The Boston Globe
Hearing to address phone-jamming lawsuit request
July 13, 2006
MANCHESTER, N.H. --A judge gave New Hampshire Democrats the go-ahead today to question high-ranking Republicans as part of a phone jamming lawsuit against the Republican Party.
Democrats want to hear from individuals at the state and national level who might have had knowledge of the plan to jam Democrats' phone lines in 2002 -- a crime that led to convictions against three former G-O-P officials.
The case is scheduled to go to trial on November 27th. Lawyers say that's a tight timeframe given the number of people to be questioned and the possibility some may challenge the Democrats request to question them.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2006/07/13/hearing_to_address_phone_jamming_lawsuit_request/
60 bad fixtures found in ceiling
Bolt problem in tunnel known since 1999, says attorney general
By Raja Mishra and Sean P. Murphy, Globe Staff July 13, 2006
Inspectors have found at least 60 faulty bolt fixtures that supported the ceiling of the Interstate 90 connector tunnel in the same section where concrete ceiling panels fell and crushed Milena Del Valle, state officials said yesterday.
Though the tunnel passed at least one previous safety inspection, the faulty bolt fixtures -- which Turnpike Authority officials yesterday called ``suspect" and ``compromised" -- went unnoticed until the 38-year-old's death Monday night spurred an unprecedented criminal investigation of the Big Dig's safety.
State officials were uncertain whether the faulty bolt fixtures found in the approximately 50 ceiling panels along 200 feet of the eastbound connector tunnel might have led to similar failures. The 60 potentially dangerous bolt fixtures make up about 10 percent of all bolt fixtures in that section.
Turnpike officials said there are probably more compromised bolt fixtures in the ceilings above the westbound and high-occupancy vehicle lanes of the connector tunnel.
http://www.boston.com/news/traffic/bigdig/articles/2006/07/13/60_bad_fixtures_found_in_ceiling/
Need for heavy panels was debated
By Scott Allen, Globe Staff July 13, 2006
The engineer who oversaw completion of the Interstate 90 connector said in an interview with the Globe yesterday that he questioned the need for heavy concrete panels in the tunnel's drop ceiling when he came on the job, but that he didn't press the issue with senior Big Dig officials, because the ceiling work was already well underway and he was persuaded it was being done safely.
Several of the 2 1/2- to 3-ton slabs crashed to the roadway Monday night, killing a 38-year-old mother of three and closing the tunnel indefinitely.
Officials of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority said yesterday that the concrete panels were part of the tunnel's ventilation system and needed to be heavy to remain still when powerful fans operated at full power.
But some have questioned whether the slabs were needed at all, since their main purpose was to improve air circulation and fresh air was already entering at the entrance to the tunnel 200 feet away.
http://www.boston.com/news/traffic/bigdig/articles/2006/07/13/need_for_heavy_panels_was_debated/
Big Dig Ceiling Collapse
http://www.boston.com/news/specials/big_dig_ceiling_collapse/
Israel claims hundreds of hits in Lebanon
Lebanese citizens inspect a damaged bridge that was destroyed late Wednesday when Israeli fighter jets targeted it, on the Awali River, north of the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Thursday, July 13, 2006. Israeli forces intensified their attacks in Lebanon on Thursday, imposing a naval blockade on the country and pounding its only international airport and the Hezbollah TV station in Israel's heaviest air campaign against Lebanon for 24 years. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
By Sam F. Ghattas, Associated Press Writer July 13, 2006
JERUSALEM --Israel has hit hundreds of targets in Lebanon as part of its effort to force the release of two soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas, a top Israeli general said Thursday.
Israel intensified its attacks against Lebanon on Thursday, blasting Beirut's airport and two Lebanese army air bases near the Syrian border, and imposing a naval blockade. More than 50 people have died in violence following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militants.
Warplanes punched holes in the runways of Beirut's international airport and two military air bases, attacks that could draw the Lebanese army into the conflict.
Israel has information that Lebanese guerrillas who captured two Israeli soldiers are trying to transfer them to Iran, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said. Spokesman Mark Regev did not disclose the source of his information.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/07/13/israeli_warplanes_attack_beirut_airport_1152787531/
U.N.'s Annan sends team to Middle East
July 13, 2006
UNITED NATIONS --U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will send three veteran U.N. officials to the Middle East to try to defuse what he called a "major crisis" there, the United Nations said Thursday.
Annan was responding to a flare-up in violence that began two weeks ago when Israeli forces launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip to free a captured soldier. Israel then launched attacks against Lebanon on Wednesday after Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers.
The team will be led by Vijay Nambiar, Annan's special political adviser. It also includes U.N. Mideast envoy Alvaro de Soto and Terje Roed-Larsen, Anna's special envoy who has overseen implementation of a U.N. resolution demanding Syria end its sway over Lebanon.
"Mr. Nambiar will emphasize to all parties the secretary-general's call to exercise restraint and to do whatever possible to help contain the conflict," Annan's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement released in Rome, where Annan is visiting.
The three officials will head to Cairo for a meeting of the Arab League foreign ministers on Saturday and also travel to Israel, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, the U.N. said.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/07/13/uns_annan_sends_team_to_middle_east/
Guns galore as anarchy stalks Baghdad
By Mariam Karouny July 13, 2006
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Seif has never fired a gun. He wouldn't know how one worked, he says. But that did not stop him buying both a pistol and an AK-47 assault rifle last month.
In Baghdad, it can seem everyone these days is armed, a mark of violence that is ever more anarchic and prompting efforts by the government, U.S. military, and even militia leaders, to curb rogue gunmen, especially among majority Shi'ites, who threaten what the prime minister has called the "last chance" for peace.
Terrified by the thought of being caught up in the sort of street violence seen in several Baghdad neighborhoods in the past week, when dozens of people have been gunned down by squads of militants, Seif typifies Baghdad's spreading gun culture.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/07/13/guns_galore_as_anarchy_stalks_baghdad/
Bush gets conflicting signals over Russia policy
By Matt Spetalnick July 13, 2006
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, conflicting forces are once again vying to shape U.S. policy toward Moscow.
With language sometimes echoing Cold War mistrust, lawmakers from across the political spectrum are urging Washington to use this weekend's Group of Eight summit to get tough with Russia over what they see as backsliding on democracy.
Behind the scenes, however, American business interests are lobbying against anything that might offend Moscow's political sensibilities and endanger access to Russia's booming economy.
"Some of the rhetoric has gone too far," said Blake Marshall, executive vice-president of the U.S.-Russia Business Council, a Washington-based lobbying group. "When politics starts to get in the way of commerce, that's a concern to us."
The debate has yet to evoke the kind of ideological fervor it did during the Soviet era when American hawks and doves battled over policy, but new lines of engagement are emerging.
For President Bush, the challenge will be in coming to grips with those differing approaches when he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday before the G8 major-power summit opens in St. Petersburg.
White House aides see it as a difficult balancing act.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2006/07/13/bush_gets_conflicting_signals_over_russia_policy/
Putin, on defensive, criticizes Cheney
By Associated Press July 13, 2006
MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin yesterday called Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism of Russia ``an unsuccessful hunting shot," a comment that underlines tensions ahead of the Group of Eight summit this weekend.
Under fire from critics who say his country does not deserve to be in the G-8 because of democratic backsliding during his more than six years in power, Putin said the elite club of wealthy nations needs Russia because of its energy riches and nuclear might.
Putin reserved his most acerbic words for Cheney, who angered the Kremlin with a speech in May in the ex-Soviet republic of Lithuania in which he accused Russia of cracking down on religious and political rights.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2006/07/13/putin_on_defensive_criticizes_cheney/
Revealing the road to 'The Dark Side'
By Scot Lehigh, Globe Columnist July 13, 2006
IF NEWSPAPERS are the first, the second draft of history on Iraq is in books and broadcast. Two new offerings might well be called the CIA's revenge, so devastating are their accounts of the Bush administration's pre-Iraq War conduct.
One is a ''Frontline'' production titled ''The Dark Side,'' so named for Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that in combating terror, the administration would have to ''work the dark side.'' The other is ''The One Percent Doctrine,'' Ron Suskind's revealing new book about the way the Bush administration has conducted the war on terror.
That, too, takes its title from a Cheney comment, this time from his reported declaration that if there was even a 1 percent chance of a catastrophe occurring, the administration had to treat that possibility as a certainty when formulating a response.
These two impressive pieces of reporting reveal and reinforce a picture of an administration operating in a world where belief overrode evidence and ideology trumped analysis as it pressed for an ill-conceived war.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/07/13/revealing_the_road_to_the_dark_side/
Lawmakers delay vote on gay marriage measure
By Andrea Estes and Russell Nichols, Globe Staff July 13, 2006
With energetic demonstrators chanting in the street, state lawmakers yesterday delayed a vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage until after the November election.
The joint legislative session voted, 100 to 91, to recess until Nov. 9, two days after Election Day. Legislators also defeated in a separate vote a move to reconvene next week.
Gay-marriage advocates said they had pushed for a postponement so they could persuade more legislators to vote against the proposed amendment and prevent it from reaching the ballot in 2008. But supporters of the ban were furious that the vote was put off.
``Profiles in courage," snapped Representative Philip Travis, Democrat of Rehoboth, a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage. ``They leave the building and don't take up the amendment until two days after they are reelected. Those who took a walk will be scrutinized. Everyone will want to know why they wanted to walk out."
http://www.boston.com/news/specials/gay_marriage/articles/2006/07/13/lawmakers_delay_vote_on_gay_marriage_measure/
Autism, mercury, and politics
By Robert Kennedy Jr. July 1, 2005
MOUNTING EVIDENCE suggests that Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in children's vaccines, may be responsible for the exponential growth of autism, attention deficit disorder, speech delays, and other childhood neurological disorders now epidemic in the United States.
Prior to 1989, American infants generally received three vaccinations (polio, measles-mumps-rubella, and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis). In the early 1990s, public health officials dramatically increased the number of Thimerosal-containing vaccinations without considering the cumulative impact of the mercury load on developing brains.
In a 1991 memo, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccination programs, warned his bosses that 6-month-old children administered the shots on schedule would suffer mercury exposures 87 times the government safety standards. He recommended that Thimerosal be discontinued and complained that the US Food and Drug Administration, which has a notoriously close relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, could not be counted on to take appropriate action as its European counterparts had. Merck ignored Hilleman's warning, and for eight years government officials added seven more shots for children containing Thimerosal.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/07/01/autism_mercury_and_politics/
Party shuns Vermont Democrats in race
Seeks to clear way for independent in US Senate bid
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff July 13, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Vermont's Democratic Party is maneuvering to keep the Democratic candidates for the state's open US Senate seat off the November ballot, as party leaders seek to clear the way for independent Representative Bernard Sanders in his bid for the Senate.
State Democratic leaders are spearheading efforts to gather signatures to put Sanders on the ballot as a Democrat, even though Sanders has repeatedly said he would turn down the party's nomination if he wins the primary. At least three other candidates have announced their intention to run for the Democratic nomination in the Sept. 12 primary, but party leaders prefer Sanders to any of them.
Ian Carleton, the chairman of the Vermont Democratic Party, said the party's efforts to secure the nomination for Sanders is a concession to political reality: Polls indicate that Sanders is so popular in Vermont that no Democrat has a real chance of beating him.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/07/13/party_shuns_vermont_democrats_in_race/
Dozens evacuated as wildfire rages in Calif. desert
Sites of Hollywood Westerns spared
By Christina Almeida, Associated Press July 13, 2006
YUCCA VALLEY, Calif. -- Firefighters evacuated dozens of homes yesterday as a wildfire raced across 26,000 acres of desert and destroyed 30 homes and buildings in an area where Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and others filmed Hollywood Westerns.
Historic buildings in the Old West movie-set area of Pioneertown had been spared but several other structures were destroyed, fire officials said yesterday.
Wind exceeding 40 miles per hour fanned the flames, and officials said they didn't expect the weather to change anytime soon.
Dozens were evacuated yesterday from communities in Little Morongo Canyon and Burns Canyon. As many as 1,000 people fled the flames Tuesday, authorities said. Firefighters had no estimate yesterday of when they might have the blaze under control.
``If we have more of the same with the high winds and high temperatures, it could be trouble," said Marc DeRosier, a captain with the California Department of Forestry.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/07/13/dozens_evacuated_as_wildfire_rages_in_calif_desert/
Kashmiri militants eyed in India blasts
Death toll rises to 200, officials say
By Tim Sullivan, Associated Press July 13, 2006
MUMBAI, India -- The prime minister praised this wounded city for its strength yesterday, vowing that ``no one can make India kneel," while a senior investigator said the Mumbai train attacks that killed at least 200 people could be linked to a Kashmiri militant group.
A Foreign Ministry official demanded that Pakistan dismantle all terrorist networks on land it controls -- but fell short of directly accusing India's nuclear-armed rival for the attacks.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh highlighted the achievements of this city of 16 million, also known as Bombay, which staggered back to life despite attacks on the commuter train network Tuesday that killed at least 200 people and wounded more than 700.
``Your resilience and resolve will triumph over the evil designs of the merchants of death and destruction," Singh said in a televised speech. ``Let me say again, no one can make India kneel. No one can come in the path of our progress."
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2006/07/13/kashmiri_militants_eyed_in_india_blasts/
22 Iraqis are abducted and slain
Victims seized at bus station
By Joshua Partlow and Josh White, Washington Post July 13, 2006
BAGHDAD -- Gunmen kidnapped a group of people in the parking lot of a Baghdad bus station yesterday and killed 22 of them, according to Iraqi police and military officials. The execution-style slayings occurred on the same day Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq and stressed the need to stem the sectarian violence that has killed scores of civilians in recent days.
The early morning raid took place in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad. The Iraqi military said four people were rescued but that the other captives had been killed by the time Iraqi soldiers arrived on the scene.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/07/13/22_iraqis_are_abducted_and_slain/
Fenway for free
A sneak peek into how teens find the cheapest way to see Sox
Josh Earle,16, of Roslindale sneaks into the Red Sox game at Fenway Park by going under the fence on Van Ness St. and into Fenway through RemDawgs on Yawkey Way. Behind him is Sean Driscoll,16, of Hyde Park. (Globe Staff Photo / Stan Grossfeld)
By Stan Grossfeld, Globe Staff July 13, 2006
There was a little blood spilled sneaking into Fenway Park to see the great Pedro Martínez pitch against his old pals last month.
``It was worth it," says Josh Earle, a 16-year-old from Roslindale, dabbing his T-shirt on the minor cut he suffered on his palm while belly sliding under a chain link fence that separates RemDawg's hot dog stand and Fenway Park from the Free World. ``I had to get in to support him. I was one of those kids that painted his face red and held up `K' cards in the bleachers and screamed for Pedro."
