The Rooster
Friday, December 23, 2005
Separating the Whales from the Whalers is a diligent task. (Join if you can. Click here.)
December 23, 2005.
Greenpeace vs. Japanese Whalers.
Morning Papers - It's Origins
Rooster "Cock-A-Doodle-Do"
"Okeydoke"
History
Today is Friday, Dec. 23, the 357th day of 2005. There are eight days left in the year.
1783, George Washington resigned as commander in chief of the Army and retired to his home at Mount Vernon, Va.
1815 Rev. Henry H. Garnet, militant abolitionist, is born a slave in Kent County, MD.
1823, the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement C. Moore was published in the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel.
1867 Madame C.J. Walker, a millionaire businesswoman who will be a philanthropic contributor to the NAACP, the YMCA, and Black Colleges, is born in Delta, LA.
1893, the Engelbert Humperdinck opera "Haensel und Gretel" was first performed, in Weimar, Germany.
1928, the National Broadcasting Company set up a permanent, coast-to-coast network.
1935 Singer "Little Esther" Phillips, noted for her songs "And I Love Him" and "Release Me", is born in Galveston, TX
1941, during World War II, American forces on Wake Island surrendered to the Japanese.
1948, former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese war leaders were executed in Tokyo.
1968, 82 crew members of the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo were released by North Korea, 11 months after they had been captured.
1986, the experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first non-stop, non-refueled, round-the-world flight as it landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
1987, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, serving a life sentence for the attempted assassination of President Ford in 1975, escaped from the Alderson Federal Prison for Women in West Virginia. (She was recaptured two days later.)
Ten years ago: A fire in Dabwali, India, killed 540 people, including 170 children, during a year-end party being held near the children's school.
Five years ago: Pro-democracy forces claimed a sweeping victory in Serbia's parliamentary elections.
One year ago: Democrat Christine Gregoire won the Washington governor's race by 130 votes out of 2.9 million ballots cast, according to final recount results announced from Seattle's King County. Former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland pleaded guilty to a corruption charge (he was later sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison).
Assailants claiming to be members of a revolutionary group opposed to the death penalty ambushed a bus in Honduras, killing 28 people, including six children.
Two men were convicted in Houston for their role in a smuggling attempt that resulted in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants crammed in a tractor-trailer.
Missing in Action
1965 SHANKEL WILLIAM L. SAN ANDREAS CA 02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1966 REEVES JOHN HOWARD CANADA
1970 BOOTH GARY P. OLYMPIA WA "ACFT BROKE UP, SAR NEG"
1970 MC ANDREWS MICHAEL W. FORT LAUDERDALE FL "ACFT BROKE UP, SAR NEG"
1970 WISEMAN BAIN W. JR. TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCE NM "ACFT BROKE UP, SAR NEG"
December 22
1964 PARKS JOE CEDAR LANE TX 12/30/66 DIC ON PRG LIST
1965 ALCORN WENDELL R. KITTANNING PA 02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 1998
1965 CARTWRIGHT BILLIE J. SAN ANTONIO TX REMAINS IDENTIFIED 28 NOV 94
1965 DAIGLE GLENN H. LABADIEVILLE LA 02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1965 GOLD EDWARD F. OAKLAND CA REMAINS IDENTIFIED 01/95
1965 LUKENBACH MAX D. TUCSON AZ DEAD BURIED
1965 PRUDHOMME JOHN D. TIPP CITY OH
1967 COOK WILMER P. ANNAPOLIS MD REMAINS RETURNED 6/21/88 ID'D 9/28/89 BURIED AT SEA FROM SHIP NAMED FOR HIM
1967 FORS GARY H. PUYALLUP WA
1967 HICKERSON JAMES M. ATLANTA GA 03/14/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1969 BURRIS DONALD D. JR. WAYNE PA
1969 KENNEDY JAMES E. PINE HILL NJ
1972 ALLEY GERALD W. POTACELLO ID REMAINS RETURNED 12/88 ID'D- 06/89
1972 BENNETT THOMAS W. JR. NATCHEZ MS
1972 BERNASCONI LOUIS H. NAPA CA 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1972 CAMEROTA PETER P. GIBBSTOWN NJ 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1972 CONLEE WILLIAM W. LEMON GROVE CA 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE IN 98
1972 COPACK JOSEPH H. JR. CHICAGO IL REMAINS RETURNED 06/89
1972 DRUMMOND DAVID I. WESTWOOD NJ 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1972 GIROUX PETER J. TRUMANSBURG NY 02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV INJURED ALIVE AND WELL 98
1972 LE BLANC LOUIS E. JR. PROVIDENCE RI 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV DECEASED
1972 MAYALL WILLIAM T. LEVITTOWN NY 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE IN 98
1972 MORGAN GARY L. ABILENE TX 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE IN 98
1972 SPONEYBARGER ROBERT C. EMMAUS PA 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE IN 98
1972 WILSON WILLIAM W. CONRAD IA 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV
1972 YUILL JOHN H. BOSWELL IN 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 1998
The Boston Globe
Famed explorer Norman Vaughan dies at age 100
December 23, 2005
ANCHORAGE, Alaska --Norman Vaughan, who as a young man explored Antarctica and spent much of his life seeking adventure, died Friday just a few days after turning 100 years old.
Vaughan, a Salem, Mass. native, died at about 10:30 a.m. at Providence Alaska Medical Center surrounded by family and friends, said nursing supervisor Martha George.
Vaughan was well enough on Saturday to enjoy a birthday celebration at the hospital attended by more than 100 friends and hospital workers. His actual birthday was Monday.
Vaughan's motto was "Dream big and dare to fail." As a young man, he joined Admiral Richard Byrd on his expedition to the South Pole in 1928 and 1930 as a dog handler and driver.
Days before his 89th birthday he and his wife, Carolyn Muegge-Vaughan, returned to Antarctica and climbed to the summit of 10,320-foot Mount Vaughan, the mountain Byrd named in his honor.
"It was the climax of our dream," he told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview at his Anchorage home. "We had to risk failure to get there. We dared to fail."
Vaughan continued to seek adventure his entire life. His exploits included finishing the 1,100 mile-Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race six times after age 70. At age 96, he carried the Olympic torch in Juneau, passing the flame from a wheelchair, 70 years after he competed in the Olympics as a sled dog racer.
He wanted to climb Mount Vaughan again to celebrate his 100th birthday but the expedition fell short of money. He planned to sip champagne at the summit -- the first taste of alcohol for the lifetime teetotaler.
"The only liquor I've ever had was the taste of wine at communion," he said. "I told my mother I wouldn't drink until I was 100 and she said, 'That's all right."
Vaughan had a taste of champagne Saturday during his birthday celebration.
Vaughan was born Dec. 19, 1905, in Salem, Mass.
He was the son of a wealthy leather tanner and shoe manufacturer. In his youth, he became fascinated by tales of early-century polar explorers and taught himself to mush dogs, beginning with the family pet.
In 1925, he entered Harvard College but soon left to be a dog musher in Newfoundland for a medical missionary. He left Harvard for good to join Byrd on his expedition, which included creation of the first settlement in Antarctica and the first air flight over the South Pole. Vaughan was part of a crew that drove dog teams 1,500 miles across the frozen continent to collect geological samples and other scientific data.
"We were the last to use dogs," he recalled in his book, "With Byrd at the Bottom of the World," published in 1990. "From then on, explorers would use planes and over-the-snow vehicles."
Vaughan kept driving dogs after his return to New England, qualifying for an exhibition of the sport at the 1932 Winter Olympics.
At the outset of World War II, he was commissioned an officer in the Army Air Corps and assigned to a search-and-rescue unit based in Maine. His service included using a dog team to salvage a secret bombsight from the so-called "Lost Squadron" of U.S. warplanes forced to land in Greenland in 1942. More than five decades later, Vaughan would return to Greenland as part of an expedition that found several of the planes buried hundreds of feet beneath the ice.
After serving in the Korean War, Vaughan started making frequent trips to Alaska, moving permanently to the state at age 67. He arrived in Anchorage nearly broke. His first job was shoveling snow from sidewalks to pay for room and board, and he followed that with a stint as a dishwasher.
Despite his accomplished past, he felt no embarrassment about his humble beginnings in Alaska.
"If you don't look for challenges, you become a follower," Vaughan said. "Challenges are self-satisfying for a person, testing himself on whether he can do it or not, analyzing for himself his character. Many times it answers a great question for the person."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/12/23/famed_explorer_norman_vaughan_dies_at_age_100/
Military school sex harassment continues
By Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
WASHINGTON --Sexual assaults and harassment are still significant problems at the nation's military academies, polls of students at the schools show, despite recent scandals that triggered intensive training to prevent the behavior.
Up to 6 percent of the women at the Army, Navy and Air Force academies said they experienced sexual assault during the 2004-2005 school year, and about half or more said they were sexually harassed, according to a survey released Friday by the Pentagon.
The survey comes more than two years after a sex abuse scandal rocked the Air Force Academy, leading to a purge in its leadership and a new, intensive focus on training to prevent abuse and sexual harassment.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/12/23/military_school_sex_harassment_continues/
Azeri passenger plane crashes with 23 on board: RIA
December 23, 2005
MOSCOW (Reuters) - An Azeri passenger plane with 23 people on board crashed on Friday soon after take off from the Caucasus state's capital Baku, Russia's RIA news agency reported.
RIA quoted the Azeri transport authority as saying that An-142 aircraft bound for the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan with 18 passengers and five crew disappeared from radar screens 20 minutes after take-off. It was not clear if there had been any survivors.
Itar-Tass news agency said the plane was An-140.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/12/23/azeri_passenger_plane_crashes_with_23_on_board_ria/
Irish spy's revelations cause an uproar
Top republican Denis Donaldson who headed Sinn Fein's Stormont offices is seen in this Dec. 9, 2005 file photo. For 20 years, Donaldson says he worked both as an important backroom official for Sinn Fein - and, to the public dismay of his closest party colleagues, as a paid informer for the British. His Dec. 16, 2005, declaration to have been a turncoat sent shock waves through Northern Ireland's peace process. (AP Photo/Paul Faith, PA)
By Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
DUBLIN, Ireland --For 20 years, Denis Donaldson says he worked both as an important backroom official for Sinn Fein -- and, to the public dismay of his closest party colleagues, as a paid informer for the British.
His Dec. 16 declaration to have been a turncoat sent shock waves through Northern Ireland's peace process. It raised fresh doubts about why the province's power-sharing government really collapsed three years ago -- an event triggered by Donaldson's own arrest as a suspected Irish Republican Army spy -- and whether any trust remains to build a new one.
Donaldson, 55, today is in hiding somewhere in Ireland, leaving the IRA-linked Sinn Fein and British officials to push rival conspiracy theories about what "their" man was really doing. Moderate politicians and analysts say the truth probably lies in the middle, but they question Sinn Fein's claim of a plot by British "spooks," or intelligence officials, to scuttle power-sharing.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2005/12/23/irish_spys_revelations_cause_an_uproar/
Heating aid slashed; N.E. faces burden
US spending was tied to Alaska drilling
By Susan Milligan and Rick Klein, Globe Staff December 23, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The federal program to help poor families heat their homes got cut to less than half the amount originally promised by Congress, because of a flurry of late-night maneuvers on Wednesday that could leave tens of thousands of New England families struggling with skyrocketing heating bills this winter.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/12/23/heating_aid_slashed_ne_faces_burden/
Massachusetts eyes expansion of abortion clinic buffer zone
By Ken Maguire, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
BOSTON --Abortion rights activists and lawmakers are backing new legislation to expand state-protected buffer zones around abortion clinics.
Currently, state law mandates a 6-foot buffer zone around patients within an 18-foot radius of a clinic entrance, and prohibits anyone from approaching without their consent for the purpose of passing leaflets or "engaging in oral protest, education or counseling."
Abortion rights supporters say they want to amend the law to create something similar to their original proposal, which was for a fixed zone of 25 feet.
"Right now it's very hard to enforce," said Melissa Kogut, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts. "It's a moving zone. Protesters still are able to harass women as they are going in."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/12/23/massachusetts_eyes_expansion_of_abortion_clinic_buffer_zone/
Judge allows $62.5 million H&R Block settlement to proceed
By Lawrence Messina, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
CHARLESTON, W.Va. --A Kanawha Circuit judge gave preliminary approval Friday to a $62.5 million settlement between H&R Block Inc. and an estimated eight million consumers in more than two dozen states, including Maine, who exchanged tax refunds for upfront payments.
The deal resolves four class-action lawsuits as well as potential claims alleging the nation's largest tax preparer violated state consumer protection laws.
The company offered quick payments, formerly known as "Rapid Refunds," to customers expecting tax refunds. They were actually loans repaid by those refunds that featured interest rates of between 29 percent and 750 percent.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2005/12/23/judge_allows_625_million_hr_block_settlement_to_proceed/
Attorney General opposes motion to dismiss No Child lawsuit
December 23, 2005
HARTFORD, Conn. --Attorney General Richard Blumenthal filed a brief Friday opposing the Justice Department's motion to dismiss Connecticut's lawsuit challenging the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to dismiss the Connecticut lawsuit, arguing that Connecticut officials are wrong to claim states should not have to spend their own money to meet the education law's mandates.
Connecticut in August became the first state to try to block the 2002 law. State officials argued in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Hartford tat the law is unconstitutional, an unfunded federal mandate costing more than the state receives in federal aid.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2005/12/23/attorney_general_opposes_motion_to_dismiss_no_child_lawsuit/
Fish head with two mouths heads to Harvard
December 23, 2005
LINCOLN, Neb. --People may need top grades to get into Ivy league schools.
But two mouths is all it took to get a fish into Harvard University.
The head of a double-jawed fish pulled from Nebraska's Holmes Lake will be off to Harvard next week. James Lee, a research fellow at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, contacted fisherman Clarence Olberding about donating his curious catch for research.
"I'm interested in seeing what the actual jaw anatomy is," Lee said. He wants to determine whether the extra jaw is a result of an injury, or if it's an actual jaw.
Olberding, 57, caught the two-mouthed rainbow trout Saturday. After taking a couple of photos, he cut off the head and put both pieces in the freezer.
The fish head will eventually be on display, crediting Olberding with the donation and catch.
Nebraska Game and Parks Commission fisheries officials said the deformity may be a genetic mutation, but that the fish is fine to eat.
Olberding plans to smoke and eat the trout.
"I wish I would have kept it intact and had it mounted," he said. "But I think it's going to the right place."
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/12/23/fish_head_with_two_mouths_heads_to_harvard/
Double-mouthed fish pulled from Neb. lake
A rainbow trout fished out of Holmes Lake in Lincoln, Neb., on Dec. 17, 2005, features a double mouth. Clarence Olberding, 57, of Lincoln, wasn't just telling a fisherman's fib when he called over another angler to look at the two-mouthed trout. It weighed in at about a pound. Olberding, who plans to smoke and eat the fish, said the hook was in the upper mouth, and that the lower one did not appear to be functional. (AP Photo/Submitted photo, Charrye Olberding)
December 21, 2005
LINCOLN, Neb. --This fish didn't have a chance. A rainbow trout pulled out of Holmes Lake last weekend had double the chance to get hooked: It had two mouths.
Clarence Olberding, 57, wasn't just telling a fisherman's fib when he called over another angler to look at the two-mouthed trout. It weighed in at about a pound.
"I reached down and grabbed it to take the hook out, and that's when I noticed that the hook was in the upper mouth and there was another jaw protruding out below," said Olberding.
He said in his 40 years of fishing, he's never seen anything like it.
Don Gabelhouse, head of the fisheries division of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, said a two-mouthed fish was new to him, too.
"It's probably a genetic deformity," he said. "I don't think there's anything wrong with it."
The second mouth didn't appear to be functional, Olberding said. He has plans for the fish, which don't included mounting.
"I'm going to smoke it up and eat it," he said.
Information from: Lincoln Journal Star, http://www.journalstar.com
http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2005/12/21/double_mouthed_fish_pulled_from_neb_lake/
Tsunami Death Toll
By The Associated Press December 23, 2005
At least 216,000 people were killed or disappeared in the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami, according to an assessment by The Associated Press of government and credible relief agency figures for each country hit.
The true toll probably never will be known -- many bodies were lost at sea and in some cases the populations of some places struck were not accurately known. Different agencies in Indonesia and Sri Lanka -- the countries hardest hit -- report different figures, but say no real attempt is being made at reconciling the discrepancies.
The United Nations said this week its total of dead and missing was 223,492, but it noted that some figures were still being updated and that some countries did not distinguish between those killed and those not accounted for.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2005/12/23/tsunami_death_toll/
Some reconstruction spending up in Iraq
By Antonio Castaneda, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
BAQOUBA, Iraq --As reconstruction spending nears $100 million in the key Diyala province, U.S. commanders say the hundreds of new roads, schools and clinics have tamed the insurgency by helping sway a once-skeptical public.
But the reconstruction program has not been as effective as initially hoped. The insurgency that still rages here has forced most money to be diverted toward building the military or police and providing security for reconstruction projects.
