The New York Times
Ford Is Buried After Thousands in Hometown Pay Respects
By MONICA DAVEY
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Jan. 3 — Gerald R. Ford was buried on Wednesday on a grassy hill beside the rushing waters of the Grand River as the sun set, a final farewell in a week of remembrances for the nation’s 38th president.
Though Mr. Ford had lived elsewhere for decades, Grand Rapids made it clear that it still considered this his true home and that it still considered him one of its most beloved, famous — and yet ordinary — men.
In a city of 195,000 residents, some 57,000 waited since Tuesday evening in a line that wound through two miles of downtown to walk silently past Mr. Ford’s coffin inside his presidential museum, steps from where he would be buried.
In temperatures that dipped into the low 30s, some people cheerfully waited six hours, deep into the night and morning, for a minute or two beside the former president, who died on Dec. 26 at age 93.
“We needed to be here — this is how we feel about him here,” Mary Castro said shortly before 3 a.m. Wednesday, still waiting to reach the museum after four hours in line. A family, carrying a 2-year-old in blankets beside her, nodded.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04ford.html?em&ex=1168059600&en=db9a99b91e374d24&ei=5087%0A
Plugging Into the Sun
By GREGORY DICUM
WILLIAM LEININGER is not your typical environmental zealot. A Navy commander who works as a doctor at the Naval Medical Center San Diego, he is a Republican and lives in one of California’s most conservative counties, in a development of neat lawns and Spanish-style houses. His 2,400-square-foot, single-level house — “the usual Southern California design,” he said recently — is barely distinguishable from its neighbors, apart from one detail: the red-tile roof is crammed with solar panels.
Dr. Leininger, 42, is one of thousands of Californians, many of them unlikely converts to the cause of alternative energy, who have installed solar power systems in their homes in just the last year.
Spurred by recent legislation that provides financial incentives — and by rising energy costs and, perhaps, by a lingering distrust of power companies in the aftermath of the California electricity crisis at the start of the decade — homeowners across the state have come to see solar power as a way to conserve money as well as natural resources. Architects in California are routinely designing solar systems into custom homes, and developers are offering solar systems and solar-ready wiring in new spec houses and subdivisions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/garden/04solar.html
Taipei Journal
Taiwan’s Bullet Trains Can’t Outrun Controversy
By KEITH BRADSHER
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Dec. 28 — The sleek, bulbous-nosed new bullet trains here look like they are designed to whisk passengers across wide-open spaces. But on this congested island, they represent the start of a 180-mile-per-hour commuter train system.
After a quarter century of planning and construction, the system is scheduled to open on Jan. 5. It will tie together cities and towns where 94 percent of Taiwan’s population lives, offering an alternative to clogged highways and the air pollution the vehicles on them produce.
For some urban planners and environmentalists, the project is an example of how Asia may be able to control oil imports, curb fast-rising emissions of global-warming gases and bring a higher standard of living to enormous numbers of people in an environmentally sustainable way.
Passengers who travel on a fully loaded train will use only a sixth of the energy they would use if they drove alone in a car and will release only one-ninth as much carbon dioxide, the main gas linked to global warming. Compared with a bus ride, the figures are half the energy and a quarter of the carbon dioxide, train system officials said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/world/asia/04taipei.html
U.S. Bars Lab From Testing Electronic Voting
A laboratory that has tested most of the nation’s electronic voting systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests. Skip to next paragraph
The company, Ciber Inc. of Greenwood Village, Colo., has also come under fire from analysts hired by New York State over its plans to test new voting machines for the state. New York could eventually spend $200 million to replace its aging lever devices.
Experts on voting systems say the Ciber problems underscore longstanding worries about lax inspections in the secretive world of voting-machine testing. The action by the federal Election Assistance Commission seems certain to fan growing concerns about the reliability and security of the devices.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04voting.html?hp&ex=1167973200&en=02b1a2cf02dc5f00&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Intelligence Chief Is Shifted to Deputy State Dept. Post
By MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 — John D. Negroponte, whom President Bush installed less than two years ago as the first director of national intelligence, will soon leave his post to become the State Department’s second-ranking official, administration officials said Wednesday.
Mr. Negroponte will fill a critical job that has been vacant for months, and he is expected to play a leading role in shaping policy in Iraq. But his transfer is another blow to an intelligence community that has seen little continuity at the top since the departure of George J. Tenet in 2004 as director of central intelligence.
Mr. Negroponte had been brought to the intelligence job to help restore credibility and effectiveness to agencies whose reputations were badly damaged by failures related to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and mistaken prewar assessments of Iraq’s illicit weapons. He has maintained a low public profile but provides Mr. Bush with a briefing most mornings.
President Bush has hailed the establishment of the intelligence post as an essential step in helping prevent another terrorist attack. On paper, the director of national intelligence outranks the deputy secretary of state, raising questions about why the White House would seek — and why Mr. Negroponte would agree to — the shift.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04secretary.html?_r=1&oref=login
Miers Steps Down as White House Counsel
By JIM RUTENBERG
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — Harriet E. Miers, President Bush’s longtime confidante and onetime Supreme Court nominee, has resigned as White House counsel, officials said Thursday.
Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said that Mr. Bush had accepted Ms. Miers’s resignation “reluctantly” and that she had tendered it after deciding she was ready for a change after six years in the job. The White House said that a search for a successor was under way and that Ms. Miers would remain at her post through this month.
Mr. Snow said her departure was not the beginning of another round of changes in the West Wing.
“For those who are speculating about any others within the White House proper, I am aware of none and expect none,” Mr. Snow said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05counsel.html?hp&ex=1167973200&en=9aa526c09f429118&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Bush to Name a New General to Oversee Iraq
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — President Bush has decided to name Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus as the top American military commander in Iraq, part of a broad revamping of the military team that will carry out the administration’s new Iraq strategy, administration officials said Thursday.
In addition to the promotion of General Petraeus, who will replace Gen. George W. Casey Jr., Adm. William J. Fallon, who is the top admiral in the Pacific, is expected to replace Gen. John P. Abizaid as the head of Central Command, officials said.
The changes are being made as the White House is considering an option to increase American combat power in Baghdad by five brigades as well as adding two battalions of reinforcements to the volatile province of Anbar in western Iraq.
Mr. Bush, who said Thursday that he would present details of his overall strategy for Iraq next week, and several top aides held a video teleconference on Thursday, speaking with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq and his top deputies about plans to add forces in the capital and other matters. The session lasted roughly an hour and forty-five minutes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/world/middleeast/05military.html?ei=5094&en=50b31caf7a778dce&hp=&ex=1167973200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
Democrats Taking Reins as New Session Opens on Hill
WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 — On the brink of regaining power after 12 years, House Democrats said Wednesday that they would move immediately to try to sever ties between lawmakers and lobbyists who figured into scandals that helped Democrats win control of Congress.
Democrats, who campaigned relentlessly last year on the theme of a Republican culture of corruption, introduced the proposed ethics rules as part of a week of choreography designed to deliver the message that they did not intend to do business as usual in Washington. In some cases, like restrictions on the use of corporate jets, the rules on gifts and travel by lobbyists go further than what Democrats had pledged earlier.
Another part of the Democrats’ package called for detailed disclosure of pet projects or special-interest tax benefits that individual lawmakers insert into major bills. On Wednesday, President Bush jumped into the debate on such spending projects, called earmarks, urging that their number and cost be cut in half this year, a proposal that Democrats immediately rejected.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04cong.html?ref=us
News Analysis
The Democrats’ Cautious Tiptoe Around the President’s Tax Cuts
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 — President Bush is all but daring Democratic leaders to attack his signature tax cuts as they take over Congress. But Democrats, perhaps to his frustration, are having none of it.
