His Majesty King Abdullah is escorted by Chinese President Hu Jintao during an inspection of the guard of honour outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on Tuesday (AP photo by Andy Wong)



His Majesty King Abdullah and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ahead of their meeting in Islamabad on Thursday (Photo by Yousef Allan)

His Majesty King Abdullah on Thursday said Jordan is keen to conclude as soon as possible a free trade agreement with Pakistan.

The New York Times

Justices Stay Execution, a Signal to Lower Courts
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: October 31, 2007
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — Moments before a Mississippi prisoner was scheduled to die by lethal injection, the Supreme Court granted him a stay of execution on Tuesday evening and thus gave a nearly indisputable indication that a majority intends to block all executions until the court decides a lethal injection case from Kentucky next spring.
There were two dissenters, Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr., but neither they nor the majority gave reasons for their positions. Because only five votes are required for a stay of execution, it is not clear whether all the remaining seven justices supported it.
The stay will remain in effect until the full court reviews an appeal filed Monday by lawyers for the inmate, Earl W. Berry, who is on death row for killing a woman 20 years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/washington/31execute.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin




Seventies Something
Tags: the seventies, tweens
I never thought there was going to be any sort of nostalgia for childhood in the 1970s, a time of skyrocketing divorce, “latch key kids” and newly liberated adults who sometimes behaved rather badly toward their much less with-it offspring.
Yet now, with middle age encroaching upon the girls who cut their hair like Dorothy Hamill and carried lunchboxes that sported the face of the original Bionic Woman, the seventies are coming back to life, and looking a whole lot better in retrospect.
Last month, American Girl introduced Julie of 1974, the latest doll in the company’s “historical” line, with a set of accompanying books, written by the children’s author and seventies girl Megan McDonald and filled with fun facts about Shirley Chisholm, the ERA, Title IX, Billie Jean King and the etymology of Ms.
This week came “The Daring Book for Girls,” the work of two almost-middle-aged writers whose goal, they told me, wasn’t just to complement the mega blockbuster “The Dangerous Book for Boys,” but also to offer an escape route out of the high-pressure, perfectionist, media-saturated and competitive world of girlhood in our time. The way they do it: by offering up an alternative kind of girl culture that looks and sounds a whole lot like … life in the 1970s.

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/seventies-something/?8ty&emc=ty



How offensive does this paper get? The Opinionator, AKA Propagandinator :: "...but the left-wingers couldn’t stand the fact that he wasn’t a self-hater like them. Because, as he said, ‘I sleep clearly every night.’..." From a chronic column in The New York Times a world war is brewing. When reading other entries at this column the word 'bomb' is featured all too many times. I wish they would clean up the place and get rid of some of the right wing nuts in their midst left over from "The Bush Years."

At a time when the current president is using the words "World War Three" I find this completely offensive. There is no reason to even be considering such force in The Middle East. Quite the contrary, what the Middle East needs are allies that facilitate the ability to quiet past pains and future fears.

Look how far the relations with Palestine and Israel has come. Only a decade ago did we think there would be a return of Palestine to Gaza? Even if those occupying Gaza are discredited within their own nation of Palestine, the reality is the Palestinian nation is taking shape and it's leadership is emerging with considerable definition and ability to overcome extremism. That is an incredible reality and tribute to Ariel Sharon and now Mr. Harshaw wants to imply there is dignity in mass death by atomic weapon.

What the Opinionator wants to do is supply a discussion to reveal how 'peace of mind' can exist when nuclear weapons bring about victory. That, in the case of The Middle East would degrade the integrity of the people of the entire region in making the statement they could never come to terms with the extremism within Islam and they could never broker an understanding with Israel and The West.

There is no dignity in dropping nuclear weapons for the supremacy of the USA. The Middle East is not a threat to this nation and there is no immediate threat to Israel, either. The rhetoric of the Bush White House has cast Iran into extremism and keeps it, Russia and China against the ropes to facilitate greater war to lead to asset management of the Neocons.

The Middle East is capable of brokering their own peace and they don't need the assistance of nuclear weapons to achieve their goal. Ariel Sharon's Israel has proven that and Gaza in all it's current internal struggles are a proof of that.

I find the article today offensive to the integrity of The New York Times and that of my conscience.


Blowback
By Tobin Harshaw
Tags: Hiroshima, World War II
It’s not often that an obituary sets off a blogstorm, but in the case of Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets, the man who piloted the Enola Gay over Hiroshima, it was probably to be expected.
“He ‘had requested that there be no funeral or headstone, fearing it would give his detractors a place to protest,’ ” notes Mark Krikorian at The Corner.
“Detractors? Protest? He helped win the war and — oh, by the way — saved hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of lives (both American and Japanese), but the left-wingers couldn’t stand the fact that he wasn’t a self-hater like them. Because, as he said, ‘I sleep clearly every night.’ You go on sleeping clearly, general.”
Others are just getting restless. “I can’t say I admired Paul Tibbets. I can say I was in awe of the man,” writes Fixer at Alternate Brian, whose site indicates he’s an Air Force vet turned mechanic. “I was in awe of the fact he could sleep at night for the past 60 years. I was in awe of the fact he didn’t step out of Enola Gay on 6 Aug 1945, chamber a round into his pistol, place the barrel up to his temple, and pull the trigger. I would have … It would seem he had no soul.”