Almost half of the expended U.S. reconstruction money authorized by Congress last year, or about $4.65 billion, has been spent on supporting Iraqi security forces or the judicial system, according to the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, a U.S. State Department agency.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/12/23/some_reconstruction_spending_up_in_iraq/
French hand, face transplant patients meet
Daniele Bachmann, the psychologist who is treating the woman who received a partial face transplant with part of a nose, chin and lips on Nov. 27, and identified in France only by the name Isabelle, addresses a reporter during an interview with the Associated Press in Lyon, central France, Friday, Dec. 23, 2005. Isabelle, staying at the Lyon Edouard Herriot hospital where she is receiving follow-up treatment, was to meet Friday with Denis Chatelier, the man who received two new hands in a transplant in January 2000 . Bachmann said that the 38-year-old woman, given a partial face transplant on Nov. 27, already has some feeling and some facial movement. (AP Photo/Patrick Gardin)
By Angela Doland, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
LYON, France --The woman who received a new nose, chin and lips in groundbreaking surgery last month had a warm chat with the man who was the world's first double hand transplant patient, a psychiatrist who has treated both of them said Friday.
Denis Chatelier, the Frenchman who received new hands in a January 2000 operation, offered the woman encouragement at a meeting held discreetly Thursday to avoid media scrutiny, Dr. Daniele Bachmann said. Because of privacy laws, the woman can be identified only as Isabelle.
"I think they really clicked," Bachmann said in an interview with The Associated Press at her office in this southwestern city.
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2005/12/23/french_hand_face_transplant_patients_meet/
U.S. cancer death rate continues to drop
By Randolph E. Schmid, AP Science Writer December 23, 2005
WASHINGTON --The threat of dying from cancer is on the decline, even though the overall rate of being diagnosed with the disease holds steady, the government says.
In its biannual update on progress in the battle against cancer, the National Cancer Institute said Thursday that Americans are increasing their use of screening tests to catch some cancers early, when they are more treatable.
They are also smoking less, being more careful in the sun and consuming less alcohol and fats, though obesity remains a problem.
"The overall message of the report remains positive," NCI Director Andrew C. von Eschenbach said. "The evidence that I have seen convinces me that we are poised to make dramatic gains against cancer in the near future."
The report said 488.6 new cases of cancer were diagnosed for every 100,000 Americans in 2002, very similar to the rate of 488.1 a year earlier.
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/women/articles/2005/12/23/us_cancer_death_rate_continues_to_drop/
WHO calls on China to release flu samples
Geese rest on a partially frozen lake as temperatures dip to subzero numbers on the Celsius scale in Shanghai, China, Friday Dec. 23, 2005. A senior World Health Organization official appealed to China to hand over samples of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying Friday that Beijing has failed to release any samples from its dozens of outbreaks. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
By Alexa Olesen, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
BEIJING --A senior World Health Organization official complained Friday that China has not shared with his agency any samples of a deadly bird flu virus strain from its dozens of outbreaks in poultry.
WHO's Asia-Pacific Director Shigeru Omi said that sharing samples of the H5N1 virus is crucial to diagnosing new cases, and to developing a vaccine that could prevent a possible pandemic in humans.
China's Ministry of Agriculture shared five samples collected from infected birds last year but has failed to provide any this year, Omi said.
"From the more than 31 reported outbreaks in animals from 2005, no (Chinese) viruses have been made available so far for the international community," Omi said. "Time is of the essence."
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/diseases/articles/2005/12/23/who_asks_china_to_release_bird_flu_samples/
Yesterday's top search engine keywords people used that led to us (not including "Boston" and "Globe")
1) michelle mangan
2) red sox
3) michelle damon
4) dirt dogs
5) the carver nip tuck
6) carbon trading
7) patriot act
8) who is the carver
9) red sox rumors
10) howard stern
Michael Moore Today
Did George believe spying on U.S. citizens without court authorization was legal?
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program
By Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna Linzer / Washington Post
The presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President Bush's domestic spying program, according to several intelligence and government sources.
Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said in interviews that they want to know why the administration believed secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails of U.S. citizens without court authorization was legal. Some of the judges said they are particularly concerned that information gleaned from the president's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to gain authorized wiretaps from their court.
"The questions are obvious," said U.S. District Judge Dee Benson of Utah. "What have you been doing, and how might it affect the reliability and credibility of the information we're getting in our court?"
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5258
Secret wiretaps could hurt prosecutions, experts warn
By Ted Bridis / Associated Press
Washington - The Bush administration's decision to sometimes bypass the secretive U.S. court that governs terrorism wiretaps could threaten cases against terror suspects that rely on evidence uncovered during the disputed eavesdropping, some legal experts cautioned.
These experts pointed to this week's unprecedented resignation from the government's spy court by U.S. District Judge James Robertson as an indicator of the judiciary's unease over domestic wiretaps ordered without warrants under a highly classified domestic spying program authorized by President Bush.
Neither Robertson nor the White House would comment Wednesday on his abrupt resignation from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the little-known panel of 11 U.S. judges that secretively approves wiretaps and searches in the most sensitive terrorism and espionage cases. But legal experts were astonished.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5261
Survey below noted at 6:07 PM on December 23, 2005.
Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment?
* 136154 responses
Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.
85%
No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors."
5%
No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.
8%
I don't know.
2%
Not a scientifically valid survey.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904/
U.S. protects freed Iraqi officials
By Shafika Mattar / Associated Press
AMMAN, Jordan — U.S. forces are providing protection for most of a group of top officials from Saddam Hussein’s government who were recently released from custody, an Iraqi lawyer said Wednesday.
The top officials were released after no charges were filed against them, and they included Rihab Taha, who was known as “Dr. Germ” for her role in making bio-weapons for Saddam’s regime in the 1980s, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, known as “Mrs. Anthrax,” a former top Baath Party official and biotech researcher.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5263
Iraqi Court Upset Over U.S. Release of Prisoners
Tribunal says that it will take 'judicial measures' against the freed Hussein-era officials.
Los Angeles Times
BAGHDAD — The Iraqi High Tribunal, the special court trying ousted President Saddam Hussein and other leaders of his former government, on Wednesday publicly disagreed with a U.S. decision to release a group of high-profile prisoners.
A statement released by the court said the tribunal did not free the accused, who included Rihab Taha, known as Dr. Germ, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, known as Mrs. Anthrax. The court said it would hunt them down and continue taking "judicial measures" against them.
The court statement came as
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5264
What ‘Mrs. Anthrax’ Told Me
By Melinda Liu / Newsweek
Dec. 22, 2005 - Shortly before the Iraq war began in March 2003, I didn’t believe Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash when she insisted, in an interview, that Saddam Hussein’s regime was not developing biological weapons. Dubbed by Washington “Mrs. Anthrax” or “Chemical Sally,” Ammash was then Iraq’s most powerful woman. She’d been accused by U.S. investigators of heading a program, into the mid-'90s, that involved the attempted weaponization of anthrax, smallpox and botulin toxin.
On Monday, her Baghdad lawyer confirmed that Ammash was one of around two dozen Saddam-era officials released from jail without charges. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad confirmed a number of so-called “high-value detainees” had been released because “they were not considered to be a security threat, and they were not wanted on charges under Iraqi law. So we no longer had any reason to continue detaining them.”
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5260
New York Police Covertly Join In at Protest Rallies
By Jim Dwyer / New York Times
Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident, a series of videotapes show.
In glimpses and in glaring detail, the videotape images reveal the robust presence of disguised officers or others working with them at seven public gatherings since August 2004.
The officers hoist protest signs. They hold flowers with mourners. They ride in bicycle events. At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, "I am a shameless agitator." She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5257
Police Video Caught a Couple's Intimate Moment on a Manhattan Rooftop
By Jim Dwyer / New York Times
A man and woman who shared an intimate moment on a secluded, dark rooftop one August night last year have learned that they were secretly watched, an intrusion made possible by increased police surveillance of protest rallies and other events and also by advanced technology intended to fight terrorists.
That night, police officers tracked bicycle riders moving through the streets of the Lower East Side from a custom-built, $9.8 million helicopter equipped with optical equipment able to display a license plate 1,000 feet away.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5255
Protesters rally against government surveillance
By Mike Clary / South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Representatives of a dozen or more South Florida anti-war and environmental groups gathered in front of the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach on Wednesday to demand an end to secret surveillance by the U.S. government that one speaker said represented an attempt "to deliberately undermine the legitimate political activities" of advocacy organizations by linking them to terrorism.
"The Truth Project Inc. believes that we have been defamed by agents of the federal executive branch by being designated a `credible threat' to military recruiters and recruiting facilities," Marie Zwicker, a board member of the Lake Worth group, said while reading from a prepared statement.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5266
Spied on by government, S. Florida activist group demands congressional inquiry
Pentagon scrutiny may lead to lawsuit
By Mike Clary / South Florida Sun-Sentinel
A Palm Beach County group known to have been spied on under a secret Pentagon program has launched a campaign to seek a congressional investigation of what members allege are blatant infringements of civil liberties.
Attorneys for the Truth Project Inc., formed last year to counter military recruitment in high schools, say they also are exploring a lawsuit that could put the Lake Worth-based group at the center of a wider effort to reveal a pattern of Bush administration surveillance of anti-war and activist organizations in South Florida and elsewhere.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5265
Iraqis Reject Increased Fuel Costs
By Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed / IPS
BAGHDAD, Dec 21 - For two days demonstrations have continued across Iraq in protest against the government's decision to raise the price of petrol, cooking and heating fuels.
With costs increased up to nine-fold, Iraq's oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum has threatened to resign. Yet this has done nothing to quell the outburst of anger in Iraqis towards the sudden and drastic price hike.
Iraq's Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told reporters that the Cabinet raised the prices in order to curb a growing black market. Jihad said that kerosene prices were raised fivefold, cooking gas threefold, and diesel was raised nine-fold.
Iraqi response to the recent hiking of fuel prices has been one of indignation and disapproval.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5248
Impeachment
ImpeachPAC supports Democratic candidates for Congress who support the immediate and simultaneous impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney for their Iraq War lies.
http://www.impeachpac.org/
Season is tinged with sadness for family of fallen soldier
By Norm Parish / St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The smile on her face doesn't erase the heavy heart of LaKesha Johnson, a part-time gift wrapper who helps customers excited about the holidays.
LaKesha, a senior at Hazelwood Central High School, loves her job in Jamestown Mall, but she doesn't have much cheer herself.
Her only sister, Army Pfc. LaVena Johnson, died mysteriously July 19 near Balad, Iraq, nearly two days after assuring her mother she would be home for her favorite holiday - Christmas.
"I don't feel great at all," said LaKesha, who lives with three brothers and her parents in a stately seven-bedroom house in Florissant. "LaVena is not here."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5250
City clerk certifies troop withdrawal petitions
By Joan Kent / La Crosse Tribune
Petitions calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq have been certified by the La Crosse city clerk and could be considered by the council in January.
City Clerk Teri Lehrke said the petitions submitted by the group Bring Them Home Now on Nov. 23 had 2,423 valid signatures, more than the required 2,352, but needed some changes to meet state regulations.
Group member Jessica Thill submitted the revamped petitions Monday, and Lehrke said she certified them Wednesday morning.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5251
Make Your Freedom of Information Act Reques
George Bush is using the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance on American citizens without the consent of any court. After initially refusing to confirm the story, the President has admitted to personally overseeing this domestic spying program for years.
These actions are explicitly against the law. But the administration says that other laws somehow allow for this unprecedented use of a foreign intelligence agency to spy on Americans right here in the United States. According to reports, political appointees in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel wrote still-classified legal opinions laying out the supposed justification for this program.
Governor Howard Dean is filing a formal demand that they release these documents. You can add your name to a Freedom of Information Act request by providing the information below.
http://www.democrats.org/page/petition/domesticspying/fdgdqg
Bush's impeachable offense
Yes, the president committed a federal crime by wiretapping Americans, say constitutional scholars, former intelligence officers and politicians. What's missing is the political will to impeach him.
By Michelle Goldberg
On Tuesday, Dec. 20, Washington Post polling editor Richard Morin participated in an online chat with readers. The liberal blog MyDD urged its users to take part, and evidently they did. In previous days, legal experts had declared that Bush had committed a federal crime by authorizing the surveillance of American citizens without a court order, and Morin was grilled about the issue of impeachment.
First, someone from Naperville, Ill., asked Morin why the Post hasn't polled on public support for impeaching Bush. "This question makes me mad," Morin replied. Someone else repeated the question and Morin typed, "Getting madder." It came up again, and he wrote, "Madder still."
Finally, a fourth person asked it, and he answered.
Want to read the rest of this article and all of Salon for FREE?
Just watch a brief advertisement to get a FREE Site Pass for today. There's no registration required. Or you can join Salon Premium today and read Salon without ads. Just choose one of the two options below.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/12/22/impeach/index_np.html
http://www.salon.com/index.html
The Guardian
Korean scientist resigns over fake stem cell research
Associated Press
Friday December 23, 2005
South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-Suk. Photograph: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty
A scientist today issued an apology as he resigned from South Korea's top university after the school announced he had fabricated results in stem cell research that had raised hopes of new cures for hard-to-treat diseases.
A panel at the university, releasing initial findings of a investigation, accused Hwang Woo-Suk of damaging the scientific community with his deception, while the South Korean government threatened to pull its funding for his research.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,9830,1673483,00.html
Life among the ghosts of Banda Aceh
Banda Aceh one year on. Watch the clip in Quicktime (5 min 03s) (high speed version 38mb)
Banda Aceh one year on (slower internet connections 12.5mb)
In pictures: Rebuilding Nusa photo gallery
James Meek
Friday December 23, 2005
Kamboja Street is so close to the sea that the tsunami all but levelled it a year ago. Most of the fishermen's villas, with their red-tiled roofs, fluted columns and verandahs, were shaved off the earth by the great cutthroat razor of water which stood over them, then sliced them from their foundations.
When, after three months, the Indonesians cleared the waist-high layer of mud, masonry, cars and corpses which covered Lampulo, the district of Banda Aceh where Kamboja Street lies, there was nothing left of many homes except a faint border of sea-chewed brick and the tiling on the ground floor.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tsunami/story/0,15671,1673294,00.html
Chinese toxic spill 'stopped by dam'
James Sturcke and agencies
Friday December 23, 2005
Residents of Yingde city in China's Guangdong province collect drinking water from a fire engine following a toxic cadmium spill in the Bei River. Photograph: Zhuang Jin/Xinhua/AP
A toxic river spill - the second in six weeks to poison Chinese waterways - has been brought under control, authorities said today.
Officials insisted that the cadmium discharge had been contained by closing a dam on the Bei river around 60 miles north of the southern business capital of Guangzhou.
"Water in the lower stream is safe," local official Wang Zhensheng was quoted as saying in the China Daily newspaper. Mr Wang said another dam downstream had also been closed and authorities planned to discharge water from a reservoir to dilute the chemical.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1673490,00.html
Booming China promises peace and goodwill
· Policy paper pledges share of bigger markets for all
· But wary Japan sees threat from military build-up
Justin McCurry in Tokyo Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Friday December 23, 2005
The Chinese government yesterday tried to soothe foreign anxieties over its economic expansion and military power by publishing a blueprint for what it called a peaceful future.
In what is being seen as a bureaucratic equivalent of a charm offensive, the administration produced a 32-page policy document entitled China's Peaceful Development Road. The document pledged to seek a "harmonious world" where all nations can share in bigger markets without fear or threat. But no sooner had the "white paper" been published than Japan's foreign minister abandoned diplomatic decorum to describe Beijing as a "considerable threat" because of its military build-up and tendency to secrecy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1673311,00.html
Microsoft could face 2m euro a day fine over competition ruling
· Kroes accuses US firm of ignoring obligations
· Software group claims it has cooperated fully
David Gow in Brussels
Friday December 23, 2005
The European commission significantly raised the stakes yesterday in its protracted legal battle with Microsoft by threatening to fine the world's biggest software group €2m (£1.4m) a day for non-compliance with anti-trust sanctions.
The commission, which fined Microsoft a record €497m in March 2004, chose the first anniversary of the decision by the court of first instance (CFI), Europe's second-highest court, to demand the group immediately enacted "interim remedies" (the sanctions), pending a full appeal.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,16559,1673333,00.html
PakTribune
12 die in Iraq violence
BAGHDAD: Violence around Iraq left more than a dozen people dead, officials said on Thursday.
Six Iraqi police officers were shot dead in Baghdad, while three Iraqi police were killed and four wounded in an attack in Samarra, 95 km north of Baghdad, a US military official said. Gunmen in the capital killed politician Khazaal Jasib al-Saiedi, the head of the small independent Iraq Reforming Movement, Baghdad police’s Lt Muhammed Khayoun said.
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=129210
continued …
"Okeydoke"
History
Today is Friday, Dec. 23, the 357th day of 2005. There are eight days left in the year.
1783, George Washington resigned as commander in chief of the Army and retired to his home at Mount Vernon, Va.
1815 Rev. Henry H. Garnet, militant abolitionist, is born a slave in Kent County, MD.
1823, the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement C. Moore was published in the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel.
1867 Madame C.J. Walker, a millionaire businesswoman who will be a philanthropic contributor to the NAACP, the YMCA, and Black Colleges, is born in Delta, LA.
1893, the Engelbert Humperdinck opera "Haensel und Gretel" was first performed, in Weimar, Germany.
1928, the National Broadcasting Company set up a permanent, coast-to-coast network.
1935 Singer "Little Esther" Phillips, noted for her songs "And I Love Him" and "Release Me", is born in Galveston, TX
1941, during World War II, American forces on Wake Island surrendered to the Japanese.
1948, former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese war leaders were executed in Tokyo.