In an opening salvo on Wednesday, Mr. Bush proclaimed that he would present a budget next month that manages to project a balanced budget by 2012 while permanently extending more than $1 trillion in tax cuts.
“It is also a fact that our tax cuts have fueled robust economic growth and record revenues,” Mr. Bush wrote in an op-ed article for The Wall Street Journal. “We met our goal of cutting the deficit in half three years ahead of schedule.”
The implicit message, which Republican lawmakers reinforced later, was that their tax cuts were popular with voters, that Republicans had proven the economic benefits of tax cuts and that Democrats would court disaster if they even hinted at rolling them back or repealing them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04assess.html?pagewanted=print
News Analysis
For Democrats, a Choice: Forward or Reverse?
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — Democrats realized their political and legislative dream Thursday. Now they must face reality.
As they take control of the House and Senate, members of the new majority must reconcile diverse ideological factions within their ranks and make a fundamental choice. They can spend their energy trying to reverse what they see as the flaws of the Bush administration and a dozen years in which conservative philosophy dominated Congress. Or they can accept the rightward tilt of that period and grudgingly concede that big tax cuts, deregulation, restrictions on abortion and other Republican-inspired changes are now a permanent part of the legislative framework.
The competing drives were on display amid the constitutional hoopla Thursday and the emotion surrounding Representative Nancy Pelosi’s election as speaker, a position filled until now by the likes of Sam Rayburn, Joseph Cannon and Nicholas Longworth — men whose names adorn nearby House office buildings. “We have broken the marble ceiling,” Mrs. Pelosi said after she was handed the gavel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/us/politics/05assess.html
Report Faults Handling of Law Enforcement Grants
Lax oversight of federal law enforcement grants tied up $726 million for eight years and potentially shortchanged state and local crime-fighting programs, a Justice Department audit has found. The report, by Glenn A. Fine, the department’s inspector general, looked at nearly 61,000 grants, worth $25 billion, that expired from October 1997 through December 2005. The audit concluded that if officials had dealt promptly with expired grants, the $726 million could have been used for other Justice Department programs or returned to the government’s general fund. A department spokesman did not have an immediate response to the report.
Lack of Rules on Protective Gear Brings Suit Against Labor Dept.
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the United Food and Commercial Workers sued the Department of Labor yesterday, asserting that it broke the law by failing to issue regulations requiring employers to pay for protective equipment for their workers.
The two labor organizations said it was wrong for the Labor Department to require employers to provide protective equipment like helmets, face shields and gloves, while often letting employers charge workers for that equipment.
The groups complained that the Labor Department under President Bush had not issued final rules based on those the Clinton Labor Department proposed in 1999. Those proposals would have required companies to pay for all employee protective equipment required by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the Labor Department.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/us/04labor.html?pagewanted=print
Car Seats for Infants Often Fail in Broadside Crashes, Tests Find
By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — Car seats for infants often fail to withstand the impact when a vehicle is struck by another from the side, according to laboratory tests conducted by Consumer Reports.
Of a dozen models tested in simulations of such impacts, 10 failed, some “disastrously,” the magazine reports in its February issue.
The seats have a base that is installed in the car, and a detachable carrier in which the baby is strapped. In the simulations, the seats often separated from the base and skidded across the laboratory, Consumer Reports said.
The seats are rear-facing models of the kind intended for infants up to 1 year old, or about 22 pounds. The government requires manufacturers to test such seats for head-on collisions, but not for broadside crashes, which kill about 30 infants a year in the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/us/05infant.html?ref=us
More Rhode Island Schools Closed in Disease Outbreak
By KATIE ZEZIMA
COVENTRY, R.I., Jan. 4 — More than 20,000 Rhode Island students were told Thursday to stay home from school at least until Monday as officials investigate the case of a student hospitalized Wednesday with meningitis.
The officials are trying to determine whether that case is related to an encephalitis outbreak last month in which a second grader from Warwick died.
Schools in Coventry, Warwick and West Warwick were closed early Thursday after officials learned that a student at Hopkins Hill Elementary School here had meningitis. The child is recovering and was expected to be released from the hospital quickly, officials said.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence closed eight schools in those communities, and Warwick canceled youth activities for Thursday and Friday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/us/05warwick.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print
Anti - Gay Marriage Group Withdraws Suit
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:39 p.m. ET
BOSTON (AP) -- Gay marriage opponents on Thursday withdrew a federal lawsuit that sought $5 million from lawmakers who blocked a vote in November on a proposed constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage.
The decision to withdraw the lawsuit comes two days after lawmakers voted to advance the amendment. The measure still needs approval in the next legislative session before it can appear on the ballot in 2008.
VoteOnMarriage.org filed the lawsuit in December against 109 lawmakers who voted to adjourn the Legislature without considering the amendment. It claimed the lawmakers violated supporters' rights to free speech, to petition the government and due process under the law.
The lawsuit sought $500,000 for the cost of the group's legal battles and another $5 million in punitive damages.
Glen Lavy, a lawyer representing VoteOnMarriage.org, said there was no reason to pursue the case ''now that the Legislature has chosen to do the right thing and vote.''
The decision also follows the threat of a countersuit by 14 of 109 lawmakers. The lawmakers sent a letter to the group on Dec. 29 calling the suit frivolous and giving them 21 days to withdraw it.
An Appreciation
From Father to Son, Last Words to Live By
By DANA CANEDY
He drew pictures of himself with angel wings. He left a set of his dog tags on a nightstand in my Manhattan apartment. He bought a tiny blue sweat suit for our baby to wear home from the hospital.
Then he began to write what would become a 200-page journal for our son, in case he did not make it back from the desert in Iraq.
For months before my fiancé, First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, kissed my swollen stomach and said goodbye, he had been preparing for the beginning of the life we had created and for the end of his own.
He boarded a plane in December 2005 with two missions, really — to lead his young soldiers in combat and to prepare our boy for a life without him.
Dear son, Charles wrote on the last page of the journal, “I hope this book is somewhat helpful to you. Please forgive me for the poor handwriting and grammar. I tried to finish this book before I was deployed to Iraq. It has to be something special to you. I’ve been writing it in the states, Kuwait and Iraq.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/us/01charles.html
Dana Canedy Responds to Reader Questions
The Times’s Dana Canedy, whose fiancé was killed in Iraq, is taking questions from readers. Her responses will be posted thoughout the week.
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/questions-canedy.html?ref=us
In Padilla Wiretaps, Murky View of ‘Jihad’ Case
By DEBORAH SONTAG
In 1997, as the government listened in on their phone call, Adham Hassoun, a computer programmer in Broward County, Fla., proposed a road trip to Jose Padilla, a low-wage worker there. The excursion to Tampa would be his treat, Mr. Hassoun said, and a chance to meet “some nice, uh, brothers.”
Mr. Padilla, 36, a Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican who had converted to Islam a few years earlier, knew Mr. Hassoun, an outspoken Palestinian, from his mosque. Still, according to a transcript of the conversation obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Padilla equivocated as Mr. Hassoun exhorted.
“We take the whole family and have a blast,” Mr. Hassoun said. “We go to, uh, our Busch Gardens, you know ... You won’t regret it. Money-back guarantee.”