Earle and his buddy, Sean Driscoll, 16, of Hyde Park, arrive at Fenway Park at 1 p.m. for a 7:05 game against the Mets. They know the game is sold out; the Sox' last 263 home games have been sold out. ``I've been coming to Fenway since I was born," says Earle. ``I don't have a job. The demand is so high for tickets I can't afford it."
http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2006/07/13/fenway_for_free/
Women's fashion breaks loose
By Tina Cassidy, Globe Correspondent July 13, 2006
When the most recent J. Crew catalog arrived, a mindless glance at the first few pages was disorienting. Wait, was this Liz Lange's latest maternity offering for summer? Page after page carried baby-doll-style tops with ample pleats and fabric around the middle. Hours later, in the check-out at the grocery store, a headline on the cover of Star shouted, ``Reese: Not pregnant -- just bloated!" The poor petite Ms. Witherspoon , even if she was retaining water, was not helped by her billowy top with a drop drawstring waist; she looked so much like a sack of potatoes that her lawyer had to make an official statement declaring that she was not expecting.
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/fashion/articles/2006/07/13/womens_fashion_breaks_loose/
House panel backs bill on FBI ignoring crimes
Bulger-Flemmi case cited; agents would serve time
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff July 13, 2006
WASHINGTON -- A key House panel yesterday approved a bill that would send FBI agents to prison for up to five years if they ignore violent crimes committed by their confidential informants, a stern reaction to abuses involving a former agent and Boston gangsters James ``Whitey" Bulger and Stephen Flemmi.
The bill, approved on a voice vote by the House Judiciary Committee, would require FBI officials to give local authorities information about any ``serious violent felonies" -- including murder, sexual assault, kidnapping, and carjacking -- committed by their informants or other individuals.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/07/13/house_panel_backs_bill_on_fbi_ignoring_crimes/
Zoos
200 trees removed to make way for zoo's rain forest exhibit
Associated Press
EVANSVILLE, Ind. - Crews have removed at least 200 trees at the city's Mesker Park Zoo to make way for an $11 million Amazonian rain forest exhibit that will include 650 trees and plants typically found in the tropics.
The 10,000-square-foot exhibit will include 400 trees outside Amazonia, 100 inside and a new parking lot and zoo entrance shaded by another 150 trees of both hardy tropical varieties and native hardwoods. Many of them are already growing in greenhouses at the zoo.
The zoo director sees the project as good for trees.
"I remember watching them work and a guy with me said, 'What are you going to do when the tree-huggers find out about this?'" said Dan McGinn. "I said, 'You don't understand. We are the tree-huggers. We are replacing much, much more than we are taking out.'"
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/local/14988301.htm
Daby Toure Brings Summer Enchantment To Oregon Zoo
PORTLAND, Oregon - Daby Touré would be a businessman if his father had gotten his way. But a guitar, some self-taught lessons and a determination to succeed have made him into the rising world music star he is today. Touré will enchant the Oregon Zoo crowd when he performs as part of the zoo's Wells Fargo Summer Concert Series presented by Fred Meyer on July 26.
http://www.medfordnews.com/articles/index.cfm?artOID=331534&cp=10997
$1 increase for adults: Zoo fee hike to help pay for elephant enclosure
Tucson Citizen
It will cost adults an extra dollar to see the Reid Park Zoo's two elephants.
Starting Aug. 1, zoo admission will rise from $5 to $6 after a unanimous vote by the City Council Thursday night. Children's admission fees will not increase from the current $2 per child between the ages of 2 and 14. Children younger than 2 are admitted free.
The increase is meant to pay for the construction of the Conservation Learning Center and the Africa Zone of the zoo, which includes the controversial enclosure for an Asian and an African elephant.
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/18382.php
One Man's Opinion - Chippewa Zoo
Rick Smith
Web Posted: 7/7/2006 2:46:31 PM
I think it’s time the city of Thunder Bay considered another upgrade at the Wildlife Exhibit at Chippewa Park. As part of their presentation they should issue a clarification of the reason those creatures are there in the first place. If it is true that they are there because they would not survive in the bush, that they are non-releasable because of injuries that, in fact, they are rescued birds and animals and not “captured” so they can be put on display then for Pete’s sake say so! A simple, single-page handout clarifying this and issuing something of a mission statement would go a long way toward eliminating the resentment that these poor creatures were “captured” replacing the negativity with a positive feeling of gratitude that they were rescued.
The two residents of the facility that I felt terribly sorry for were the bears. Their present accommodation is a vast improvement over the appalling “torture pit” of years ago but I would guess if any single negative response from the public outnumbers all others it would be prompted by the plight of the bears.
We did not spot a single moose – was this because some action was taken following reports of neglect leading to curled up hoofs and moose forced to walk on their tendons?
I’m sure a walk about with some knowledgeable, concerned folks would lead to a list of simple, inexpensive solutions to some problems and accentuate the positive, producing an appropriate attitude of gratitude.
This is Rick Smith and That’s One Man’s Opinion
http://www.tbsource.com/Editorials/index.asp?cid=84425
Second gorilla dies at D.C. National Zoo
Staff and agencies
07 July, 2006
Mon Jul 3, 10:14 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Another western lowland gorilla died at the National Zoo on Monday, days after the zoo‘s only other adult male died while veterinary specialists tried to implant a cardiac device.
Officials were awaiting a final pathology report that might provide more information about the cause of Mopie‘s death.
Though Kuja‘s heart function was found to be normal for his age during a routine physical in late March, members of the zoo staff reported the animal was lethargic and experienced appetite loss this month.
The animals are considered endangered with dwindling wild populations. Zoo officials have said one of the leading causes of death among adult male gorillas is heart disease.
On the Net:
Smithsonian Institution ‘s National Zoo: http://nationalzoo.si.edu
http://www.newsone.ca/hinesbergjournal/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=200940
City zoo on upswing; tops list of tourist draws
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
PATRICK HICKERSON
News staff writer
The Birmingham Zoo was Alabama's top stop in 2005 among admission-charging attractions, according to the state Bureau of Tourism and Travel.
The Birmingham Zoo tallied 449,807 visitors, followed by Visionland (now Alabama Adventure) with 345,000 and the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville - the number-one attraction in 2003 and 2004 - with 320,000. The figures were compiled in April.
The McWane Science Center, which came in seventh place, was the remaining Birmingham-area attraction in the top 10 with 246,699 visitors.
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1147166636302360.xml&coll=2
Popcorn Park Zoo offers discount
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 05/9/06
LACEY: Visitors to Popcorn Park Zoo on West Lacey Road can receive discounted admission by showing their AAA membership cards, according to officials for the Associated Humane Societies, Inc., the group that operates the zoo.
The "Show Your Card and Save" program offers a $1 discount on adult admissions and 50 cents off for senior citizens and children younger than 2 years old. The 7-acre zoo, open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, is a refuge for more than 200 sick, elderly and abused animals. For more information about the zoo, visit www.ahscares.org on the Web.
Joseph Cacchioli
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060509/NEWS02/605090398/1070/NEWS02
Zoo garage numbers assailed
By KATHY MULADY
P-I REPORTER
They give up their evenings and big parts of their weekends, take time off work, attend public meetings of all kinds and pore over numbers with city officials.
John Havard and Irene Wall live near Woodland Park Zoo and oppose the proposed parking garage, which would be situated in the center left of this photograph, between the meadow where the zoo stages concerts and Phinney Avenue North.
Their obsession: a four-level parking garage planned for Woodland Park Zoo that they say would be in the wrong place, wouldn't be used, has been assigned the wrong attendance figures and would lose money every year for 20 years.
The problem, garage critics say, is that the expected number of drivers wouldn't park there, so the garage wouldn't be able to cover its bills -- unless the zoo is planning to hold a lot more events. Even now, on days when there are plenty of $4 spaces in the zoo's parking lots, they note, many visitors prefer free street parking near the zoo.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/269512_zoogarage09.html
BBC
Norway's whale catch falls short
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
Norway's fleet will harpoon just half of its quota this year
Norway's whaling fleet will catch only half of its quota this season.
The government set a quota of 1052 minke whales, but so far only 444 have been landed.
Industry spokesmen predict the final tally for the April to August season will be about 500, and say bad weather earlier in the year prevented hunting.
Western environmental groups say the industry is in crisis, with stores full of unsold meat and a lack of demand from the Norwegian public.
"Norway has some real headaches this summer," said Sue Fisher from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5175970.stm
Colombia volcano provokes alert
Officials are closely monitoring the volcano's activity
The Colombian authorities are urging several thousand people to leave their homes on the slopes and foothills of a volcano that is spewing ash and smoke.
A state of maximum alert is in force around the Galeras volcano in the south-west of the country.
About 2,000 people from nearby villages have so far been taken to shelters.
The last major eruption from Galeras, one of Colombia's most active volcanoes, killed nine people in 1993, including scientists monitoring it.
An explosion of rock and gas from the volcano on Wednesday prompted the local authorities
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5176234.stm
Israel imposes Lebanon blockade
Bridges were targeted in overnight raids on south Lebanon
Israel is imposing an air and sea blockade on Lebanon as part of a major offensive after two soldiers were seized by the militant group Hezbollah.
Israeli warships have blocked Lebanese ports, and its international airport was closed after Israeli bombing.
A Lebanese cabinet minister said the Israeli response was disproportionate, and called for a ceasefire.
Raids on targets across south Lebanon have killed at least 35. Two have died in Hezbollah attacks on Israel.
The operation comes as Israel continues a separate offensive in the Gaza Strip. An Israeli soldier was captured there last month.
See map of crisis in Lebanon
The offensive in Lebanon follows a day of heavy fighting in which the Israelis suffered their worst losses on the border for several years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5175160.stm
Iraq province power transferred
The handover was signalled by a ceremony in a sports stadium
Britain has handed over responsibility for security in one of Iraq's 18 provinces to local forces for the first time since the country was invaded.
An agreement transferring power in Muthanna was signed by Major General John Cooper, who commands coalition forces in southern Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who was present, said the handover "will bring happiness to all Iraqis".
It ends the long-term presence of coalition troops in the province.
UK Defence Secretary Des Browne said it was a "milestone" for the people of the region and of Iraq.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5175478.stm
'No evidence' of shot Iraqi boy
Claims British troops killed an Iraqi boy after firing baton rounds at a crowd have proved unfounded, according to the Ministry of Defence.
Local media said the 13-year-old was hit and killed in a fracas between troops and locals just south of Amara in south-east Iraq on Wednesday.
But an MoD spokesman said troops had combed hospitals in the area and found no record of any child being admitted.
There was "no substantial evidence" to back up the claims, he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5061422.stm
More Iraqi troops to patrol Basra
The Iraqi soldiers will tackle militias and police corruption
More Iraqi troops will patrol the streets of Basra - the centre of the UK operation in Iraq - it has been announced.
Defence Secretary Des Browne said agreement had been reached with Iraqi ministers on a new security plan.
This is intended to curb the city's militias and tackle police corruption.
Mr Browne, currently visiting the country, said: "I believe this plan can make a real difference to the lives of 1.5 million Basrawis."
As a result of the blueprint, security in the city will be given "a more visible Iraqi lead".
Defence minister Abdul Qader confirmed there would be a doubling of the number of routine patrols carried out by forces from the Iraq 10th Division.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5102904.stm
Police detain 300 in Mumbai probe
Police investigating train blasts in the Indian city of Mumbai have detained about 300 people in a series of raids, and released sketches of suspects.
The raids have been carried out in the city and other parts of the state of Maharashtra amid tightened security.
But so far no formal arrests or charges have been made.
The number of people killed in Tuesday's attacks has reached 200, with more than 700 people still being treated in hospital.
The BBC's Zubair Ahmed in Mumbai says that homes, hotels, railway stations and hideouts of suspects have been targeted over the last two days in an attempt to find out who could have been responsible for the blasts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5176890.stm
Mumbai is 'bombed but not beaten'
By Monica Chadha
BBC News, Mumbai
Hospitals have becomes theatres of grief
As Mumbai slowly recovers from Tuesday's serial bomb attacks, hospitals in the city are struggling to cope with more than 700 people injured.
Relatives and friends have been left with the unhappy task of searching for their loved ones by scrutinising lists of survivors on display outside most hospital premises.
The medics not only have to help identify charred and mutilated corpses but have also to attend to the injured lying on blood-soaked beds.
In many hospitals distraught relatives are wandering around in shock at what has happened.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5173276.stm
Bush vows Iran diplomacy solution
The visit is being seen as highly significant
US President George Bush, who is visiting Germany, has said the dispute about Iran's nuclear programme can still be solved diplomatically.
He said it would be dangerous if Iran had nuclear weapons and said the world was united in opposing this.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Iran had not given a firm response to proposals on its energy concerns if it stopped enriching uranium.
Mrs Merkel added that a new course might be necessary.
Mrs Merkel has been showing Mr Bush round the historic Baltic port of Stralsund, part of her constituency.
She is hosting a wild boar roast for him later, in the village of Trinwillershagen.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5176848.stm
'Many die' in new Afghan fighting
Nato forces are battling Taleban fighters regularly in Helmand
At least 19 suspected Taleban militants have been killed in clashes in southern Afghanistan, officials say.
A Helmand province government spokesman said Taleban fighters attacked the village of Nawzad, targeting a garrison of Afghan and coalition troops.
Shopkeepers were surrounded and ordered to leave the centre of the village before the attack began, reports said.
Coalition forces launched air strikes, with reports saying 12 Taleban died in a car, with others killed elsewhere.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5175276.stm
No advance in N Korea diplomacy
Mr Hill said talks in Pyongyang appeared to have failed
Diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis over North Korea's missile tests appear to have made little headway with two sets of talks failing to progress.
Soon after a US envoy said China-North Korea talks had not had a breakthrough, inter-Korean talks collapsed.
But key nations remain at odds on what action to take, setting the scene for a showdown in the UN Security Council.
China says it will veto a Japanese resolution on the issue and, with Russia, has circulated a rival draft.
Japan is seeking a tough resolution - backed by the US, UK and France - that could lead to sanctions against North Korea. But China and Russia have proposed a softer draft that emphasises a diplomatic solution.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5174990.stm
3-in-1 HIV pill is licensed in US
A once-a-day HIV treatment combining three drugs in one pill, has been licensed for the first time by the US Food and Drug Administration.
Atripla, made by Bristol-Myers-Squibb and Gilead Sciences, contains efavirenz, tenofovir and emtricitabine got fast-track approval.
It is expected to be licensed in Europe next year.