1968, 82 crew members of the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo were released by North Korea, 11 months after they had been captured.
1986, the experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first non-stop, non-refueled, round-the-world flight as it landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
1987, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, serving a life sentence for the attempted assassination of President Ford in 1975, escaped from the Alderson Federal Prison for Women in West Virginia. (She was recaptured two days later.)
Ten years ago: A fire in Dabwali, India, killed 540 people, including 170 children, during a year-end party being held near the children's school.
Five years ago: Pro-democracy forces claimed a sweeping victory in Serbia's parliamentary elections.
One year ago: Democrat Christine Gregoire won the Washington governor's race by 130 votes out of 2.9 million ballots cast, according to final recount results announced from Seattle's King County. Former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland pleaded guilty to a corruption charge (he was later sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison).
Assailants claiming to be members of a revolutionary group opposed to the death penalty ambushed a bus in Honduras, killing 28 people, including six children.
Two men were convicted in Houston for their role in a smuggling attempt that resulted in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants crammed in a tractor-trailer.
Missing in Action
1965 SHANKEL WILLIAM L. SAN ANDREAS CA 02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1966 REEVES JOHN HOWARD CANADA
1970 BOOTH GARY P. OLYMPIA WA "ACFT BROKE UP, SAR NEG"
1970 MC ANDREWS MICHAEL W. FORT LAUDERDALE FL "ACFT BROKE UP, SAR NEG"
1970 WISEMAN BAIN W. JR. TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCE NM "ACFT BROKE UP, SAR NEG"
December 22
1964 PARKS JOE CEDAR LANE TX 12/30/66 DIC ON PRG LIST
1965 ALCORN WENDELL R. KITTANNING PA 02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 1998
1965 CARTWRIGHT BILLIE J. SAN ANTONIO TX REMAINS IDENTIFIED 28 NOV 94
1965 DAIGLE GLENN H. LABADIEVILLE LA 02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1965 GOLD EDWARD F. OAKLAND CA REMAINS IDENTIFIED 01/95
1965 LUKENBACH MAX D. TUCSON AZ DEAD BURIED
1965 PRUDHOMME JOHN D. TIPP CITY OH
1967 COOK WILMER P. ANNAPOLIS MD REMAINS RETURNED 6/21/88 ID'D 9/28/89 BURIED AT SEA FROM SHIP NAMED FOR HIM
1967 FORS GARY H. PUYALLUP WA
1967 HICKERSON JAMES M. ATLANTA GA 03/14/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1969 BURRIS DONALD D. JR. WAYNE PA
1969 KENNEDY JAMES E. PINE HILL NJ
1972 ALLEY GERALD W. POTACELLO ID REMAINS RETURNED 12/88 ID'D- 06/89
1972 BENNETT THOMAS W. JR. NATCHEZ MS
1972 BERNASCONI LOUIS H. NAPA CA 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1972 CAMEROTA PETER P. GIBBSTOWN NJ 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1972 CONLEE WILLIAM W. LEMON GROVE CA 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE IN 98
1972 COPACK JOSEPH H. JR. CHICAGO IL REMAINS RETURNED 06/89
1972 DRUMMOND DAVID I. WESTWOOD NJ 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1972 GIROUX PETER J. TRUMANSBURG NY 02/12/73 RELEASED BY DRV INJURED ALIVE AND WELL 98
1972 LE BLANC LOUIS E. JR. PROVIDENCE RI 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV DECEASED
1972 MAYALL WILLIAM T. LEVITTOWN NY 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE IN 98
1972 MORGAN GARY L. ABILENE TX 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE IN 98
1972 SPONEYBARGER ROBERT C. EMMAUS PA 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE IN 98
1972 WILSON WILLIAM W. CONRAD IA 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV
1972 YUILL JOHN H. BOSWELL IN 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 1998
The Boston Globe
Famed explorer Norman Vaughan dies at age 100
December 23, 2005
ANCHORAGE, Alaska --Norman Vaughan, who as a young man explored Antarctica and spent much of his life seeking adventure, died Friday just a few days after turning 100 years old.
Vaughan, a Salem, Mass. native, died at about 10:30 a.m. at Providence Alaska Medical Center surrounded by family and friends, said nursing supervisor Martha George.
Vaughan was well enough on Saturday to enjoy a birthday celebration at the hospital attended by more than 100 friends and hospital workers. His actual birthday was Monday.
Vaughan's motto was "Dream big and dare to fail." As a young man, he joined Admiral Richard Byrd on his expedition to the South Pole in 1928 and 1930 as a dog handler and driver.
Days before his 89th birthday he and his wife, Carolyn Muegge-Vaughan, returned to Antarctica and climbed to the summit of 10,320-foot Mount Vaughan, the mountain Byrd named in his honor.
"It was the climax of our dream," he told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview at his Anchorage home. "We had to risk failure to get there. We dared to fail."
Vaughan continued to seek adventure his entire life. His exploits included finishing the 1,100 mile-Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race six times after age 70. At age 96, he carried the Olympic torch in Juneau, passing the flame from a wheelchair, 70 years after he competed in the Olympics as a sled dog racer.
He wanted to climb Mount Vaughan again to celebrate his 100th birthday but the expedition fell short of money. He planned to sip champagne at the summit -- the first taste of alcohol for the lifetime teetotaler.
"The only liquor I've ever had was the taste of wine at communion," he said. "I told my mother I wouldn't drink until I was 100 and she said, 'That's all right."
Vaughan had a taste of champagne Saturday during his birthday celebration.
Vaughan was born Dec. 19, 1905, in Salem, Mass.
He was the son of a wealthy leather tanner and shoe manufacturer. In his youth, he became fascinated by tales of early-century polar explorers and taught himself to mush dogs, beginning with the family pet.
In 1925, he entered Harvard College but soon left to be a dog musher in Newfoundland for a medical missionary. He left Harvard for good to join Byrd on his expedition, which included creation of the first settlement in Antarctica and the first air flight over the South Pole. Vaughan was part of a crew that drove dog teams 1,500 miles across the frozen continent to collect geological samples and other scientific data.
"We were the last to use dogs," he recalled in his book, "With Byrd at the Bottom of the World," published in 1990. "From then on, explorers would use planes and over-the-snow vehicles."
Vaughan kept driving dogs after his return to New England, qualifying for an exhibition of the sport at the 1932 Winter Olympics.
At the outset of World War II, he was commissioned an officer in the Army Air Corps and assigned to a search-and-rescue unit based in Maine. His service included using a dog team to salvage a secret bombsight from the so-called "Lost Squadron" of U.S. warplanes forced to land in Greenland in 1942. More than five decades later, Vaughan would return to Greenland as part of an expedition that found several of the planes buried hundreds of feet beneath the ice.
After serving in the Korean War, Vaughan started making frequent trips to Alaska, moving permanently to the state at age 67. He arrived in Anchorage nearly broke. His first job was shoveling snow from sidewalks to pay for room and board, and he followed that with a stint as a dishwasher.
Despite his accomplished past, he felt no embarrassment about his humble beginnings in Alaska.
"If you don't look for challenges, you become a follower," Vaughan said. "Challenges are self-satisfying for a person, testing himself on whether he can do it or not, analyzing for himself his character. Many times it answers a great question for the person."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/12/23/famed_explorer_norman_vaughan_dies_at_age_100/
Military school sex harassment continues
By Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
WASHINGTON --Sexual assaults and harassment are still significant problems at the nation's military academies, polls of students at the schools show, despite recent scandals that triggered intensive training to prevent the behavior.
Up to 6 percent of the women at the Army, Navy and Air Force academies said they experienced sexual assault during the 2004-2005 school year, and about half or more said they were sexually harassed, according to a survey released Friday by the Pentagon.
The survey comes more than two years after a sex abuse scandal rocked the Air Force Academy, leading to a purge in its leadership and a new, intensive focus on training to prevent abuse and sexual harassment.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/12/23/military_school_sex_harassment_continues/
Azeri passenger plane crashes with 23 on board: RIA
December 23, 2005
MOSCOW (Reuters) - An Azeri passenger plane with 23 people on board crashed on Friday soon after take off from the Caucasus state's capital Baku, Russia's RIA news agency reported.
RIA quoted the Azeri transport authority as saying that An-142 aircraft bound for the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan with 18 passengers and five crew disappeared from radar screens 20 minutes after take-off. It was not clear if there had been any survivors.
Itar-Tass news agency said the plane was An-140.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/12/23/azeri_passenger_plane_crashes_with_23_on_board_ria/
Irish spy's revelations cause an uproar
Top republican Denis Donaldson who headed Sinn Fein's Stormont offices is seen in this Dec. 9, 2005 file photo. For 20 years, Donaldson says he worked both as an important backroom official for Sinn Fein - and, to the public dismay of his closest party colleagues, as a paid informer for the British. His Dec. 16, 2005, declaration to have been a turncoat sent shock waves through Northern Ireland's peace process. (AP Photo/Paul Faith, PA)
By Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
DUBLIN, Ireland --For 20 years, Denis Donaldson says he worked both as an important backroom official for Sinn Fein -- and, to the public dismay of his closest party colleagues, as a paid informer for the British.
His Dec. 16 declaration to have been a turncoat sent shock waves through Northern Ireland's peace process. It raised fresh doubts about why the province's power-sharing government really collapsed three years ago -- an event triggered by Donaldson's own arrest as a suspected Irish Republican Army spy -- and whether any trust remains to build a new one.
Donaldson, 55, today is in hiding somewhere in Ireland, leaving the IRA-linked Sinn Fein and British officials to push rival conspiracy theories about what "their" man was really doing. Moderate politicians and analysts say the truth probably lies in the middle, but they question Sinn Fein's claim of a plot by British "spooks," or intelligence officials, to scuttle power-sharing.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2005/12/23/irish_spys_revelations_cause_an_uproar/
Heating aid slashed; N.E. faces burden
US spending was tied to Alaska drilling
By Susan Milligan and Rick Klein, Globe Staff December 23, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The federal program to help poor families heat their homes got cut to less than half the amount originally promised by Congress, because of a flurry of late-night maneuvers on Wednesday that could leave tens of thousands of New England families struggling with skyrocketing heating bills this winter.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/12/23/heating_aid_slashed_ne_faces_burden/
Massachusetts eyes expansion of abortion clinic buffer zone
By Ken Maguire, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
BOSTON --Abortion rights activists and lawmakers are backing new legislation to expand state-protected buffer zones around abortion clinics.
Currently, state law mandates a 6-foot buffer zone around patients within an 18-foot radius of a clinic entrance, and prohibits anyone from approaching without their consent for the purpose of passing leaflets or "engaging in oral protest, education or counseling."
Abortion rights supporters say they want to amend the law to create something similar to their original proposal, which was for a fixed zone of 25 feet.
"Right now it's very hard to enforce," said Melissa Kogut, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts. "It's a moving zone. Protesters still are able to harass women as they are going in."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/12/23/massachusetts_eyes_expansion_of_abortion_clinic_buffer_zone/
Judge allows $62.5 million H&R Block settlement to proceed
By Lawrence Messina, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
CHARLESTON, W.Va. --A Kanawha Circuit judge gave preliminary approval Friday to a $62.5 million settlement between H&R Block Inc. and an estimated eight million consumers in more than two dozen states, including Maine, who exchanged tax refunds for upfront payments.
The deal resolves four class-action lawsuits as well as potential claims alleging the nation's largest tax preparer violated state consumer protection laws.
The company offered quick payments, formerly known as "Rapid Refunds," to customers expecting tax refunds. They were actually loans repaid by those refunds that featured interest rates of between 29 percent and 750 percent.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2005/12/23/judge_allows_625_million_hr_block_settlement_to_proceed/
Attorney General opposes motion to dismiss No Child lawsuit
December 23, 2005
HARTFORD, Conn. --Attorney General Richard Blumenthal filed a brief Friday opposing the Justice Department's motion to dismiss Connecticut's lawsuit challenging the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to dismiss the Connecticut lawsuit, arguing that Connecticut officials are wrong to claim states should not have to spend their own money to meet the education law's mandates.
Connecticut in August became the first state to try to block the 2002 law. State officials argued in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Hartford tat the law is unconstitutional, an unfunded federal mandate costing more than the state receives in federal aid.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2005/12/23/attorney_general_opposes_motion_to_dismiss_no_child_lawsuit/
Fish head with two mouths heads to Harvard
December 23, 2005
LINCOLN, Neb. --People may need top grades to get into Ivy league schools.
But two mouths is all it took to get a fish into Harvard University.
The head of a double-jawed fish pulled from Nebraska's Holmes Lake will be off to Harvard next week. James Lee, a research fellow at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, contacted fisherman Clarence Olberding about donating his curious catch for research.
"I'm interested in seeing what the actual jaw anatomy is," Lee said. He wants to determine whether the extra jaw is a result of an injury, or if it's an actual jaw.
Olberding, 57, caught the two-mouthed rainbow trout Saturday. After taking a couple of photos, he cut off the head and put both pieces in the freezer.
The fish head will eventually be on display, crediting Olberding with the donation and catch.
Nebraska Game and Parks Commission fisheries officials said the deformity may be a genetic mutation, but that the fish is fine to eat.
Olberding plans to smoke and eat the trout.
"I wish I would have kept it intact and had it mounted," he said. "But I think it's going to the right place."
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/12/23/fish_head_with_two_mouths_heads_to_harvard/
Double-mouthed fish pulled from Neb. lake
A rainbow trout fished out of Holmes Lake in Lincoln, Neb., on Dec. 17, 2005, features a double mouth. Clarence Olberding, 57, of Lincoln, wasn't just telling a fisherman's fib when he called over another angler to look at the two-mouthed trout. It weighed in at about a pound. Olberding, who plans to smoke and eat the fish, said the hook was in the upper mouth, and that the lower one did not appear to be functional. (AP Photo/Submitted photo, Charrye Olberding)
December 21, 2005
LINCOLN, Neb. --This fish didn't have a chance. A rainbow trout pulled out of Holmes Lake last weekend had double the chance to get hooked: It had two mouths.
Clarence Olberding, 57, wasn't just telling a fisherman's fib when he called over another angler to look at the two-mouthed trout. It weighed in at about a pound.
"I reached down and grabbed it to take the hook out, and that's when I noticed that the hook was in the upper mouth and there was another jaw protruding out below," said Olberding.
He said in his 40 years of fishing, he's never seen anything like it.
Don Gabelhouse, head of the fisheries division of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, said a two-mouthed fish was new to him, too.
"It's probably a genetic deformity," he said. "I don't think there's anything wrong with it."
The second mouth didn't appear to be functional, Olberding said. He has plans for the fish, which don't included mounting.
"I'm going to smoke it up and eat it," he said.
Information from: Lincoln Journal Star, http://www.journalstar.com
http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2005/12/21/double_mouthed_fish_pulled_from_neb_lake/
Tsunami Death Toll
By The Associated Press December 23, 2005
At least 216,000 people were killed or disappeared in the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami, according to an assessment by The Associated Press of government and credible relief agency figures for each country hit.
The true toll probably never will be known -- many bodies were lost at sea and in some cases the populations of some places struck were not accurately known. Different agencies in Indonesia and Sri Lanka -- the countries hardest hit -- report different figures, but say no real attempt is being made at reconciling the discrepancies.
The United Nations said this week its total of dead and missing was 223,492, but it noted that some figures were still being updated and that some countries did not distinguish between those killed and those not accounted for.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2005/12/23/tsunami_death_toll/
Some reconstruction spending up in Iraq
By Antonio Castaneda, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
BAQOUBA, Iraq --As reconstruction spending nears $100 million in the key Diyala province, U.S. commanders say the hundreds of new roads, schools and clinics have tamed the insurgency by helping sway a once-skeptical public.
But the reconstruction program has not been as effective as initially hoped. The insurgency that still rages here has forced most money to be diverted toward building the military or police and providing security for reconstruction projects.
Almost half of the expended U.S. reconstruction money authorized by Congress last year, or about $4.65 billion, has been spent on supporting Iraqi security forces or the judicial system, according to the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, a U.S. State Department agency.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/12/23/some_reconstruction_spending_up_in_iraq/
French hand, face transplant patients meet
Daniele Bachmann, the psychologist who is treating the woman who received a partial face transplant with part of a nose, chin and lips on Nov. 27, and identified in France only by the name Isabelle, addresses a reporter during an interview with the Associated Press in Lyon, central France, Friday, Dec. 23, 2005. Isabelle, staying at the Lyon Edouard Herriot hospital where she is receiving follow-up treatment, was to meet Friday with Denis Chatelier, the man who received two new hands in a transplant in January 2000 . Bachmann said that the 38-year-old woman, given a partial face transplant on Nov. 27, already has some feeling and some facial movement. (AP Photo/Patrick Gardin)
By Angela Doland, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
LYON, France --The woman who received a new nose, chin and lips in groundbreaking surgery last month had a warm chat with the man who was the world's first double hand transplant patient, a psychiatrist who has treated both of them said Friday.
Denis Chatelier, the Frenchman who received new hands in a January 2000 operation, offered the woman encouragement at a meeting held discreetly Thursday to avoid media scrutiny, Dr. Daniele Bachmann said. Because of privacy laws, the woman can be identified only as Isabelle.
"I think they really clicked," Bachmann said in an interview with The Associated Press at her office in this southwestern city.