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/blow-up/#comment-20658



That Promised Peace Conference
Published: November 3, 2007
One month before President Bush’s Mideast peace conference — the administration’s first serious effort in six years — it’s still not clear what will be on the agenda or who, beyond the Americans, Israelis and Palestinians, will show up. Even the date is still up in the air.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in the region through early next week for what we hope will be more than just another one of her listening tours. If the conference has any chance of success, she needs to be carrying with her creative proposals, a willingness to twist everyone’s arms and the stamina to keep at it for as long as it takes.
The issue is less how peace would look than whether leaders — including Mr. Bush — have the political courage to make decisions and finally move forward.
The broad outlines of a deal for Israel and the new state of Palestine have been apparent since President Clinton’s 2000 push. The two states would be separated by a line approximating Israel’s pre-1967 war border, with small land swaps to permit most Jewish settlers in the West Bank to be part of Israel. There would be some kind of agreed resolution of the Palestinian refugees issue, while the two sides would find a way to split control of Jerusalem. A guarantee to use the full resources of the Palestinian Authority to help protect Israel from future terrorist attacks is also essential.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/opinion/03sat1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin



Cut the Scary Music: Here Sharks Are More Endangered Than Dangerous
By MATT ZOLLER SEITZ
Published: November 2, 2007
The ocean is just large enough to contain the ambition of “Sharkwater.” This beautiful and horrifying debut feature by the underwater cameraman Rob Stewart of Toronto characterizes the depletion of the world’s shark population as an ecological catastrophe with dire consequences for humanity.
(November 2, 2007)
Sharks sit atop the nautical food chain and subsist on midlevel ocean life, which in turn feeds on plankton, whose biological processes absorb carbon dioxide. “Sharkwater” argues that the extinction of the shark — a creature whose population has been depleted by 90 percent in the past 30 years — could unbalance the ocean’s ecosystem and accelerate the process of global warming.
According to Mr. Stewart, the animal is being eradicated mainly to feed Asian consumers’ craving for shark fin soup, a $300-a-bowl status symbol whose popularity is fueled by the widespread, demonstrably false belief that sharks don’t get sick. Sharks are harvested via long-line fishing, a technique that stretches fishing line over tens of miles of ocean. Fishermen then hack off the sharks’ fins and dump them in the water to die.
This practice, known as finning, is illegal in many countries. But Mr. Stewart says the governments that pass anti-finning laws rarely enforce them because of staff deficiencies and the influence of organized crime, which controls the global shark fin trade.
Mr. Stewart learned about finning when he joined the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a Greenpeace-style group led by the activist Paul Watson. The most tense parts of “Sharkwater” show Mr. Watson’s crew patrolling the waters of Costa Rica for shark finners, at the government’s request.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/movies/02shar.html?8mu&emc=mua1



Children and Cold Medicines
Published: November 3, 2007
Anyone who doubts the power of drug company marketing to overcome a dearth of scientific evidence need only ponder the disturbing matter of cold medicines used to treat children and infants.
Over the past several decades, tens of millions of parents anxious to quell the ailments of their children have turned to a variety of over-the-counter cold remedies. Now they are being told by an expert advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration that there is no evidence that the commonly used cold remedies actually ease the symptoms in children. There have been rare reports of these medicines causing death or serious harm.
These products have not been tested thoroughly in young people, even though a child’s physiological response to a drug often differs from that of an adult. The few clinical trials that were conducted found no proof that these medicines work any better than a placebo. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that at least 1,500 children younger than 2 developed serious health problems in 2004 and 2005 after being treated with common cold medicines. Three died.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/opinion/03sat3.html?ref=opinion



Worsening the Odds
By BOB HERBERT
Published: November 3, 2007
Lonnie Lynam, a self-employed carpenter in Pipe Creek, Tex., specialized in spiral staircases. Friends thought of him as a maestro in a toolbelt, a whiz with a hammer and nails.
“His customers were always so pleased,” his mother told me. “There was this one family, kind of higher class, and he built them one of those glass holders that you would see in a bar or a lounge, with the glasses hanging upside down in different sizes. It was awesome.”
Lonnie had a following, a reputation. He was said to have a magic touch.
What he didn’t have was health insurance.
So when the headaches came, he tried to ignore them. “We’ve had migraines in our family,” said his mother, Betty Lynam, who is 67 and lives in Creston, Iowa. “So he thought that was what it was.”
Lonnie’s brother, Kelly, said: “He wasn’t the type to complain. And since he didn’t have insurance ...”
Kelly, 45, worked on different jobs with his brother. He was the one who rushed Lonnie to an emergency room one day last fall when the headaches became so severe that Lonnie couldn’t stand up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/opinion/03herbert.html?ref=opinion



Prostates and Prejudices
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: November 2, 2007
“My chance of surviving prostate cancer — and thank God I was cured of it — in the United States? Eighty-two percent,” says Rudy Giuliani in a new radio ad attacking Democratic plans for universal health care. “My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England? Only 44 percent, under socialized medicine.”
It would be a stunning comparison if it were true. But it isn’t. And thereby hangs a tale — one of scare tactics, of the character of a man who would be president and, I’m sorry to say, about what’s wrong with political news coverage.
Let’s start with the facts: Mr. Giuliani’s claim is wrong on multiple levels — bogus numbers wrapped in an invalid comparison embedded in a smear.
Mr. Giuliani got his numbers from a recent article in City Journal, a publication of the conservative Manhattan Institute. The author gave no source for his numbers on five-year survival rates — the probability that someone diagnosed with prostate cancer would still be alive five years after the diagnosis. And they’re just wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/opinion/02krugman.html?em&ex=1194235200&en=53c6be1c4117adba&ei=5087%0A