HIV experts said patients were increasingly demanding combined treatments.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5176408.stm
Bard's first folio fetches £2.8m
The First Folio contains 18 plays that had never been printed before
A rare complete copy of the First Folio of William Shakespeare's plays has sold for £2.8m at a Sotheby's auction.
The book, one of about 40 complete copies known to exist, was bought by an anonymous London book dealer.
The auctioneer hailed the book, containing 36 plays, as "the most important book in English literature".
The book, still in its 17th-Century binding, includes 36 plays, 18 of which were published for the first time, including Macbeth and Twelfth Night.
"This was a spectacular auction at Sotheby's. Sales like this are few and far between," said Charles Dupplin, book sales expert at specialist insurers Hiscox.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5175044.stm
'Moonie' archbishop rocks Vatican
Milingo renounced his marriage four months after the wedding
An African archbishop who scandalised the Catholic Church with a 'Moonie' marriage before returning to the fold looks set to shock the Vatican again.
Emmanuel Milingo has held a surprise news conference calling on the Catholic Church to allow priests to marry.
He has spent the last four years living quietly at a convent south of Rome following his return to the church.
In 2001, he married a woman in a mass wedding conducted by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5176508.stm
Fifa opens inquiry over Materazzi
Materazzi scored Italy's first-half equaliser in the final
Italy defender Marco Materazzi faces disciplinary proceedings regarding his conduct in the World Cup final.
France skipper Zinedine Zidane was sent off in extra-time in Berlin for headbutting Materazzi in the chest.
Italy went on to win the title in a penalty shoot-out, but Zidane has since said he reacted to repeated provocation from his opponent.
Fifa has summoned the players to attend a hearing of its disciplinary committee on Thursday 20 July in Zurich.
A decision is expected later that day.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/world_cup_2006/teams/italy/5177140.stm
'Suicide' of World Cup official
Juergen Kiessling was known as Mr World Cup to his colleagues
Berlin's top World Cup official has died four days after shooting himself in the head just hours after the football tournament ended.
Juergen Kiessling, 65, was rushed to hospital from his house in Reinickendorf, a suburb of Berlin, after a neighbour heard the shot.
The motive for the incident is not clear, but reports said Mr Kiessling left two suicide notes.
Berlin hosted the World Cup final on Sunday, when Italy beat France.
Mr Kiessling was known as "Mister WM" (Mr World Cup) by colleagues in Berlin.
He was responsible for the hugely successful Fan Mile in Berlin city centre, a concourse where giant screens showed the matches to hundreds of thousands of fans who could not get tickets.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5177440.stm
Greasing the wheels
By George Arney
BBC News, Moscow
Can corruption drive Russians to drink?
Denis is an alcoholic and a drug addict.
But the drugs, at least, are not his fault.
He started drinking at the age of 13. By 16, he was drinking so heavily that - to use his own words - he was "completely mad, nuts!"
He committed a serious crime - he'd prefer not to say what it was - and then spent a year in prison waiting to be put on trial. After that, being found guilty but "nuts", he spent another four years incarcerated inside a psychiatric hospital.
It was in the hospital that Denis became a drug addict.
Psychiatric nurses aren't very well paid anywhere. In Russia they're paid peanuts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5169724.stm
Wolfowitz plea ahead of G8 summit
A deal could lift millions from poverty, the World Bank boss says
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz has called on leaders to push for agreement on a deal to free up global trade at the forthcoming G8 summit in Russia.
In a letter to leaders of the top industrialized and developing nations, Mr Wolfowitz warned that "time was running out" for a deal to be reached.
Long-running negotiations on a trade deal have so far failed to bear fruit.
Leaders of the world's richest nations are preparing to meet in St Petersburg for the G8 summit this weekend.
They will be joined by leaders of the so-called +5 group of major developing nations - China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5163974.stm
Philadelphia Inquirer
Chechen rebel who led attacks is killed
Russia's most-wanted man planned terror attacks that killed 800 people. There was a $10 million bounty on his head.
EKAZHEVO, Russia - Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel leader responsible for terror attacks that led to the deaths of more than 800 people, was killed yesterday when a dynamite-laden truck in his convoy exploded next to a muddy field in this village of redbrick houses.
The blast that killed Russia's most-wanted man, who had a $10 million bounty on his head, appeared to have been an accident, according to regional officials. Basayev died along with three other extremists in Ingushetia - a Russian republic plagued by sporadic spill-over violence from neighboring Chechnya, where Russian forces have battled separatists for a dozen years.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15009416.htm
Chechen rebel's mission won't die
By Jim Heintz
Associated Press
MOSCOW - Shamil Basayev was the face and the brains of the Chechen rebels, but his death yesterday is unlikely to be a fatal blow to the insurgency that has bloodied Russian troops for a dozen years.
Just as Basayev thrived for years after a Russian mine blew off one of his legs, the Chechen rebels have kept up their fight despite the loss of an array of charismatic and wily leaders. The violence has spread throughout Russia's poor and resentful, largely Muslim North Caucasus.
Russian politicians crowed that Basayev's demise would take away the man who was an inspiring catalyst for the small guerrilla bands that hide in Chechnya's woods and mountains in often-primitive encampments. The death was seen as a tactical victory for the Russian forces that Basayev had eluded for years.
There are conflicting reports of how Basayev died. Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Federal Security Service, said Basayev was killed as part of a special operation. But other officials, and the rebels, said he died when an explosives-laden truck blew up next to his car: An accident may have accomplished what Russia's military might was unable to do.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15009438.htm
Major Attacks Linked To Basayev
June 14, 1995 Shamil Basayev leads Chechen fighters in an attack on a hospital in Budyonnovsk, about 90 miles north of the Chechen border. About 1,000 people are held hostage and about 100 people are killed; dozens more die when Russian troops unsuccessfully storm the hospital June 17.
August 1999 Four apartment building bombings kill about 300 people in Moscow and two other Russian cities. Basayev denies responsibility; Russia cites the attacks as one of the motives for sending troops back into Chechnya for the second war in a decade.
Oct. 23, 2002 Chechen extremists take 800 people hostage at a Moscow theater. Two days later, Russian special forces storm the building and use narcotic gas to subdue the attackers; 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters are killed.
Dec. 27, 2002 A suicide truck bomb attack destroys the headquarters of
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15012762.htm
City faulted on disaster readiness
A task force is preparing to release a report Thursday calling for Phila. to beef up its inadequate emergency services for a "24-hour presence."
By Marcia Gelbart
Inquirer Staff Writer
A task force studying Philadelphia's protocol for dealing with a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina has determined that the city's emergency-management office is not on par with similar agencies in other cities.
The Philadelphia office needs to be strengthened so that it has a "24-hour presence," and should be led by a high-salaried executive with a background in emergency services, task force member James Eisenhower said last week.
Eisenhower, an unsuccessful 2004 Democratic candidate for state attorney general, mentioned those findings during an unrelated board meeting last week of the city's fiscal watchdog, the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA).
A broad final report of the 42-member task force on emergency preparedness, which was appointed by Mayor Street in September, is expected to be released at a City Hall news conference Thursday.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15009455.htm
Phila. unready for big disaster
Study says city would be "quickly overwhelmed."
By Jennifer Lin
The question weighed on the mind of every big-city mayor in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: Could my city handle such a cataclysmic disaster?
The answer for Mayor Street is no.
A million-dollar analysis of the city's emergency readiness, which is to be released at a news conference today, has concluded that Philadelphia could be "quickly overwhelmed in a large-scale or catastrophic event."
The report by consultant James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the Clinton administration, said gaps in resources and procedures would make the city vulnerable in times of extreme distress.
While the city can handle big planned events - like the 2000 Republican National Convention or the 2005 Live 8 concert - a major emergency caused by nature or terrorists could turn Philadelphia into New Orleans.
The review, which began in January, found that the city:
Relies heavily on individual knowledge for emergency planning.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15025099.htm
Olmert, Hamas leader intensify verbal battle
No prisoner swap, the Israeli insisted. Mashaal said it was the only way. Talks may yet be alive.
By Michael Matza
Inquirer Staff Writer
JERUSALEM - Underscoring the dangerous stalemate between Israel and Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he refuses to trade Palestinian prisoners for an Israeli soldier abducted last month by Hamas' military wing, while in Damascus, Hamas' political chief, Khaled Mashaal, said the only solution to the burgeoning crisis is a mediated "swap."
The language from both men was fierce and unequivocal.
"Khaled Mashaal is a terrorist with blood on his hands," Olmert said. "He is the head of an organization which openly, publicly and officially calls for the liquidation of the State of Israel... . He is not a partner" for anything, Olmert told reporters yesterday in his first foreign-media news conference since becoming prime minister.
Mashaal, using similar rhetoric to address Israel, said, "You want to liquidate the Palestinian people and place them on the margins of history... you will fail."
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/15009420.htm
Fears of Iraqi civil war climb with violence that kills 40
Two more bombings and shootings left Baghdad reeling. The new prime minister called for unity.
By Joshua Partlow and Bassam Sebti
Washington Post
BAGHDAD - A barrage of bombings and gunfire killed at least 40 people in Iraq yesterday, as sectarian warfare continued a day after Shiite Muslim militiamen had terrorized a Sunni Arab neighborhood in Baghdad.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called on Iraqis to "unite as brothers" and stop the cycle of retaliatory violence.
But the killings that began Sunday morning - with mobs of gunmen pulling Sunnis out of their cars and storming their homes in the al-Jihad neighborhood - spread to Shiite enclaves in the capital and other cities across Iraq.
Many Iraqis expressed fear that the recent attacks were pushing the country past isolated killings into civil war.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/15009422.htm
Tape: Troops were killed because of rape
By Robert H. Reid
Associated Press
BAGHDAD - An al-Qaeda-linked group says it killed three U.S. soldiers last month and mutilated two of their bodies to avenge the rape-slaying of a young Iraqi by troops of the same unit, an institute that monitors extremist Web sites said today.
The Mujahedeen Shura Council made the claim in an Internet video that included the mutilated bodies of two of the soldiers attacked June 16 near Youssifiyah, according to a statement by the SITE Institute.
The institute released still pictures from the video showing two of the American dead, one of whom had been decapitated.
According to the institute, the statement by the insurgent group said the video was released as "revenge for our sister who was dishonored by a soldier of the same brigade."
Five U.S. soldiers have been charged in the March 12 alleged rape and killing of the young Iraqi and the slayings of three of her relatives. The U.S. military released the identities of the suspects yesterday.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/15010648.htm
The Lightning Round
We'll take what we can get
Italy is the new world champion of soccer, having defeated France, which means South Philly has bragging rights for the next four years. May the celebration go on for as long as possible; Italy's fans deserve this joy that had eluded them since 1982.
Besides, who knows when another pro sports championship might arrive in South Philly? The 17-year locust shows up more often. If we must embrace a team from overseas for the opportunity to chant "We're Number One," we'll take it.
Despite Italy's hard-earned victory, the conclusion of World Cup 2006 did not show the "beautiful game" at its best. Retiring French star Zinedine Zidane, perhaps the finest player of his era, disgraced himself by head-butting an Italian opponent and getting ejected in his last game.
Ted Williams said farewell to baseball by hitting a home run in his final at-bat. Zidane chose to assault a man with his bald pate. Given that unsportsmanlike conduct, journalists were wrong to vote Zidane the tournament's best player.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/15009441.htm
'Reforming' FEMA will fail
Katrina exposed flaws in an overly centralized agency. Free markets would do the job better.
By Russell S. Sobel and Peter T. Leeson
The Senate succeeded last week in reconciling two bills intended to reform the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but the proposals do little more than tweak FEMA's organizational chart.
The bills ignore the real problem: FEMA's central-planning approach to organizing economic activity after a natural disaster.
The great weakness of central planning is its inability to respond quickly to changes and unforeseen circumstances. No centralized authority, no matter how well-intentioned its employees and well-functioning its internal operations, can overcome this problem. The superiority of markets over central planning is widely recognized around the world, except apparently by those responsible for American disaster relief policy.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/15009445.htm
Where have you gone, Babe Ruth?
Baseball needs a shot of innocence - a return to the kid-friendly days past when it was all about fun.
By B.G. Kelley
As baseball showcases its All-Stars tonight, there's no way to deny this: The game needs more fun.
Baseball is beleaguered by too many black-eye issues: steroid use; domestic abuse; the bottom-line mentality of team owners; agents and lawyers with little or no regard for the game; and unstable teams full of here-today-gone-tomorrow players who are too often greedy and surly.
Baseball needs to take a page out of its history. Remember Willie Mays playing stickball on the streets of New York with kids? Yogi Berra speaking unguardedly and with ceaseless delight about the game? Ernie Banks coming to the park and genuinely musing, "It's a great day, let's play two"? Richie Ashburn, the symbol of the 1950 pennant-winning Whiz Kids Phillies, signing autograph after autograph for kids?
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/15009446.htm
A Smaller Deficit
Editorial Worth a Bronx cheer
Score one for President Bush, but his budget team is still way behind.
The president said Tuesday that the federal deficit for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 would be only $296 billion. That is good news; last year's deficit was $318 billion. And the Bush administration, never shy about managing expectations, had projected in February that this year's deficit would be a whopping $423 billion.
So a less catastrophic deficit is indeed a ray of sunshine.
But, in this week of the All-Star Game, Robert Bixby, executive director of the nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group Concord Coalition, put the news in perspective with a baseball analogy:
Suppose your team is trailing by eight runs. Then your side scores one run. That is good news. But you are still far behind, and opportunities to erase that deficit are dwindling.
Worse, it's as if Manager Bush glanced at the scoreboard, saw his team trailing 10-3 and pronounced that his pitching staff was doing great. No need to change strategy.
"We're not looking at tax and spending policies in a rational way," said Bixby.
The lower deficit is due in part to an increase in taxes paid by corporations, wealthy individuals and small business owners. It's another bit of evidence that, in this economy, high wage earners are benefitting at a greater pace, with bonuses and bigger salary hikes, than their lower-paid counterparts.
The wealthy are getting wealthier and opening a larger gap on the rest of America.
The president and supporters of his tax cuts claim that the latest revenue uptick proves that tax cuts "pay for themselves" by boosting the economy. It's wishful thinking, this absolutist version of "supply side" theory.
Without doubt, tax cuts can spur economic activity that generates revenue to offset the impact of tax cuts. While this "replacement effect" can vary, it's never 100 percent and rarely more than 50 percent.
The Bush tax cuts are a big reason the government is still operating at a large defict. The red ink is projected to get worse next year.
Fact is, economic growth since the tax cuts in 2001 hasn't been as strong as the growth in the economy in the years following the large Clinton-era income tax increase in 1993. For three consecutive years after the 2001 cuts, tax revenue declined. While revenue has increased over the past year, tax receipts are only now recovering to where they were in 2000.
