Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 479

(AP)

RENO, Nev. — A few tents cropped up hard by the railroad tracks, pitched by men left with nowhere to go once the emergency winter shelter closed for the summer.

Then others appeared — people who had lost their jobs to the ailing economy, or newcomers who had moved to Reno for work and discovered no one was hiring.

Within weeks, more than 150 people were living in tents big and small, barely a foot apart in a patch of dirt slated to be a parking lot for a campus of shelters Reno is building for its homeless population. Like many other cities, Reno has found itself with a "tent city" — an encampment of people who had nowhere else to go.

From Seattle to Athens, Ga., homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation.

Nearly 61 percent of20local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening.

"It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition. "The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future."

The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up.

"What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the 80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group for homeless advocacy organizations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., Portland, Ore. and Seattle.

The relatively tony city of Santa Barbara has given over a parking lot to people who sleep in cars and vans. The city of Fresno, Calif., is trying to manage several proliferating tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood. In Portland, Ore., and Seattle, homeless advocacy groups have paired with nonprofits or faith-based groups to manage tent cities as outdoor shelters. Other cities where tent cities have either appeared or expanded include include Chattanooga, Tenn., San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently reported a 12 percent drop in homelessness nationally in two years, from about 754,000 in January 2005 to 666,000 in January 2007. But the 2007 numbers omitted people who previously had been considered homeless — such as those staying with relatives or friends or living in campgrounds or motel rooms for more than a week.

In addition, the housing and economic crisis began soon after HUD's most recent data was compiled.

"The data predates the housing crisis," said Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for HUD. "From the headlines, it might appear that the report is about yesterday. How is the housing situation affecting homelessness? That's a great question. We're still trying to get to that."

In Seattle, which is experiencing a building boom and an influx of affluent professionals in neighborhoods the working class once owned, homeless encampments have been springing up — in remote places to avoid police sweeps.

"What's happening in Seattle is what's happening everywhere else — on steroids," said Tim Harris, executive director of Real Change, an advocacy organization that publishes a weekly newspaper sold by homeless people.

Homeless people and their advocates have organized three tent cities at City Hall in recent months to call attention to the homeless and protest the sweeps — acts of militancy, said Harris, "that we really haven't seen around homeless activism since the early '90s."

In Reno, officials decided to let the tent city be because shelters were already filled.

Officials don't know how many homeless people are in Reno. "But we do know that the soup kitchens are serving hundreds more meals a day and that we have more people who are homeless than we can remember," said Jodi Royal-Goodwin, the city's redevelopment agency director.

Those in the tents have to register and are monitored weekly to see what progress they are making in finding jobs or real housing. They are provided times to take showers in the shelter, and told where to go for food and meals.

Sylvia Flynn, 51, came from northern California but lost a job almost immediately and then her apartment.

Since the cheapest motels here charge upward of $200 a week, Flynn ended up at the Reno women's shelter, which has only 20 beds and a two-week limit on stays.

Out of a dozen people interviewed in the tent city, six had come to Reno from California or elsewhere over the last year, hoping for casino jobs.

"I figured this would be a great place for a job," said Max Perez, a 19-year-old from Iowa. He couldn't find one and ended up taking showers at the men's shelter and sleeping in a pup tent barely big enough to cover his body.

The casinos are actually starting to lay off employees.

"Sometimes I think we need to put out an ad: 'No, we don't have any more jobs than you do,"' Royal-Goodwin said.

The city will shut down the tent city as soon as early October because the tents sit on what will be a parking lot for a complex of shelters and services for homeless people. The complex will include a men's shelter, a women's shelter, a family shelter and a resource center.

Reno officials aren't sure whether the construction will eliminate the need for the tent city. The demand, they say, keeps growing.

by Dahr Jamail

MARFA, Texas - Aside from the Iraqi people, nobody knows what the U.S. military is doing in Iraq better than the soldiers themselves. A new book gives readers vivid and detailed accounts of the devastation the U.S. occupation has brought to Iraq, in the soldiers' own words.

"Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupation," published by Haymarket Books Tuesday, is a gut-wrenching, historic chronicle of what the U.S. military has done to Iraq, as well as its own soldiers.

Authored by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and journalist Aaron Glantz, the book is a reader for hearings that took place in Silver Spring, Maryland between Mar. 13-16, 2008 at the National Labour College.

"I remember one woman walking by," said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the U.S. Marines who served three tours in Iraq. "She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realised that t he bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces."

Washburn testified on a panel that discussed the rules of engagement in Iraq, and how lax they were, even to the point of being virtually non-existent.