Panel Faults Army’s Wartime Contracting
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: November 1, 2007
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — An independent panel has sharply criticized the Army for failing to train enough experienced contracting officers, deploy them quickly to war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan and ensure that they properly manage billions of dollars in contracts to supply American troops in the field, according to officials briefed on its findings.
Back Story With The Times's Eric Schmitt (mp3)
In a wide-ranging report to be made public on Thursday, the panel said these and other shortcomings had contributed to an environment in Iraq and Kuwait that allowed waste, fraud and other corruption to take hold and flourish.
The report does not address any suspected crimes by soldiers or civilian contractors; those are being pursued by investigators from the Army and the Justice Department. Nor does it single out individuals for blame.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/washington/01army.html?pagewanted=all



The Feminine Critique
By LISA BELKIN
Published: November 1, 2007
DON’T get angry. But do take charge. Be nice. But not too nice. Speak up. But don’t seem like you talk too much. Never, ever dress sexy. Make sure to inspire your colleagues — unless you work in Norway, in which case, focus on delegating instead.
Writing about life and work means receiving a steady stream of research on how women in the workplace are viewed differently from men. These are academic and professional studies, not whimsical online polls, and each time I read one I feel deflated. What are women supposed to do with this information? Transform overnight? And if so, into what? How are we supposed to be assertive, but not, at the same time?
“It’s enough to make you dizzy,” said Ilene H. Lang, the president of Catalyst, an organization that studies women in the workplace. “Women are dizzy, men are dizzy, and we still don’t have a simple straightforward answer as to why there just aren’t enough women in positions of leadership.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/fashion/01WORK.html?ei=5087&em=&en=2bad4a6cbfde3069&ex=1194235200&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1194092401-4aaz+n5ejbjnYlpxpqiqRQ



Citigroup Chief Is Set to Exit Amid Losses
By ERIC DASH and LANDON THOMAS Jr.
Published: November 3, 2007
The embattled head of Citigroup, the global banking giant, has told directors that he would resign from the bank after an emergency meeting this weekend in the wake of a $5.9 billion write-down and sharp drop in profit, people briefed on the situation said last night.
Charles O. Prince III, 57, the chairman and chief executive, took responsibility for the bank’s disappointing results and said it would be better for the bank if he left, these people said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/business/03bank.html?hp



Justice Nominee Gets 2 Key Votes From Democrats
By PHILIP SHENON and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: November 3, 2007
WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 — The confirmation of Michael B. Mukasey as attorney general appeared to be all but certain on Friday after two key Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee announced they would support the nomination despite complaints over Mr. Mukasey’s refusal to clarify his views on what amounts to torture.
The announcements by the senators, Dianne Feinstein of California and Charles E. Schumer of New York, came after Mr. Schumer met with the nominee on Friday afternoon and said he had obtained Mr. Mukasey’s promise to enforce laws that banned any of the harsh interrogation methods known to have been used on Qaeda terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Mr. Schumer said Mr. Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York, had “pledged to enforce such a law and repeated his willingness to leave office rather than participate in a violation of the law.”
Initially welcomed by Democrats and Republicans alike when it was announced in September, Mr. Mukasey’s nomination appeared close to being derailed this week over his repeated refusal to declare to senators that the interrogation technique known as waterboarding was torture. Waterboarding simulates drowning and is reported to have been used by the C.I.A. against a few top leaders of Al Qaeda.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/washington/03mukasey.html?hp



Bush, Mukasey and the Fairness Issue
Re “Bush, Defending Justice Nominee, Sees Unfairness” (front page, Nov. 2):
It is amazing that President Bush would complain that Michael B. Mukasey, his nominee for attorney general, is being treated unfairly on Capitol Hill. Does he honestly believe that all his actions as president have been so flawless that he should not be second-guessed?
Certainly the president’s history regarding appointees or nominees who proved to be less than competent makes the case for careful and cautious questioning now of any nominee he puts forward for any position.
Further, it is extremely disappointing that some senators who previously condemned waterboarding, such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, will still vote to confirm Mr. Mukasey. This suggests that they are more intimidated by the president than they are committed to their original belief that waterboarding is indeed “torture.”
Patricia A. Weller
Emmitsburg, Md., Nov. 2, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/opinion/l03mukasey.html



Loyal to Kerik, Giuliani Missed Warning Signs
By MICHAEL POWELL
Published: November 3, 2007
This article was reported by Russ Buettner, Michael Powell and William K. Rashbaum and was written by Mr. Powell.
If the rise of Bernard B. Kerik under the mentorship of Rudolph W. Giuliani was meteoric, the speed of his fall was breathtaking.
In December 2004, President Bush nominated Mr. Kerik, a former New York police commissioner, to head the federal Department of Homeland Security. Seven days later, Mr. Kerik withdrew as a nominee.
A cascade of questions followed about his judgment as a public official, not least that he had inappropriately lobbied city officials on behalf of Interstate Industrial, a construction firm suspected of links to organized crime. Mr. Giuliani defended Mr. Kerik, a friend and business partner, whom he had recommended to the Bush administration. But he also tried to shield himself from accusations that he had ignored Mr. Kerik’s failings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/us/politics/03kerik.html?hp