A lot of factors go into the economy's health, many beyond government's control. What recent history suggests is that supply-siders overestimate the economic benefits of tax cuts, while trying to excuse or minimize the damage they do to the nation's fiscal health.
The last thing the nation should do is look at this budgetary blip and conclude that it justifies extending tax cuts that are set to expire.
"We still have a $300 billion deficit," Bixby said. "We're still not raising enough money to pay for the war, prescription drugs and all else."
We're still down seven runs, and it's getting late in the game.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/15025098.htm
Mind over matter
New technology turns thoughts into actions, offering hope to spinal-cord patients.
By Tom Avril
Inquirer Staff Writer
With the aid of electrodes implanted in his brain, a man paralyzed from the neck down was able to perform certain everyday activities - move a computer cursor, open e-mail, turn on a TV set - merely by imagining them.
The patient, whose spinal cord was injured when an attacker stabbed him in the neck, was even able to open and close a prosthetic hand, his thoughts translated into action by a computer system developed at Brown University.
The results, reported in today's issue of the journal Nature, offer hope that thousands of people with injured spinal cords could someday regain significant function by simply bypassing the injury. Authors predicted a commercial version of the system would be available in just a few years and would also work for victims of stroke and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly called Lou Gehrig's disease.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15025100.htm
Video
http://press.nature.com/pdf/press_files/nature/13-07-2006/nature04970-s7.mov
Barbaro is resting but in guarded condition
By Mike Jensen
Inquirer Staff Writer
The surgeon treating injured Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro said yesterday that the horse was resting comfortably at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center, but he is in guarded condition, "facing tough odds."
"Our entire staff is determined to do all they can for this magnificent horse," Dean Richardson, chief of surgery at New Bolton, said in a statement.
Richardson said all decisions are being made "in constant consultation" with owners Roy and Gretchen Jackson, who live several miles west of the Kennett Square facility and visit daily.
"Barbaro's condition is potentially serious, and we are aggressively seeking all treatment options," said Richardson, who performed surgery the day after Barbaro suffered "catastrophic" fractures in his right hind leg in the May 20 Preakness Stakes. "Today, we will focus on further diagnostics and keeping our patient comfortable."
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15025006.htm
D.A. need not tell how drug money is spent
Pennsylvania law says the confiscated cash may be spent for any "law enforcement" purpose - and the public need not be told where it went.
By Jeff Shields
Inquirer Staff Writer
The prosecutors and police officers marveled when Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor six weeks ago piled a table high with $2.7 million in cash confiscated in a gambling arrest.
No one present that day had ever seen such a fortune - perhaps the largest seizure of its kind in state history. It was equal to almost a quarter of Castor's annual budget.
But even more amazing than the windfall itself: Castor can decide how the money is spent without ever telling the public what he did with it.
It's a quirk of state law that has observers scratching their heads. New Jersey, for example, requires quarterly reports of such seized assets.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15025068.htm
Experiments on prisoners recommended - with limits
Drugs and counseling could be studied, said an independent medical panel that stressed it wants to avoid repeating the Holmesburg horrors.
By Dawn Fallik
Inquirer Staff Writer
Thirty years ago, the federal government severely limited medical experimentation on prisoners after the discovery that pharmaceutical companies and medical researchers were using Philadelphia inmates as medical guinea pigs.
Now, an independent panel has suggested easing those restrictions. But with the lingering specter of Nazi experiments and the local Holmesburg Prison scandal, some say the door should remain shut.
"This is a dangerous cul-de-sac to go down again," said A. Bernard Ackerman, a New York dermatologist who worked at Holmesburg Prison as a second-year resident at the University of Pennsylvania during the trials. "There has to be experimentation in medicine, but populations that are aged, vulnerable or defective mentally should not be used."
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15025044.htm
Stores taking tax hike calmly
Buyers can beat Saturday's clock.
By Edward Colimore and Jan Hefler
Inquirer Staff Writers
In Cherry Hill, the Pet Shoppe alerted customers with a sign: "Sales Tax Increase Effective Saturday 15th. Buy Now and Save."
Other businesses, including Eckenhoff Buick in Cherry Hill, placed newspaper ads encouraging people to buy before Saturday.
And some merchants phoned customers, warning them about Saturday's sales-tax increase to 7 percent.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15025069.htm
Kean researcher's own past ends up in spotlight
By Cynthia Burton
Inquirer Staff Writer
A researcher working on Thomas H. Kean Jr.'s proposed film attacking U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez once sent out thousands of anonymous post cards and automated phone calls accusing a New Hampshire candidate's wife of being in an orgasm cult.
Christopher Lyon's resume includes work done for Republican state parties in New York and Virginia, more than one New Jersey congressman, former New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Bret Schundler, and now Kean, Menendez's challenger in New Jersey's U.S. Senate race.
Lyon researched Willie Horton, the furloughed killer who became an issue in the 1988 presidential race between Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton's background while Clinton was governor of Arkansas.
Lyon, known as an "opposition researcher," is definitely not the kind of campaign worker politicians brag about. Yet his work often drives strategy in a tight race such as the one between Republican Kean and Democrat Menendez.
Lyon declined to comment.
Campaigns for everything from school board to the presidency hire such researchers. Menendez has one, too, who is digging into Kean's background. As a rule, the tighter a race, the more likely the candidates will attack each other.
What is unusual about Lyon is that he is being shoved from the musty record rooms and exhaustive Internet searches and into the light of controversy surrounding Kean's allegations about Menendez.
Kean says Menendez was no hero when he testified against a bribe-taking boss of Union City, N.J., almost a quarter-century ago. Former prosecutors said Menendez's testimony was a courageous act.
Lyon came into the light when he told a New York Times reporter about the Menendez movie.
Menendez campaign spokesman Matthew Miller said a candidate's background was a legitimate area of inquiry, but that it was the Kean campaign's "deliberate misrepresentation of information that is so objectionable."
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15026528.htm
Center Square The real coward
By Chris Satullo
Inquirer Columnist
The only bullets Karl Rove has ever dodged were legal.
Last week, after learning he would avoid indictment for his role in the sliming of an Iraq war critic, Rove had this to say about two men who risked death in service of country, John Murtha and John Kerry:
"Like too many Democrats, it strikes me that they are ready to give the green light to go to war, but when it gets tough and when it gets difficult they fall back on that party's pattern of cutting and running."
In any sentence with the names Kerry, Murtha and Rove, there is only one possible coward. It's not the Pennsylvania congressman nor the Massachusetts senator.
The only combat for which Rove ever volunteered was political. In that realm, he's mastered the coward's way, the sly attack from the hidden place, the anonymous flier full of innuendo, the invective by surrogates, the timely leak to the friendly writer. The shiv goes in the back, but the fingerprints are smudged.
Sadly, it works. So it gets rewarded and imitated.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/14842903.htm
Karl Rove's Role
Editorial He was a source, and in the wrong
The Valerie Plame case is one tangled mess. But one oft-disputed point is now clear:
Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, was a source for the newspaper column that initiated this mess. In 2003, Robert Novak told his readers that Plame, a CIA agent, was married to a vocal critic of Bush's misstatements about Iraqi WMD.
In a column this week, Novak said Rove was not the original source, but a confirming one. The columnist, who (unlike other journalists involved in this case) was never threatened with jail for shielding sources, still won't identify the first leaker to readers, except as an "administration official."
Novak also wrote that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who investigated whether the Plame leak violated a federal law against outing CIA agents, figured out early on who Novak's sources had been. Novak said that, under subpoena, he only confirmed what the prosecutor suspected.
Novak's column is riddled with vague syntax that leaves mysteries unanswered. What's clear, though, is that Rove abetted the outing of Plame. No, Rove was not charged, as his apologists trumpet. Fitzgerald concluded that the facts of the case didn't fit the spy statute well enough. The only indictment, against White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was for lying to a grand jury.
But is this really the feeble ethical reed to which the supposed party of "values voters" clings: "If they can't convict me, it's not wrong"?
The president originally said he'd fire any staffer responsible for the Plame leak. His press secretary denied that Rove was involved. Then, as the heat rose around Rove, the standard changed. Bush said he'd fire only those convicted of a crime.
Guess the president's first statement became "inoperative." Sound familiar?
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/15025116.htm
The Fishbowl
http://inkyfishbowl.wordpress.com/
Recipe Blueberry-Lavender Compote
Makes 3 cups
2 pints fresh blueberries
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
Pinch sea salt
1 teaspoon lavender blossoms (or dried culinary lavender)
1. Pick over berries, removing any stems, and give them a rinse.
2. In a saucepan large enough to accommodate the berries, mix the juice with the cornstarch, sugar and salt. Add the berries and lavender and cook over medium heat until the fruit gives up its juice and the liquid thickens, a matter of a few minutes.
3. Take off the heat and cool.
4. Serve over vanilla ice cream, bread pudding, lemon tart, pancakes, etc.
-From Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating From America's Farmers' Markets by Deborah Madison (Broadway 2002).
Per serving (based on 6): 128 calories, 1 gram protein, 31 grams carbohydrates, 26 grams sugar, 0.4 gram fat, no cholesterol, 33 milligrams sodium, 2 grams dietary fiber.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/15023879.htm
continued …
Thursday, July 13, 2006
When I first started my campaign to reverse Human Induced Global Warming...
... I stated if people, especially the USA the biggest contributor to carbon dioxide on Earth, didn't stop polluting there would come a point when those same people no longer had a choice.
These widespread wildfires are due to Human Induced Global Warming and a 'dew point' that no longer exists. The USA is based primarily in a service economy. Walker Bush declares a 'cheap' USA dollar will invite foreign interests to visit the USA as a bargain spot. Never once, did George Walker Bush mean those words. If he did. The tourist industry in the USA would not be in jeopardy due to the very element I warned against a long time ago.
July 12, 2006. Patterson, California. Photographer states :: DPC Fire. Del Puerto Canyon fire. It's been snowing ashes all over Patterson for about 4 days.
Mroning Papers - continued
The Arab News
Editorial: Moral Vacuum
13 July 2006
FIRST Madrid, then London, now Bombay — terrorists have once again chosen to massacre innocent commuters. But why? What possible good could ever be achieved by slaughtering ordinary decent people as they go about their daily business? The hearts of the world have gone out to the citizens of Bombay to this act of horror. The agony of the relatives of the dead and maimed as they searched through the city’s many hospitals for news of their loved ones was evident from heart-breaking television pictures. The question must be asked how terrorists could view those awful pictures and not feel the slightest remorse for their crime. Yet incredibly it seems clear that these disturbed nihilists actually greet such horrors with perverse satisfaction. The perpetrators of this and other attacks reside in a moral vacuum. Nothing engenders universal contempt by all right-thinking people more than the calculated slaughter of innocent people riding a subway in India, London, or Madrid, or, for that matter, taking a bus in Tel Aviv, going to a wedding in Amman, vacationing in Bali, or taking a commercial flight in the US. What some foreign commentators appeared to forget in their early reports of this latest outrage is that Bombay is no stranger to terror, having suffered the first assault in 1987. In the past, attacks have been blamed on Kashmiri terror groups or other Al-Qaeda offshoots, both of which are apparently based in Pakistan.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=85260&d=13&m=7&y=2006
Hezbollah Seizes Two Soldiers
Hisham Abu Taha, Arab News
GAZA CITY/BEIRUT, 13 July 2006 — Israel pounded southern Lebanon with airstrikes and artillery and sent ground troops over the border for the first time in six years yesterday after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in an explosion of violence between the two countries.
And Israel sharply escalated its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, dropping a quarter ton bomb on a home yesterday in an attempt to assassinate top Hamas leaders. Nine members of a family, including seven children, were killed.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=85245&d=13&m=7&y=2006
Manmohan Says Terror War Will Be Won; Police Hunt for Train Bombers
Shahid Raza Burney, Arab News
BOMBAY, 13 July 2006 — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh struck a note of defiance yesterday saying the war against terror will be won and India will never be beaten by terrorists, a day after bombs ripped through trains in India’s financial hub Bombay. Police began a massive hunt for the bombers in an attack that police say bore all the hallmarks of extremists.
Manmohan said the return to work in Bombay after the blasts during evening rush hour Tuesday, showed the determination of the country to fight terrorism.
“They have not yet understood that we will never let them win,” he said in a nationally televised address as investigators picked through the debris seeking clues to the country’s worst attack in more than a decade.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=85246&d=13&m=7&y=2006
Saudi Arabia: Some Hopeful Developments, Promising Signs
Abeer Mishkhas, abeermishkhas@arabnews.com
Three different events have made me think of all the changes we are going through in Saudi Arabia. The events posed puzzling questions as well.
The first was actually a group discussion about a Saudi novel called “Terrorist Number 20”. I attended the function where the author talked about his book and the message he wanted to convey.
The book, which I was told was being sold in Saudi bookstores, discusses about how terrorists are created, how some groups use religion to attract young people, filling their heads and hearts with hatred for everything around them.
The author explained the title of his book by saying that his hero could have been the 20th terrorist in the Sept. 11 attacks had he not started questioning the fanatic group and its ideas. It’s not just people, misguided or not, who play a role in brainwashing some youths, the author said; the education they receive too plays a part.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=85256&d=13&m=7&y=2006
Yemen Court Reviews Acquittal of 19
Khaled Al-Mahdi, Arab News
SANAA, 13 July 2006 — A Yemeni court of appeals began hearing yesterday an appeal by the prosecution against the acquittal of 19 men, including five Saudis, charged with plotting to attack Americans in Yemen.
A state security court acquitted the men on Saturday citing lack of sufficient evidence.
When the trial began on Feb. 22, the men were charged with plotting to attack Americans in Yemen on orders from the Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Jordanian Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was killed last month in a US airstrike.
Prosecutors have said the men planned to bomb sites frequented by Americans living in Yemen, including a five-star hotel in the southern port city of Aden. They said some of the defendants had fought alongside militants in Iraq and that they returned from Iraq after Zarqawi ordered them to carry out attacks in Yemen. The appeals court’s three-judge panel, headed by Judge Saeed Al-Qataa, accepted the prosecution’s appeal allowing state security prosecutors to present their arguments and evidence.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=85248&d=13&m=7&y=2006
Al-Khorafi Retains His Position as Kuwaiti Parliament Speaker
Hassan A. Bari, Arab News
KUWAIT, 13 July 2006 — “A special National Assembly session will be held next Monday to discuss the draft laws for redrawing electoral constituencies, dropping interest on retirees’ loans and voting using the civil ID’,” said the re-elected National Assembly Speaker Jasem Al-Khorafi yesterday.