Mr. Padilla, laughing, suggested that they not discuss the matter over the phone.
“Why?” Mr. Hassoun said. “We’re going to Busch Gardens. What’s the big deal!”
That conversation took place five years before Mr. Padilla, a United States citizen accused of plotting a “dirty bomb” attack against this country, was declared an enemy combatant. Given that Mr. Padilla and Mr. Hassoun are now criminal defendants in a terrorism conspiracy case in Miami, it sounds suspicious, as if Mr. Hassoun were proposing something more sinister than a weekend at the amusement park. He well may have been — but maybe, too, he was sincere or joking about a Muslim retreat.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04padilla.html?em&ex=1168059600&en=8afb70cecbe3a109&ei=5087%0A
Skin Deep
The Cosmetics Restriction Diet
By NATASHA SINGER
DR. FRAN E. COOK-BOLDEN, a dermatologist in Manhattan, is an advocate of skin-care minimalism. When a patient recently arrived for an appointment toting 20 different products she was using regularly — including an eye cream, a vitamin C cream, a wrinkle serum, a pigmentation cream, a mask, a peel, a scrub and “some sort of special oxygen detoxifying cream” — Dr. Cook-Bolden said she confiscated all but three.
“It gave me a headache just to look at all of those products,” Dr. Cook-Bolden said. “Just two products, a gentle cleanser and a good sunscreen, are enough daily skin care for most people, and you can buy those at a drugstore or a grocery store.”
Dr. Cook-Bolden is part of a back-to-basics movement among dermatologists. At a time when beauty companies are introducing an increasing number of products marketed for specific body parts —including necks, creases around the mouth and eyelids — or for apocryphal maladies like visible pores or cellulite, these doctors are putting their patients on cosmetics restriction diets.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/fashion/04skin.html?em&ex=1168059600&en=03acb6afb649bd98&ei=5087%0A
Op-Ed Columnist
Another Thousand Lives
By BOB HERBERT
How long can this go on?
Saddam is dead. The weapons of mass destruction were a mirage. More than 3,000 American G.I.s and scores of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Voters in the United States have made it clear that they no longer support American involvement in this exercise in sustained barbarism. Incredibly, the U.S. military itself is turning against the war.
And yet the president, against the counsel of his commanders on the ground, apparently is ready to escalate — to send more American lives into the fire he set in Iraq.
In a devastating critique of the war, the newsweekly Army Times led its current edition with the headline: “About-Face on the War — After 3 years of support, troops sour on Iraq.” The article detailed a Military Times Poll that found, for the first time, that “more troops disapprove of the president’s handling of the war than approve of it.”
Only a third of the service members surveyed approved of the president’s conduct of the war, while 42 percent disapproved. Perhaps worse was the finding that only half of the troops believed that success in Iraq was likely.
The service members made it clear that they were not attacking their commander in chief personally. His overall approval rating remained high. What has turned them off has been the wretched reality of the war. In the article, David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, said, “They’re seeing more casualties and fatalities and less progress.”
In other words, they’re seeing the same thing everybody else is seeing — except, perhaps, Mr. Bush.
On New Year’s Day, readers of The New York Times could see the excruciating photo layout of the latest 1,000 American service members to die in Iraq. As in all wars, most of them were young. Many of them were smiling in the photos. All of them died unnecessarily.
The war has been an exercise in futility and mind-boggling incompetence, and yet our involvement continues — with no end in sight, no plans for withdrawal, no idea of where we might be headed — as if the U.S. had fallen into some kind of bizarrely destructive trance from which it is unable to awaken.
And who is paying the price for this insanity — apart from ordinary Iraqis, who are paying the most grievous price of all? The burden of the war in the U.S. is being shouldered overwhelmingly by a contingent of Americans whom no one would categorize as economically privileged.
As Lizette Alvarez and Andrew Lehren wrote in Monday’s Times:
“The service members who died during this latest period fit an unchanging profile. They were mostly white men from rural areas, soldiers so young they still held fresh memories of high school football heroics and teenage escapades. Many men and women were in Iraq for the second or third time. Some were going on their fourth, fifth or sixth deployment.”
There is no way that this can be justified. It is just wrong.
I’ve said many times that if a war is worth fighting the way to do it is to mobilize the entire country, drawing the warriors from as wide a swath of the population as possible and raising taxes on everyone as part of an all-out effort to defeat a common enemy.
This war is not worth fighting. And if there were ever serious talk about enacting a draft or raising taxes to fight it, you’d see quickly enough that the vast majority of Americans would not find it worth fighting.
There must be a leader somewhere who can shake the U.S. out of this tragic hypnotic state, who can see that it is beyond crazy to continue our involvement in this war indefinitely, to sacrifice another 1,000 young lives, and then another thousand after that.
All of the tortured, twisted rationales for this war — all of the fatuous intellectual pyrotechnics dreamed up to justify it — have vaporized, and we’re left with just the mad, mindless, meaningless and apparently endless slaughter.
Shakespeare, in “Henry VI,” said: “Now thou art come unto a feast of death.”
We should end our participation in the feast of death in Iraq. It is criminal to continue feeding our troops into the slaughter.
If there were politicians here at home with some of the courage of the troops in the field, we could begin saving lives rather than watching helplessly as the Bush White House continues to sacrifice them. Three thousand and counting is enough.
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/opinion/04herbert.html?hp
A Terror Detainee Longs for Court
By ADAM LIPTAK
Ali al-Marri, whom the government calls a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda and who is the only person on the American mainland still held as an enemy combatant, spends his days in a small cell in solitary confinement at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. When he is in an ironic mood, his lawyers say, he calls the cell his villa.
Mr. Marri waits there for word from his wife, two sons and three daughters, whom he last saw in 2001, just before his arrest in Peoria, Ill., where he was studying computer science at Bradley University.
Letters arrive, but they are late and have words and sentences blacked out. A note his wife sent to him 10 months ago landed recently. It began with a standard Muslim invocation, but a word was missing. Mr. Marri is pretty sure it was “Allah.”
But mostly Mr. Marri waits for word from a federal appeals court, which will soon rule on one of the most urgent questions in American law, one his case presents in stark form: May the government indefinitely detain a foreigner living legally in the United States, without charges and without access to the courts?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05terror.html?hp&ex=1167973200&en=41146f7f4f1db1fb&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Fiji Military Chief and Coup Leader Sworn in as PM
By REUTERS
Filed at 10:20 p.m. ET
SUVA (Reuters) - Fiji's military commander tightened his grip on power when he was sworn in as interim prime minister on Friday, exactly a month after his bloodless coup overthrew the South Pacific nation's elected government.
Commander Frank Bainimarama said he would remain head of the military as well as lead the interim government, but the man he ousted, former Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, warned that Fiji was heading toward military dictatorship.
Bainimarama staged Fiji's fourth coup in 20 years on December 5. He was sworn in as interim premier on Friday by President Ratu Josefa Iloilo, whom he reinstated a day earlier after assuming his largely ceremonial powers during the coup. ''In all things, I will be a true and faithful prime minister,'' Bainimarama said as he took the oath of office.
``Let us put the interest of the nation at heart,'' he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-fiji.html?pagewanted=print
Israeli Raid Overshadows Olmert’s Talks With Mubarak
By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, Jan. 4 — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt on Thursday evening in an effort to give momentum to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. But the meeting was overshadowed by an Israeli raid in the West Bank in which four Palestinians were killed and 20 wounded.