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2005/12/23/french_hand_face_transplant_patients_meet/
U.S. cancer death rate continues to drop
By Randolph E. Schmid, AP Science Writer December 23, 2005
WASHINGTON --The threat of dying from cancer is on the decline, even though the overall rate of being diagnosed with the disease holds steady, the government says.
In its biannual update on progress in the battle against cancer, the National Cancer Institute said Thursday that Americans are increasing their use of screening tests to catch some cancers early, when they are more treatable.
They are also smoking less, being more careful in the sun and consuming less alcohol and fats, though obesity remains a problem.
"The overall message of the report remains positive," NCI Director Andrew C. von Eschenbach said. "The evidence that I have seen convinces me that we are poised to make dramatic gains against cancer in the near future."
The report said 488.6 new cases of cancer were diagnosed for every 100,000 Americans in 2002, very similar to the rate of 488.1 a year earlier.
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/women/articles/2005/12/23/us_cancer_death_rate_continues_to_drop/
WHO calls on China to release flu samples
Geese rest on a partially frozen lake as temperatures dip to subzero numbers on the Celsius scale in Shanghai, China, Friday Dec. 23, 2005. A senior World Health Organization official appealed to China to hand over samples of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying Friday that Beijing has failed to release any samples from its dozens of outbreaks. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
By Alexa Olesen, Associated Press Writer December 23, 2005
BEIJING --A senior World Health Organization official complained Friday that China has not shared with his agency any samples of a deadly bird flu virus strain from its dozens of outbreaks in poultry.
WHO's Asia-Pacific Director Shigeru Omi said that sharing samples of the H5N1 virus is crucial to diagnosing new cases, and to developing a vaccine that could prevent a possible pandemic in humans.
China's Ministry of Agriculture shared five samples collected from infected birds last year but has failed to provide any this year, Omi said.
"From the more than 31 reported outbreaks in animals from 2005, no (Chinese) viruses have been made available so far for the international community," Omi said. "Time is of the essence."
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/diseases/articles/2005/12/23/who_asks_china_to_release_bird_flu_samples/
Yesterday's top search engine keywords people used that led to us (not including "Boston" and "Globe")
1) michelle mangan
2) red sox
3) michelle damon
4) dirt dogs
5) the carver nip tuck
6) carbon trading
7) patriot act
8) who is the carver
9) red sox rumors
10) howard stern
Michael Moore Today
Did George believe spying on U.S. citizens without court authorization was legal?
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program
By Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna Linzer / Washington Post
The presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President Bush's domestic spying program, according to several intelligence and government sources.
Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said in interviews that they want to know why the administration believed secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails of U.S. citizens without court authorization was legal. Some of the judges said they are particularly concerned that information gleaned from the president's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to gain authorized wiretaps from their court.
"The questions are obvious," said U.S. District Judge Dee Benson of Utah. "What have you been doing, and how might it affect the reliability and credibility of the information we're getting in our court?"
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5258
Secret wiretaps could hurt prosecutions, experts warn
By Ted Bridis / Associated Press
Washington - The Bush administration's decision to sometimes bypass the secretive U.S. court that governs terrorism wiretaps could threaten cases against terror suspects that rely on evidence uncovered during the disputed eavesdropping, some legal experts cautioned.
These experts pointed to this week's unprecedented resignation from the government's spy court by U.S. District Judge James Robertson as an indicator of the judiciary's unease over domestic wiretaps ordered without warrants under a highly classified domestic spying program authorized by President Bush.
Neither Robertson nor the White House would comment Wednesday on his abrupt resignation from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the little-known panel of 11 U.S. judges that secretively approves wiretaps and searches in the most sensitive terrorism and espionage cases. But legal experts were astonished.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5261
Survey below noted at 6:07 PM on December 23, 2005.
Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment?
* 136154 responses
Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.
85%
No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors."
5%
No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.
8%
I don't know.
2%
Not a scientifically valid survey.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904/
U.S. protects freed Iraqi officials
By Shafika Mattar / Associated Press
AMMAN, Jordan — U.S. forces are providing protection for most of a group of top officials from Saddam Hussein’s government who were recently released from custody, an Iraqi lawyer said Wednesday.
The top officials were released after no charges were filed against them, and they included Rihab Taha, who was known as “Dr. Germ” for her role in making bio-weapons for Saddam’s regime in the 1980s, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, known as “Mrs. Anthrax,” a former top Baath Party official and biotech researcher.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5263
Iraqi Court Upset Over U.S. Release of Prisoners
Tribunal says that it will take 'judicial measures' against the freed Hussein-era officials.
Los Angeles Times
BAGHDAD — The Iraqi High Tribunal, the special court trying ousted President Saddam Hussein and other leaders of his former government, on Wednesday publicly disagreed with a U.S. decision to release a group of high-profile prisoners.
A statement released by the court said the tribunal did not free the accused, who included Rihab Taha, known as Dr. Germ, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, known as Mrs. Anthrax. The court said it would hunt them down and continue taking "judicial measures" against them.
The court statement came as
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5264
What ‘Mrs. Anthrax’ Told Me
By Melinda Liu / Newsweek
Dec. 22, 2005 - Shortly before the Iraq war began in March 2003, I didn’t believe Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash when she insisted, in an interview, that Saddam Hussein’s regime was not developing biological weapons. Dubbed by Washington “Mrs. Anthrax” or “Chemical Sally,” Ammash was then Iraq’s most powerful woman. She’d been accused by U.S. investigators of heading a program, into the mid-'90s, that involved the attempted weaponization of anthrax, smallpox and botulin toxin.
On Monday, her Baghdad lawyer confirmed that Ammash was one of around two dozen Saddam-era officials released from jail without charges. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad confirmed a number of so-called “high-value detainees” had been released because “they were not considered to be a security threat, and they were not wanted on charges under Iraqi law. So we no longer had any reason to continue detaining them.”
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5260
New York Police Covertly Join In at Protest Rallies
By Jim Dwyer / New York Times
Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident, a series of videotapes show.
In glimpses and in glaring detail, the videotape images reveal the robust presence of disguised officers or others working with them at seven public gatherings since August 2004.
The officers hoist protest signs. They hold flowers with mourners. They ride in bicycle events. At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, "I am a shameless agitator." She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5257
Police Video Caught a Couple's Intimate Moment on a Manhattan Rooftop
By Jim Dwyer / New York Times
A man and woman who shared an intimate moment on a secluded, dark rooftop one August night last year have learned that they were secretly watched, an intrusion made possible by increased police surveillance of protest rallies and other events and also by advanced technology intended to fight terrorists.
That night, police officers tracked bicycle riders moving through the streets of the Lower East Side from a custom-built, $9.8 million helicopter equipped with optical equipment able to display a license plate 1,000 feet away.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5255
Protesters rally against government surveillance
By Mike Clary / South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Representatives of a dozen or more South Florida anti-war and environmental groups gathered in front of the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach on Wednesday to demand an end to secret surveillance by the U.S. government that one speaker said represented an attempt "to deliberately undermine the legitimate political activities" of advocacy organizations by linking them to terrorism.
"The Truth Project Inc. believes that we have been defamed by agents of the federal executive branch by being designated a `credible threat' to military recruiters and recruiting facilities," Marie Zwicker, a board member of the Lake Worth group, said while reading from a prepared statement.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5266
Spied on by government, S. Florida activist group demands congressional inquiry
Pentagon scrutiny may lead to lawsuit
By Mike Clary / South Florida Sun-Sentinel
A Palm Beach County group known to have been spied on under a secret Pentagon program has launched a campaign to seek a congressional investigation of what members allege are blatant infringements of civil liberties.
Attorneys for the Truth Project Inc., formed last year to counter military recruitment in high schools, say they also are exploring a lawsuit that could put the Lake Worth-based group at the center of a wider effort to reveal a pattern of Bush administration surveillance of anti-war and activist organizations in South Florida and elsewhere.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5265
Iraqis Reject Increased Fuel Costs
By Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed / IPS
BAGHDAD, Dec 21 - For two days demonstrations have continued across Iraq in protest against the government's decision to raise the price of petrol, cooking and heating fuels.
With costs increased up to nine-fold, Iraq's oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum has threatened to resign. Yet this has done nothing to quell the outburst of anger in Iraqis towards the sudden and drastic price hike.
Iraq's Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told reporters that the Cabinet raised the prices in order to curb a growing black market. Jihad said that kerosene prices were raised fivefold, cooking gas threefold, and diesel was raised nine-fold.
Iraqi response to the recent hiking of fuel prices has been one of indignation and disapproval.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5248
Impeachment
ImpeachPAC supports Democratic candidates for Congress who support the immediate and simultaneous impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney for their Iraq War lies.
http://www.impeachpac.org/
Season is tinged with sadness for family of fallen soldier
By Norm Parish / St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The smile on her face doesn't erase the heavy heart of LaKesha Johnson, a part-time gift wrapper who helps customers excited about the holidays.
LaKesha, a senior at Hazelwood Central High School, loves her job in Jamestown Mall, but she doesn't have much cheer herself.
Her only sister, Army Pfc. LaVena Johnson, died mysteriously July 19 near Balad, Iraq, nearly two days after assuring her mother she would be home for her favorite holiday - Christmas.
"I don't feel great at all," said LaKesha, who lives with three brothers and her parents in a stately seven-bedroom house in Florissant. "LaVena is not here."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5250
City clerk certifies troop withdrawal petitions
By Joan Kent / La Crosse Tribune
Petitions calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq have been certified by the La Crosse city clerk and could be considered by the council in January.
City Clerk Teri Lehrke said the petitions submitted by the group Bring Them Home Now on Nov. 23 had 2,423 valid signatures, more than the required 2,352, but needed some changes to meet state regulations.
Group member Jessica Thill submitted the revamped petitions Monday, and Lehrke said she certified them Wednesday morning.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5251
Make Your Freedom of Information Act Reques
George Bush is using the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance on American citizens without the consent of any court. After initially refusing to confirm the story, the President has admitted to personally overseeing this domestic spying program for years.
These actions are explicitly against the law. But the administration says that other laws somehow allow for this unprecedented use of a foreign intelligence agency to spy on Americans right here in the United States. According to reports, political appointees in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel wrote still-classified legal opinions laying out the supposed justification for this program.
Governor Howard Dean is filing a formal demand that they release these documents. You can add your name to a Freedom of Information Act request by providing the information below.
http://www.democrats.org/page/petition/domesticspying/fdgdqg
Bush's impeachable offense
Yes, the president committed a federal crime by wiretapping Americans, say constitutional scholars, former intelligence officers and politicians. What's missing is the political will to impeach him.
By Michelle Goldberg
On Tuesday, Dec. 20, Washington Post polling editor Richard Morin participated in an online chat with readers. The liberal blog MyDD urged its users to take part, and evidently they did. In previous days, legal experts had declared that Bush had committed a federal crime by authorizing the surveillance of American citizens without a court order, and Morin was grilled about the issue of impeachment.
First, someone from Naperville, Ill., asked Morin why the Post hasn't polled on public support for impeaching Bush. "This question makes me mad," Morin replied. Someone else repeated the question and Morin typed, "Getting madder." It came up again, and he wrote, "Madder still."
Finally, a fourth person asked it, and he answered.
Want to read the rest of this article and all of Salon for FREE?
Just watch a brief advertisement to get a FREE Site Pass for today. There's no registration required. Or you can join Salon Premium today and read Salon without ads. Just choose one of the two options below.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/12/22/impeach/index_np.html
http://www.salon.com/index.html
The Guardian
Korean scientist resigns over fake stem cell research
Associated Press
Friday December 23, 2005
South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-Suk. Photograph: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty
A scientist today issued an apology as he resigned from South Korea's top university after the school announced he had fabricated results in stem cell research that had raised hopes of new cures for hard-to-treat diseases.
A panel at the university, releasing initial findings of a investigation, accused Hwang Woo-Suk of damaging the scientific community with his deception, while the South Korean government threatened to pull its funding for his research.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,9830,1673483,00.html
Life among the ghosts of Banda Aceh
Banda Aceh one year on. Watch the clip in Quicktime (5 min 03s) (high speed version 38mb)
Banda Aceh one year on (slower internet connections 12.5mb)
In pictures: Rebuilding Nusa photo gallery
James Meek
Friday December 23, 2005
Kamboja Street is so close to the sea that the tsunami all but levelled it a year ago. Most of the fishermen's villas, with their red-tiled roofs, fluted columns and verandahs, were shaved off the earth by the great cutthroat razor of water which stood over them, then sliced them from their foundations.
When, after three months, the Indonesians cleared the waist-high layer of mud, masonry, cars and corpses which covered Lampulo, the district of Banda Aceh where Kamboja Street lies, there was nothing left of many homes except a faint border of sea-chewed brick and the tiling on the ground floor.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tsunami/story/0,15671,1673294,00.html
Chinese toxic spill 'stopped by dam'
James Sturcke and agencies
Friday December 23, 2005
Residents of Yingde city in China's Guangdong province collect drinking water from a fire engine following a toxic cadmium spill in the Bei River. Photograph: Zhuang Jin/Xinhua/AP
A toxic river spill - the second in six weeks to poison Chinese waterways - has been brought under control, authorities said today.
Officials insisted that the cadmium discharge had been contained by closing a dam on the Bei river around 60 miles north of the southern business capital of Guangzhou.
"Water in the lower stream is safe," local official Wang Zhensheng was quoted as saying in the China Daily newspaper. Mr Wang said another dam downstream had also been closed and authorities planned to discharge water from a reservoir to dilute the chemical.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1673490,00.html
Booming China promises peace and goodwill
· Policy paper pledges share of bigger markets for all
· But wary Japan sees threat from military build-up
Justin McCurry in Tokyo Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Friday December 23, 2005
The Chinese government yesterday tried to soothe foreign anxieties over its economic expansion and military power by publishing a blueprint for what it called a peaceful future.
In what is being seen as a bureaucratic equivalent of a charm offensive, the administration produced a 32-page policy document entitled China's Peaceful Development Road. The document pledged to seek a "harmonious world" where all nations can share in bigger markets without fear or threat. But no sooner had the "white paper" been published than Japan's foreign minister abandoned diplomatic decorum to describe Beijing as a "considerable threat" because of its military build-up and tendency to secrecy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1673311,00.html
Microsoft could face 2m euro a day fine over competition ruling
· Kroes accuses US firm of ignoring obligations
· Software group claims it has cooperated fully
David Gow in Brussels
Friday December 23, 2005
The European commission significantly raised the stakes yesterday in its protracted legal battle with Microsoft by threatening to fine the world's biggest software group €2m (£1.4m) a day for non-compliance with anti-trust sanctions.
The commission, which fined Microsoft a record €497m in March 2004, chose the first anniversary of the decision by the court of first instance (CFI), Europe's second-highest court, to demand the group immediately enacted "interim remedies" (the sanctions), pending a full appeal.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,16559,1673333,00.html
PakTribune
12 die in Iraq violence
BAGHDAD: Violence around Iraq left more than a dozen people dead, officials said on Thursday.
Six Iraqi police officers were shot dead in Baghdad, while three Iraqi police were killed and four wounded in an attack in Samarra, 95 km north of Baghdad, a US military official said. Gunmen in the capital killed politician Khazaal Jasib al-Saiedi, the head of the small independent Iraq Reforming Movement, Baghdad police’s Lt Muhammed Khayoun said.
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=129210
continued …
Morning Papers - continued
The Chicago Tribune
Alito Defended Officials From Wiretap Suits
By DONNA CASSATA
Associated Press Writer
Published December 23, 2005, 3:58 PM CST
WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito defended the right of government officials to order domestic wiretaps for national security when he worked at the Reagan Justice Department, an echo of President Bush's rationale for spying on U.S. residents in the war on terror.
Then an assistant to the solicitor general, Alito wrote a 1984 memo that provided insights on his views of government powers and legal recourse -- seen now through the prism of Bush's actions -- as well as clues to the judge's understanding of how the Supreme Court operates.
The National Archives released the memo and scores of other documents related to Alito on Friday; the Associated Press had requested the material under the Freedom of Information Act. The memo comes as Bush is under fire for secretly ordering domestic spying of suspected terrorists without a warrant.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Monday he would ask Alito about the president's authority at confirmation hearings beginning Jan. 9. The memo's release Friday prompted committee Democrats to signal that they will press the conservative jurist about executive powers.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-alito,1,7704748.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Italian Judge Issues Warrants in Abduction
By AIDAN LEWIS
Associated Press Writer
Published December 23, 2005, 3:38 PM CST
ROME -- An Italian judge has issued European arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives wanted for the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric, a prosecutor said Friday.
Prosecutor Armando Spataro said the warrants allowed for the arrest of the suspects in any of the 25 European Union member countries. Italy issued warrants for the arrest of the 22 suspects within its own borders earlier this month.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-italy-cia,1,7472584.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Tracks give archeologists foot in door to 18,000 B.C.
Discovery of aboriginal runner's dash and children's wanderings, pressed in ancient Australian mud, are called `the nearest we've got to prehistoric film'
By Rod McGuirk
Associated Press
Published December 23, 2005
CANBERRA, Australia -- Children meandered around their parents' ankles. A man, likely a hunter, dashed through the mud. Somebody dragged a dead animal along the shores of a lake.
Now the footprints they left some 20,000 years ago are giving a fresh perspective on the lives of Australian aborigines.
