he was resigning for personal reasons.
His announcement came as staff approved a no-confidence motion in management after a decision to hand news photographs over to police.
The new chairman and chief executive was the only candidate approved by the selection committee to replace Eveno, said AFP's information director, Pierre Taillefer.
Louette has been the agency's executive vice-president since 2003.
He also served in the cabinet of former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur and worked for state broadcaster France Televisions. His private-sector jobs included posts in Havas Advertising and at an investment fund run by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Group's chairman, Bernard Arnault.
Louette was elected by AFP's board, which includes representatives from personnel, the national and regional press and the French state. He has a three-year renewable contract, Taillefer said.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/time-dumps-senior-executives-in-shakeup/2005/12/14/1134500891925.html
Howard quizzed on riots over cocktails
December 14, 2005 - 1:44PM
Leaders at the East Asia Summit have asked Prime Minister John Howard about Sydney's race riots following global news coverage of the violence.
Mr Howard today said it was too early to discuss the long-term reasons for the riots, which should be viewed right now as a law and order problem.
He said several leaders raised the issue at a gala dinner last night ahead of today's 16-nation meeting, which aims to open talks on a pan-Asia free-trade zone.
"It was mentioned informally, yes," Mr Howard told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/howard-quizzed-on-riots-over-cocktails/2005/12/14/1134500896575.html
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