Out to Sea on Law of the Sea
By The Editorial Board
The strange campaign for the Republican presidential nomination took another weird turn this week when every major Republican candidate spoke out against the Law of the Sea Treaty, which was approved by a 17-4 committee vote and may soon come to a vote on the Senate floor.
This lemming-like rush to denounce a 25-year-old treaty that commands support from President Bush, the military and major business interests means that there is not a single Republican — not the former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, not the former Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, not Senator John McCain, and not the TV actor and Watergate interrogator, Fred Thompson — who is willing to stand up to the party’s right-wing fringe, which is where the opposition to the treaty resides.
The law, approved by the United Nations in 1982, and amended to fix flaws that bothered the United States in 1994, sets rules governing the military and commercial use of the oceans. The military likes it because it would guarantee mobility and latitude, including rights of passage
through key strategic waterways. The oil companies like it because it provides certainty on how the ocean floor will be divvied up and how royalties will be paid. The environmentalists like it because they hope it will provide new leverage over lawless and destructive overfishing by huge industrial fleets on the high seas.

http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/



With Resolution Unlikely, Writers Guild Sets Strike for Monday
By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES
Published: November 3, 2007
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 2 —When the sun rises here on Monday morning, movie and television writers will be ready to head for their assigned picket lines outside Hollywood’s studios and production sites.
By the time it sets, the entertainment industry’s new reality will have settled in: Writers and their employers, who together rode a boom of expanding revenues in the last two decades, are now on opposite sides of the future.
At a press conference in Los Angeles on Friday, leaders of the Writers Guild of America West and the Writers Guild of America East said they would order their members to stop work just after midnight Sunday. That will begin Hollywood’s first industrywide strike since 1988.
“We’re sorry that the studios have put us where we are,” said Patric M. Verrone, president of the West Coast guild, speaking at the press gathering. Flanked by colleagues and by a photo montage titled “Earthquakes in Hollywood,” Mr. Verrone added: “It’s our sense that we can do some economic damage immediately.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/business/media/03strike.html




Pressed by Turks, Rice Seeks to Solve Kurdish Rebel Threat While Urging Restraint
By HELENE COOPER and SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: November 3, 2007
ANKARA, Turkey, Nov. 2 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came under pressure Friday from Turkish leaders seeking American help to curb Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq. But it was not clear whether her public pronouncements at the outset of this long-awaited visit would be enough to satisfy them.
During a string of meetings in the capital, Ankara, before heading to Istanbul, Ms. Rice took pains to demonstrate support for Turkey. She called for restraint in an attempt to forestall any Turkish military incursion into northern Iraq, where the Kurdish rebels stage attacks on Turkey from mountain hide-outs.
“I think it’s fair to say that we all need to redouble our efforts,” Ms. Rice said at a press conference on Friday. “All across the world we’ve seen that it’s not easy to root out terrorism.”
Turkish leaders continued to sound resolute. “Our expectations of the United States are very high,” the foreign minister, Ali Babacan, said, standing next to Ms. Rice. “We want action.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/world/europe/03turkey.html



The Global Sympathetic Audience
By NOAM COHEN
Published: November 4, 2007
ON Aug. 1, Nick Starr, a 27-year-old computer consultant from Tampa, Fla., was tapping text messages into his cellphone, telling hundreds of his virtual friends about his day.
Mr. Starr was using Twitter, a relatively new program that allows its mostly young members to post “miniblogs” — running diaries about the mundane details of their lives, in entries of barely two sentences.
Mr. Starr, who was driving around near his hometown, wrote in Twitter’s characteristic staccato, stream-of-consciousness style about picking up some chicken wings and getting a new haircut. Then his postings took a darker turn.
At 6:02, he sent out a note about a nearby bridge: “Maybe I should jump from it?”
At 8:17, bemoaning his lack of close friends, he speculated about being the first “Twitter suicide.”
At 9:39, there was a final note: “Alright this is it. Parked my car. I wish everyone who ever was nice to me well. See you in the next life.”
Mr. Starr didn’t jump from the bridge, the Sunshine Skyway across Tampa Bay. The police found him asleep in his car the next morning. But the incident didn’t go unnoticed among Twitter users: Mr. Starr’s iPhone was jammed with text messages from people frantically trying to reach him. Some had alerted the local police.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/fashion/04twitter.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1194094883-szqj8ABF1ryakMd8Qoq4aA



The Immunity will return the 'mercenary personnel' to Iraq. Iraq may indeed ban Blackwater, but, the immunity will provide a venue to keep Blackwater personnel in Iraq only they'll be working for other private mercenary firms, that's all. So, even though Iraq is a stand against Blackwater, it may still be facing the same problem with the same people all over again. That's Bush and his cronies, right or wrong they never are thwarted from being 'those people.'


Immunity Deals Offered to Blackwater Guards
By DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: October 30, 2007
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 — State Department investigators offered Blackwater USA security guards immunity during an inquiry into last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad — a potentially serious investigative misstep that could complicate efforts to prosecute the company’s employees involved in the episode, government officials said Monday.
The State Department investigators from the agency’s investigative arm, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, offered the immunity grants even though they did not have the authority to do so, the officials said. Prosecutors at the Justice Department, who do have such authority, had no advance knowledge of the arrangement, they added.
Most of the guards who took part in the Sept. 16 shooting were offered what officials described as limited-use immunity, which means that they were promised that they would not be prosecuted for anything they said in their interviews with the authorities as long as their statements were true. The immunity offers were first reported Monday by The Associated Press.
The officials who spoke of the immunity deals have been briefed on the matter, but agreed to talk about the arrangement only on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss a continuing criminal investigation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/washington/30blackwater.html?pagewanted=all>