Since an aboriginal park ranger stumbled upon the first print in 2003 in Mungo National Park, 500 miles west of Sydney, archeologists helped by local aborigines have excavated 457 other prints from the region's shifting sands.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0512230200dec23,1,1407033.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Eavesdropping on readers
Published December 23, 2005
How dangerous.
--John Osbolt
Elmhurst
President Bush's surveillance program violates the law and the basic principles of our country. The law provided him with a way to do necessary surveillance and he simply ignored it. If we accept his argument that the program is an inherent part of his powers as commander in chief, then he can do virtually anything without consulting any other branch of government. Some of his supporters may believe that he would not go too far, because they trust him, but this violates the basic principle that we are a country of laws and not of men. Would those supporters have trusted Bill Clinton or Richard Nixon with such powers?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0512230219dec23,0,6895977.story?page=2&coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed
China Daily
Japan FM's 'China threat' remarks criticized
By Qin Jize (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-12-23 06:15
China yesterday criticized Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso for making "extremely irresponsible" remarks about the so-called China threat.
"As a foreign minister, to incite such groundless rhetoric about China is extremely irresponsible. What is the purpose?" asked Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang at a regular press conference.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_505846.htm
222 people punished for coal mine accidents
(Xinhua/chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2005-12-23 16:27
A total of 222 people were punished after being held responsible for six catastrophic coal mine accidents that occurred across China since November last year, the government announced in Beijing on Friday.
The central government investigation into and handling of the six major accidents. It said that 126 officials, including two vice provincial governors, received disciplinary penalties within the Party or the government, while 40 others were stripped of their administrative posts.
The State Council, China's cabinet, has decided to "record a demerit" for Gong Deshun, former vice governor of the northwestern Shaanxi Province, for his responsibility for a coal mine gas explosion on November 28, 2004 which killed 166 miners.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_506125.htm
Evolution tops 2005's scientific breakthrough
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-23 16:05
Two days after a U.S. judge struck down the teaching of intelligent design theory in a Pennsylvania public school, the journal Science on Thursday proclaimed evolution the breakthrough of 2005.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_506121.htm
China and OPEC start energy dialogue
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-12-23 07:49
China and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ( OPEC) started an energy dialogue aimed at ensuring a steady supply for one of the fastest growing economies, officials said.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_505871.htm
New York's 3-day transit strike ends
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-23 08:32
Faced with mounting fines and the rising wrath of millions of commuters, the city transit union sent its members back to work without a new contract Thursday and ended a crippling, three-day strike that brought subways and buses to a standstill.
Union members were told to return to their jobs starting with the evening shift. Buses were expected to be rolling again by evening. And most subways were expected to be running by the Friday morning rush, just two days before Christmas.
"I'm ecstatic that it's over, but I'm still really mad that they did it," said Jessica Cunningham, 21, who was in town for the holiday. "I really think it's screwed up that they decided to strike the week before Christmas."
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_505932.htm
Microsoft, Google settle over employee
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-23 15:18
Microsoft Corp. said late Thursday it had reached a settlement with rival Google Inc. and former employee Kai-Fu Lee, ending a legal battle that had exposed behind-the-scenes rancor between the companies.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_506107.htm
Reactions over campus sex education BBS polarized
By Echo Shan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2005-12-23 15:49
Li Feng, a sophomore at a Hebei university, used to feel sick over misguided fear of having contracted STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) despite not having any intimacy with his lover.
However, after consulting the campus BBS (bulletin board system) "Eden," a site themed on sex education, the man in his early twenties has dismissed any disease phobia.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_506114.htm
Beijing Olympics tickets to go on sale in early 2007
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-12-23 13:44
BEIJING, December 23 (Xinhua) -- Tickets for the 2008 Beijing summer Olympics will go on sale in early 2007, and the those for the Games' opening ceremony and the finals of some hot events will be more expensive, according to the organizing committee of Beijing Olympic Games on Friday.
"We will not unveil the tickets sales scheme until early next year," said Liu Jingmin, vice mayor of Beijing and vice executive president of the Games' organizing committee.
"Except for those reserved for the Olympic family, most of the tickets will be sold on the market. Foreign spectators in 202 countries and regions worldwide can buy the tickets via their own Olympic committees," said Liu.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_506093.htm
Asia celebrates Christmas with a twist
Chef Max Huber, executive chef of a hotel, makes a chocolate Christmas tree at a hotel in Bangkok.
Few Asians are Christian but people across the vast continent are embracing the holiday as a great excuse for shopping, partying and even romance.
Come December, Christmas lights brighten shopping streets in cities from Beijing to Colombo, while images of Santa Claus and Rudolph adorn office buildings, shops and restaurants.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_506061.htm
Christmas Eve spells romance
Christmas Eve in some parts of the world may find parents battling crowds of other last-minute shoppers or struggling to assemble toys as their children sleep, but in Japan the holiday is as much for couples as for kids.
Magazines aimed at the young and in love are filled with advice on the best places to stroll down streets illuminated with stunning displays of Christmas lights, the best restaurants for a cosy dinner for two -- and the best hotels for a romantic night.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/21/content_505272.htm
San Francisco Chronicle
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Los Alamos lab chief leaves no doubt who's in charge
5 workers exposed to deadly plutonium in accident this week
The new director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory cleared up one question Thursday about who will be in charge of ensuring the troubled weapons lab is run efficiently and problem-free under a new management team led by the University of California and Bechtel.
"I'll be responsible ... absolutely," said Michael Anastasio, brushing aside concerns about the lines of authority under management that will take effect June 1.
The challenge that he faces in reforming the weapons lab was dramatized by revelations that surfaced Thursday of another lab accident in which five lab workers were exposed to deadly plutonium used in nuclear bombs. They have been under medical observation since Monday's accident, which is under investigation, said lab official Kevin Roark.
Anastasio, who is departing as chief of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to take over Los Alamos in mid-2006, said he had been unaware of the accident and declined further comment. Since management of the lab by the new UC-Bechtel Corp. consortium will not begin until June, it cannot be held responsible for what happened, he said.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/23/BAGB7GC5SF56.DTL
Los Alamos in the right hands
Friday, December 23, 2005
AWARDING A NEW contract to the University of California for management of the Los Alamos National Laboratory is good for the nation -- as much as it upholds California's long-standing scientific renown.
Keeping UC in charge of the nuclear weapons program it helped inaugurate more than six decades ago serves to recognize the university's unique credentials in a field vital to national security. The decision by the U.S. Department of Energy capped a competitive-bidding process in which UC was teamed with the Bechtel Corp. and a pair of other partners to win out over a bid submitted by Lockheed Martin Corp., the biggest arms-maker, and the University of Texas.
UC's history-making management of the New Mexico nuclear complex goes back to World War II and Berkeley scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer's "Manhattan Project" to build the first atomic bombs.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12/23/EDGU6GBNVD1.DTL
Plight of stolen baby penguin raises global concern
London -- Police ran down leads and the Royal Navy was on alert Thursday in the search for Toga, an 18-inch-tall baby penguin stolen from an Isle of Wight zoo last weekend, creating a national soap opera rivaling Elton John's same-sex wedding for media coverage.
"We're all a bit ragged here, to say the least," said Kath Bright, manager of Amazon World Zoo Park, which has received nearly $13,000 in donations -- including $600 from the United States -- to offer as a reward for the safe return of the 9-pound South African jackass penguin.
The theft has been covered exhaustively in the British media -- and television stations as far away as Australia. Sky News, which had a grim-faced reporter live at Amazon World, showed photos of Toga throughout the day and urged anyone with information to call in.
"No questions asked," an anchor said. "We just want to get Toga back to his mum and dad."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/23/MNGFCGCBMO1.DTL
Alito Argued to Overturn Roe in 1985 Memo
By DONNA CASSATA, Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 23, 2005
(12-23) 07:42 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --
Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in a June 1985 memo that the ruling that legalized abortion should be overturned, a position certain to spur tough questioning at January's confirmation hearings.
In a recommendation to the solicitor general on filing a friend-of-court brief, Alito said the government "should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled."
The June 3, 1985 document was one of 45 released by the National Archives on Friday. A total of 744 pages were made public.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/12/23/national/w065142S13.DTL
C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N : :
Friday, December 23, 2005
In March, Alicia Parlette, a 23-year-old Chronicle copy editor, learned she has a rare cancer spreading from a tumor on her hip. While she waits to see if treatment with the drug interferon is successful, she struggles with her fears and tries to carry on a normal life.
For the past five months, I have had problems with my weight.
http://www.sfgate.com/alicia/
FILM REVIEWS
A hunt for terrorists -- without heroes or evildoers. 'Munich' is an amoral look at men on a deadly mission.
Munich: Drama. Starring Eric Bana, Daniel Craig and Ciaran Hinds. Directed by Steven Spielberg. (R. 167 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)
Steven Spielberg's "Munich" is an unlovable movie. It's morally ambiguous, which means there's no real rooting interest. It's episodic, with the same kinds of episodes repeated over and over, so there's little sense of forward motion. It feels philosophically and politically confused, so there's no message to take from it, and it doesn't have a single movie star in the cast, unless you count Eric Bana.
Yet everything that keeps it from being lovable could be looked upon as a virtue, and everything about it is intentional. Moreover, the episodes, in and of themselves, are compelling, and though the movie runs 167 minutes, it never drags. It ends precisely as it should end, with an extended shot that says more with one image than ever could have been said with dialogue.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/23/DDGSFGBKCI1.DTL
Cold truth on the Arctic
Friday, December 23, 2005
FOR THE moment, at least, the U.S. Senate got the message -- the American people want to keep the 1.5-million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge off limits to oil drilling. That was the case in 1980, when Congress passed a law making sure it had the final say on any move to drill in an area regarded as "America's Serengeti,'' and it remains so today.
Not that the oil industry and its friends on Capitol Hill will stop trying. The past quarter century has been marked by fierce battles over whether to open the Arctic wilderness to drilling. Usually unspoken, the specter of campaign donations and retribution often loomed over the debate.
Even so, the bare-knuckled tactics this week of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, set a new low for shameful maneuvering on this issue. Stevens thought he held the ultimate hole card by tucking approval for Arctic drilling into a defense-spending measure. He effectively dared pro-environment senators to swallow the amendment or vote against a must-pass funding package of support for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chair of the powerful Appropriations defense subcommittee, Stevens openly reminded his colleagues of past favors, and darkly suggested that his memory would be long for those who defied him on this vote.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12/23/EDGU6GBNVF1.DTL
South Africa fallout from gay marriage ruling relatively light
Stephanie Hanes
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Johannesburg -- Marie Fourie sounded almost giddy as she recalled the moment earlier this month when South Africa's highest court ruled that gay couples have the right to marry.
"It was a great day for me," the 54-year-old said. "After four years of fighting, it was sweet victory."
Although she and Cecelia Bonthuys, her partner of almost 12 years, were always optimistic that their court case would succeed, Fourie said they were still relieved when they heard the decision. And now they can't wait to have a party for their lawyers, friends, and all the people who supported them.
This, of course, is the feel-good part of the script.
In San Francisco and Massachusetts, Spain and Britain, wherever there has been a political or legal decision in support of gay rights, at first there are always the happy couples, laughing, crying, kissing, talking about relief and vindication.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12/18/INGOAG7JFS1.DTL
continued ...
Alito Defended Officials From Wiretap Suits
By DONNA CASSATA
Associated Press Writer
Published December 23, 2005, 3:58 PM CST
WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito defended the right of government officials to order domestic wiretaps for national security when he worked at the Reagan Justice Department, an echo of President Bush's rationale for spying on U.S. residents in the war on terror.
Then an assistant to the solicitor general, Alito wrote a 1984 memo that provided insights on his views of government powers and legal recourse -- seen now through the prism of Bush's actions -- as well as clues to the judge's understanding of how the Supreme Court operates.
The National Archives released the memo and scores of other documents related to Alito on Friday; the Associated Press had requested the material under the Freedom of Information Act. The memo comes as Bush is under fire for secretly ordering domestic spying of suspected terrorists without a warrant.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Monday he would ask Alito about the president's authority at confirmation hearings beginning Jan. 9. The memo's release Friday prompted committee Democrats to signal that they will press the conservative jurist about executive powers.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-alito,1,7704748.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Italian Judge Issues Warrants in Abduction
By AIDAN LEWIS
Associated Press Writer
Published December 23, 2005, 3:38 PM CST
ROME -- An Italian judge has issued European arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives wanted for the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric, a prosecutor said Friday.
Prosecutor Armando Spataro said the warrants allowed for the arrest of the suspects in any of the 25 European Union member countries. Italy issued warrants for the arrest of the 22 suspects within its own borders earlier this month.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-italy-cia,1,7472584.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Tracks give archeologists foot in door to 18,000 B.C.
Discovery of aboriginal runner's dash and children's wanderings, pressed in ancient Australian mud, are called `the nearest we've got to prehistoric film'
By Rod McGuirk
Associated Press
Published December 23, 2005
CANBERRA, Australia -- Children meandered around their parents' ankles. A man, likely a hunter, dashed through the mud. Somebody dragged a dead animal along the shores of a lake.
Now the footprints they left some 20,000 years ago are giving a fresh perspective on the lives of Australian aborigines.
Since an aboriginal park ranger stumbled upon the first print in 2003 in Mungo National Park, 500 miles west of Sydney, archeologists helped by local aborigines have excavated 457 other prints from the region's shifting sands.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0512230200dec23,1,1407033.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Eavesdropping on readers
Published December 23, 2005
How dangerous.
--John Osbolt
Elmhurst
President Bush's surveillance program violates the law and the basic principles of our country. The law provided him with a way to do necessary surveillance and he simply ignored it. If we accept his argument that the program is an inherent part of his powers as commander in chief, then he can do virtually anything without consulting any other branch of government. Some of his supporters may believe that he would not go too far, because they trust him, but this violates the basic principle that we are a country of laws and not of men. Would those supporters have trusted Bill Clinton or Richard Nixon with such powers?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0512230219dec23,0,6895977.story?page=2&coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed
China Daily
Japan FM's 'China threat' remarks criticized
By Qin Jize (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-12-23 06:15
China yesterday criticized Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso for making "extremely irresponsible" remarks about the so-called China threat.
"As a foreign minister, to incite such groundless rhetoric about China is extremely irresponsible. What is the purpose?" asked Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang at a regular press conference.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_505846.htm
222 people punished for coal mine accidents
(Xinhua/chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2005-12-23 16:27
A total of 222 people were punished after being held responsible for six catastrophic coal mine accidents that occurred across China since November last year, the government announced in Beijing on Friday.
The central government investigation into and handling of the six major accidents. It said that 126 officials, including two vice provincial governors, received disciplinary penalties within the Party or the government, while 40 others were stripped of their administrative posts.
The State Council, China's cabinet, has decided to "record a demerit" for Gong Deshun, former vice governor of the northwestern Shaanxi Province, for his responsibility for a coal mine gas explosion on November 28, 2004 which killed 166 miners.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_506125.htm
Evolution tops 2005's scientific breakthrough
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-23 16:05
Two days after a U.S. judge struck down the teaching of intelligent design theory in a Pennsylvania public school, the journal Science on Thursday proclaimed evolution the breakthrough of 2005.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_506121.htm
China and OPEC start energy dialogue
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-12-23 07:49
China and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ( OPEC) started an energy dialogue aimed at ensuring a steady supply for one of the fastest growing economies, officials said.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_505871.htm
New York's 3-day transit strike ends
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-23 08:32
Faced with mounting fines and the rising wrath of millions of commuters, the city transit union sent its members back to work without a new contract Thursday and ended a crippling, three-day strike that brought subways and buses to a standstill.
Union members were told to return to their jobs starting with the evening shift. Buses were expected to be rolling again by evening. And most subways were expected to be running by the Friday morning rush, just two days before Christmas.
"I'm ecstatic that it's over, but I'm still really mad that they did it," said Jessica Cunningham, 21, who was in town for the holiday. "I really think it's screwed up that they decided to strike the week before Christmas."
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_505932.htm
Microsoft, Google settle over employee
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-23 15:18
Microsoft Corp. said late Thursday it had reached a settlement with rival Google Inc. and former employee Kai-Fu Lee, ending a legal battle that had exposed behind-the-scenes rancor between the companies.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_506107.htm
Reactions over campus sex education BBS polarized
By Echo Shan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2005-12-23 15:49
Li Feng, a sophomore at a Hebei university, used to feel sick over misguided fear of having contracted STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) despite not having any intimacy with his lover.
However, after consulting the campus BBS (bulletin board system) "Eden," a site themed on sex education, the man in his early twenties has dismissed any disease phobia.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_506114.htm
Beijing Olympics tickets to go on sale in early 2007
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-12-23 13:44
BEIJING, December 23 (Xinhua) -- Tickets for the 2008 Beijing summer Olympics will go on sale in early 2007, and the those for the Games' opening ceremony and the finals of some hot events will be more expensive, according to the organizing committee of Beijing Olympic Games on Friday.
"We will not unveil the tickets sales scheme until early next year," said Liu Jingmin, vice mayor of Beijing and vice executive president of the Games' organizing committee.
"Except for those reserved for the Olympic family, most of the tickets will be sold on the market. Foreign spectators in 202 countries and regions worldwide can buy the tickets via their own Olympic committees," said Liu.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_506093.htm
Asia celebrates Christmas with a twist
Chef Max Huber, executive chef of a hotel, makes a chocolate Christmas tree at a hotel in Bangkok.