The first sitting of the 11th legislative term arrived at a consensus on a parliamentary request to discuss the three topics.As predicted, the National Assembly re-elected Khorafi in a secret voting, where he got 36 votes, while his rival Ahmad Al-Saadoun got 28 votes, out of the total number of 65 (50 MPs and 15 Cabinet members) with one MP abstaining from voting.
Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah extended a hand to the assembly, saying in the inaugural session that the Cabinet “stresses its sincere wish to cooperate positively.”
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=85247&d=13&m=7&y=2006
First Saudi Film Festival Kicks Off
Ebtihal Mubarak, Arab News
JEDDAH, 13 July 2006 — Saudi Arabia’s first film festival kicked off yesterday at the Jeddah Science and Technology Center in a media-only event of around 50 people consisting of both men and women.
“The First Visual Show Festival”, which is running for four weeks, began yesterday to an audience of movie scriptwriters, directors, actors, film producers and anyone else related to the movie industry. Organizers have arranged an interesting lineup of rare and unique films including action movies, dramas, narrative movies, human-interest films, comedies and cartoons.
In his opening speech, the deputy manager of the Jeddah Science and Technology Center, Muhammad Salam, said, “We are expecting the entire festival to be a huge success. Many people have called and expressed their enthusiasm. We hope to show full-length movies, documentaries and even short movies.”
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=85250&d=13&m=7&y=2006
Los Angeles Times
Voracious Desert Wildfire Feeds on Temperatures, Wind
The blaze hasn't slowed down, burning more than 40 homes and 37,000 acres.
By David Kelly and Susannah Rosenblatt, Times Staff Writers
July 13, 2006
YUCCA VALLEY — A runaway wildfire that has already charred more than 37,000 acres showed little sign of slowing Wednesday as firefighters fought to save lives and property in the 108-degree heat and gusting desert winds.
Started by lightning Sunday morning, the fire pumped huge clouds of black, white and gray smoke over the mountains and deserts, forcing many to flee their homes clutching photo albums, pets and other irreplaceables. About 100 structures have been destroyed or damaged, including more than 40 homes.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-yucca13jul13,0,5854543.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Winds Feed Ferocious Yucca Valley Fire
By David Kelly, Times Staff Writer
2:20 PM PDT, July 12, 2006
Firefighters struggled against a mushrooming desert wildfire that gutted at least 30 homes in and around the cowboy movie colony of Pioneertown and consumed more than 26,000 acres of San Bernardino County scrubland, authorities said.
Winds gusting to 40 mph propelled the fire, which continued to blacken the sky and remain out of control this afternoon.
About 1,000 people from nearby communities such as Burns Canyon, Rimrock, Gamma Gulch and Flamingo Heights were under mandatory evacuation, and more than 3,000 buildings remained threatened by the blaze, according to state fire officials.
"It's a challenging fire at this point," said Glenn Barley, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in San Bernardino County. "We really don't know when we can get it under control."
More than 1,200 firefighters were battling the wildfire, focusing on saving lives and structures.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-071206fire,0,2200320.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Can a Dead River Rise Again?
Parts of the San Joaquin have turned into a sewer, but the state has a chance to bring it back to life.
By Bill Stall, BILL STALL is a contributing editor to Opinion.
July 13, 2006
FEW RIVERS have as glorious a beginning as the San Joaquin. The headwaters are on the flanks of the Ritter Range a few miles from Mammoth Mountain in the Sierra Nevada. Anyone who has taken an upper-mountain chairlift at Mammoth instantly recognizes the jagged Minarets and the hulks of Mt. Ritter and Banner Peak on the skyline.
Water from melting snow collects in Ediza, Garnet and Thousand Island lakes and others. The new river gathers quickly, rushing past Devils Postpile National Monument and Red's Meadow before plunging over Rainbow Falls and tumbling down one of the most contorted and isolated canyons in the range to the western foothills.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-stall13jul13,0,6037727.story?coll=la-home-commentary
Rampart's Redemption Rooted in Complex Forces
By Jill Leovy, Times Staff Writer
July 13, 2006
Big, bad Rampart is no more. Home to MacArthur Park, once home to the city's densest murder cluster, the Los Angeles police division has undergone a transformation so broad that for the last two years, homicides per capita have fallen to the citywide average.
Measured in murder, Rampart is now safer than Boyle Heights and is nearly as safe as the harbor area, a Times analysis shows. Although a blue ribbon report on policing in Rampart credited the LAPD for the turnaround, Rampart's crime has been falling in spurts for 15 years, with the most dramatic shift in the mid-1990s, before Chief William J. Bratton took over.
The change is especially striking because a high percentage of Rampart residents are poor minorities living in crowded and unforgiving circumstances — conditions linked to large homicide figures elsewhere.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-rampart13jul13,0,569140.story?coll=la-home-local
L.A. in Peril of Another Rampart Scandal, Panel Finds
A task force urges the department to add officers and replace 'warrior policing' with methods that are community-friendly.
By Patrick McGreevy, Times Staff Writer
July 12, 2006
Despite extensive reform in the seven years since the Rampart Division police corruption scandal, Los Angeles is at risk of similar crises unless the LAPD is significantly expanded and trades its "warrior policing" model for a more community- friendly problem-solving style, a city task force warned today.
The Blue Ribbon Rampart Review Panel set out to provide a final accounting of what city officials characterize as one of the most serious police corruption scandals in American history.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-rampart12jul12,0,2149212.story?coll=la-home-headlines
USC Center Is Latest With Transplant Woes
University Hospital has among the nation's highest death rates for those receiving new livers, data show. The state plans to investigate.
By Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, Times Staff Writers
July 13, 2006
The liver transplant program at USC University Hospital in Los Angeles has one of the highest death rates in the nation, with twice as many patients as expected dying after their surgeries, according to data released this week.
The most recent statistics show that 38 USC patients who received new livers from January 2003 to June 2005 died within a year of surgery — 19 more than expected, according to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. The agency, which analyzes data on behalf of the federal government, determines the expected rate for each center after adjusting for such factors as patient age and condition and organ quality.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-transplant13jul13,0,6995257.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Disney Slashing Jobs, Yearly Film Output
From Associated Press
5:00 PM PDT, July 12, 2006
Walt Disney Co. will substantially reduce its work force and slash its annual output of films from 18 to eight -- cutbacks greater than Hollywood had anticipated, it was reported Wednesday.
Additionally, Daily Variety said all the movies will be Disney-branded, suggesting diminished roles for its Touchstone label. The Hollywood trade paper said a Disney announcement was expected within 10 days.
Burbank-based Disney, basking in the glow of a record $135.6 million debut weekend box office for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," wouldn't discuss the report.
"We are constantly evaluating our business to make it better and more efficient," Disney spokeswoman Heidi Trotta said in a prepared statement to The Associated Press.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-fi-disney13jul13,0,5351232.story?coll=la-home-headlines
The Nation of Hezbollah
The militants' raid is a sign that it sees itself as an independent force in Lebanon and beyond.
By Megan K. Stack and Rania Abouzeid, Special to The Times
July 13, 2006
BEIRUT — As Lebanon's largest political party and most potent armed force, Hezbollah has long been described as a "state within a state" — a Shiite Muslim minigovernment boasting close ties to Iran and Syria.
But Wednesday's move across the border to capture two Israeli soldiers went a step further: Hezbollah acted as the state itself, threatening to drag Lebanon into a war.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-hezbollah13jul13,0,4053216.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Rape Case Is Latest Sports Scandal in Fresno
Two community college recruits are charged with assaulting a girl, 11.
By Christine Hanley and Megan Garvey, Times Staff Writers
July 13, 2006
FRESNO — At the Elbow Room Bar and Grill, where former Fresno State basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian used to hold court and photos of legendary sports figures hang from paneled walls, patron Rick Miller sat on a stool Wednesday and ticked off the growing list of local sports scandals.
There's the point-shaving debacle at Fresno State under Tarkanian, who arrived at his alma mater three years after being forced to resign from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas after it incurred numerous NCAA violations. And the 2004 slaying of an 18-year-old woman near campus by a former basketball star who was trying to buy drugs.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fresno13jul13,0,2546673.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Zidane Cites 'Nasty' Taunts
French soccer icon says Italy defender insulted his mother and sister; he doesn't regret head butt.
By Tracy Wilkinson and Achrene Sicakyuz, Times Staff Writers
July 13, 2006
PARIS — French soccer icon Zinedine Zidane on Wednesday finally broke his silence, answering the question on everyone's mind: What was behind his shocking head butt that felled his Italian opponent in the closing minutes of the World Cup championship?
In interviews on French television, Zidane said Italian defender Marco Materazzi insulted his mother and sister, repeatedly using "harsh, nasty" words that the French captain could not bear to hear.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/la-sp-zidane13jul13,0,5064774.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Wal-Mart Warms to a Green Outlook
The retailer works hard to polish its image. Environmental groups have mixed reviews.
By Claire Hoffman, Times Staff Writer
July 13, 2006
Bentonville, Ark., seemed like an Emerald City of sorts Wednesday as hometown giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. put on display its latest efforts to go green.
The company hosted former Vice President Al Gore's talk on global warming, welcomed an environmental group's plan to locate an office in the corporate neighborhood and talked about the progress it was making to improve the global effects of its worldwide operations.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-walmart13jul13,0,3571192.story?coll=la-home-headlines
CIA Leak Case Source No. 1 Still a Mystery
Columnist reveals that he cooperated with the special prosecutor but chooses not to name the Bush official who started it all.
By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer
July 13, 2006
WASHINGTON — Columnist Robert Novak's decision to break his silence about his role in the CIA leak investigation has left one crucial question unanswered: Who was the administration official who gave him the tip that has occupied a special prosecutor and Beltway pundits for three years?
Novak's July 14, 2003, column publicly identifying CIA officer Valerie Plame triggered a federal investigation into whether the Bush administration had retaliated against a critic of its Iraq policy by blowing the covert status of his wife.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-novak13jul13,0,4652262.story?coll=la-home-nation
350 Detained in Bombay Train Bombings
By NIRMALA GEORGE, Associated Press Writer
4:09 AM PDT, July 13, 2006
BOMBAY, India -- Indian police on Thursday detained about 350 people for questioning in the Bombay train bombings amid suspicion that Kashmiri militants could be linked to the attacks that killed at least 200 people.
The detentions came as a man claiming to represent al-Qaida said the terror network had set up a wing in Kashmir and praised Tuesday's bombings.
A senior intelligence official said the government was taking the claim seriously and authorities were trying to trace a call the man made to a Kashmiri news service.
"Our immediate effort is to locate the caller and ascertain the authenticity of the claim," the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. "The government is taking it very seriously."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_top11jul13,0,313068.story
Japan Seeks Vote on N.Korea Resolution
By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer
3:26 AM PDT, July 13, 2006
BEIJING -- The U.S. nuclear envoy said Thursday that Washington was likely to give Chinese diplomatic efforts over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs only a few more days before pushing for a tough U.N. resolution.
"My sense is we're down to a number of days," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters in Beijing.
His comments came as Japan pressed for a vote on its resolution threatening sanctions for the North's missiles tests last week, while China and Russia introduced a rival proposal, intensifying jockeying over a unified response.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_top13jul13,0,1099502.story
John Money, 84; Doctor Pioneered Study of Gender Identity in 1950s
By Kelly Brewington, The Baltimore Sun
July 13, 2006
BALTIMORE — Dr. John Money, a leading sex researcher who pioneered the study of gender identity and helped establish Johns Hopkins Hospital as the first one in the United States to perform adult sex-change operations, has died. He was 84.
The controversial scholar, who coined the term "gender role," died Friday at St. Joseph Medical Center in Baltimore of complications from Parkinson's disease.
As director of the Psychohormonal Research Unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Money did groundbreaking research. He developed hormonal treatment to improve self-control of sex offenders and dedicated research to the virtually unexplored topic of infants born with ambiguous sex organs.
"People never thought about that. Before, you had male animals and female animals, and that was it," said Dr. Gregory K. Lehne, an assistant professor of medical psychology at Hopkins and a protege of Money.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-money13jul13,0,793477.story?coll=la-home-obituaries
Steak and lobster? Dream on
You can't fence chefs in these days when it comes to surf-and-turf plates. They're imagining all sorts of seafood and meat combinations -- with fantastic results.
By Betty Hallock, Times Staff Writer
July 12, 2006
HALIBUT cheeks and short ribs. Scallops and foie gras. Squid and pig's ears. Lobster and squab. Recognize the theme? It's surf and turf.
For the guy shuffling chips at a Vegas craps table, hoping for a hot roller — or at least a meal comped by the pit boss — surf and turf means a thick steak and a fat lobster tail. But chefs are navigating uncharted waters and ranging beyond the plains to create new takes on the steakhouse standby.
Their sometimes wild iterations continue to evolve and proliferate despite the fact that some food lovers think the classic American pairing is based on an uneasy marriage of meat and fish. And whether inspired by the land-sea combinations of international cuisines or maybe just the American dream of having it all, especially on one plate, today's surf-and-turf combinations are more varied than the possible rolls on a pair of six-sided dice.
"So many meats go really well with seafood because they'll add richness or fat that a lot of seafood doesn't have," says Water Grill executive chef David Lefevre. "With a flounder or a sole or a John Dory or a flakier, whiter-fleshed seafood, a rich piece of meat contrasts with the lean fish and adds a new dimension of flavor."
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-surfnturf12jul12,0,4745269.story?coll=la-home-food
The New Zealand Herald
Wildfire burns out of control in California desert [video report]
4.00pm Thursday July 13, 2006
LOS ANGELES - A 10,500-hectare wildfire burned out of control in the California desert today, threatening thousands of homes after destroying structures in a town used for filming Hollywood westerns.
Authorities in San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, have declared a state of emergency and asked Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for disaster relief as more than 2000 firefighters worked to contain the blaze.
The fire, which officials believe was started on Sunday by lightning and whipped through bone dry brush by hot desert winds, was burning in the Yucca Valley area north of the resort city of Palm Springs.
Mandatory evacuation orders were in place for several desert communities, including Pioneertown, which has served as the backdrop for Hollywood westerns since the 1950s.
Officials said about 30 structures, some in Pioneertown, had been destroyed and that nine people had suffered minor injuries.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391125
Israel attacks Beirut airport, Israeli town hit
UPDATED 5.40pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By Nadim Ladki
BEIRUT - Israeli aircraft attacked Beirut airport and killed 22 civilians in strikes on south Lebanon on Thursday, dramatically widening its reprisals after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight.
Hizbollah retaliated for "Israeli massacres" by firing 60 rockets at Nahariya. The Israeli army said Katyusha rockets had hit the northern Israeli city and that one civilian was killed.