Bush Vetoes Water Bill, Citing Cost of $23 Billion
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: November 3, 2007
WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 — President Bush on Friday vetoed a bill authorizing $23 billion in water resource projects, calling it overly expensive, and Congressional Democrats responded angrily, accusing him of insensitivity to the hurricane-damaged Gulf Coast, a big beneficiary of the legislation. They pledged to override him.
The bill, the Water Resources Development Act, would authorize $3.5 billion in work for hurricane-ravaged Louisiana, nearly $2 billion for efforts to save the Everglades and additional sums for a host of other projects favored by lawmakers. Critics said the bill not only was costly but also failed to provide vital changes to the often criticized Army Corps of Engineers, which would do most of the work.
Mr. Bush has now cast five vetoes as president, four since Democrats took control of Congress in January. None have been overridden, although this legislation passed both houses with more than the two-thirds majorities needed to override.
In his veto message, the president noted that when the bill emerged from a House-Senate conference committee, its cost had risen more than 50 percent above the cost of legislation originally passed by the two houses. He also said a backlog of projects for the Corps of Engineers meant that many projects in the bill would never be financed or completed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/washington/03water.html



Texas Proceeding With Plan to Auction Preserve
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: November 3, 2007
As a Comanche moon rose one night last week over the West Texas border town of Terlingua, the Christmas Mountains Association convened over Mexican food in the Longhorn Ranch Motel.
“Proceed as if we’re not going out of business,” said Tom Alex, the group’s president.
But he did not sound confident. In Austin, 360 miles east, the state’s general land commissioner was collecting bids to do what conservationists say is all but unheard of — selling a state wildlife preserve to a private buyer.
The property, which could be sold as soon as Tuesday, is the Christmas Mountains Ranch, a 9,270-acre tract abutting Big Bend National Park near the Rio Grande. It was given to the state in 1991 and leased to the nonprofit association of local residents to patrol.
The pending sale of the property, which is limestone hills and Chihuahuan Desert scrublands, has created an uproar.
The dispute pits the donors of the land, the Conservation Fund and the Richard King Mellon Foundation, against a pistol-packing commissioner adamant about preserving hunting and firearms rights on the property, even at the cost of denying the land to the National Park Service, although Texas ranks 44th in park land.
The state has less than 2 percent of its area in protected state and federal land, according to the Trust for Public Land, a conservation group.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/us/03mountains.html



Expecting Presidential Veto, Senate Passes Child Health Measure
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: November 2, 2007
WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 — Talks seeking a bipartisan compromise on health insurance for low-income children were cut short on Thursday, and the Senate then swiftly passed a bill to provide coverage for 10 million youngsters, fully expecting President Bush to veto it.
The 64-to-30 vote, coming one week after the House approved the same bill, moves the legislation to Mr. Bush’s desk. The bill differs slightly from one vetoed on Oct. 3, but it faces the same fate.
On Thursday, Senate Republican leaders objected to Democratic requests to allow more time for the bipartisan negotiations seeking a compromise. The purpose of the talks was to win over enough House Republicans to override the veto promised by the president.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/washington/02health.html



F.D.A. Is Unable to Ensure Drugs Are Safe, Panel Is Told
By WALT BOGDANICH
Published: November 2, 2007
The Food and Drug Administration cannot guarantee the safety of the nation’s drug supply because it inspects few foreign drug manufacturers and the inspections it does carry out abroad are less rigorous than those performed in this country, witnesses told a Congressional subcommittee yesterday.
While foreign companies manufacture as much as 80 percent of all ingredients used by American drug makers, the drug agency’s record keeping is so poor that it cannot say which of those have not been inspected, according to the testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
“More than nine years after we issued our last report on this topic, F.D.A.’s effectiveness in managing the foreign drug inspection program continues to be hindered by weaknesses in its data systems,” Marcia Crosse, director of health care for the Government Accountability Office, said in a statement to the committee.
The agency is supposed to inspect domestic drug makers every two years, but there is no such requirement for foreign suppliers, even though foreign factories are more likely to have quality problems, witnesses said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/washington/02FDA.html



Embattled Barnard Anthropologist Is Awarded Tenure
By ALAN FINDER
Published: November 3, 2007
An assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard College whose scholarship on the use of archaeology in Israel has attracted both fierce criticism and scholarly support has been approved for tenure, Barnard officials said in a statement released yesterday.
The professor, Nadia Abu El-Haj, who was born in America and is of Palestinian descent, contended in her first book, “Facts on the Ground,” that Israeli archaeologists searched for an ancient Jewish presence to help build the case for a Jewish state. In their quest, she wrote, they sometimes used bulldozers, destroying the remains of Arab and other cultures.
Her bid for tenure set off petitions supporting and opposing her candidacy; some opponents accused her of shoddy scholarship, while some supporters said her opponents were engaged in an ideological witch hunt.
Barnard officials said in their statement that Dr. Abu El-Haj had passed a rigorous tenure review by scholars from Barnard and Columbia University, as well as independent scholars in her field. Tenure, college officials said, “gives scholars the liberty to advance ideas, regardless of their political impact, so that their work may be openly debated and play a critical role in shaping knowledge in the scholar’s academic field.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/nyregion/03barnard.html