Mr. Mubarak was clearly embarrassed by the timing of the raid, hours before the meeting of the two leaders in an Egyptian Red Sea resort town, Sharm el Sheik. He called it a hindrance to peace efforts and told Mr. Olmert that Egypt “rejects and is indignant at the military operation.”
“Israel’s security cannot be achieved through military force but by serious endeavors toward peace,” Mr. Mubarak added at his news conference with Mr. Olmert.
Mr. Olmert said that he was sorry that innocent Palestinians were hurt, but that Israel would defend itself and was acting to arrest “terrorists who had killed Israelis.”
He gave no explanation for the timing of the daylight raid, a vain attempt to arrest a wanted militant, which used unusual force in normally quiet Ramallah. He said Israeli troops returned fire, but did not initiate it. “Things developed in a way that could not have been predicted in advance,” he said. “If innocent people were hurt, this was not our intention.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/world/middleeast/05mideast.html
Lilly Settles With 18,000 Over Zyprexa
By ALEX BERENSON
Eli Lilly agreed yesterday to pay up to $500 million to settle 18,000 lawsuits from people who claimed they had developed diabetes or other diseases after taking Zyprexa, Lilly’s drug for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Including earlier settlements over Zyprexa, Lilly has now agreed to pay at least $1.2 billion to 28,500 people who said they were injured by the drug. At least 1,200 suits are still pending, the company said. About 20 million people worldwide have taken Zyprexa since its introduction in 1996.
The settlement covers cases filed in state and federal courts by law firms or groups of firms for 18,000 clients, Lilly said. The federal suits have been overseen in Brooklyn by Judge Jack B. Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York.
The settlement will not affect continuing civil or criminal investigations of Zyprexa by state attorneys general and federal prosecutors.
Both Lilly and lawyers for plaintiffs said they were pleased with the agreement. With global sales of roughly $4.2 billion last year, Zyprexa is Lilly’s largest-selling drug and a major contributor to the company’s profits. Lilly shares were relatively flat after the settlement announcement. They rose 11 cents yesterday, to $52.36.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/business/05drug.html?hp&ex=1167973200&en=8f01fff668aca7d0&ei=5094&partner=homepage
State of the Art
Fewer Excuses for Not Doing a PC Backup
By DAVID POGUE
If there’s one New Year’s resolution even more likely to fail than “I vow to lose weight,” it’s “I vow to start backing up my computer.”
After all, setting up and remembering to use a backup system is a huge hassle. The odds are good that you don’t have an up-to-date backup at this very moment.
Fortunately, 2007 may turn out to be the Year of the Backup. Both Microsoft and Apple have built automated backup software into the latest versions of their operating systems, both to be introduced this year.
At the same time, an option that was once complex, limited and expensive is suddenly becoming effortless, capacious and even free: online backups, where files are shuttled off to the Internet for safekeeping.
Online backup means never having to buy or manage backup disks. You can have access to your files from any computer anywhere. And above all, your files are safe even if disaster should befall your office — like fire, flood, burglary or marauding children.
As it turns out, the Web is brimming with backup services. Most of them, however, offer only 1 or 2 gigabytes’ worth of free storage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/technology/04pogue.html?em&ex=1168059600&en=418b64de715e4aef&ei=5087%0A
The Sky Wasn’t Falling, Just a Tiny Chunk of It
By KAREEM FAHIM
FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP, N.J., Jan. 3 — Whatever it was, the object that fell from the sky was not part of an airplane. That was all anyone knew for sure.
It was dense with a rough metallic surface. The oblong object was only about two inches long — fitting into the palm of a hand — but weighed almost a pound. And it fell through the roof of a two-story house here Tuesday afternoon, shattering the tile floor of the second-floor bathroom and embedding itself in a wall.
“No one was injured,” said Lt. Robert Brightman of the Freehold Township Police Department at a press conference Wednesday while discussing the possibly extraterrestrial event. His investigators had put the object, whatever it was, in a plastic cylinder, where it sat on a bed of aqua blue Styrofoam inside the cylinder.
Flanked by a detective and a representative from the local emergency management office, Lieutenant Brightman said that after the object entered the home in a housing development here (passing through shingles and sheathing and insulation), a test with a Geiger counter indicated that at least it was not radioactive.
“Would you call that kidney-shaped?” a reporter asked. The officer said he did not know.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/nyregion/04ball.html
Maria Kalman, the Artist
http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=17#comment-2039
Spitzer Requests Sweeping Array of New Measures
By DANNY HAKIM
ALBANY, Jan. 3 — Gov. Eliot Spitzer proposed overhauling almost every corner of the state’s operations and policies in his first address to the Legislature on Wednesday. He said he would move swiftly to guarantee health insurance for all children in the state, toughen campaign finance laws, cut property taxes by $6 billion and draft constitutional amendments to overhaul the state’s courts.
The dizzying collection of ambitious proposals reflects how the new governor is moving quickly to capitalize on the momentum of his landslide victory and recent government corruption scandals to push through major initiatives early in his term. While some of the proposals were outlined during his campaign, in his speech to lawmakers he offered several new initiatives and promised to accomplish others during his first year in office.
“Make no mistake, the changes I just described will not be easy, but change rarely is,” he said near the end of the speech, in which he used the words “reform” or “reforms” 31 times. “At every major transition point in our history, we have experienced uncertainty and growing pains. We will experience them again.”
In an hourlong address that was largely a repudiation of the policies of his predecessor, George E. Pataki, the new governor said he would seek to broadly overhaul the state’s ethics and lobbying rules. He said he would make prekindergarten available to all 4-year-olds by the end of his term, overhaul the public authorities that control most of the state’s debt and make New York more inviting to business by reducing the cost of workers’ compensation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/nyregion/04spitzer.html
Exxon Accused of Trying to Mislead Public
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
HOUSTON, Jan. 3 — The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report on Wednesday accusing Exxon Mobil of spending millions of dollars to manipulate public opinion on the seriousness of global warming.
“Many of the tactics, and even some of the same organizations and actors used by Exxon Mobil to mislead the public, draw upon the tobacco industry’s 40-year disinformation campaign,” the report said.
The report said that a task force that Exxon Mobil helped create on global climate science in 1998 included someone who had led a nonprofit organization called the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, “which had been covertly created by the tobacco company Philip Morris in 1993 to manufacture uncertainty about the health hazards posed by secondhand smoke.”
Many of the accusations in the report have been made before by the scientists’ organization and environmental groups. But the organization, a liberal advocacy group, said this report more completely detailed connections between money donated by Exxon Mobil and the scientists in groups that question the degree to which humans are contributing to climate change.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/business/04exxon.html
The Pour
Ancient Messages, Hidden in a Dusty Bottle From Long Ago
By ERIC ASIMOV
BEAUNE, France
THE lineup of wines to be served with dinner was extraordinary, including a Montrachet from 1939 and a Volnay Caillerets from 1929. Still, the wine I couldn’t wait to try was the ’46 Meursault Charmes.
That would be the 1846.
The dinner was in honor of Bouchard Père & Fils, the venerable Burgundy producer and négociant, which was celebrating its 275th anniversary with a tasting of some very, very old wines. It was held at the historic Château de Beaune, a 15th-century fortress here that has been the producer’s ceremonial and corporate home since 1810. In addition to the 1846, Bouchard was to pour a relative youngster, the 1865 Beaune Grèves Vigne de L’Enfant Jésus.