Few Asians are Christian but people across the vast continent are embracing the holiday as a great excuse for shopping, partying and even romance.
Come December, Christmas lights brighten shopping streets in cities from Beijing to Colombo, while images of Santa Claus and Rudolph adorn office buildings, shops and restaurants.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/23/content_506061.htm
Christmas Eve spells romance
Christmas Eve in some parts of the world may find parents battling crowds of other last-minute shoppers or struggling to assemble toys as their children sleep, but in Japan the holiday is as much for couples as for kids.
Magazines aimed at the young and in love are filled with advice on the best places to stroll down streets illuminated with stunning displays of Christmas lights, the best restaurants for a cosy dinner for two -- and the best hotels for a romantic night.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/21/content_505272.htm
San Francisco Chronicle
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Los Alamos lab chief leaves no doubt who's in charge
5 workers exposed to deadly plutonium in accident this week
The new director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory cleared up one question Thursday about who will be in charge of ensuring the troubled weapons lab is run efficiently and problem-free under a new management team led by the University of California and Bechtel.
"I'll be responsible ... absolutely," said Michael Anastasio, brushing aside concerns about the lines of authority under management that will take effect June 1.
The challenge that he faces in reforming the weapons lab was dramatized by revelations that surfaced Thursday of another lab accident in which five lab workers were exposed to deadly plutonium used in nuclear bombs. They have been under medical observation since Monday's accident, which is under investigation, said lab official Kevin Roark.
Anastasio, who is departing as chief of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to take over Los Alamos in mid-2006, said he had been unaware of the accident and declined further comment. Since management of the lab by the new UC-Bechtel Corp. consortium will not begin until June, it cannot be held responsible for what happened, he said.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/23/BAGB7GC5SF56.DTL
Los Alamos in the right hands
Friday, December 23, 2005
AWARDING A NEW contract to the University of California for management of the Los Alamos National Laboratory is good for the nation -- as much as it upholds California's long-standing scientific renown.
Keeping UC in charge of the nuclear weapons program it helped inaugurate more than six decades ago serves to recognize the university's unique credentials in a field vital to national security. The decision by the U.S. Department of Energy capped a competitive-bidding process in which UC was teamed with the Bechtel Corp. and a pair of other partners to win out over a bid submitted by Lockheed Martin Corp., the biggest arms-maker, and the University of Texas.
UC's history-making management of the New Mexico nuclear complex goes back to World War II and Berkeley scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer's "Manhattan Project" to build the first atomic bombs.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12/23/EDGU6GBNVD1.DTL
Plight of stolen baby penguin raises global concern
London -- Police ran down leads and the Royal Navy was on alert Thursday in the search for Toga, an 18-inch-tall baby penguin stolen from an Isle of Wight zoo last weekend, creating a national soap opera rivaling Elton John's same-sex wedding for media coverage.
"We're all a bit ragged here, to say the least," said Kath Bright, manager of Amazon World Zoo Park, which has received nearly $13,000 in donations -- including $600 from the United States -- to offer as a reward for the safe return of the 9-pound South African jackass penguin.
The theft has been covered exhaustively in the British media -- and television stations as far away as Australia. Sky News, which had a grim-faced reporter live at Amazon World, showed photos of Toga throughout the day and urged anyone with information to call in.
"No questions asked," an anchor said. "We just want to get Toga back to his mum and dad."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/23/MNGFCGCBMO1.DTL
Alito Argued to Overturn Roe in 1985 Memo
By DONNA CASSATA, Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 23, 2005
(12-23) 07:42 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --
Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in a June 1985 memo that the ruling that legalized abortion should be overturned, a position certain to spur tough questioning at January's confirmation hearings.
In a recommendation to the solicitor general on filing a friend-of-court brief, Alito said the government "should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled."
The June 3, 1985 document was one of 45 released by the National Archives on Friday. A total of 744 pages were made public.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/12/23/national/w065142S13.DTL
C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N : :
Friday, December 23, 2005
In March, Alicia Parlette, a 23-year-old Chronicle copy editor, learned she has a rare cancer spreading from a tumor on her hip. While she waits to see if treatment with the drug interferon is successful, she struggles with her fears and tries to carry on a normal life.
For the past five months, I have had problems with my weight.
http://www.sfgate.com/alicia/
FILM REVIEWS
A hunt for terrorists -- without heroes or evildoers. 'Munich' is an amoral look at men on a deadly mission.
Munich: Drama. Starring Eric Bana, Daniel Craig and Ciaran Hinds. Directed by Steven Spielberg. (R. 167 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)
Steven Spielberg's "Munich" is an unlovable movie. It's morally ambiguous, which means there's no real rooting interest. It's episodic, with the same kinds of episodes repeated over and over, so there's little sense of forward motion. It feels philosophically and politically confused, so there's no message to take from it, and it doesn't have a single movie star in the cast, unless you count Eric Bana.
Yet everything that keeps it from being lovable could be looked upon as a virtue, and everything about it is intentional. Moreover, the episodes, in and of themselves, are compelling, and though the movie runs 167 minutes, it never drags. It ends precisely as it should end, with an extended shot that says more with one image than ever could have been said with dialogue.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/23/DDGSFGBKCI1.DTL
Cold truth on the Arctic
Friday, December 23, 2005
FOR THE moment, at least, the U.S. Senate got the message -- the American people want to keep the 1.5-million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge off limits to oil drilling. That was the case in 1980, when Congress passed a law making sure it had the final say on any move to drill in an area regarded as "America's Serengeti,'' and it remains so today.
Not that the oil industry and its friends on Capitol Hill will stop trying. The past quarter century has been marked by fierce battles over whether to open the Arctic wilderness to drilling. Usually unspoken, the specter of campaign donations and retribution often loomed over the debate.
Even so, the bare-knuckled tactics this week of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, set a new low for shameful maneuvering on this issue. Stevens thought he held the ultimate hole card by tucking approval for Arctic drilling into a defense-spending measure. He effectively dared pro-environment senators to swallow the amendment or vote against a must-pass funding package of support for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chair of the powerful Appropriations defense subcommittee, Stevens openly reminded his colleagues of past favors, and darkly suggested that his memory would be long for those who defied him on this vote.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12/23/EDGU6GBNVF1.DTL
South Africa fallout from gay marriage ruling relatively light
Stephanie Hanes
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Johannesburg -- Marie Fourie sounded almost giddy as she recalled the moment earlier this month when South Africa's highest court ruled that gay couples have the right to marry.
"It was a great day for me," the 54-year-old said. "After four years of fighting, it was sweet victory."
Although she and Cecelia Bonthuys, her partner of almost 12 years, were always optimistic that their court case would succeed, Fourie said they were still relieved when they heard the decision. And now they can't wait to have a party for their lawyers, friends, and all the people who supported them.
This, of course, is the feel-good part of the script.
In San Francisco and Massachusetts, Spain and Britain, wherever there has been a political or legal decision in support of gay rights, at first there are always the happy couples, laughing, crying, kissing, talking about relief and vindication.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12/18/INGOAG7JFS1.DTL
continued ...
Morning Papers - continued ...
Sydney Morning Herald
It's true, dancing does lead to sex
SCIENTISTS have confirmed what fans of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever have known all along: men with the best dance moves have the most sex appeal.
The finding lends support to the idea that dancing is a way to show off high quality genes and good health - both indicators of a top quality mate.
Charles Darwin was the first to suggest that dance was a courtship signal in animals, but there had been no studies of the relation of dance and genetic or physical quality in humans until now.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/12/22/1135032135891.html
Meet Osama's niece
She's not the model niece Osama bin Laden's looking for - but she is modelling.
This is how Wafah Dufour, the al Qaeda leader's niece, will appear in the January 2006 issue of GQ magazine.
Dufour, who took her mother's maiden name after the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, is an aspiring musician struggling to make a name for herself.
She says she has never met Osama bin Laden.
"Everyone relates me to that man, and I have nothing to do with him," she said in the article.
"There are 400 other people related to him, but they are all in Saudi Arabia, so nobody's going to get tarred with it.
"I'm the only one here."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/people/meet-osamas-niece/2005/12/23/1135032164860.html
Fulla has the Mid-East doll market covered
SHE is the must-have toy this festive season, flying off the shelves. But the season in question is Eid al-Adha next month, not Christmas. Santa Claus means nothing to her.
Fulla, the Muslim doll, is now thought to be the best-selling girl's toy in the Arab world, two years after she first came on the market, displacing her Western rival, Barbie, in shops across her native Levant.
With thick black hair and large dark eyes, Fulla is the physical antithesis of Mattel's blonde, empty-eyed icon of Western consumerism.
Compared with Barbie's improbably pneumatic curves and lanky legs, Fulla's assets are modest, and never officially on display. Although she is marketed with a range of funky clothes, furniture, jewellery and grooming equipment, to avoid offending Muslim modesty, she has no swimwear.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/12/22/1135032135918.html
Tunnel gas blast kills at least 42
A gas explosion in a highway tunnel under construction killed 42 people and injured 11 others in south-west China's Sichuan province and the toll could rise.
Yesterday's explosion happened less than 100 km north-west of Chengdu, at an intersection of a highway being built to link the smaller cities of Dujiangyan and Wenchuan, the State Administration for Work Safety said today.
The exact number of casualties remains unclear, officials said.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/tunnel-gas-blast-kills-at-least-42/2005/12/23/1135032177762.html
Bush: 2005 'a good year'
US President George W Bush has called 2005 "a good year for the American people", but warns that terrorists like those who carried out the September 11 attacks still pose a threat.
In brief remarks today outside the White House as he headed to the Camp David presidential retreat for Christmas, Bush also pointed to elections in Iraq and in Afghanistan and said the US economy had grown stronger.
"This has been a year of strong progress toward a freer, more peaceful world and a prosperous America," he said. "It's been a good year for the American people."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bush-2005-a-good-year/2005/12/23/1135032165900.html
Baby's raw food tragedy
December 23, 2005 - 4:23PM
US parents who fed their baby only raw foods until she died have each been sentenced to 15 years' probation for neglecting their four older children.
Joseph and Lamoy Andressohn were acquitted in the malnutrition death of baby Woyah, but convicted of neglecting the four older kids.
In sentencing the couple in Florida, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Stanford Blake's order included a host of conditions to ensure the safety of the children if and when the Andressohns regain custody.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/babys-raw-food-tragedy/2005/12/23/1135032178070.html
Cold war warriors battle Antarctic whalers
By Andrew Darby
December 23, 2005
THE Japanese whaling fleet threw off attempts to silence its harpoons, as diplomatic and environmentalist pressure rose against the Antarctic hunt.
Greenpeace activists in high-speed inflatables on Thursday spent hours trying to put themselves between chaser boats and minke whales due south of Tasmania, and claimed that some whales were getting away.
"We've certainly succeeded in slowing down the hunt, though, unfortunately, eventually they did kill a whale," said the expedition leader, Shane Rattenbury.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/cold-war-warriors-battle-antarctic-whalers/2005/12/22/1135032135867.html
Bushfire alert as mercury soars
Firefighters are bracing for a black Christmas as searing temperatures threaten to combine with low humidity and high winds to fan major bushfires across much of eastern Australia.
Extreme fire danger is current nationwide, with total bans in Victoria and NSW as temperatures soar towards 40 degrees Celsius in tinderbox conditions.
Sydney and Brisbane are forecast to reach 38 degrees Celsius tomorrow, while Melbourne is expecting 36.
ACT authorities have also extended a fire ban in the national capital until midnight tomorrow after Canberra residents remained under fire alert today with temperatures in the high 30s.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/bushfire-alert-as-mercury-soars/2005/12/23/1135032180937.html
No shooting from the lip
George Bush's words of the past weeks would have been unthinkable just months ago. Michael Gawenda tracks the President's transformation.
AFTER two weeks of speeches, a television address to the nation from the Oval Office and a series of long interviews on network television, is George Bush a president transformed?
Has a president known for his stubbornness and disdain for self-reflection become less stubborn, more reflective, more open to admitting to mistakes?
One way of answering these questions is to look at the language, the rhetoric that has marked his presidency. Language matters.
Nine days after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, Bush addressed a special sitting of Congress. He was a president transformed by events which many people, and not just in the United States, believed marked the end of the post-Cold War era that began with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/no-shooting-from-the-lip/2005/12/22/1135032135942.html
Judges to be briefed on Bush wire-tapsTHE presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President George Bush's domestic spying program.
The move came as Senate Democrats thwarted a permanent renewal of the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act, setting up instead a temporary six-month extension of expiring provisions so that changes can be considered to better safeguard civil liberties. Mr Bush had argued that the law was necessary to safeguard US citizens.
Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said they want to know why the Administration believed secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading emails of US citizens without court authorisation was legal. Some judges were concerned that information gleaned from Mr Bush's eavesdropping program might have been improperly used to gain authorised wire-taps from their court.
On Monday, one of the court's 10 judges, James Robertson, submitted his resignation.
The presiding judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, told fellow court members by email that she was arranging for them to convene in Washington for a secret briefing on the program. Two intelligence sources familiar with the plan said Judge Kollar-Kotelly expected top-ranking officials from the National Security Agency and the Justice Department to outline the classified program to the members.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/judges-to-be-briefed-on-bush-wiretaps/2005/12/22/1135032135876.html
The Washington Times
Power We Didn't Grant
By Tom Daschle
Friday, December 23, 2005; A21
In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done."
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.
On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.
The shock and rage we all felt in the hours after the attack were still fresh. America was reeling from the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not yet accounted for. Even so, a strong bipartisan majority could not agree to the administration's request for an unprecedented grant of
authority.
The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress -- but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language.
All Americans agree that keeping our nation safe from terrorists demands aggressive and innovative tactics. This unity was reflected in the near-unanimous support for the original resolution and the Patriot Act in those harrowing days after Sept. 11. But there are right and wrong ways to defeat terrorists, and that is a distinction this administration has never seemed to accept. Instead of employing tactics that preserve Americans' freedoms and inspire the faith and confidence of the American people, the White House seems to have chosen methods that can only breed fear and suspicion.
If the stories in the media over the past week are accurate, the president has exercised authority that I do not believe is granted to him in the Constitution, and that I know is not granted to him in the law that I helped negotiate with his counsel and that Congress approved in the days after Sept. 11. For that reason, the president should explain the specific legal justification for his authorization of these actions, Congress should fully investigate these actions and the president's justification for them, and the administration should cooperate fully with that investigation.
In the meantime, if the president believes the current legal architecture of our country is insufficient for the fight against terrorism, he should propose changes to our laws in the light of day.
That is how a great democracy operates. And that is how this great democracy will defeat
terrorism.
The writer, a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, was Senate majority leader in 2001-02. He is now distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201101_pf.html
THIS IS ONE VERY WEAK AND CONTRIVED ARGUMENT. What this level of surveillance relates is an Act of War. I didn't know Bush was at war with American civilians. If he is then he should declare it ! It's an impeachable act even if you don't like it. This is 2005, not the turn of the 20th century.
Impeachment Nonsense
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, December 23, 2005; A21
2005 was already the year of the demagogue, having been dominated for months by the endlessly echoed falsehood that the president "lied us into war." But the year ends with yet another round of demagoguery.
Administration critics, political and media, charge that by ordering surveillance on communications of suspected al Qaeda agents in the United States, the president clearly violated the law. Some even suggest that Bush has thereby so trampled the Constitution that impeachment should now be considered. (Barbara Boxer, Jonathan Alter, John Dean and various luminaries of the left have already begun floating the idea.) The braying herds have already concluded, Tenet-like, that the president's actions were slam-dunk illegal. It takes a superior mix of partisanship, animus and ignorance to say that.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201102_pf.html
On Leaks, Relying on A Faulty Case Study
Untrue Bin Laden Satellite Phone Story Still Has Currency With Media's Critics
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A03
The allegation that news organizations leaked information about Osama bin Laden's satellite phone, thus shutting down a valuable source of intelligence that might have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has long been a prime case study cited by government officials seeking to impose greater restrictions on the news media.
President Bush drew attention to the case Monday when he twice cited it as a dangerous example of the news media "revealing sources, methods and what we use the information for." Bush was basing his remarks on a conclusion by the Sept. 11 commission, which had labeled it a "leak" that prompted the al Qaeda leader to turn off his phone.
Upon closer examination, the story turned out to be wrong. Bin Laden's use of a satellite phone had already been widely reported by August 1998, and he stopped using it within days of a cruise missile attack on his training camps in Afghanistan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201800.html
A Design That's Anti-Faith
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, December 23, 2005; A21
Can you imagine a more faithless pursuit than trying to prove the existence of God?
Yet that is what the whole "intelligent design" movement is really about, and it seems to me that people of faith should rejoice at the federal court decision Tuesday forbidding the schools of Dover, Pa., to read a statement touting intelligent design in science classes. The eloquent ruling by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III is a Christmastime blessing.
"Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID [intelligent design] as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom," Jones wrote in a painstaking, 139-page opinion that probably will set the parameters for future battles over intelligent design around the country. No appeal is expected, because the pro-ID school board members who tried to inject religion into the classroom have already been ousted by voters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201103_pf.html
Newly Emboldened Congress Has Dogged Bush This Year
By Jim VandeHei and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A05
After four years in which Congress repeatedly laid down while President Bush dictated his priorities, 2005 will go down as the year legislators stood up.