The Perils of Petrocracy
Who holds the world’s oil? You might assume it’s in the hands of big private oil companies like ExxonMobil. But in fact, 77 percent of the world’s oil reserves are held by national oil companies with no private equity, and there are 13 state-owned oil companies with more reserves than ExxonMobil, the largest multinational oil company. The popular perception in the United States is that if leaders of oil countries nationalize their oil, they are bucking a global trend toward privatization. In reality, nationalized oil is the trend. And the percentage of oil controlled by state-owned companies is likely to continue rising, mainly because of the demographics of oil. Deposits are being exhausted in wealthy countries — the ones that exploited their oil first and generally have the most private oil — and are being found largely in developing countries, where oil tends to belong to the state.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/magazine/04oil-t.html



A Hospital’s Journey
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY
Published: November 4, 2007
THE northwest corner of Park Avenue and 70th Street has almost disappeared under construction netting. From the side street, it’s as if the big 1927 apartment house at 720 Park Avenue, designed by Rosario Candela, had never been built. In fact, it went up at the same time as everything else on the block, replacing the old Presbyterian Hospital, built in 1872, long before the Upper East Side became a desirable neighborhood.
At the time of the Civil War, James Lenox owned a great swath of land from 68th Street to 74th and from Park Avenue to Fifth — the crest of what was called Lenox Hill. It was still mostly vacant in 1868 when he circulated a letter to fellow Presbyterians offering the block from 70th Street to 71st and Park Avenue to Madison as the site of a new hospital.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/realestate/04scap.html



Israeli Film About Harmony in the Mideast Provokes Off-Screen Discord
By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: October 31, 2007
JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 — “The Band’s Visit” tells the story of an eight-man Egyptian police orchestra that gets lost in Israel and lands in a dead-end desert town, where bemused and amused locals take the musicians into their homes, and into their weary hearts.
Offering a glimpse into a better world, one where the distance between strangers can miraculously melt away, “The Band’s Visit” triumphed at the Israel film academy’s 2007 awards and has reaped accolades at film festivals abroad.
So it seems unfortunate — or perhaps simply typical, given the unforgiving nature of the Middle East — that a film trying to bridge the region’s bitter divides has been blocked from film festivals in the Arab world and become the focus of a rancorous dispute at home.
The domestic strife has its roots in the film’s disqualification as Israel’s official candidate for an Oscar nomination in the category of best foreign-language film, on the grounds that too much of its dialogue is in English. According to the rules of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, to qualify for the category a foreign-language film must have a dialogue track that is predominantly in a language, or languages, other than English, meaning more than 50 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/movies/31band.html?8mu&emc=mua3



Investors Divided on the Fed’s Rate Cut
By VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: November 1, 2007
For stock investors, the Federal Reserve delivered just the right tonic yesterday.
The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index closed up 1.2 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average added 137.54 points, or 1 percent, after the Fed cut its benchmark interest rate a quarter point, to 4.5 percent. The move was seen as a sign that policy makers would do what it took to forestall a recession and alleviate the credit crisis.
But the Fed’s move received a much less enthusiastic reception in the bond, commodities and currency markets. Treasuries sold off as investors worried that cheaper credit would stoke inflation. The dollar sank to a new low against the euro, and oil and gold prices surged.
Investors rarely speak with a single voice, and it is not surprising that there are sharply differing views on interest rate policy at this crucial juncture. A report released by the Commerce Department yesterday showed that the economy grew at a robust 3.9 percent pace in the third quarter, after a 3.8 percent pace in the second quarter. But many economists expect growth will slow as the housing market weakens further and many consumers have to pay more for mortgages, if they can even qualify.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/business/01stox.html



The Principles of Maira Kalman

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=17ece25f5d729c0eed37737825a662cef47a406c&8ty&emc=ty



Merrill Chooses Insider to Lead Search for Chief
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
Published: October 31, 2007
Now the search begins.
After days of silence, Merrill Lynch directors yesterday named Alberto Cribiore, a board member and private equity executive, to look inside the firm and out for a chief executive to succeed E. Stanley O’Neal, who said yesterday that he would retire after 21 years.
Mr. O’Neal’s departure was long expected — the board decided late last week that he would have to go after an $8.4 billion write-down and an unauthorized merger approach to a rival bank, Wachovia. But the news still marked a final, stunning coda to one of the more abrupt chief executive departures in Wall Street history.
“I have been very fortunate to spend the past 21 years at Merrill Lynch,” Mr. O’Neal said in a statement. “The company has provided me with opportunities that I never could have imagined growing up, culminating with my leadership of the company over the past five years.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/business/31merrill.html


Red Sox 4, Rockies 3
Boston Sweeps World Series Again
By TYLER KEPNER
Published: October 29, 2007
DENVER, Oct. 28 — They have gone from exorcism to coronation in record time. The Boston Red Sox, who fought ghosts for most of the last century, are the premier team of the new millennium.
The Red Sox won their second World Series in four seasons Sunday, edging the Colorado Rockies, 4-3, in Game 4 at Coors Field. They are the first team to win multiple championships since 2000, and with a deep payroll and a stable of talented young pitchers, they may be poised for more.
“Pitching will lead you all the way,” first baseman Kevin Youkilis said. “That was it: great pitching and timely hitting. What can you say? This team is the best team in baseball.”
Mike Lowell doubled and homered and was named most valuable player in the Series for hitting .400 with six runs scored and four runs batted in. Jon Lester — who, like Lowell, is a cancer survivor — worked five and two-thirds shutout innings for the victory.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/sports/baseball/29seriesy.html