Both of these ancient vintages had spent their long lives in the bowels of the chateau, where thick walls keep the cellars cool and the bottles can rest undisturbed. As rare as it is to taste wines this old, it’s even more unusual to taste bottles with such an unimpeachable provenance.
Scientists know that the gradual interaction between a fine wine and small amounts of oxygen results in what we call aging. Firm tannins soften and aggressive aromas of fruit mellow and evolve into complex new characteristics. A wine becomes harmonious and shows new dimensions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/dining/03pour.html
Judiciary
The Kennedy Factor on the Roberts Court
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Washington
THE Supreme Court, having decided only four cases since the term began in October, has not exactly been living in the fast lane. But the pace is about to pick up.
The coming months will be a testing time for the young Roberts court, including decisions due by early summer on abortion, school integration and environmental policy, with an unusually large emphasis on cases of significance to the business community.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has spoken often of the virtues of a court that speaks modestly and unanimously. Those goals may well prove elusive. The court’s conservative bloc reached out to hear challenges to voluntary integration plans put in place by the public school systems of Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, which had been upheld by lower courts.
If the Dec. 4 arguments were any indication, a majority will overturn student assignment plans that seek to maintain racial balance in systems that struggled for years to achieve it. The outcome is likely to prove divisive both within the court and outside it.
The Nov. 8 arguments in two cases on the constitutionality of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 did not provide such a clear basis for prediction. Instead, they served to showcase Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s position at the center of a court that is closely divided in cases that Justice Antonin Scalia has described as battles in the culture war. Before she retired a year ago, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor held that pivotal position.
Justice Kennedy did not tip his hand during the abortion arguments. But enough other justices tipped theirs to make clear that the first federal statute ever to make an abortion procedure a crime will stand or fall depending on Justice Kennedy’s opinion.
As the term proceeds, the court will also have its say in its first brush with the issue of global climate change. But in this instance — a statutory rather than constitutional case — the court’s word will not be the last. Whatever the justices decide about the Bush administration’s refusal to regulate carbon dioxide in automobile emissions, the new Congress may well have something to say.
Op-Ed Columnist
A Healthy New Year
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The U.S. health care system is a scandal and a disgrace. But maybe, just maybe, 2007 will be the year we start the move toward universal coverage.
In 2005, almost 47 million Americans — including more than 8 million children — were uninsured, and many more had inadequate insurance.
Apologists for our system try to minimize the significance of these numbers. Many of the uninsured, asserted the 2004 Economic Report of the President, “remain uninsured as a matter of choice.”
And then you wake up. A scathing article in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times described how insurers refuse to cover anyone with even the slightest hint of a pre-existing condition. People have been denied insurance for reasons that range from childhood asthma to a “past bout of jock itch.”
Some say that we can’t afford universal health care, even though every year lack of insurance plunges millions of Americans into severe financial distress and sends thousands to an early grave. But every other advanced country somehow manages to provide all its citizens with essential care. The only reason universal coverage seems hard to achieve here is the spectacular inefficiency of the U.S. health care system.
Americans spend more on health care per person than anyone else — almost twice as much as the French, whose medical care is among the best in the world. Yet we have the highest infant mortality and close to the lowest life expectancy of any wealthy nation. How do we do it?
Part of the answer is that our fragmented system has much higher administrative costs than the straightforward government insurance systems prevalent in the rest of the advanced world. As Anna Bernasek pointed out in yesterday’s New York Times, besides the overhead of private insurance companies, “there’s an enormous amount of paperwork required of American doctors and hospitals that simply doesn’t exist in countries like Canada or Britain.”
In addition, insurers often refuse to pay for preventive care, even though such care saves a lot of money in the long run, because those long-run savings won’t necessarily redound to their benefit. And the fragmentation of the American system explains why we lag far behind other nations in the use of electronic medical records, which both reduce costs and save lives by preventing many medical errors.
The truth is that we can afford to cover the uninsured. What we can’t afford is to keep going without a universal health care system.
If it were up to me, we’d have a Medicare-like system for everyone, paid for by a dedicated tax that for most people would be less than they or their employers currently pay in insurance premiums. This would, at a stroke, cover the uninsured, greatly reduce administrative costs and make it much easier to work on preventive care.
Such a system would leave people with the right to choose their own doctors, and with other choices as well: Medicare currently lets people apply their benefits to H.M.O.’s run by private insurance companies, and there’s no reason why similar options shouldn’t be available in a system of Medicare for all. But everyone would be in the system, one way or another.
Can we get there from here? Health care reform is in the air. Democrats in Congress are talking about providing health insurance to all children. John Edwards began his presidential campaign with a call for universal health care.
And there’s real action at the state level. Inspired by the Massachusetts plan to cover all its uninsured residents, politicians in other states are talking about adopting similar plans. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has introduced a Massachusetts-type plan for the nation as a whole.
But now is the time to warn against plans that try to cover the uninsured without taking on the fundamental sources of our health system’s inefficiency. What’s wrong with both the Massachusetts plan and Senator Wyden’s plan is that they don’t operate like Medicare; instead, they funnel the money through private insurance companies.
Everyone knows why: would-be reformers are trying to avoid too strong a backlash from the insurance industry and other players who profit from our current system’s irrationality.
But look at what happened to Bill Clinton. He rejected a single-payer approach, even though he understood its merits, in favor of a complex plan that was supposed to co-opt private insurance companies by giving them a largely gratuitous role. And the reward for this “pragmatism” was that insurance companies went all-out against his plan anyway, with the notorious “Harry and Louise” ads that, yes, mocked the plan’s complexity.
Now we have another chance for fundamental health care reform. Let’s not blow that chance with a pre-emptive surrender to the special interests.
Op-Ed Columnist
A Failed Revolution
By PAUL KRUGMAN
After first attempting to deny the scale of last month’s defeat, the apologists have settled on a story line that sounds just like Marxist explanations for the failure of the Soviet Union. What happened, you see, was that the noble ideals of the Republican revolution of 1994 were undermined by Washington’s corrupting ways. And the recent defeat was a good thing, because it will force a return to the true conservative path.
But the truth is that the movement that took power in 1994 — a movement that had little to do with true conservatism — was always based on a lie.
The lie is right there in “The Freedom Revolution,” the book that Dick Armey, who had just become the House majority leader, published in 1995. He declares that most government programs don’t do anything “to help American families with the needs of everyday life,” and that “very few American families would notice their disappearance.” He goes on to assert that “there is no reason we cannot, by the time our children come of age, reduce the federal government by half as a percentage of gross domestic product.”
Right. Somehow, I think more than a few families would notice the disappearance of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — and those three programs alone account for a majority of nondefense, noninterest spending. The truth is that the government delivers services and security that people want. Yes, there’s some waste — just as there is in any large organization. But there are no big programs that are easy to cut.
As long as people like Mr. Armey, Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were out of power, they could run on promises to eliminate vast government waste that existed only in the public’s imagination — all those welfare queens driving Cadillacs. But once in power, they couldn’t deliver.
That’s why government by the radical right has been an utter failure even on its own terms: the government hasn’t shrunk. Federal outlays other than interest payments and defense spending are a higher percentage of G.D.P. today than they were when Mr. Armey wrote his book: 14.8 percent in fiscal 2006, compared with 13.8 percent in fiscal 1995.
Unable to make good on its promises, the G.O.P., like other failed revolutionary movements, tried to maintain its grip by exploiting its position of power. Friends were rewarded with patronage: Jack Abramoff began building his web of corruption almost as soon as Republicans took control. Adversaries were harassed with smear campaigns and witch hunts: Congress spent six years and many millions of dollars investigating a failed land deal, and Bill Clinton was impeached over a consensual affair.