This week's uprising against a four-year extension of the USA Patriot Act was the latest example of a new willingness by lawmakers in both parties to challenge Bush and his notions of expansive executive power.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201829.html
Rumsfeld Announces U.S. Troop Reduction in Iraq
By Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 23, 2005; 6:12 AM
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced today that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq would be reduced by two brigades early next year, a move which would cut U.S. forces there by 8,000 to 10,000 troops.
The "adjustment," as Rumsfeld called it, would leave between 129,000 and 131,000 troops in the country, down from a baseline of 138,000. That baseline number was augmented for Iraq's election by another 12,000 troops.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122300266.html
Brown's Turf Wars Sapped FEMA's Strength
Director Who Came to Symbolize Incompetence in Katrina Predicted Agency Would Fail
By Michael Grunwald and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A01
On Sept. 15, 2003, one of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's deputies lobbed a bureaucratic hand grenade across his desk. In a seven-page memo, the new department's undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response told Ridge that his organizational plan would cripple America's ability to respond to disasters.
The memo, like so many that flew around Washington during the largest government reshuffling in decades, involved turf: Ridge had decided to move some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's preparedness functions to an office less than one-fifteenth its size. The writer warned that the shift would make a mockery of FEMA's new motto, "A Nation Prepared," and would "fundamentally sever FEMA from its core functions," "shatter agency morale," and "break longstanding, effective and tested relationships with states and first responder stakeholders."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122202213.html
Brown's Turf Wars Sapped FEMA's Strength
Director Who Came to Symbolize Incompetence in Katrina Predicted Agency Would Fail
By Michael Grunwald and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A01
On Sept. 15, 2003, one of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's deputies lobbed a bureaucratic hand grenade across his desk. In a seven-page memo, the new department's undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response told Ridge that his organizational plan would cripple America's ability to respond to disasters.
The memo, like so many that flew around Washington during the largest government reshuffling in decades, involved turf: Ridge had decided to move some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's preparedness functions to an office less than one-fifteenth its size. The writer warned that the shift would make a mockery of FEMA's new motto, "A Nation Prepared," and would "fundamentally sever FEMA from its core functions," "shatter agency morale," and "break longstanding, effective and tested relationships with states and first responder stakeholders."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122202213.html
New Home Sales Plummet in November
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
Friday, December 23, 2005; 10:37 AM
WASHINGTON -- Sales of new homes plunged in November by the largest amount in nearly 12 years, providing the most dramatic evidence yet that the red hot housing market over the last five years is starting to cool down.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that new single-family homes were sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.245 million units last month, a drop of 11.3 percent from October, when sales had surged to an all-time high.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122300460.html
To Some in Turkey, a Kurdish Beer Has the Flavor of Aversion
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A14
ISTANBUL -- Even before the bloody head of a sheep turned up on the brewery doorstep, the makers of Roj beer had reason to suspect their light, malty lager might not be to everyone's taste.
There was the hate mail, a virulent torrent of insults invoking mothers, sisters, dogs, blood and "dreamers like you."
Roj proudly identifies itself as "Kurdish beer." Brewed in Vienna, its Turkish import application has been pending for 18 months, three times the norm. (Rojbeer.co
There was the knock on the door of the brewer's Istanbul representative, who was taken from his house one evening in late September by Turkish security officers and interrogated till dawn.
And there was the remarkably long time Turkish officials were taking to consider the request to allow Roj into their country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201928.html
New Home Sales Plummet in November
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
Friday, December 23, 2005; 10:37 AM
WASHINGTON -- Sales of new homes plunged in November by the largest amount in nearly 12 years, providing the most dramatic evidence yet that the red hot housing market over the last five years is starting to cool down.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that new single-family homes were sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.245 million units last month, a drop of 11.3 percent from October, when sales had surged to an all-time high.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122300460.html
Young and Homeless Fill Africa's City Streets
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A01
KHARTOUM, Sudan -- The morning call to prayer echoed through the city as Ahmed Abdulraham, 14, a small boy with cloudy, yellowing eyes, rose from his version of a mattress: a pile of trash spread across a gutter.
He rubbed some murky brown water over his face. He prostrated himself and prayed, he said, for a day when he would be safe and earn a lot of money. Then he took turns with his five friends sniffing glue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122202226.html
New Zealand Herald
Christmas shoppers frustrated by Eftpos breakdown
23.12.05 3.20pm UPDATE
By NZPA and Angela Gregory
Last minute Christmas shoppers have been frustrated by a breakdown in the Eftpos system this afternoon.
A partial failure on a processor affected thousands of terminals at locations nationwide. Paymark Eftpos said a "large number" of transactions were declined starting at 12.50pm.
Though it had initially said it would only take 20 minutes to rectify the fault, there were further problems restarting the system.
Queues grew at central Auckland ATM machines from shoppers trying to get cash instead.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10361289
Nervous time for whale rescuers
22.12.05 1.00pm UPDATE
By Paul Smith and NZPA
Click on 'more pictures' above for photos of the rescue and a map of the area. Video link at foot of page
The next few hours will be crucial for a pod of whales which were stranded on a beach in Golden Bay.
The whales were refloated yesterday but had been heading for another beach in the area this morning.
However, the Department of Conservation (DOC) said mid-morning that the whales were again swimming out to sea.
DoC and volunteer rescuers are now monitoring the situation with high tide due at 2.45pm and strandings possible about two hours after that.
Spokesman Martin Heine told nzherald.co.nz: "They were heading back, but they have done a bit of a u-turn and they look like they are heading in a north-easterly direction back out of Golden Bay.
"They are swimming into an incoming tide so that is good."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10361085
Man swept off rocks
22.12.05 3.40pm
A man is missing after being washed off rocks in West Auckland this afternoon.
Surf Rescue and Coastguard vessels, suported by the Westpac Rescue and police helicopters searched the area at Whatipu for about an hour without success, police said.
Coastguard rescue boats are continuing a shoreline search of the Manukau Harbour inside the Manukau Heads.
No details of the missing man were yet available, Inspector Andrew Brill said.
- HERALD ONLINE STAFF
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10361140
Bangladeshi family victims of hate message
22.12.05 12.00pm
A racist message has been crudely spray-painted across a garage door in the latest attack on a Papamoa Bangladeshi family.
Neither Kamrun Imam, 34, nor husband Hasan, a 39-year-old dentists, know the meaning of the slogan used but are still hurt by the expression of hatred.
"It's very upsetting. Personally I feel really scared," said Mrs Imam, a dental nurse who is pregnant with her second child.
"I asked the police if anybody comes in the middle of the night and broke the door off, what might happen."
The Imams emigrated to New Zealand 10 years ago and moved to the Bay of Plenty from Auckland last year.
Local constable Mark Farrell alerted the family to the damage on Tuesday morning. He said the graffitti was "really offensive".
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10361117
Bugged plants to track thieves
22.12.05
An Auckland landscape gardener has resorted to a desperate and novel security measure to stop her plants being stolen - microchipped yuccas.
Since June this year North Shore landscape gardener Merryn Webster has had 87 yuccas and flax plants stolen from newly developed commercial spaces.
"We're on to them - we've seen their vehicles - they're on camera," Ms Webster said.
"It just guts me to think people are coming in and helping themselves."
Camera surveillance around the Northbridge Properties buildings in Albany captured a white van scouting the area before the most recent theft of nine yuccas three weeks ago.
Twenty-two yuccas were also stolen in June, and 56 flax plants last month.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361071
Floods kill 35 in south Thailand, aid rushed in
22.12.05 7.20am
BANGKOK - Widespread floods have killed 19 people in southern Thailand in the past week, raising to 35 the death toll in the region's worst floods in nearly 30 years, the Interior Ministry said.
Relief agencies rushed food, clothes and blankets to 9 provinces, including three bordering Malaysia, where more than 700,000 people have been affected, the ministry said.
In Malaysia, six people have died in Kelantan state, the worst affected of four northern states hit by floods since Friday, the government said. About 30,000 people were evacuated in the four states, but many have returned home as floodwaters receded in some areas.
In Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was criticised for not touring the flooded deep south where his ruling Thai Rak Thai Party was trounced in general elections earlier this year.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10361060
Union heads could face jail over NY transit strike
22.12.05 1.00pm
The leaders of the union behind New York's crippling mass transit strike could face jail, a judge warned today as commuters were forced to improvise for a second day to get to work.
The day after a court slapped US$1 million ($1.49 million) a day in fines on the striking union, a judge ordered union lawyers to bring TWU Local 100 leader Roger Toussaint and other top officials to court on Thursday, warning that jail was a "distinct possibility."
The bus and subway strike by some 34,000 transit workers is New York's first for 25 years. Staff walked out on Tuesday after talks on pay, health care and pensions broke down.
State law prohibits public sector employees from striking, and the judge is considering imposing fines on individual workers as well as jailing three union leaders.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10361111
Thieves and sightseers plague flood-devastated town
23.12.05 1.00pm
By Cherie Taylor
Thieves and sightseers are adding to the woes of flood-ravaged Matata residents.
Seven months after the disastrous floods hit the Bay of Plenty town, residents' homes are being targeted by thieves and sightseers are treating the area as if it is a tourist attraction.
Resident Marilyn Pearce, whose beach home of eight years is no longer safe to live, said she understood people were curious about what had happened but it was unnecessary for them to ransack the empty homes of people forced out of them.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361275
Expert not surprised at Tamiflu resistance
23.12.05 1.00pm
An international bird flu expert says despite two Vietnamese patients dying after developing a tamiflu resistant strain of bird flu, most patients respond to the drug.
Professor Arnold Monto, from the University of Michigan, said it was expected that the bird flu virus H5N1 would evolve into resistant forms.
The deaths were reported this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.
But Prof Monto said the fact the two Vietnamese patients had developed the resistant strain may not have in itself caused their deaths.
"I think that really has very little to do with the outcome, namely that both of them died, especially since one of them was actually treated six days into the illness," Prof Monto told National Radio.
"The virus has developed resistance. We knew that this was going to happen.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361274
Tourist murder case accused remanded
23.12.05 9.00am
Michael Scott Wallace, 44, the man accused of the kidnap and murder of German tourist Birgit Brauer, was yesterday remanded in custody to re-appear in the New Plymouth District Court for a deposition hearing starting on April 10.
Wallace also faced one charge of driving with excess blood alcohol on April 29 and one charge of driving with excess breath alcohol on August 19, a month before he allegedly killed Miss Brauer, 28. Judge Louis Bidois remanded Wallace in custody until February 9 on those charges.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361228
Recycling at record levels
23.12.05 7.00am
New Zealanders are recycling more waste than ever, the Government said yesterday.
Research showed 77 per cent of local councils now provided kerbside recycling for glass, paper and plastics compared with 10 per cent a decade ago. Recycled packaging material increased from about 130,000 tonnes in 1994 to almost 340,000 tonnes last year.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361226
Chainsaw threat to exotic city trees
23.12.05
By Bernard Orsman
The Auckland City Council is readying the chainsaw to cut down 20 exotic trees in Queen St, many of which appear healthy and have an estimated lifespan of more than 20 years.
The trees' removal is part of a long-term strategy to do away with liquidambar and other large exotic trees for a native planting theme of smaller cabbage trees and nikau palms.
The aim is to bring a distinctive New Zealand flavour to Queen St.
But the removal of exotic trees, many of which are flourishing after decades of slow growth, has angered some councillors and members of the public.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361240
Disarmament cash for Siberian project
23.12.05 6.00am
New Zealand is contributing $1.2 million to a Siberian chemical weapons destruction project and to help the decommissioning of Russia's last plutonium-producing nuclear reactor.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361225
Santa and sleigh for forces in Bamiyan
23.12.05 10.35am UPDATE
By Wayne Thompson
Click on 'more pictures' above for a map showing where NZ forces are serving
It will be a Christmas away from home and loved ones for 221 New Zealand Defence Force personnel on duty in 21 countries in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the global war against terrorism, or peace support operations with the United Nations.
In Sinai, Egypt, a 26-strong contingent will host Christmas Eve drinks and give a kapa haka performance for other nations.
In Afghanistan, 94 personnel are in the New Zealand provincial reconstruction team.
From the New Zealand base in the town of Bamiyan, Captain Sally Homer told the Herald last night that the daytime temperature was zero degrees and at night minus 10-15C.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361219
continued ...
It's true, dancing does lead to sex
SCIENTISTS have confirmed what fans of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever have known all along: men with the best dance moves have the most sex appeal.
The finding lends support to the idea that dancing is a way to show off high quality genes and good health - both indicators of a top quality mate.
Charles Darwin was the first to suggest that dance was a courtship signal in animals, but there had been no studies of the relation of dance and genetic or physical quality in humans until now.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/12/22/1135032135891.html
Meet Osama's niece
She's not the model niece Osama bin Laden's looking for - but she is modelling.
This is how Wafah Dufour, the al Qaeda leader's niece, will appear in the January 2006 issue of GQ magazine.
Dufour, who took her mother's maiden name after the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, is an aspiring musician struggling to make a name for herself.
She says she has never met Osama bin Laden.
"Everyone relates me to that man, and I have nothing to do with him," she said in the article.
"There are 400 other people related to him, but they are all in Saudi Arabia, so nobody's going to get tarred with it.
"I'm the only one here."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/people/meet-osamas-niece/2005/12/23/1135032164860.html
Fulla has the Mid-East doll market covered
SHE is the must-have toy this festive season, flying off the shelves. But the season in question is Eid al-Adha next month, not Christmas. Santa Claus means nothing to her.
Fulla, the Muslim doll, is now thought to be the best-selling girl's toy in the Arab world, two years after she first came on the market, displacing her Western rival, Barbie, in shops across her native Levant.
With thick black hair and large dark eyes, Fulla is the physical antithesis of Mattel's blonde, empty-eyed icon of Western consumerism.
Compared with Barbie's improbably pneumatic curves and lanky legs, Fulla's assets are modest, and never officially on display. Although she is marketed with a range of funky clothes, furniture, jewellery and grooming equipment, to avoid offending Muslim modesty, she has no swimwear.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/12/22/1135032135918.html
Tunnel gas blast kills at least 42
A gas explosion in a highway tunnel under construction killed 42 people and injured 11 others in south-west China's Sichuan province and the toll could rise.
Yesterday's explosion happened less than 100 km north-west of Chengdu, at an intersection of a highway being built to link the smaller cities of Dujiangyan and Wenchuan, the State Administration for Work Safety said today.
The exact number of casualties remains unclear, officials said.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/tunnel-gas-blast-kills-at-least-42/2005/12/23/1135032177762.html
Bush: 2005 'a good year'
US President George W Bush has called 2005 "a good year for the American people", but warns that terrorists like those who carried out the September 11 attacks still pose a threat.
In brief remarks today outside the White House as he headed to the Camp David presidential retreat for Christmas, Bush also pointed to elections in Iraq and in Afghanistan and said the US economy had grown stronger.
"This has been a year of strong progress toward a freer, more peaceful world and a prosperous America," he said. "It's been a good year for the American people."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bush-2005-a-good-year/2005/12/23/1135032165900.html
Baby's raw food tragedy
December 23, 2005 - 4:23PM
US parents who fed their baby only raw foods until she died have each been sentenced to 15 years' probation for neglecting their four older children.
Joseph and Lamoy Andressohn were acquitted in the malnutrition death of baby Woyah, but convicted of neglecting the four older kids.
In sentencing the couple in Florida, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Stanford Blake's order included a host of conditions to ensure the safety of the children if and when the Andressohns regain custody.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/babys-raw-food-tragedy/2005/12/23/1135032178070.html
Cold war warriors battle Antarctic whalers
By Andrew Darby
December 23, 2005
THE Japanese whaling fleet threw off attempts to silence its harpoons, as diplomatic and environmentalist pressure rose against the Antarctic hunt.
Greenpeace activists in high-speed inflatables on Thursday spent hours trying to put themselves between chaser boats and minke whales due south of Tasmania, and claimed that some whales were getting away.
"We've certainly succeeded in slowing down the hunt, though, unfortunately, eventually they did kill a whale," said the expedition leader, Shane Rattenbury.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/cold-war-warriors-battle-antarctic-whalers/2005/12/22/1135032135867.html
Bushfire alert as mercury soars
Firefighters are bracing for a black Christmas as searing temperatures threaten to combine with low humidity and high winds to fan major bushfires across much of eastern Australia.
Extreme fire danger is current nationwide, with total bans in Victoria and NSW as temperatures soar towards 40 degrees Celsius in tinderbox conditions.
Sydney and Brisbane are forecast to reach 38 degrees Celsius tomorrow, while Melbourne is expecting 36.
ACT authorities have also extended a fire ban in the national capital until midnight tomorrow after Canberra residents remained under fire alert today with temperatures in the high 30s.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/bushfire-alert-as-mercury-soars/2005/12/23/1135032180937.html
No shooting from the lip
George Bush's words of the past weeks would have been unthinkable just months ago. Michael Gawenda tracks the President's transformation.
AFTER two weeks of speeches, a television address to the nation from the Oval Office and a series of long interviews on network television, is George Bush a president transformed?
Has a president known for his stubbornness and disdain for self-reflection become less stubborn, more reflective, more open to admitting to mistakes?
One way of answering these questions is to look at the language, the rhetoric that has marked his presidency. Language matters.