The violence was the worst between Israel and Lebanon since 1996 when Israeli troops still occupied part of the south. It coincided with an major Israeli offensive into the Gaza Strip to retrieve a captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.
Lebanese security sources said Israeli aircraft fired at least six rockets at runways of Rafik al-Hariri International Airport and a nearby road, forcing flights to divert.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391126
Hang Mumbai bombers, locals say
1.00pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By Justin Huggler
MUMBAI - The message was scrawled in chalk on a brick wall outside Bandra station, just 50 metres from where the first bomb went off inside a packed commuter train on Tuesday night local time (early Wednesday morning NZT).
"We condemn the ones who did a terrorist bomb here," it said in English. "The culprits should be hanged to death."
It was a message from the wrong side of the tracks.
As the death toll from the Mumbai bombings was confirmed as crossing 200, suspicions as to who was behind them centred on Islamic militants.
The simple message chalked on the wall was the heartfelt response from a dirt-poor Muslim suburb of Mumbai where the people had watched in horror as the bomb went off and immediately rushed to help the injured.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391080
Blair's chief party fundraiser arrested
1.00pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By Adrian Croft
LONDON - Lord Levy, the chief fundraiser for Labour Party, was arrested today by police probing allegations that state awards had been given in return for cash.
The "cash-for-favours" row has dented Prime Minister Tony Blair's standing in opinion polls and sparked calls for his resignation. The arrest of Blair's Middle East envoy, close friend and tennis partner makes the prime minister's position even more precarious.
Levy, who denied any wrongdoing and accused the police of using their arrest powers "totally unnecessarily", was later released on bail without charge pending further enquiries.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391102
Iraq PM says 'last chance' for peace
1.00pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By Kristin Roberts and Ross Colvin
BAGHDAD - Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told Iraqis today they had one last chance for peace as US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Iraqi leaders on the escalating sectarian violence in the country.
The US commander in Iraq said Shi'ite "death squads" were fuelling a spike in the violence in which scores of people have been killed in street fighting, reprisal attacks and bombings in Baghdad neighbourhoods in the past few days. The US ambassador said communal bloodshed was now a bigger threat than al Qaeda.
Several hours after Maliki spoke, clashes erupted between gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades and police and residents in Um al-Maalif, a mainly Shi'ite neighbourhood in southern Baghdad. Police said at least two people were killed.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391114
Putin to press Bush on Russian nuclear sales in US
1.20pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin said today he planned to press President George W Bush to open up the US market for nuclear material at talks this week.
Putin, in answers to emailed questions that were posted on the Kremlin's website www.kremlin.ru, said he wanted an end to US limits on the sale of Russian nuclear materials.
Russian nuclear officials say they want changes to agreements that give US uranium supplier USEC the right to buy uranium recovered from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons and an end to US anti-dumping duties on other uranium sales.
Asked if he would discuss the direct sale of nuclear fuel to US customers at a meeting with Bush, Putin said: "The problem that you have touched on does exist and we will have something to discuss on this topic with Mr Bush." "I would note that we do not agree with discriminatory measures which currently are in force in the US for enterprises in the Russian atomic sector," he said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391104
US pressures Iran on atomic offer
Thursday July 13, 2006
PARIS - The United States has stepped up pressure on Iran, warning it faced UN Security Council action for failing to respond swiftly enough to a package of incentives aimed at defusing a nuclear standoff.
Foreign ministers of the world's top powers meet in Paris today to decide how to handle Iran after Tehran said it needed more time to consider the June 6 offer.
"If in fact we are not on a path of negotiations and the Iranians have decided not to take that path, then we will have no choice but to return to the Security Council," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters as she flew into Paris, referring to today's meeting.
"We have to decide tonight which path we are on. ... If we have not received that, 'Yes we are on the path of negotiations', then I think it is pretty clear by process of elimination that we are on the path of the Security Council."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391059
Bloodied South Koreans protest US trade deal
Thursday July 13, 2006
SEOUL - Tens of thousands of South Koreans clashed with police firing water cannons on the rain-soaked streets of central Seoul yesterday to protest against bilateral free trade talks with the United States.
South Korea and the United States kicked off a second round of talks on a free trade pact on Monday in Seoul. Protesters say a pact would hurt the country's farmers and workers. South Korean and US negotiators said it would be a "win-win" deal.
An estimated 30,000 protesters gathered in torrential rain that hit the capital, including a group that seized the roof of a major post office and unfurled a banner reading: "Let's Break Through the Oppression of Capitalism".
Rescue workers inflated large orange cushions at the base of the building in case anyone fell off.
Some 15,700 riot police were dispatched to the scene and about 100 people were taken into custody for fighting, a police official said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391026
US racist leaders in mass trial for murders over 32 years
1.00pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By David Usborne
NEW YORK - A white supremacist prison gang known as the Aryan Brotherhood maintains its grip on gambling and drug trafficking both inside and outside the walls of America's penitentiaries by ruthlessly murdering anyone who gets in its way or dares to cross its leadership, a US prosecutor told a jury this week.
Chilling details of the gang's modus operandi, including the smuggling of weapons concealed in genitals and the sending of messages between prisons with disappearing ink made from urine, were disclosed in closing arguments at a trial of four alleged leaders of the gang in Santa Ana, California.
It is the first of several trials expected in the wake of a sprawling federal investigation into the gang that ended in 2002.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391106
US wants passenger info before overseas flights
2.20pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By John Crawley
WASHINGTON - Homeland security officials proposed today making airlines transmit passenger names and other information to the government before an international departure, a change designed to keep suspected terrorists off US-bound flights.
If approved, the security initiative would reverse current policy of requiring that manifests for flights originating in foreign countries be transmitted shortly after takeoff.
The proposal seeks to improve security as well as end the inconvenient and sometimes embarrassing practice of ordering flights diverted or turned around if manifest information raises suspicion with US authorities or is incomplete.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391118
Colombian volcano spews ash, people evacuated
10.20am Thursday July 13, 2006
BOGOTA, Colombia - The Galeras volcano in southwest Colombia shot rocks, gas and ash in an eruption today that prompted the government to evacuate about 10,000 nearby residents.
Television images showed thick clouds of ash hanging over the town of Pasto in Narino province. No injuries were immediately reported.
"The negative health effects could be serious and this could be only the beginning of a series of eruptions," government disaster response coordinator Eduardo Gonzalez told reporters.
A 1993 Galeras eruption killed at least 10 people. It is one of the 15 volcanoes most closely monitored in the world due to the threat it poses to local communities.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391076
Canadian blogger turns paper clip into house
3.20pm Thursday July 13, 2006
TORONTO - A Canadian man was handed the keys to a three-bedroom house today, exactly a year after he offered a red paper clip online, asking to trade it for "bigger or better" things.
In his latest trade, Kyle MacDonald, 26, swapped a bit role in a Hollywood movie for a house in the small Western Canadian town of Kipling, Saskatchewan.
When he started his quest with the paper clip, MacDonald said getting a house was his goal.
He traded in the paper clip for a fish pen and eventually moved up to an afternoon with rocker Alice Cooper before snagging the Hollywood movie role in his 14th trade.
Today, the mayor of Kipling presented MacDonald with the house in return for a role in the movie Donna on Demand, starring Corbin Bernsen.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391124
Poland wins name change for Auschwitz
5.20am Thursday July 13, 2006
WARSAW - The United Nations has agreed to rename Auschwitz concentration camp to stress that Nazi Germans, not Poles, were responsible for the world's most notorious death camp, Poland's Culture Ministry said on Wednesday.
"Auschwitz Concentration Camp", a UN heritage site, will be renamed "the Former Nazi German Concentration Camp of Auschwitz", the ministry of culture said in a statement.
Poland asked the UN in April to rename Auschwitz, where 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, died in World War Two.
Warsaw objects to references to "Polish gas chambers" at the "Polish concentration camp" in foreign media. Nearly 3 million non-Jewish Poles died at Nazi hands, and Poles see themselves as victims of the war.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391027
Killer kangaroo, 'demon duck of doom' roamed Outback
Thursday July 13, 2006
SYDNEY - Forget cute, cuddly marsupials. A team of Australian palaeontologists say they have found the fossilised remains of a fanged killer kangaroo and what they describe as a "demon duck of doom".
A University of New South Wales team said the fearsome fossils were among 20 previously unknown species uncovered at a site in northwest Queensland state.
Professor Michael Archer said yesterday the remains of a meat-eating kangaroo with wolf-like fangs were found as well as a galloping kangaroo with long forearms that could not hop like a modern kangaroo.
"Because they didn't hop, these were galloping kangaroos, with big, powerful forelimbs. Some of them had long canines (fangs) like wolves," Archer told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391029
EU hits Microsoft with unprecedented fine
Thursday July 13, 2006
By David Lawsky and Sabina Zawadzki
BRUSSELS - European Union regulators fined Microsoft €280.5 million ($578 million) on Wednesday for defying a 2004 antitrust ruling, and warned the company to comply or face bigger fines from next month.
The tough new penalty is the first of its kind and comes on top of a record €497 million fine the Commission imposed in its landmark antitrust decision against Microsoft in March 2004.
"Microsoft has still not put an end to its illegal conduct. I have no alternative but to levy penalty payments for this continued non-compliance," Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said. "No company is above the law."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391030
Organised fraudsters steal millions in UK tax credits
2.20pm Wednesday July 12, 2006
LONDON - Organised fraudsters tried to steal more than half a billion pounds from Britain's tax credit system in 2005/06, figures released today showed.
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) said that of the £540 million it knows about, it lost £131 million to fraud, up from an earlier estimate of £15 million.
Some 53,000 fraudulent claims were only discovered after payment - although HMRC stopped 91,000 other attempts.
The Child and Working Tax Credits are designed to assist low-paid workers and families.
The credits, a flagship welfare policy of Prime Minister Tony Blair's government introduced in 2003, are paid to almost 20 million people, HMRC said.
They try to integrate the social security system with the tax system, rather than offering straight handouts.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10390953
Delhi pantomime warns women of rape threat
Thursday July 13, 2006
By Sunil Kataria
NEW DELHI - Beating drums and ringing bells, a group of young boys, girls and middle-aged men, their faces painted, go through New Delhi's poorer settlements calling on housewives to come and watch a pantomime - on rape.
An unusual topic for a community play in conservative India. But given the city's reputation as the country's "rape capital", it is not surprising the group has found a large audience.
Performing in streets and parks across the capital, the troupe has struck a chord with thousands of women who are often too shy to seek information or too ignorant to understand the dangers stalking them.
Using mimes, the performers enact tales of women falling victim to rape - sometimes to strangers but more often to their own family or friends.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10390990
Wealthiest countries at bottom of list of happiest societies
3.20pm Wednesday July 12, 2006
By Philip Thornton
The Beatles told us that money can't buy love but it takes an economist to tell us it can't buy happiness.
A new index of well-being shows that the world's wealthiest countries do very badly when it comes to true contentment.
The index attempts to measure how well countries use their resources to deliver improved livelihoods and satisfaction. It finds that true happiness can be found in the Pacific island of Vanuatu.
By contrast the Group of Eight (G8) rich nations, whose leaders for their annual summit in St Petersburg this weekend, languish near the bottom of the list.
The host, Russia, comes 172nd out of 178, followed by the United States at 150 and France and 128. The UK comes in 108th - just below Libya but above Laos.
The list appears in a "happy planet index" published by the UK-based New Economics Foundation that attempts to log the progress of nations based on the amount of the Earth's resources they use on the one hand, and the length and happiness of people's lives on the other.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10390951
Gangsters resume attacks on Brazil police, 5 dead
12.20pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By Eduardo Lima
SAO PAULO, Brazil - Police stations and bank branches were riddled with bullets and dozens of buses firebombed in Sao Paulo state overnight, leaving five people dead, in what police said today was a new round of attacks ordered by a powerful prison gang.
Police said the violence, which started yesterday and continued through until today, left one police officer and his sister dead in Sao Paulo city, Brazil's financial capital. Three security guards were also gunned down in the nearby coastal town of Guaruja.
Police had previously said that the adult son of a prison guard in Sao Paulo had been murdered by the gang but said that his killing was unrelated.
The bloodshed was the latest chapter in a tense battle between security forces and a notorious criminal gang known as the First Command of the Capital, or PCC, which police said was behind the attacks.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391098
continued …
Editorial: Moral Vacuum
13 July 2006
FIRST Madrid, then London, now Bombay — terrorists have once again chosen to massacre innocent commuters. But why? What possible good could ever be achieved by slaughtering ordinary decent people as they go about their daily business? The hearts of the world have gone out to the citizens of Bombay to this act of horror. The agony of the relatives of the dead and maimed as they searched through the city’s many hospitals for news of their loved ones was evident from heart-breaking television pictures. The question must be asked how terrorists could view those awful pictures and not feel the slightest remorse for their crime. Yet incredibly it seems clear that these disturbed nihilists actually greet such horrors with perverse satisfaction. The perpetrators of this and other attacks reside in a moral vacuum. Nothing engenders universal contempt by all right-thinking people more than the calculated slaughter of innocent people riding a subway in India, London, or Madrid, or, for that matter, taking a bus in Tel Aviv, going to a wedding in Amman, vacationing in Bali, or taking a commercial flight in the US. What some foreign commentators appeared to forget in their early reports of this latest outrage is that Bombay is no stranger to terror, having suffered the first assault in 1987. In the past, attacks have been blamed on Kashmiri terror groups or other Al-Qaeda offshoots, both of which are apparently based in Pakistan.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=85260&d=13&m=7&y=2006
Hezbollah Seizes Two Soldiers
Hisham Abu Taha, Arab News
GAZA CITY/BEIRUT, 13 July 2006 — Israel pounded southern Lebanon with airstrikes and artillery and sent ground troops over the border for the first time in six years yesterday after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in an explosion of violence between the two countries.
And Israel sharply escalated its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, dropping a quarter ton bomb on a home yesterday in an attempt to assassinate top Hamas leaders. Nine members of a family, including seven children, were killed.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=85245&d=13&m=7&y=2006
Manmohan Says Terror War Will Be Won; Police Hunt for Train Bombers
Shahid Raza Burney, Arab News
BOMBAY, 13 July 2006 — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh struck a note of defiance yesterday saying the war against terror will be won and India will never be beaten by terrorists, a day after bombs ripped through trains in India’s financial hub Bombay. Police began a massive hunt for the bombers in an attack that police say bore all the hallmarks of extremists.
Manmohan said the return to work in Bombay after the blasts during evening rush hour Tuesday, showed the determination of the country to fight terrorism.