But it wasn’t enough. Without 9/11, the Republican revolution would probably have petered out quietly, with the loss of Congress in 2002 and the White House in 2004. Instead, the atrocity created a window of opportunity: four extra years gained by drowning out unfavorable news with terror alerts, starting a gratuitous war, and accusing Democrats of being weak on national security.
Yet the Bush administration failed to convert this electoral success into progress on a right-wing domestic agenda. The collapse of the push to privatize Social Security recapitulated the failure of the Republican revolution as a whole. Once the administration was forced to get specific about the details, it became obvious that private accounts couldn’t produce something for nothing, and the public’s support vanished.
In the end, Republicans didn’t shrink the government. But they did degrade it. Baghdad and New Orleans are the arrival destinations of a movement based on deep contempt for governance.
Is that the end for the radical right? Probably not. As a long-suffering civil servant once told me, bad policy ideas are like cockroaches: you can flush them down the toilet, but they keep coming back. Many of the ideas that failed in the Bush years had previously failed in the Reagan years. So there’s no reason to assume they’re gone for good.
Indeed, it appears that loss of power and the ensuing lack of accountability is liberating right-wingers to lie yet again: since last month’s election, I’ve noticed a number of Social Security privatizers propounding the same free-lunch falsehoods that the Bush administration had to abandon in the face of demands that it present an actual plan.
Still, the Republican revolution of 1994 is over. And not a moment too soon.
The Guardian Unlimited
Labour targets airlines over carbon emissionsMinister warns companies he says are not taking climate change seriously
The government has launched an outspoken attack on major airlines for refusing to take climate change seriously, branding Ryanair "the irresponsible face of capitalism" and describing the attitude of major American airlines "a disgrace".
Environment minister Ian Pearson also warned that British Airways was "only just about playing ball" in the fight to reduce carbon emissions. His language is strikingly tougher on some in the cheap flights industry than the prime minister's: Tony Blair has appeared extremely reluctant to be seen to be curtailing their growth.
But the minister is determined to stand up to the intense lobbying by parts of the airline industry, especially its efforts to delay market-based curbs being placed on its emissions.
He is also known to be angry that Lufthansa, the German airline, is opposing curbs even though the German government of Angela Merkel is making the fight against climate change a central issue of its G8 presidency.
Mr Pearson also said he regards the predicted growth in airlines' carbon emissions such a threat to the government's plans to cut emissions by 60% by 2050 that he still wants the European Union to go further - and faster - to include airline emissions in its trading scheme.
Just before Christmas, the EU proposed including all flights within Europe in the carbon trading scheme from 2011 then, a year later, expanding the scope to cover all international flights that arrive at or depart from an EU airport. Foreign airlines from outside the EU would also be included.
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/travel/story/0,,1983334,00.html
Spineless England roll over
The inevitable happened 12 minutes before lunch this morning when Matthew Hayden hit the run that gave Australia victory by 10 wickets in the final Test and the 5-0 whitewash they have craved for the last 16 months. Set to score 46, Justin Langer and Hayden took just one ball shy of 11 overs to complete England's biggest humiliation in 86 years.
Earlier, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee had brushed aside the remnants of the England innings, McGrath finishing his Test career with a wicket, three for 38 from 21 parsimonious overs and a total of 563 in a career of undisputed greatness, with Lee, rapid and aggressive, taking three for 39.
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/ashes2006-07/story/0,,1983463,00.html
Ashley's story
When news broke that a disabled American girl had been given radical treatment to prevent her growing up, it caused a furore. Here, in an edited extract from his blog, her father explains why the family did it
Our daughter Ashley had a normal birth, but her mental and motor faculties did not develop. Over the years, neurologists, geneticists and other specialists conducted every known traditional and experimental test, but still could not determine a diagnosis or a cause. Doctors call her condition "static encephalopathy of unknown etiology", which means an insult to the brain of unknown origin or cause, and one that will not improve.
Now nine years old, Ashley cannot keep her head up, roll or change her sleeping position, hold a toy or sit up by herself, let alone walk or talk. She is tube fed and depends on her caregivers in every way. We call her our "Pillow Angel" since she is so sweet and stays right where we place her - usually on a pillow.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1983325,00.html
Show some compassion
The decision to suspend the growth of Ashley is not a slide towards eugenics but a solution that is right for her.
Looking at the pictures of Ashley, the nine year old brain-damaged girl whose parents have decided to "freeze" her at her present stage of development, I was struck by how calm and, yes, happy she looked, her hair washed and combed, no evidence of the twisting and wasting of limbs which is hard to avoid if a child is unable to move. It is hard to imagine the massive gulf between this child's life and the desperate lives of those children I saw 27 years ago, when I happened to visit a, shall we say "facility" for severely mentally and physically disabled children.
I will never forget it. The pervasive smell of urine which made me gag, the scrubbed and empty rooms and the children: some sitting blankly, others wailing piteously and one or two steadily banging their heads against the wall. Carers were there mainly to feed them and then mop up the inevitable results from the floor. These were the Ashley's of another era when parents were encouraged to abandon severely brain-damaged babies to the tender mercies of the state. The thinking then was that such children would be a burden on any family and would deprive any other children of parental care.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/angela_phillips/2007/01/ashleys_rights_1.html
Democrats hail new era for US as they sweep into Congress
Marble ceiling is broken, says first woman speaker · Ambitious agenda to focus on lobbying and Iraq war
A new era was proclaimed in Washington yesterday as the Democratic party recaptured control of both houses of Congress after 12 years on the sidelines of power.
"The Democrats are back," exulted Nancy Pelosi, who went on to make history yesterday afternoon when she was sworn in as the first woman to become speaker of the House of Representatives.
"This is an historic moment - for the Congress, and for the women of this country. It is a moment for which we have waited more than 200 years," Ms Pelosi, 66, told Congress. "Today we have broken the marble ceiling."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1983287,00.html
Six thousand women missing from boardrooms, politics and courts
· Glass ceiling hampers access to 33,000 top jobs· Children can spell career death in professions
The glass ceiling is still holding back 6,000 women from the top 33,000 jobs in Britain, according to new research from the Equal Opportunities Commission. Thirty years after the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act, women are "woefully under-represented" in the country's boardrooms, politics and courts, it says.
Help from nannies has not enabled successful women to maintain their careers after having children, the research suggests. The EOC blames a male-dominated culture in the professions for resistance to flexible working.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,,1983368,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1
Scientists attack plan to ban 'hybrid' embryos
Groundbreaking research into incurable diseases could be jeopardised if permission to create human embryos from animal eggs is withheld, scientists warned yesterday.
British researchers want to use the embryos to make stem cells with genetic faults linked to conditions such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's and motor neurone disease. Studying how the cells grow could yield unprecedented insights into disease, leading to cures for the otherwise untreatable conditions.
The scientists fear the government and its embryo research watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, will outlaw the research to head off a public backlash. Some groups oppose the work because while the embryos would be almost entirely human, around 1% of their DNA would be from the animal.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/article/0,,1983472,00.html
Party anger at Reid for 'stirring up artificial conflict'
Patrick Wintour, political editorFriday January 5, 2007The Guardian
A warning by John Reid that Labour will lose the next election if Tony Blair's successor abandons New Labour's appeal to the ambitious middle class yesterday made senior cabinet figures furious that he appears to be setting up "an artificial conflict" between old and New Labour.