"During the course of my three tours, the rules of engagement changed a lot," Washburn's testimony continues. "The higher the threat the more viciously we were permitted and expected to respond."

His emotionally charged testimony, like all of those in the book that covered panels addressing dehumanisation, civilian testimony, sexism in the military, veterans' health care, and the breakdown of the military, raised issues that were repeated again and again by other veterans.

"Something else we were encouraged to do, almost with a wink and nudge, was to carry 'drop weapons', or by my third tour, 'drop shovels'. We would carry these weapons or shovels with us because if we accidentally shot a civilian, we could just toss the weapon on the body, and make them look like an insurgent," Washburn said.

Four days of searing testimony, witnessed by this writer, is consolidated into the book, which makes for a difficult read. One page after another is filled with devastating stories from the soldiers about what is being done in Iraq.

Everything from the taking of "trophy" photos of the dead, to torture and slaughtering of civilians is included.

"We're trying to build a historical record of what continues to happen in this war and what the war is really about," Glantz told IPS.

Hart Viges, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army who served one year in Iraq, tells of taking orders over the radio.

"One time they said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation...One of the snipers replied back, 'Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?' The lieutenant colonel responded, 'You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxicabs.' After that, the town lit up, with all the units firing on cars. This was my rst experience with war, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment."

Vincent Emanuele, a Marine rifleman who spent a year in the al-Qaim area of Iraq near the Syrian border, told of emptying magazines of bullets into the city without identifying targets, running over corpses with Humvees and stopping to take "trophy" photos of bodies. "An act that took place quite often in Iraq was taking pot shots at cars that drove by," he said. "This was not an isolated incident, and it took place for most of our eight-month deployment."

Kelly Dougherty, the executive director of IVAW, blames the behavior of soldiers in Iraq on the policies of the U.S. government. "The abuses committed in the occupations, far from being the result of a 'few bad apples' misbehaving, are the result of our government's Middle East policy, which is crafted in the highest spheres of U.S. power," she said.

Knowing this, however, does little to soften the emotional and moral devastation of the accounts.

"You see an individual with a white flag and he does anything but approach you slowly and obey commands, assume it's a trick and kill him," Michael Leduc, a corporal in the Marines who was part of the U.S. attack of Fallujah in November 2004, said were the orders from his battalion JAG officer he received before entering the city.

This is an important book for the public of the United States, in particular, because the Winter Soldier testimonies were not covered by any of the larger media outlets, aside from the Washington Post, which ran a single piece on the event that was buried in the Metro section.

The New York Times, CNN, and network news channels ABC, NBC and CBS ignored it completely.

This is particularly important in light of the fact that, as former Marine Jon Turner stated, "Anytime we did have embedded reporters with us, our actions changed drastically. We never acted the same. We were always on key with everything, did everything by the book."

"To me it's about giving a picture of what war is like," Glantz added, "Because here in the U.S. we have this very sanitized version of what war is. But war is when we have a large group of armed people killing large numbers of other people. And that is the picture that people will get from reading veterans testimony...the true face of war."

Dehumanization of the soldiers themselves is covered in the book, as it includes testimony of sexism, racism, and the plight of veterans upon their return home as they struggle to obtain care from the Veterans Administration.

There is much testimony on the dehumanization of the Iraqi people as well. Brian Casler, a corporal in the Marines, spoke to some of this that he witnessed during the invasion of Iraq.

"But on these convoys, I saw marines defecate into MRE bags or urinate in bottles and throw them at children on the side of the road," he stated.

Numerous accounts from soldiers include the prevalence of degrading terms for Iraqis, such as "hajis," "towel-heads" and "sand-niggers".

Scott Ewing, who served in Iraq from 2005-2006, admitted on one panel that u nits intentionally gave candy to Iraqi children for reasons other than "winning hearts and minds".

"There was also another motive," Ewing said, "If the kids were around our vehicles, the bad guys wouldn't attack. We used the kids as human shields."

Glantz admits that it would be difficult for the average U.S. citizen to read the book, and believes it is important to keep in mind while doing so what it took for the veterans to give this historic testimony.

"They could have been heroes, but what they are doing here is even more heroic -- which is telling the truth," Glantz told IPS. "They didn't have to come forward. They chose to come forward."

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 478

By Erica Werner

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two former top Justice Department officials emerged Wednesday as figures in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal as prosecutors disclosed plans to turn over some of their correspondence to defense attorneys preparing for trial in the case.