“They have not yet understood that we will never let them win,” he said in a nationally televised address as investigators picked through the debris seeking clues to the country’s worst attack in more than a decade.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=85246&d=13&m=7&y=2006
Saudi Arabia: Some Hopeful Developments, Promising Signs
Abeer Mishkhas, abeermishkhas@arabnews.com
Three different events have made me think of all the changes we are going through in Saudi Arabia. The events posed puzzling questions as well.
The first was actually a group discussion about a Saudi novel called “Terrorist Number 20”. I attended the function where the author talked about his book and the message he wanted to convey.
The book, which I was told was being sold in Saudi bookstores, discusses about how terrorists are created, how some groups use religion to attract young people, filling their heads and hearts with hatred for everything around them.
The author explained the title of his book by saying that his hero could have been the 20th terrorist in the Sept. 11 attacks had he not started questioning the fanatic group and its ideas. It’s not just people, misguided or not, who play a role in brainwashing some youths, the author said; the education they receive too plays a part.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=85256&d=13&m=7&y=2006
Yemen Court Reviews Acquittal of 19
Khaled Al-Mahdi, Arab News
SANAA, 13 July 2006 — A Yemeni court of appeals began hearing yesterday an appeal by the prosecution against the acquittal of 19 men, including five Saudis, charged with plotting to attack Americans in Yemen.
A state security court acquitted the men on Saturday citing lack of sufficient evidence.
When the trial began on Feb. 22, the men were charged with plotting to attack Americans in Yemen on orders from the Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Jordanian Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was killed last month in a US airstrike.
Prosecutors have said the men planned to bomb sites frequented by Americans living in Yemen, including a five-star hotel in the southern port city of Aden. They said some of the defendants had fought alongside militants in Iraq and that they returned from Iraq after Zarqawi ordered them to carry out attacks in Yemen. The appeals court’s three-judge panel, headed by Judge Saeed Al-Qataa, accepted the prosecution’s appeal allowing state security prosecutors to present their arguments and evidence.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=85248&d=13&m=7&y=2006
Al-Khorafi Retains His Position as Kuwaiti Parliament Speaker
Hassan A. Bari, Arab News
KUWAIT, 13 July 2006 — “A special National Assembly session will be held next Monday to discuss the draft laws for redrawing electoral constituencies, dropping interest on retirees’ loans and voting using the civil ID’,” said the re-elected National Assembly Speaker Jasem Al-Khorafi yesterday.
The first sitting of the 11th legislative term arrived at a consensus on a parliamentary request to discuss the three topics.As predicted, the National Assembly re-elected Khorafi in a secret voting, where he got 36 votes, while his rival Ahmad Al-Saadoun got 28 votes, out of the total number of 65 (50 MPs and 15 Cabinet members) with one MP abstaining from voting.
Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah extended a hand to the assembly, saying in the inaugural session that the Cabinet “stresses its sincere wish to cooperate positively.”
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=85247&d=13&m=7&y=2006
First Saudi Film Festival Kicks Off
Ebtihal Mubarak, Arab News
JEDDAH, 13 July 2006 — Saudi Arabia’s first film festival kicked off yesterday at the Jeddah Science and Technology Center in a media-only event of around 50 people consisting of both men and women.
“The First Visual Show Festival”, which is running for four weeks, began yesterday to an audience of movie scriptwriters, directors, actors, film producers and anyone else related to the movie industry. Organizers have arranged an interesting lineup of rare and unique films including action movies, dramas, narrative movies, human-interest films, comedies and cartoons.
In his opening speech, the deputy manager of the Jeddah Science and Technology Center, Muhammad Salam, said, “We are expecting the entire festival to be a huge success. Many people have called and expressed their enthusiasm. We hope to show full-length movies, documentaries and even short movies.”
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=85250&d=13&m=7&y=2006
Los Angeles Times
Voracious Desert Wildfire Feeds on Temperatures, Wind
The blaze hasn't slowed down, burning more than 40 homes and 37,000 acres.
By David Kelly and Susannah Rosenblatt, Times Staff Writers
July 13, 2006
YUCCA VALLEY — A runaway wildfire that has already charred more than 37,000 acres showed little sign of slowing Wednesday as firefighters fought to save lives and property in the 108-degree heat and gusting desert winds.
Started by lightning Sunday morning, the fire pumped huge clouds of black, white and gray smoke over the mountains and deserts, forcing many to flee their homes clutching photo albums, pets and other irreplaceables. About 100 structures have been destroyed or damaged, including more than 40 homes.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-yucca13jul13,0,5854543.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Winds Feed Ferocious Yucca Valley Fire
By David Kelly, Times Staff Writer
2:20 PM PDT, July 12, 2006
Firefighters struggled against a mushrooming desert wildfire that gutted at least 30 homes in and around the cowboy movie colony of Pioneertown and consumed more than 26,000 acres of San Bernardino County scrubland, authorities said.
Winds gusting to 40 mph propelled the fire, which continued to blacken the sky and remain out of control this afternoon.
About 1,000 people from nearby communities such as Burns Canyon, Rimrock, Gamma Gulch and Flamingo Heights were under mandatory evacuation, and more than 3,000 buildings remained threatened by the blaze, according to state fire officials.
"It's a challenging fire at this point," said Glenn Barley, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in San Bernardino County. "We really don't know when we can get it under control."
More than 1,200 firefighters were battling the wildfire, focusing on saving lives and structures.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-071206fire,0,2200320.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Can a Dead River Rise Again?
Parts of the San Joaquin have turned into a sewer, but the state has a chance to bring it back to life.
By Bill Stall, BILL STALL is a contributing editor to Opinion.
July 13, 2006
FEW RIVERS have as glorious a beginning as the San Joaquin. The headwaters are on the flanks of the Ritter Range a few miles from Mammoth Mountain in the Sierra Nevada. Anyone who has taken an upper-mountain chairlift at Mammoth instantly recognizes the jagged Minarets and the hulks of Mt. Ritter and Banner Peak on the skyline.
Water from melting snow collects in Ediza, Garnet and Thousand Island lakes and others. The new river gathers quickly, rushing past Devils Postpile National Monument and Red's Meadow before plunging over Rainbow Falls and tumbling down one of the most contorted and isolated canyons in the range to the western foothills.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-stall13jul13,0,6037727.story?coll=la-home-commentary
Rampart's Redemption Rooted in Complex Forces
By Jill Leovy, Times Staff Writer
July 13, 2006
Big, bad Rampart is no more. Home to MacArthur Park, once home to the city's densest murder cluster, the Los Angeles police division has undergone a transformation so broad that for the last two years, homicides per capita have fallen to the citywide average.
Measured in murder, Rampart is now safer than Boyle Heights and is nearly as safe as the harbor area, a Times analysis shows. Although a blue ribbon report on policing in Rampart credited the LAPD for the turnaround, Rampart's crime has been falling in spurts for 15 years, with the most dramatic shift in the mid-1990s, before Chief William J. Bratton took over.
The change is especially striking because a high percentage of Rampart residents are poor minorities living in crowded and unforgiving circumstances — conditions linked to large homicide figures elsewhere.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-rampart13jul13,0,569140.story?coll=la-home-local
L.A. in Peril of Another Rampart Scandal, Panel Finds
A task force urges the department to add officers and replace 'warrior policing' with methods that are community-friendly.
By Patrick McGreevy, Times Staff Writer
July 12, 2006
Despite extensive reform in the seven years since the Rampart Division police corruption scandal, Los Angeles is at risk of similar crises unless the LAPD is significantly expanded and trades its "warrior policing" model for a more community- friendly problem-solving style, a city task force warned today.
The Blue Ribbon Rampart Review Panel set out to provide a final accounting of what city officials characterize as one of the most serious police corruption scandals in American history.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-rampart12jul12,0,2149212.story?coll=la-home-headlines
USC Center Is Latest With Transplant Woes
University Hospital has among the nation's highest death rates for those receiving new livers, data show. The state plans to investigate.
By Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, Times Staff Writers
July 13, 2006
The liver transplant program at USC University Hospital in Los Angeles has one of the highest death rates in the nation, with twice as many patients as expected dying after their surgeries, according to data released this week.
The most recent statistics show that 38 USC patients who received new livers from January 2003 to June 2005 died within a year of surgery — 19 more than expected, according to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. The agency, which analyzes data on behalf of the federal government, determines the expected rate for each center after adjusting for such factors as patient age and condition and organ quality.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-transplant13jul13,0,6995257.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Disney Slashing Jobs, Yearly Film Output
From Associated Press
5:00 PM PDT, July 12, 2006
Walt Disney Co. will substantially reduce its work force and slash its annual output of films from 18 to eight -- cutbacks greater than Hollywood had anticipated, it was reported Wednesday.
Additionally, Daily Variety said all the movies will be Disney-branded, suggesting diminished roles for its Touchstone label. The Hollywood trade paper said a Disney announcement was expected within 10 days.
Burbank-based Disney, basking in the glow of a record $135.6 million debut weekend box office for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," wouldn't discuss the report.
"We are constantly evaluating our business to make it better and more efficient," Disney spokeswoman Heidi Trotta said in a prepared statement to The Associated Press.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-fi-disney13jul13,0,5351232.story?coll=la-home-headlines
The Nation of Hezbollah
The militants' raid is a sign that it sees itself as an independent force in Lebanon and beyond.
By Megan K. Stack and Rania Abouzeid, Special to The Times
July 13, 2006
BEIRUT — As Lebanon's largest political party and most potent armed force, Hezbollah has long been described as a "state within a state" — a Shiite Muslim minigovernment boasting close ties to Iran and Syria.
But Wednesday's move across the border to capture two Israeli soldiers went a step further: Hezbollah acted as the state itself, threatening to drag Lebanon into a war.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-hezbollah13jul13,0,4053216.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Rape Case Is Latest Sports Scandal in Fresno
Two community college recruits are charged with assaulting a girl, 11.
By Christine Hanley and Megan Garvey, Times Staff Writers
July 13, 2006
FRESNO — At the Elbow Room Bar and Grill, where former Fresno State basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian used to hold court and photos of legendary sports figures hang from paneled walls, patron Rick Miller sat on a stool Wednesday and ticked off the growing list of local sports scandals.
There's the point-shaving debacle at Fresno State under Tarkanian, who arrived at his alma mater three years after being forced to resign from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas after it incurred numerous NCAA violations. And the 2004 slaying of an 18-year-old woman near campus by a former basketball star who was trying to buy drugs.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fresno13jul13,0,2546673.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Zidane Cites 'Nasty' Taunts
French soccer icon says Italy defender insulted his mother and sister; he doesn't regret head butt.
By Tracy Wilkinson and Achrene Sicakyuz, Times Staff Writers
July 13, 2006
PARIS — French soccer icon Zinedine Zidane on Wednesday finally broke his silence, answering the question on everyone's mind: What was behind his shocking head butt that felled his Italian opponent in the closing minutes of the World Cup championship?
In interviews on French television, Zidane said Italian defender Marco Materazzi insulted his mother and sister, repeatedly using "harsh, nasty" words that the French captain could not bear to hear.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/la-sp-zidane13jul13,0,5064774.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Wal-Mart Warms to a Green Outlook
The retailer works hard to polish its image. Environmental groups have mixed reviews.
By Claire Hoffman, Times Staff Writer
July 13, 2006
Bentonville, Ark., seemed like an Emerald City of sorts Wednesday as hometown giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. put on display its latest efforts to go green.
The company hosted former Vice President Al Gore's talk on global warming, welcomed an environmental group's plan to locate an office in the corporate neighborhood and talked about the progress it was making to improve the global effects of its worldwide operations.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-walmart13jul13,0,3571192.story?coll=la-home-headlines
CIA Leak Case Source No. 1 Still a Mystery
Columnist reveals that he cooperated with the special prosecutor but chooses not to name the Bush official who started it all.
By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer
July 13, 2006
WASHINGTON — Columnist Robert Novak's decision to break his silence about his role in the CIA leak investigation has left one crucial question unanswered: Who was the administration official who gave him the tip that has occupied a special prosecutor and Beltway pundits for three years?
Novak's July 14, 2003, column publicly identifying CIA officer Valerie Plame triggered a federal investigation into whether the Bush administration had retaliated against a critic of its Iraq policy by blowing the covert status of his wife.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-novak13jul13,0,4652262.story?coll=la-home-nation
350 Detained in Bombay Train Bombings
By NIRMALA GEORGE, Associated Press Writer
4:09 AM PDT, July 13, 2006
BOMBAY, India -- Indian police on Thursday detained about 350 people for questioning in the Bombay train bombings amid suspicion that Kashmiri militants could be linked to the attacks that killed at least 200 people.
The detentions came as a man claiming to represent al-Qaida said the terror network had set up a wing in Kashmir and praised Tuesday's bombings.
A senior intelligence official said the government was taking the claim seriously and authorities were trying to trace a call the man made to a Kashmiri news service.
"Our immediate effort is to locate the caller and ascertain the authenticity of the claim," the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. "The government is taking it very seriously."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_top11jul13,0,313068.story
Japan Seeks Vote on N.Korea Resolution
By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer
3:26 AM PDT, July 13, 2006
BEIJING -- The U.S. nuclear envoy said Thursday that Washington was likely to give Chinese diplomatic efforts over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs only a few more days before pushing for a tough U.N. resolution.
"My sense is we're down to a number of days," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters in Beijing.
His comments came as Japan pressed for a vote on its resolution threatening sanctions for the North's missiles tests last week, while China and Russia introduced a rival proposal, intensifying jockeying over a unified response.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_top13jul13,0,1099502.story
John Money, 84; Doctor Pioneered Study of Gender Identity in 1950s
By Kelly Brewington, The Baltimore Sun
July 13, 2006
BALTIMORE — Dr. John Money, a leading sex researcher who pioneered the study of gender identity and helped establish Johns Hopkins Hospital as the first one in the United States to perform adult sex-change operations, has died. He was 84.
The controversial scholar, who coined the term "gender role," died Friday at St. Joseph Medical Center in Baltimore of complications from Parkinson's disease.
As director of the Psychohormonal Research Unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Money did groundbreaking research. He developed hormonal treatment to improve self-control of sex offenders and dedicated research to the virtually unexplored topic of infants born with ambiguous sex organs.
"People never thought about that. Before, you had male animals and female animals, and that was it," said Dr. Gregory K. Lehne, an assistant professor of medical psychology at Hopkins and a protege of Money.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-money13jul13,0,793477.story?coll=la-home-obituaries
Steak and lobster? Dream on
You can't fence chefs in these days when it comes to surf-and-turf plates. They're imagining all sorts of seafood and meat combinations -- with fantastic results.