Anger was also expressed by some senior party figures that Mr Reid had used a party "Let's Talk" forum to make a speech that could be seen as part of an effort to prepare a leadership bid. One source said: "No one should hijack a party event like this for personal advancement."
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,1983352,00.html
Four US marines charged with Iraq murders
· Eight face life sentence over Haditha killings · Court hearing follows admission of cover-up
Four US marines were last night charged with murder and a further four with failure to investigate and report the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians, in the biggest American criminal case to arise from the Iraq war.
The eight include Frank Wuterich, 26, who was charged with the murder of 18 Iraqi civilians in the episode that has come to be known as the Iraq war's My Lai - a reference to the notorious massacre of civilians in the Vietnam war.
Staff Sergeant Wuterich, who commanded a squad of marines near the town of Haditha in November last year, faces 12 counts of murder and one of ordering the troops under his charge to "shoot first, ask questions later" when they cleared a house, killing six people inside it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1977592,00.html
Nimbys can't be allowed to put a block on wind farms
Plans to meet renewable energy targets are being stymied by local councils - mostly run by the Tories and the SNP Polly ToynbeeFriday January 5, 2007The Guardian
This is crunch time. If Britain is to have any chance of meeting its target to generate 10% of its energy from renewable sources by 2010, then a great leap forward is needed right now. So far only 4.2% of energy is from renewables and three years is not long to more than double it. Wind power is the clean energy closest to profitability, yet many projects - on or offshore - are being held up or rejected by local authorities. Forty per cent of all applications were refused in the past two years, most by Tory councils or the SNP.
It is a hard target, running up a down escalator. As the nation burns up an extra 1% of energy a year instead of cutting back, so every year more renewables are needed to stick to that 10% pledge. The biggest and best project caught up in the planning quicksands is the London Array - the world's largest offshore wind farm, a £2bn Shell 271-turbine project in the Thames estuary - due to deliver 1,000 megawatts, enough to power a quarter of all greater London's homes. It has government approval but the local Swale council (Tory) has blocked planning permission for a substation to be built underneath existing pylons to service it. Local Tories are using the substation as a way of objecting to the wind farm, although it will be 12 miles out to sea and beyond their jurisdiction. They have compared it to defending the Kent coast against Nazi invasion.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1983357,00.html
Finding work - and new hope - after mental ill-health
Centre that offers a helping hand over employment barriers
For Alex Cybyk the onset of mental ill-health came suddenly three years ago. She was working as a mental health nurse when she started sinking into "horrible black moods". She began drinking heavily and became suicidal.
It was not until after Ms Cybyk (right), 34, from Hunslet in south Leeds, had taken three overdoses and begun to cut herself with razor blades that she was diagnosed with manic depression. Although her partner and daughter were supportive she found limited support from mental health services.
Day centres offered little in the way of meaningful employment. "I didn't want to spend my time weaving baskets or finger painting," says Ms Cybyk. "That wasn't going to go anywhere." And when she went to the jobcentre, staff just told her to go on incapacity benefit. "But I wasn't incapacitated, I just needed some help to get on," she says.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/christmasappeal2006/story/0,,1982196,00.html
Raising the stakes
Bush looks set to send thousands of additional troops to Iraq - and that's bad news for John McCain.
Several months ago, as conditions in Iraq continued to spiral out of control, President Bush told the Washington Post's Bob Woodward that he would stay the course, "even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me". As the president moves ahead with his plan to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq, one wonders if even they will stick around.
Considered a neo-con pipedream until fairly recently, an escalation strategy for Iraq has apparently become the policy du jour for the Bush White House. Presidential aides have dutifully maintained the fiction that Bush remains undecided on a future course, but the Wall Street Journal reported this week that sending as many as 20,000 U.S. troops (a policy they refer to as a "surge" because "escalation" is too reminiscent of the Vietnam era), will "almost certainly will be the centerpiece of Mr Bush's new strategy for Iraq."
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/steve_benen/2007/01/steve_benen_on_iraq_plan.html
Michael Moore Today
FBI Reports Duct-Taping, 'Baptizing' at Guantanamo
By Dan Eggen / Washington Post
FBI agents witnessed possible mistreatment of the Koran at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including at least one instance in which an interrogator squatted over Islam's holy text in an apparent attempt to offend a captive, according to bureau documents released yesterday.
In October 2002, a Marine captain allegedly squatted over a copy of the Koran during intensive questioning of a Muslim prisoner, who was "incensed" by the tactic, according to an FBI agent. A second agent described similar events, but it is unclear from the documents whether it was a separate case.
In another incident that month, interrogators wrapped a bearded prisoner's head in duct tape "because he would not stop quoting the Koran," according to an FBI agent, the documents show. The agent, whose account was corroborated by a colleague, said that a civilian contractor laughed about the treatment and was eager to show it off.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8850
Question no longer relevant as Nancy Pelosi becomes first woman to lead House
Pelosi becomes first woman to lead House
By Thomas Ferraro / Reuters
WASHINGTON - Nancy Pelosi, who helped engineer the Democratic takeover of the Congress, was sworn in on Thursday as the first woman to lead the House of Representatives and called her historic political rise a beacon of hope for America.
Pelosi, a California liberal, was chosen as House speaker on a party-line vote of 233-202. The leader of the minority Democrats the past four years, she now is the highest ranking woman in the U.S. government, second behind only the vice president in the line of succession to Republican President George W. Bush.
"This is an historic moment for the Congress, and for the women of this country," Pelosi declared after taking the gavel. "It is a moment for which we have waited more than 200 years .... For our daughters and granddaughters, now the sky is the limit."
"By electing me speaker, you have brought us closer to the ideal of equality that is America's heritage and hope," Pelosi told colleagues.
Bush, a onetime adversary, especially regarding the unpopular war in Iraq, congratulated Pelosi and pledged to the new leaders: "I'm ready to work with you all."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8862
Democratic leaders squeezed on Iraq plans
Liberal members, activists want greater confrontation with Bush over war
By Alex Johnson / MSNBC
As Democratic leaders took power in Congress on Thursday, cracks were already beginning to show in their united front as activist groups piled on the pressure for them confront President Bush over the war in Iraq.
Bush is all but certain to seek what White House officials called a “surge” of as many as 20,000 troops to Baghdad to bring sectarian violence under control, NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski reported Thursday. In a sign that those plans were well under way, the commander of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit in al-Anbar province told Miklaszewski that a request had already been submitted to extend his unit’s deployment, which had been scheduled to end in March.
Democratic congressional leaders signaled that they would not challenge Bush on the deployment itself, MSNBC’s David Shuster reported, but instead would seek a debate over limiting the size of the deployment and pushing for an eventual drawdown of U.S. troops.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8861
U.S. military deaths in Iraq hit 3,005
Associated Press
As of Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2007, at least 3,005 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,407 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
The AP count is 12 higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Wednesday at 10 a.m. EST.
The British military has reported 127 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 18; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, six; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Romania, one death each.
The count includes two deaths listed by the Department of Defense that could not be verified as Iraq-related casualties by the AP.
Since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, 22,565 U.S. service members have been wounded, according to a Defense Department tally.
Sources: Bush likely to send up to 40,000 troops to Iraq
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush is likely to send anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 additional troops to Iraq as part of his yet-to-be-announced new Iraq strategy, sources with knowledge of his deliberations told CNN Wednesday.
Bush is expected to address the nation on the new strategy early next week, sources have said.