Nine days after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, Bush addressed a special sitting of Congress. He was a president transformed by events which many people, and not just in the United States, believed marked the end of the post-Cold War era that began with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/no-shooting-from-the-lip/2005/12/22/1135032135942.html
Judges to be briefed on Bush wire-tapsTHE presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President George Bush's domestic spying program.
The move came as Senate Democrats thwarted a permanent renewal of the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act, setting up instead a temporary six-month extension of expiring provisions so that changes can be considered to better safeguard civil liberties. Mr Bush had argued that the law was necessary to safeguard US citizens.
Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said they want to know why the Administration believed secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading emails of US citizens without court authorisation was legal. Some judges were concerned that information gleaned from Mr Bush's eavesdropping program might have been improperly used to gain authorised wire-taps from their court.
On Monday, one of the court's 10 judges, James Robertson, submitted his resignation.
The presiding judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, told fellow court members by email that she was arranging for them to convene in Washington for a secret briefing on the program. Two intelligence sources familiar with the plan said Judge Kollar-Kotelly expected top-ranking officials from the National Security Agency and the Justice Department to outline the classified program to the members.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/judges-to-be-briefed-on-bush-wiretaps/2005/12/22/1135032135876.html
The Washington Times
Power We Didn't Grant
By Tom Daschle
Friday, December 23, 2005; A21
In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done."
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.
On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.
The shock and rage we all felt in the hours after the attack were still fresh. America was reeling from the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not yet accounted for. Even so, a strong bipartisan majority could not agree to the administration's request for an unprecedented grant of
authority.
The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress -- but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language.
All Americans agree that keeping our nation safe from terrorists demands aggressive and innovative tactics. This unity was reflected in the near-unanimous support for the original resolution and the Patriot Act in those harrowing days after Sept. 11. But there are right and wrong ways to defeat terrorists, and that is a distinction this administration has never seemed to accept. Instead of employing tactics that preserve Americans' freedoms and inspire the faith and confidence of the American people, the White House seems to have chosen methods that can only breed fear and suspicion.
If the stories in the media over the past week are accurate, the president has exercised authority that I do not believe is granted to him in the Constitution, and that I know is not granted to him in the law that I helped negotiate with his counsel and that Congress approved in the days after Sept. 11. For that reason, the president should explain the specific legal justification for his authorization of these actions, Congress should fully investigate these actions and the president's justification for them, and the administration should cooperate fully with that investigation.
In the meantime, if the president believes the current legal architecture of our country is insufficient for the fight against terrorism, he should propose changes to our laws in the light of day.
That is how a great democracy operates. And that is how this great democracy will defeat
terrorism.
The writer, a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, was Senate majority leader in 2001-02. He is now distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201101_pf.html
THIS IS ONE VERY WEAK AND CONTRIVED ARGUMENT. What this level of surveillance relates is an Act of War. I didn't know Bush was at war with American civilians. If he is then he should declare it ! It's an impeachable act even if you don't like it. This is 2005, not the turn of the 20th century.
Impeachment Nonsense
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, December 23, 2005; A21
2005 was already the year of the demagogue, having been dominated for months by the endlessly echoed falsehood that the president "lied us into war." But the year ends with yet another round of demagoguery.
Administration critics, political and media, charge that by ordering surveillance on communications of suspected al Qaeda agents in the United States, the president clearly violated the law. Some even suggest that Bush has thereby so trampled the Constitution that impeachment should now be considered. (Barbara Boxer, Jonathan Alter, John Dean and various luminaries of the left have already begun floating the idea.) The braying herds have already concluded, Tenet-like, that the president's actions were slam-dunk illegal. It takes a superior mix of partisanship, animus and ignorance to say that.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201102_pf.html
On Leaks, Relying on A Faulty Case Study
Untrue Bin Laden Satellite Phone Story Still Has Currency With Media's Critics
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A03
The allegation that news organizations leaked information about Osama bin Laden's satellite phone, thus shutting down a valuable source of intelligence that might have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has long been a prime case study cited by government officials seeking to impose greater restrictions on the news media.
President Bush drew attention to the case Monday when he twice cited it as a dangerous example of the news media "revealing sources, methods and what we use the information for." Bush was basing his remarks on a conclusion by the Sept. 11 commission, which had labeled it a "leak" that prompted the al Qaeda leader to turn off his phone.
Upon closer examination, the story turned out to be wrong. Bin Laden's use of a satellite phone had already been widely reported by August 1998, and he stopped using it within days of a cruise missile attack on his training camps in Afghanistan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201800.html
A Design That's Anti-Faith
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, December 23, 2005; A21
Can you imagine a more faithless pursuit than trying to prove the existence of God?
Yet that is what the whole "intelligent design" movement is really about, and it seems to me that people of faith should rejoice at the federal court decision Tuesday forbidding the schools of Dover, Pa., to read a statement touting intelligent design in science classes. The eloquent ruling by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III is a Christmastime blessing.
"Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID [intelligent design] as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom," Jones wrote in a painstaking, 139-page opinion that probably will set the parameters for future battles over intelligent design around the country. No appeal is expected, because the pro-ID school board members who tried to inject religion into the classroom have already been ousted by voters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201103_pf.html
Newly Emboldened Congress Has Dogged Bush This Year
By Jim VandeHei and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A05
After four years in which Congress repeatedly laid down while President Bush dictated his priorities, 2005 will go down as the year legislators stood up.
This week's uprising against a four-year extension of the USA Patriot Act was the latest example of a new willingness by lawmakers in both parties to challenge Bush and his notions of expansive executive power.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201829.html
Rumsfeld Announces U.S. Troop Reduction in Iraq
By Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 23, 2005; 6:12 AM
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced today that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq would be reduced by two brigades early next year, a move which would cut U.S. forces there by 8,000 to 10,000 troops.
The "adjustment," as Rumsfeld called it, would leave between 129,000 and 131,000 troops in the country, down from a baseline of 138,000. That baseline number was augmented for Iraq's election by another 12,000 troops.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122300266.html
Brown's Turf Wars Sapped FEMA's Strength
Director Who Came to Symbolize Incompetence in Katrina Predicted Agency Would Fail
By Michael Grunwald and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A01
On Sept. 15, 2003, one of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's deputies lobbed a bureaucratic hand grenade across his desk. In a seven-page memo, the new department's undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response told Ridge that his organizational plan would cripple America's ability to respond to disasters.
The memo, like so many that flew around Washington during the largest government reshuffling in decades, involved turf: Ridge had decided to move some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's preparedness functions to an office less than one-fifteenth its size. The writer warned that the shift would make a mockery of FEMA's new motto, "A Nation Prepared," and would "fundamentally sever FEMA from its core functions," "shatter agency morale," and "break longstanding, effective and tested relationships with states and first responder stakeholders."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122202213.html
Brown's Turf Wars Sapped FEMA's Strength
Director Who Came to Symbolize Incompetence in Katrina Predicted Agency Would Fail
By Michael Grunwald and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A01
On Sept. 15, 2003, one of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's deputies lobbed a bureaucratic hand grenade across his desk. In a seven-page memo, the new department's undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response told Ridge that his organizational plan would cripple America's ability to respond to disasters.
The memo, like so many that flew around Washington during the largest government reshuffling in decades, involved turf: Ridge had decided to move some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's preparedness functions to an office less than one-fifteenth its size. The writer warned that the shift would make a mockery of FEMA's new motto, "A Nation Prepared," and would "fundamentally sever FEMA from its core functions," "shatter agency morale," and "break longstanding, effective and tested relationships with states and first responder stakeholders."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122202213.html
New Home Sales Plummet in November
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
Friday, December 23, 2005; 10:37 AM
WASHINGTON -- Sales of new homes plunged in November by the largest amount in nearly 12 years, providing the most dramatic evidence yet that the red hot housing market over the last five years is starting to cool down.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that new single-family homes were sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.245 million units last month, a drop of 11.3 percent from October, when sales had surged to an all-time high.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122300460.html
To Some in Turkey, a Kurdish Beer Has the Flavor of Aversion
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A14
ISTANBUL -- Even before the bloody head of a sheep turned up on the brewery doorstep, the makers of Roj beer had reason to suspect their light, malty lager might not be to everyone's taste.
There was the hate mail, a virulent torrent of insults invoking mothers, sisters, dogs, blood and "dreamers like you."
Roj proudly identifies itself as "Kurdish beer." Brewed in Vienna, its Turkish import application has been pending for 18 months, three times the norm. (Rojbeer.co
There was the knock on the door of the brewer's Istanbul representative, who was taken from his house one evening in late September by Turkish security officers and interrogated till dawn.
And there was the remarkably long time Turkish officials were taking to consider the request to allow Roj into their country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201928.html
New Home Sales Plummet in November
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
Friday, December 23, 2005; 10:37 AM
WASHINGTON -- Sales of new homes plunged in November by the largest amount in nearly 12 years, providing the most dramatic evidence yet that the red hot housing market over the last five years is starting to cool down.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that new single-family homes were sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.245 million units last month, a drop of 11.3 percent from October, when sales had surged to an all-time high.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122300460.html
Young and Homeless Fill Africa's City Streets
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A01
KHARTOUM, Sudan -- The morning call to prayer echoed through the city as Ahmed Abdulraham, 14, a small boy with cloudy, yellowing eyes, rose from his version of a mattress: a pile of trash spread across a gutter.
He rubbed some murky brown water over his face. He prostrated himself and prayed, he said, for a day when he would be safe and earn a lot of money. Then he took turns with his five friends sniffing glue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122202226.html
New Zealand Herald
Christmas shoppers frustrated by Eftpos breakdown
23.12.05 3.20pm UPDATE
By NZPA and Angela Gregory
Last minute Christmas shoppers have been frustrated by a breakdown in the Eftpos system this afternoon.
A partial failure on a processor affected thousands of terminals at locations nationwide. Paymark Eftpos said a "large number" of transactions were declined starting at 12.50pm.
Though it had initially said it would only take 20 minutes to rectify the fault, there were further problems restarting the system.
Queues grew at central Auckland ATM machines from shoppers trying to get cash instead.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10361289
Nervous time for whale rescuers
22.12.05 1.00pm UPDATE
By Paul Smith and NZPA
Click on 'more pictures' above for photos of the rescue and a map of the area. Video link at foot of page
The next few hours will be crucial for a pod of whales which were stranded on a beach in Golden Bay.
The whales were refloated yesterday but had been heading for another beach in the area this morning.
However, the Department of Conservation (DOC) said mid-morning that the whales were again swimming out to sea.
DoC and volunteer rescuers are now monitoring the situation with high tide due at 2.45pm and strandings possible about two hours after that.
Spokesman Martin Heine told nzherald.co.nz: "They were heading back, but they have done a bit of a u-turn and they look like they are heading in a north-easterly direction back out of Golden Bay.
"They are swimming into an incoming tide so that is good."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10361085
Man swept off rocks
22.12.05 3.40pm
A man is missing after being washed off rocks in West Auckland this afternoon.
Surf Rescue and Coastguard vessels, suported by the Westpac Rescue and police helicopters searched the area at Whatipu for about an hour without success, police said.
Coastguard rescue boats are continuing a shoreline search of the Manukau Harbour inside the Manukau Heads.
No details of the missing man were yet available, Inspector Andrew Brill said.
- HERALD ONLINE STAFF
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10361140
Bangladeshi family victims of hate message
22.12.05 12.00pm
A racist message has been crudely spray-painted across a garage door in the latest attack on a Papamoa Bangladeshi family.
Neither Kamrun Imam, 34, nor husband Hasan, a 39-year-old dentists, know the meaning of the slogan used but are still hurt by the expression of hatred.
"It's very upsetting. Personally I feel really scared," said Mrs Imam, a dental nurse who is pregnant with her second child.
"I asked the police if anybody comes in the middle of the night and broke the door off, what might happen."
The Imams emigrated to New Zealand 10 years ago and moved to the Bay of Plenty from Auckland last year.
Local constable Mark Farrell alerted the family to the damage on Tuesday morning. He said the graffitti was "really offensive".
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10361117
Bugged plants to track thieves
22.12.05
An Auckland landscape gardener has resorted to a desperate and novel security measure to stop her plants being stolen - microchipped yuccas.
Since June this year North Shore landscape gardener Merryn Webster has had 87 yuccas and flax plants stolen from newly developed commercial spaces.
"We're on to them - we've seen their vehicles - they're on camera," Ms Webster said.
"It just guts me to think people are coming in and helping themselves."
Camera surveillance around the Northbridge Properties buildings in Albany captured a white van scouting the area before the most recent theft of nine yuccas three weeks ago.
Twenty-two yuccas were also stolen in June, and 56 flax plants last month.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361071
Floods kill 35 in south Thailand, aid rushed in
22.12.05 7.20am
BANGKOK - Widespread floods have killed 19 people in southern Thailand in the past week, raising to 35 the death toll in the region's worst floods in nearly 30 years, the Interior Ministry said.
Relief agencies rushed food, clothes and blankets to 9 provinces, including three bordering Malaysia, where more than 700,000 people have been affected, the ministry said.
In Malaysia, six people have died in Kelantan state, the worst affected of four northern states hit by floods since Friday, the government said. About 30,000 people were evacuated in the four states, but many have returned home as floodwaters receded in some areas.
In Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was criticised for not touring the flooded deep south where his ruling Thai Rak Thai Party was trounced in general elections earlier this year.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10361060
Union heads could face jail over NY transit strike
22.12.05 1.00pm
The leaders of the union behind New York's crippling mass transit strike could face jail, a judge warned today as commuters were forced to improvise for a second day to get to work.
The day after a court slapped US$1 million ($1.49 million) a day in fines on the striking union, a judge ordered union lawyers to bring TWU Local 100 leader Roger Toussaint and other top officials to court on Thursday, warning that jail was a "distinct possibility."
The bus and subway strike by some 34,000 transit workers is New York's first for 25 years. Staff walked out on Tuesday after talks on pay, health care and pensions broke down.
State law prohibits public sector employees from striking, and the judge is considering imposing fines on individual workers as well as jailing three union leaders.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10361111
Thieves and sightseers plague flood-devastated town
23.12.05 1.00pm
By Cherie Taylor
Thieves and sightseers are adding to the woes of flood-ravaged Matata residents.
Seven months after the disastrous floods hit the Bay of Plenty town, residents' homes are being targeted by thieves and sightseers are treating the area as if it is a tourist attraction.
Resident Marilyn Pearce, whose beach home of eight years is no longer safe to live, said she understood people were curious about what had happened but it was unnecessary for them to ransack the empty homes of people forced out of them.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361275
Expert not surprised at Tamiflu resistance
23.12.05 1.00pm
An international bird flu expert says despite two Vietnamese patients dying after developing a tamiflu resistant strain of bird flu, most patients respond to the drug.
Professor Arnold Monto, from the University of Michigan, said it was expected that the bird flu virus H5N1 would evolve into resistant forms.
The deaths were reported this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.
But Prof Monto said the fact the two Vietnamese patients had developed the resistant strain may not have in itself caused their deaths.
"I think that really has very little to do with the outcome, namely that both of them died, especially since one of them was actually treated six days into the illness," Prof Monto told National Radio.
"The virus has developed resistance. We knew that this was going to happen.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361274
Tourist murder case accused remanded
23.12.05 9.00am
Michael Scott Wallace, 44, the man accused of the kidnap and murder of German tourist Birgit Brauer, was yesterday remanded in custody to re-appear in the New Plymouth District Court for a deposition hearing starting on April 10.
Wallace also faced one charge of driving with excess blood alcohol on April 29 and one charge of driving with excess breath alcohol on August 19, a month before he allegedly killed Miss Brauer, 28. Judge Louis Bidois remanded Wallace in custody until February 9 on those charges.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361228
Recycling at record levels
23.12.05 7.00am
New Zealanders are recycling more waste than ever, the Government said yesterday.
Research showed 77 per cent of local councils now provided kerbside recycling for glass, paper and plastics compared with 10 per cent a decade ago. Recycled packaging material increased from about 130,000 tonnes in 1994 to almost 340,000 tonnes last year.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361226
Chainsaw threat to exotic city trees
23.12.05
By Bernard Orsman
The Auckland City Council is readying the chainsaw to cut down 20 exotic trees in Queen St, many of which appear healthy and have an estimated lifespan of more than 20 years.
The trees' removal is part of a long-term strategy to do away with liquidambar and other large exotic trees for a native planting theme of smaller cabbage trees and nikau palms.
The aim is to bring a distinctive New Zealand flavour to Queen St.
But the removal of exotic trees, many of which are flourishing after decades of slow growth, has angered some councillors and members of the public.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361240
Disarmament cash for Siberian project
23.12.05 6.00am
New Zealand is contributing $1.2 million to a Siberian chemical weapons destruction project and to help the decommissioning of Russia's last plutonium-producing nuclear reactor.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361225
Santa and sleigh for forces in Bamiyan
23.12.05 10.35am UPDATE
By Wayne Thompson
Click on 'more pictures' above for a map showing where NZ forces are serving
It will be a Christmas away from home and loved ones for 221 New Zealand Defence Force personnel on duty in 21 countries in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the global war against terrorism, or peace support operations with the United Nations.
In Sinai, Egypt, a 26-strong contingent will host Christmas Eve drinks and give a kapa haka performance for other nations.
In Afghanistan, 94 personnel are in the New Zealand provincial reconstruction team.
From the New Zealand base in the town of Bamiyan, Captain Sally Homer told the Herald last night that the daytime temperature was zero degrees and at night minus 10-15C.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361219
continued ...
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