By Betty Hallock, Times Staff Writer
July 12, 2006
HALIBUT cheeks and short ribs. Scallops and foie gras. Squid and pig's ears. Lobster and squab. Recognize the theme? It's surf and turf.
For the guy shuffling chips at a Vegas craps table, hoping for a hot roller — or at least a meal comped by the pit boss — surf and turf means a thick steak and a fat lobster tail. But chefs are navigating uncharted waters and ranging beyond the plains to create new takes on the steakhouse standby.
Their sometimes wild iterations continue to evolve and proliferate despite the fact that some food lovers think the classic American pairing is based on an uneasy marriage of meat and fish. And whether inspired by the land-sea combinations of international cuisines or maybe just the American dream of having it all, especially on one plate, today's surf-and-turf combinations are more varied than the possible rolls on a pair of six-sided dice.
"So many meats go really well with seafood because they'll add richness or fat that a lot of seafood doesn't have," says Water Grill executive chef David Lefevre. "With a flounder or a sole or a John Dory or a flakier, whiter-fleshed seafood, a rich piece of meat contrasts with the lean fish and adds a new dimension of flavor."
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-surfnturf12jul12,0,4745269.story?coll=la-home-food
The New Zealand Herald
Wildfire burns out of control in California desert [video report]
4.00pm Thursday July 13, 2006
LOS ANGELES - A 10,500-hectare wildfire burned out of control in the California desert today, threatening thousands of homes after destroying structures in a town used for filming Hollywood westerns.
Authorities in San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, have declared a state of emergency and asked Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for disaster relief as more than 2000 firefighters worked to contain the blaze.
The fire, which officials believe was started on Sunday by lightning and whipped through bone dry brush by hot desert winds, was burning in the Yucca Valley area north of the resort city of Palm Springs.
Mandatory evacuation orders were in place for several desert communities, including Pioneertown, which has served as the backdrop for Hollywood westerns since the 1950s.
Officials said about 30 structures, some in Pioneertown, had been destroyed and that nine people had suffered minor injuries.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391125
Israel attacks Beirut airport, Israeli town hit
UPDATED 5.40pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By Nadim Ladki
BEIRUT - Israeli aircraft attacked Beirut airport and killed 22 civilians in strikes on south Lebanon on Thursday, dramatically widening its reprisals after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight.
Hizbollah retaliated for "Israeli massacres" by firing 60 rockets at Nahariya. The Israeli army said Katyusha rockets had hit the northern Israeli city and that one civilian was killed.
The violence was the worst between Israel and Lebanon since 1996 when Israeli troops still occupied part of the south. It coincided with an major Israeli offensive into the Gaza Strip to retrieve a captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.
Lebanese security sources said Israeli aircraft fired at least six rockets at runways of Rafik al-Hariri International Airport and a nearby road, forcing flights to divert.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391126
Hang Mumbai bombers, locals say
1.00pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By Justin Huggler
MUMBAI - The message was scrawled in chalk on a brick wall outside Bandra station, just 50 metres from where the first bomb went off inside a packed commuter train on Tuesday night local time (early Wednesday morning NZT).
"We condemn the ones who did a terrorist bomb here," it said in English. "The culprits should be hanged to death."
It was a message from the wrong side of the tracks.
As the death toll from the Mumbai bombings was confirmed as crossing 200, suspicions as to who was behind them centred on Islamic militants.
The simple message chalked on the wall was the heartfelt response from a dirt-poor Muslim suburb of Mumbai where the people had watched in horror as the bomb went off and immediately rushed to help the injured.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391080
Blair's chief party fundraiser arrested
1.00pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By Adrian Croft
LONDON - Lord Levy, the chief fundraiser for Labour Party, was arrested today by police probing allegations that state awards had been given in return for cash.
The "cash-for-favours" row has dented Prime Minister Tony Blair's standing in opinion polls and sparked calls for his resignation. The arrest of Blair's Middle East envoy, close friend and tennis partner makes the prime minister's position even more precarious.
Levy, who denied any wrongdoing and accused the police of using their arrest powers "totally unnecessarily", was later released on bail without charge pending further enquiries.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391102
Iraq PM says 'last chance' for peace
1.00pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By Kristin Roberts and Ross Colvin
BAGHDAD - Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told Iraqis today they had one last chance for peace as US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Iraqi leaders on the escalating sectarian violence in the country.
The US commander in Iraq said Shi'ite "death squads" were fuelling a spike in the violence in which scores of people have been killed in street fighting, reprisal attacks and bombings in Baghdad neighbourhoods in the past few days. The US ambassador said communal bloodshed was now a bigger threat than al Qaeda.
Several hours after Maliki spoke, clashes erupted between gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades and police and residents in Um al-Maalif, a mainly Shi'ite neighbourhood in southern Baghdad. Police said at least two people were killed.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391114
Putin to press Bush on Russian nuclear sales in US
1.20pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin said today he planned to press President George W Bush to open up the US market for nuclear material at talks this week.
Putin, in answers to emailed questions that were posted on the Kremlin's website www.kremlin.ru, said he wanted an end to US limits on the sale of Russian nuclear materials.
Russian nuclear officials say they want changes to agreements that give US uranium supplier USEC the right to buy uranium recovered from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons and an end to US anti-dumping duties on other uranium sales.
Asked if he would discuss the direct sale of nuclear fuel to US customers at a meeting with Bush, Putin said: "The problem that you have touched on does exist and we will have something to discuss on this topic with Mr Bush." "I would note that we do not agree with discriminatory measures which currently are in force in the US for enterprises in the Russian atomic sector," he said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391104
US pressures Iran on atomic offer
Thursday July 13, 2006
PARIS - The United States has stepped up pressure on Iran, warning it faced UN Security Council action for failing to respond swiftly enough to a package of incentives aimed at defusing a nuclear standoff.
Foreign ministers of the world's top powers meet in Paris today to decide how to handle Iran after Tehran said it needed more time to consider the June 6 offer.
"If in fact we are not on a path of negotiations and the Iranians have decided not to take that path, then we will have no choice but to return to the Security Council," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters as she flew into Paris, referring to today's meeting.
"We have to decide tonight which path we are on. ... If we have not received that, 'Yes we are on the path of negotiations', then I think it is pretty clear by process of elimination that we are on the path of the Security Council."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391059
Bloodied South Koreans protest US trade deal
Thursday July 13, 2006
SEOUL - Tens of thousands of South Koreans clashed with police firing water cannons on the rain-soaked streets of central Seoul yesterday to protest against bilateral free trade talks with the United States.
South Korea and the United States kicked off a second round of talks on a free trade pact on Monday in Seoul. Protesters say a pact would hurt the country's farmers and workers. South Korean and US negotiators said it would be a "win-win" deal.
An estimated 30,000 protesters gathered in torrential rain that hit the capital, including a group that seized the roof of a major post office and unfurled a banner reading: "Let's Break Through the Oppression of Capitalism".
Rescue workers inflated large orange cushions at the base of the building in case anyone fell off.
Some 15,700 riot police were dispatched to the scene and about 100 people were taken into custody for fighting, a police official said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391026
US racist leaders in mass trial for murders over 32 years
1.00pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By David Usborne
NEW YORK - A white supremacist prison gang known as the Aryan Brotherhood maintains its grip on gambling and drug trafficking both inside and outside the walls of America's penitentiaries by ruthlessly murdering anyone who gets in its way or dares to cross its leadership, a US prosecutor told a jury this week.
Chilling details of the gang's modus operandi, including the smuggling of weapons concealed in genitals and the sending of messages between prisons with disappearing ink made from urine, were disclosed in closing arguments at a trial of four alleged leaders of the gang in Santa Ana, California.
It is the first of several trials expected in the wake of a sprawling federal investigation into the gang that ended in 2002.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391106
US wants passenger info before overseas flights
2.20pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By John Crawley
WASHINGTON - Homeland security officials proposed today making airlines transmit passenger names and other information to the government before an international departure, a change designed to keep suspected terrorists off US-bound flights.
If approved, the security initiative would reverse current policy of requiring that manifests for flights originating in foreign countries be transmitted shortly after takeoff.
The proposal seeks to improve security as well as end the inconvenient and sometimes embarrassing practice of ordering flights diverted or turned around if manifest information raises suspicion with US authorities or is incomplete.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391118
Colombian volcano spews ash, people evacuated
10.20am Thursday July 13, 2006
BOGOTA, Colombia - The Galeras volcano in southwest Colombia shot rocks, gas and ash in an eruption today that prompted the government to evacuate about 10,000 nearby residents.
Television images showed thick clouds of ash hanging over the town of Pasto in Narino province. No injuries were immediately reported.
"The negative health effects could be serious and this could be only the beginning of a series of eruptions," government disaster response coordinator Eduardo Gonzalez told reporters.
A 1993 Galeras eruption killed at least 10 people. It is one of the 15 volcanoes most closely monitored in the world due to the threat it poses to local communities.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391076
Canadian blogger turns paper clip into house
3.20pm Thursday July 13, 2006
TORONTO - A Canadian man was handed the keys to a three-bedroom house today, exactly a year after he offered a red paper clip online, asking to trade it for "bigger or better" things.
In his latest trade, Kyle MacDonald, 26, swapped a bit role in a Hollywood movie for a house in the small Western Canadian town of Kipling, Saskatchewan.
When he started his quest with the paper clip, MacDonald said getting a house was his goal.
He traded in the paper clip for a fish pen and eventually moved up to an afternoon with rocker Alice Cooper before snagging the Hollywood movie role in his 14th trade.
Today, the mayor of Kipling presented MacDonald with the house in return for a role in the movie Donna on Demand, starring Corbin Bernsen.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391124
Poland wins name change for Auschwitz
5.20am Thursday July 13, 2006
WARSAW - The United Nations has agreed to rename Auschwitz concentration camp to stress that Nazi Germans, not Poles, were responsible for the world's most notorious death camp, Poland's Culture Ministry said on Wednesday.
"Auschwitz Concentration Camp", a UN heritage site, will be renamed "the Former Nazi German Concentration Camp of Auschwitz", the ministry of culture said in a statement.
Poland asked the UN in April to rename Auschwitz, where 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, died in World War Two.
Warsaw objects to references to "Polish gas chambers" at the "Polish concentration camp" in foreign media. Nearly 3 million non-Jewish Poles died at Nazi hands, and Poles see themselves as victims of the war.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391027
Killer kangaroo, 'demon duck of doom' roamed Outback
Thursday July 13, 2006
SYDNEY - Forget cute, cuddly marsupials. A team of Australian palaeontologists say they have found the fossilised remains of a fanged killer kangaroo and what they describe as a "demon duck of doom".
A University of New South Wales team said the fearsome fossils were among 20 previously unknown species uncovered at a site in northwest Queensland state.
Professor Michael Archer said yesterday the remains of a meat-eating kangaroo with wolf-like fangs were found as well as a galloping kangaroo with long forearms that could not hop like a modern kangaroo.
"Because they didn't hop, these were galloping kangaroos, with big, powerful forelimbs. Some of them had long canines (fangs) like wolves," Archer told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391029
EU hits Microsoft with unprecedented fine
Thursday July 13, 2006
By David Lawsky and Sabina Zawadzki
BRUSSELS - European Union regulators fined Microsoft €280.5 million ($578 million) on Wednesday for defying a 2004 antitrust ruling, and warned the company to comply or face bigger fines from next month.
The tough new penalty is the first of its kind and comes on top of a record €497 million fine the Commission imposed in its landmark antitrust decision against Microsoft in March 2004.
"Microsoft has still not put an end to its illegal conduct. I have no alternative but to levy penalty payments for this continued non-compliance," Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said. "No company is above the law."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10391030
Organised fraudsters steal millions in UK tax credits
2.20pm Wednesday July 12, 2006
LONDON - Organised fraudsters tried to steal more than half a billion pounds from Britain's tax credit system in 2005/06, figures released today showed.
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) said that of the £540 million it knows about, it lost £131 million to fraud, up from an earlier estimate of £15 million.
Some 53,000 fraudulent claims were only discovered after payment - although HMRC stopped 91,000 other attempts.
The Child and Working Tax Credits are designed to assist low-paid workers and families.
The credits, a flagship welfare policy of Prime Minister Tony Blair's government introduced in 2003, are paid to almost 20 million people, HMRC said.
They try to integrate the social security system with the tax system, rather than offering straight handouts.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10390953
Delhi pantomime warns women of rape threat
Thursday July 13, 2006
By Sunil Kataria
NEW DELHI - Beating drums and ringing bells, a group of young boys, girls and middle-aged men, their faces painted, go through New Delhi's poorer settlements calling on housewives to come and watch a pantomime - on rape.
An unusual topic for a community play in conservative India. But given the city's reputation as the country's "rape capital", it is not surprising the group has found a large audience.
Performing in streets and parks across the capital, the troupe has struck a chord with thousands of women who are often too shy to seek information or too ignorant to understand the dangers stalking them.
Using mimes, the performers enact tales of women falling victim to rape - sometimes to strangers but more often to their own family or friends.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10390990
Wealthiest countries at bottom of list of happiest societies
3.20pm Wednesday July 12, 2006
By Philip Thornton
The Beatles told us that money can't buy love but it takes an economist to tell us it can't buy happiness.
A new index of well-being shows that the world's wealthiest countries do very badly when it comes to true contentment.
The index attempts to measure how well countries use their resources to deliver improved livelihoods and satisfaction. It finds that true happiness can be found in the Pacific island of Vanuatu.
By contrast the Group of Eight (G8) rich nations, whose leaders for their annual summit in St Petersburg this weekend, languish near the bottom of the list.
The host, Russia, comes 172nd out of 178, followed by the United States at 150 and France and 128. The UK comes in 108th - just below Libya but above Laos.
The list appears in a "happy planet index" published by the UK-based New Economics Foundation that attempts to log the progress of nations based on the amount of the Earth's resources they use on the one hand, and the length and happiness of people's lives on the other.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10390951
Gangsters resume attacks on Brazil police, 5 dead
12.20pm Thursday July 13, 2006
By Eduardo Lima
SAO PAULO, Brazil - Police stations and bank branches were riddled with bullets and dozens of buses firebombed in Sao Paulo state overnight, leaving five people dead, in what police said today was a new round of attacks ordered by a powerful prison gang.
Police said the violence, which started yesterday and continued through until today, left one police officer and his sister dead in Sao Paulo city, Brazil's financial capital. Three security guards were also gunned down in the nearby coastal town of Guaruja.
Police had previously said that the adult son of a prison guard in Sao Paulo had been murdered by the gang but said that his killing was unrelated.
The bloodshed was the latest chapter in a tense battle between security forces and a notorious criminal gang known as the First Command of the Capital, or PCC, which police said was behind the attacks.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10391098
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