The Jordan Times

King urges more active Chinese role in region

His Majesty King Abdullah is escorted by Chinese President Hu Jintao during an inspection of the guard of honour outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on Tuesday (AP photo by Andy Wong)
BEIJING (Petra) - His Majesty King Abdullah on Tuesday expressed hope that China would play a larger role in the Arab world.
He said at a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao that such a role would be further facilitated after the launch of a “Mechanism of Dialogue”, which he said is an important step for the development of bilateral relations.
Jordan and China launched the first stage of this “Mechanism of Dialogue” in December 2006. The initiative seeks to promote political, economic, cultural, defence and security relations between the two countries.
His Majesty also highlighted China’s central role in resolving Middle East conflicts and fostering its stability.
The King said he welcomed a more active Chinese role in resolving conflicts and achieving stability in the region - in the same manner the Asian country is working to achieve stability in Darfur and Lebanon, highlighting in this context China’s credibility in the region as an honest broker.
He also stressed his appreciation of China’s commitment to working towards viable and just peace in the region.
King Abdullah also briefed President Hu on the latest developments in the Middle East peace process.

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=3276



Latin America’s corruption challenge
By Susan Ackerman and Bjørn Lomborg
It is difficult to distinguish the consequences from the causes of the corruption that bedevils many Latin American and Caribbean nations. Corruption limits growth, but low growth itself encourages corruption and makes it difficult to improve government effectiveness. In any case, corruption alone is not the essential problem. Rather, it symbolises and highlights underlying weaknesses in the operation of the state and its interactions with citizens and businesses.
Some institutions are so vital that they produce either a competent and fair state if they function well or a corrupt, unfair, and ineffective state if they operate poorly. Cleaning up two such institutions - the public sector and the judiciary - should be a priority for many governments in the region.
Surveys carried out in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Paraguay in the last decade have shown that people exposed to corruption have less confidence in the political system and lower trust in other citizens. Nicaraguans were asked if the payment of bribes “facilitates getting things done in the bureaucracy”.
Those who agreed that corruption worked had less respect for the political system’s legitimacy.
A well-functioning bureaucracy is also necessary because it contributes to economic growth. Few of this region’s most important challenges can be tackled successfully unless the state can administer complex public programmes.

http://www.jordantimes.com/index.php?news=3258



Jordan ranks slightly lower in Global Competitiveness Report 2007-2008
By Mohammad Ghazal
AMMAN - Jordan ranked slightly lower in the Global Competitiveness Report 2007-2008 released by the World Economic Forum this week.
After ranking 46th in last year’s report, the Kingdom came in 49th place on the list of 131 countries.
“Jordan dropped in the ranking because seven new countries were included in this year’s report,” Jordan Investment Board (JIB) Chief Executive Officer Maan Nsour told The Jordan Times from Beijing on Thursday.
Newly listed were Puerto Rico, Libya, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Uzbekistan, and Serbia and Montenegro which were considered as one country in last year’s report
According to the report, Jordan ranked eighth among Arab countries following Kuwait, Qatar, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain.
Nsour described the decline as minimal but stressed that the report “is of great importance for us because it measures the countries in terms of citizens’ well-being”.
He explained that the report relies on the countries’ abilities to use the basic elements they have with high competence, noting that the report is also important for gauging the institutions, the policies and the basic elements that affect well-being.

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=3326



China and India understand Africa’s possibilities
Jonathan Power
The planned purchase of a 20 per cent stake in South Africa’s highly successful Standard Bank by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world’s largest bank by market capitalisation, is the biggest foreign direct investment in South Africa since the demise of apartheid.
This signifies a degree of engagement by China that is way beyond the “resources grab” that many have accused Beijing of in its recent dealings with Africa. This, as the Financial Times reported, “is evidence that China is looking for a deeper relationship”.
For the ICBC, this is an important step in its quest to become a global bank. Its chairman, Jiang Jianqing, says: “We are focusing on merger and acquisition in emerging markets in Asia and Africa because these places enjoy high growth rates and have great potential.”
China Development Bank has ratcheted the tone up further by announcing a partnership with United Bank for Africa, one of Nigeria’s biggest lenders.
As Chinese, and Indian, investors almost pour into Africa, one wonders if their European and North American competitors have woken up to the fact that Rip Van Winkle is waking up in Africa?
The fact that a top Chinese banker brackets Africa with Asia is one more sign that the Asians themselves see what is happening in Africa, a repeat of what happened to them 20 and 30 years ago. They can see the potential while Western commentators, their spurious words tasting of sour grapes, point an accusing finger at China in particular, accusing it of planning to rape Africa as the Europeans did a 100 years ago.

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=3322



US, Gaza in darkness
George S. Hishmeh
Although the Bush administration may be on the verge of taking a big leap forward in paving the way for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, brewing for nearly 60 years now, none of the presidential candidates here have yet bothered to make any noteworthy comment about the upcoming Middle East peace meeting in Annapolis at the end of November.
The only step some of the leading candidates - there are more than a dozen running for the top position in each party - have taken on this key issue is not much different from what motivated the Democratic front-runner, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The Jewish news agency, JTA, said the senator’s action was “not only to praise the Jewish state but to bury doubts that she would be any less vigilant in its protection than the Bush administration”.
But it is surprising to see that Rudolph G. Giuliani, former New York mayor and Republican Party’s front-runner, has outranked Clinton in scoring higher on a poll just published in Haaretz.
Top Republican Jewish activists are reportedly enamoured by his combativeness and this probably explains why he has “significantly outpaced” fellow Republican hopefuls, John McCain and Mitt Romney, in raising money from the 60 board members of the Republican Jewish Coalition “Victory 2008” Forum last week.
In the view of Shmuel Rosner from Haaretz, the Israeli paper’s chief US correspondent, it is clear that “Israel is not on the top of the voters’ agenda, and no one can seriously claim that the candidates’ views on Israel are those which catapulted them to the top”.