The officials are former Solicitor General Paul Clement and David Ayres, one-time chief of staff to former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Clement and Ayres were among Justice Department officials in e-mail correspondence with Kevin Ring, a former team Abramoff lobbyist and Capitol Hill aide who's facing trial on 10 counts of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, bribery and fraud.

Ring is accused of trying to get lawmakers and government officials to help him and his clients by giving them gifts such as sports tickets and meals.

Clement and Ayres were referenced by title but not by name at a federal court hearing in Ring's case Wednesday. An attorney familiar with the case confirmed their identities, speaking on condition of anonymity because the names had not been made public.

There's no public indication that either Clement or Ayres is implicated in wrongdoing. Ayres' attorney did not immediately return a call for comment and a message left at Clement's office at Georgetown Law School, where he is a visiting professor, was not immediately returned.

At Wednesday's hearing, prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle of plans to turn over "several million pages" of documents to Ring's attorneys, including correspondence with Clement, Ayres and other former Justice Department officials.

The charges against Ring include an episode in which he allegedly lobbied Justice Department officials for money to build a jail on a reservation for a tribal client. One of the officials involved — Robert Coughlin, former deputy chief of staff of the Justice Department's criminal division — already has pleaded guilty to criminal conflict of interest in the case.

Ring knew Clement, Ayres, Coughlin and others because they all worked for Ashcroft when Ashcroft was a Republican senator from Missouri, before he became attorney general in 2001.

William Welch, head of the Justice Department's public integrity division, was in court Wednesday but he declined afterward to comment on the status of the former Justice officials in the case.

Ring, who's pleaded not guilty, had previously worked for Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., who remains under investigation. The wide-ranging Abramoff investigation has netted 13 guilty pleas from former lobbyists and government officials and one former congressman, GOP Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio.

There was discussion Wednesday about how Ring's attorneys will get access to information they need to prepare for trial without disclosing documents related to national security, which prosecutors said may exist in electronic vaults where e-mails by Clement and Ayres are stored. The attorneys and prosecutors discussed pursuing a "protective order" to keep the information confidential.

Also on Wednesday, Huvelle denied a motion by Ring's attorney, Richard Hibey, to transfer or reassign the case. Hibey said he sought the move because part of his defense would attack the reasoning behind the plea deals that Huvelle has agreed to, but Huvelle said she didn't see a problem.

No trial date was set. Huvelle said it would take a long time to go through all the possible evidence first. Prosecutors predicted a four-to-six week trial.

By Frederic J. Frommer

An undercover video shot at an Iowa pig farm shows workers hitting sows with metal rods, slamming piglets on a concrete floor and bragging about jamming rods up into sows' hindquarters.

On the video, obtained by The Associated Press, a supervisor tells an undercover investigator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that when he gets angry or a sow won't move, "I grab one of these rods and jam it in her (anus)."

The farm, located outside of Bayard, Iowa, about 60 miles west of Des Moines, is a supplier to Hormel Foods of Austin, Minn. PETA wants to use the results of the investigation to pressure Hormel, the maker of Spam and other food products, to demand that its suppliers ensure humane treatment of pigs.

Hormel spokeswoman Julie Henderson Craven on Tuesday called the abuses "completely unacceptable."

The animal rights group also planned to send the video to the sheriff in Greene County, Iowa, seeking prosecution of 18 people on animal cruelty violations. According to PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich, the video shows eight people directly abusing animals.

"Abuse on factory farms is the absolute norm, not the exception, and anyone eating factory-farmed meat is paying to support it," Friedrich said.

After getting a whistleblower complaint from someone inside the farm, PETA sent two undercover investigators to get hired at the farm and document its practices — one from June 10 to Sept. 8, and the other from July 23 to Sept. 11.

At one point on the video, an employee shouts to an investigator, "Hurt 'em! There's nobody works for PETA out here. You know who PETA is?"

The undercover PETA investigator replies that he's heard of the group.

"I hate them. These (expletives) deserve to be hurt. Hurt, I say!," the employee yells as he hits a sow with a metal rod. "Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! ... Take out your frustrations on 'em." He encourages the investigator to pretend that one of the pigs scared off a voluptuous and willing 17- or 18-year-old girl, and then beat the pig for it.

Records at the Greene County Assessor's Office show the property was owned by Natural Pork Production II LLP of Iowa until Aug. 18, and then was transferred to MowMar LLP of Fairmont, Minn.

Lynn Becker, an owner of MowMar, called the abuses on the video "completely intolerable, reprehensible. We condemn these types of acts. If any animals were abused in the brief time we've owned the farm, if we still employ these people, any attempt will made to investigate and initiate corrective action immediately."