The president has not yet signed off on any changes, including a possible increase of U.S. troops, according to the sources. But he is "driving toward a conclusion" and a plan is "taking shape" and "getting more detailed" as the president puts "on the finer points," they said.
National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe denied a report Tuesday that Bush was ready to sign off on increasing troop strength in Iraq by 20,000, saying, "The president has not made any decisions."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8856
Military challenged in recruiting efforts
Demands of war may mean easing some policies and appealing to more immigrants
By Mike Tolson and John Gonzalez / Houston Chronicle
War news arrives daily from Iraq, and most of it is bad. But for Summer Jones and Benjamin Downing, the ongoing mayhem was of minor consequence as they began to consider their future.
Both decided to join the Army, reasoning that the potential danger was far outweighed by what military service might mean personally and professionally.
"It will help me to mature, to grow up," said Jones, 19, a former nurse's assistant who recently has been waiting tables while wondering what to do next.
"In the future, in any kind of work, this will always be first on my résumé," said Downing, 23, who graduated this year from the University of Houston with a math degree. "It's something that's unlike anything you can do in the civilian world."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8854
Troops Home Now
Sheehan, protesters interrupt Dem press conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YN4Y4SMXqA
Protesters disrupt press conference on lobbying reform
Washington Business Journal
House Democrats tried to unveil their lobbying reform package today, but their press conference was drowned out by chants from anti-war activists who want Congress to stop funding the Iraq war before taking on other issues.
Led by Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a slain soldier, the protesters chanted "De-escalate, investigate, troops home now" as Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., began outlining the Democrats' plans to ban lobbyist-funded travel and institute other ethics reforms. The press conference was held in the Cannon House Office Building in an area open to the public.
Emanuel finally gave up trying to be heard over the chants, and retreated to a caucus room where Democrats were meeting.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8852
Activists on the Left Applying Pressure to Democratic Leaders
Liberals Seek Bolder Approach to War, Spying
By Jonathan Weisman / Washington Post
Democratic leaders set to take control of Congress tomorrow are facing mounting pressure from liberal activists to chart a more confrontational course on Iraq and the issues of human rights and civil liberties, with some even calling for the impeachment of President Bush.
The carefully calibrated legislative blitz that Democrats have devised for the first 100 hours of power has left some activists worried the passion that swept the party to power in November is already dissipating. A cluster of protesters will greet the new congressional leaders at the Capitol tomorrow. They will not be disgruntled conservatives wary of Democratic control, but liberals demanding a ban on torture, an end to warrantless domestic spying and a restoration of curbed civil liberties.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8855
Group turns to Legislature to oust Bush
By Suzanne Travers / Herald News
WAYNE, NJ -- There's more than one way to impeach a president.
And what the U.S. House of Representatives won't do, the New Jersey State Legislature can.
That's the message members of the North Jersey Paterson-Wayne Impeach Group will bring to Trenton this week when they meet with the chief of staff for Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, D- Princeton, as part of their campaign to bring about the impeachment of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top figures in the Bush administration.
The war in Iraq looms large in their quest to get what they call "the Bush gang" out of office. On Sunday, as the death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq passed 3,000, several Impeach Group members attended an "emergency peace vigil" on Hamburg Turnpike.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8830
Boy Kills Himself Imitating Saddam Hanging
Associated Press
Police and family members said a 10-year-old boy who died by hanging himself from a bunk bed was apparently mimicking the execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Sergio Pelico was found dead Sunday in his apartment bedroom in the Houston-area city of Webster, said Webster police Lt. Tom Claunch. Pelico's mother told police he had previously watched a news report on Saddam's death.
"It appears to be accidental," Claunch said. "Our gut reaction is that he was experimenting."
An autopsy of the fifth-grader's body was pending.
Julio Gustavo, Sergio's uncle, said the boy was a happy and curious child.
He said Sergio had watched TV news with another uncle on Saturday and asked the uncle about Saddam's death.
"His uncle told him it was because Saddam was real bad," Gustavo said. "He (Sergio) said, 'OK.' And that was it."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8863
Cost of war: grief beyond measure
Death of son in Iraq leaves painful void in family
By George Watson / San Bernardino County Sun
FONTANA - In darkness, a father and mother woke to their own silent tears. The father held the mother in their bed and he whispered a few sweet words. He sat up, his feet resting on the floor of their two-story Fontana home. He spoke of his gratitude for having such a wonderful, loving and brave son.
And then, two hours before the sun rose Tuesday, he pushed himself out of bed. He had to ready himself for something every parent loathes and fears: his son's funeral.
Fernando S. Tamayo, a 19-year-old lance corporal in the Marines, was slain Dec. 21 when a roadside bomb exploded next to the Humvee he drove in Iraq.
"I tell people our pain is too deep because we lost something bigger than we can take," said his father, Mario Tamayo Sr.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8864
Fort Carson soldier killed hours before son born, family says
Associated Press
HIXSON, Tenn. -- A Fort Carson soldier was killed in Iraq over the weekend, hours before his son was born back home, family members said Tuesday.
Sgt. John Michael Sullivan, 22, was assigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team at Fort Carson. He was killed Saturday when his Humvee was struck by a roadside bomb, family members said.
His death has not yet been confirmed by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Family members said Sullivan had planned to return home Jan. 10 from his second tour in Iraq to see his new son.
He volunteered for the patrol on Saturday because another soldier was out sick, relatives said.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8857
Dear Friends,
On Saturday, January 6, 2007 (just two days after the new US Congress convenes), 1,200 people will gather for an impeachment event in Nancy Pelosi’s back yard — on Ocean Beach in San Francisco.
Early that morning, in 100-foot letters stretching 450 feet across the sand, volunteers from the Beach Impeach Project will outline the message:
I M P E A C H !
At 10:30, the attendees will arrive and lay their bodies down inside the message’s lettering. At 11 a.m. a helicopter will arrive overhead and photographers will record the 1,200 bodies in the sand — “IMPEACH!” — with the San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.
News editors will have compelling photos for the next morning’s Sunday papers; the nation and world will have convincing evidence of how badly the American people (even Ms. Pelosi’s own constituency) want their leaders held accountable for the Iraq disaster; and the impeachment movement will have powerful visuals to go with the words and chatter swirling in the air for months and months.
http://www.beachimpeach.org/
1/18/07 - Washington, D.C.Join us for a long overdue civics lesson.
This action involves visiting your senator's office on January 18th with or without an appointment. We ask that you ask for an appointment on January 18th with the senators from your state. See contact instructions and sample letter. If you are denied an appointment or do not get a response after calling your senator's scheduler several times, plan the action that your group will take in your senator's office. This action should be related to your senator's positions. Some groups may want to read a list of demands. Groups may also want to read from educational materials we are preparing for the senators. If you can't join us in Washington consider organizing a visit to your senator's office in your state. Let us know what your plans are. For more information visit our Resources page, contact us at 212-533-2125, or at gpbrigade@gmail.com.
http://www.grannypeacebrigade.org/coming_events.html#calltoactioncoming_events.htmlcoming_events.htmlcoming_events.htmlcoming_events.html
Be It Resolved: You Can Impeach the President
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=622
The Latest from The Traverse Film Festival
Festival Dates 2007The Board of Directors has announced the opening night date for TCFF3. Thisyear opening night will be Tuesday, July 31, followed by five full days ofmovies August 1-5. Closing night will be Sunday, August 5. We look forwardto another great festival thanks to your financial support.
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