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=3321



Is the Israel lobby pushing the US?
Rami G. Khouri
A year-and-a-half after they published their groundbreaking article “The Israel Lobby” in the London Review of Books, distinguished American academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have now published their book titled “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”.
The venerable American publishers, Farrar Straus and Giroux, proved far more courageous in publishing the book than The Atlantic Monthly magazine, which had commissioned the original article, then refused to publish it - presumably because The Atlantic did not want to handle the consequences they anticipated would follow such an open analysis of the influence of the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States.
Mearsheimer and Walt argue the basic point that this influence is bad for the United States, Israel and everyone else in the Middle East, given the way events have been unfolding in this region in recent years.
During a stay at Harvard University this week, I contacted Professor Walt, whom I have known for a few years, since speaking together on a panel here, to find out if the public reception of their book had been any different from what they had been subjected to after the original article appeared last year: hostile attacks, discrediting attempts and deeply personal character assassination campaigns.
The answer is, yes and no. I was also able to witness this that same evening, when I attended a public panel discussion the authors gave at the respected Cambridge Forum (available on the web at www.cambridgeforum.org).

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=3320


Haaretz

When politics and policy collide
By Shmuel Roser
Last Update: 01/11/2007 23:55
For U.S. presidential hopefuls, the issue of Iran is now an issue of internal politics, not just international policy.
PHILADELPHIA - With 368 days before the elections and 62 days before the Iowa caucus, the U.S. presidential candidates have one hot topic - what to do about Iran.
The debate has two elements running side-by-side. On the one hand, Tehran's nuclear aspirations dominate the political agenda, but on the other, political considerations feature heavily in the debate. The issue of Iran is no longer just a question of international policy, but also of internal politics.
This week's debate between the Democratic presidential candidates is a case in point, given that it was a coordinated no-holds-barred attack on the party's leading candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton, by her two main rivals, Illinois Senator Barack Obama and former senator John Edwards.
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The senator from New York is ahead in the national polls by a comfortable margin, although she has a much smaller lead in Iowa, the first state to vote on the presidential candidates. In New Hampshire, however, the second state to vote, Clinton has a strong lead.
Over the past few days, the aides of the other candidates have reached an understanding that they won't be able to quash her candidacy if they don't step up the attacks. This is especially pertinent now, as the last quarter showed that Clinton has managed for the first time to raise more money than them.
The deadliest weapon against Clinton has become Iran and her support of the Lieberman-Kyl law, which calls for the United States government to define the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. The government passed the law last week.
During the debate, Edwards accused Clinton of voting in favor of the bill to facilitate a possible attack on Iran by President George W. Bush.
"Instead of blocking George Bush's new march to war, Senator Clinton and others are enabling him once again," said Edwards.
New Mexico governor Bill Richardson called her support "the wrong vote."
Clinton's rivals believe that the "yes" vote will allow Bush to escalate the crisis with Iran. And Obama, Edwards, Richardson and Senator Joe Biden all view any escalation as dangerous.
"We've emboldened him," Biden declared. Bush's warning of a possible World War III was, in Biden's words, "totally irresponsible."
Iran was the focus of the first half of the debate, shunting aside Iraq (a real war that is still going on, not a virtual one) and overshadowing every other subject.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=poll&itemNo=919337



Listen and learn
By Daphna Berman
Last Update: 02/11/2007 01:55
An interview with Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, President and CEO of the Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF), is available on-line as part of a year-long election podcast series sponsored by Giuliani Supporters in Israel (GSI). The new group is headed by Mordechai Twersky, a former New Yorker who last year was a Knesset candidate for the far-right Herut Party. GSI supports former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani because of his "strong leadership in a dangerous world," according to the group's tagline. The podcast is available at giulianisupportersinisrael.blogharbor.com

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=giuliani&itemNo=919615


The voice of the old Bush
Last Update: 25/10/2007 15:35
While Bush is now putting his time and energy into the peace process after neglecting it for some years, the party's candidates want to distance themselves from the president's position
Three days before he announced that he was dropping out of the presidential race, Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) spoke to the Republican Jewish Coalition, and succinctly summed up his opinion on the Bush administration's moves toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "It's time we looked at other ideas."
If it were up to him, the administration would not go to Annapolis, and would not waste time on talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Brownback supports, at least to some extent, the annexation program put forth by MK Benny Elon (National Union).
The ideas championed by a few of the major lights of the Republican Party are not necessarily new, or "other." An irony of fate: While the Bush administration is attempting to prove that it has changed direction and is now putting its time and energy into the peace process after neglecting it for some years, the party's candidates want to distance themselves from the president's position and to return to the ideas that underscored its policy during his first years in the White House.
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The new Bush is going to Annapolis, but the voice of the old Bush is issuing from the mouths of Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, and in effect from all the top-shelf Republican candidates with the exception of Senator John McCain of Arizona. His position is similar to Bush's, and perhaps even more similar to that of Senator Hillary Clinton of New York.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=giuliani&itemNo=917003

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