Becker said his company provided animal welfare training to the staff when it took over the farm.

Natural Pork Production II referred questions to AMVC Management Services, which managed the farm under its ownership. Mark Jones, AMVC's network manager, said the video showed "unacceptable practices" and that his company is working with the new ownership to investiga te.

Craven, the Hormel spokeswoman, said the farm became a Hormel supplier only after the change in ownership, and that MowMar "shares our commitment to animal welfare and humane handling."

Craven said it was her understanding that the abuses took place before the change in ownership. But PETA's Friedrich said the abuses continued, and that the new manager abused animals by shocking and kicking pigs.

Dr. Jennifer Greiner, a veterinarian and director of science and technology at the National Pork Producers Council, said the industry condemns "willful abuse" of pigs and that the video depicts acts that are not acceptable.

"Our industry is committed to handling pigs humanely," she said. "My industry is full of good people."

At one point in the video, workers are shown slamming piglets on the ground, a practice designed to instantly kill those baby pigs that aren't healthy enough. But on the video, the piglets are not killed instantly, and in a bloodied pile, some piglets can be seen wiggling vainly. The video also shows piglets being castrated, and having their tails cut off, without anesthesia.

Temple Grandin, a leading animal welfare expert who serves as a consultant to the livestock industry, said that while those are standard industry practices, the treatment of the sows on the video was far from it.

"This is atrocious animal abuse," Grandin said after PETA sent her the video. But she disagreed with PETA's contention that it was widespread in the industry.

"I've been on many good farms, and the pigs are handled gently," she said. "This was blatant, deliberate animal cruelty. These people are sick. They need to be prosecuted. There are certain people that enjoy hurting animals and they should not be working with them — period."

One of the PETA investigators, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his ability to do further undercover operations, said there was a culture of violence on the farm, and working there was an emotionally and physically exhausting experience that typically involved working 12-hour shifts and walking 15 miles a day.

"So many times, it took all of my willpower not to step up and do something," he said, adding that he also saw the supervisor shove a cane into a sow's vagina. "I was just shocked. What do you say to that?"

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 477

By Andrew Ross Sorkin, Ben White and Jenny Anderson

In one of the most dramatic days in Wall Street's history, Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself to Bank of America for roughly $50 billion to avert a deepening financial crisis, while another prominent securities firm, Lehman Brothers, hurtled toward liquidation after it failed to find a buyer, people briefed on the deals said.

The humbling moves, which reshape the landscape of American finance, mark the latest chapter in a tumultuous year in which once-proud financial institutions have been brought to their knees as a result of tens of billions of dollars in losses because of bad mortgage finance and real estate investments.

They culminated a weekend of frantic around-the-clock negotiations, as Wall Street bankers huddled in meetings at the behest of Bush administration officials to try to avoid a downward spiral in the markets stemming from a crisis of confidence.

"My goodness. I've been in the business 35 years, and these are the most extraordinary events I've ever seen," said Peter Peterson, co-founder of the private equity firm the Blackstone Group, who was head of Lehman in the 1970s and a secretary of commerce in the Nixon administration.

It remains to be seen whether the sale of Merrill, which was worth more than $100 billion during the last year, and the controlled demise of Lehman will be enough to finally turn the tide in the yearlong financial crisis that has crippled Wall Street. Questions remain about how the market will react Monday, particularly to Lehman's plan to wind down its trading operations, and whether other companies may still falter, like the American International Group, the large insurer, and Washington Mutual, the nation's largest savings and loan. Both companies' stocks fell precipitously last week.

Though the government took control of the troubled mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac only a week ago, investors have become increasingly nervous about the difficulties of major financial institutions to recover from their losses.

How things play out could affect the broader economy, which has been weakening steadily as the financial crisis has deepened over the last year, with unemployment increasing as the nation's growth rate has slowed.

What will happen to Merrill's 60,000 employees or Lehman's 25,000 employees remains unclear. Worried about the unfolding crisis and its potential impact on New York City's economy, Mayor Michael Bloomberg canceled a trip to California to meet with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Instead, aides said, Bloomberg spent much of the weekend working the phones, talking to federal officials and bank executives in an effort to gauge the severity of the crisis.

The weekend that humbled Lehman and Merrill Lynch and rewarded Bank of America, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, began at 6 p.m. Friday in the first of a series of emergency meetings at the Federal Reserve building in Downtown New York.

The meeting was called by Fed officials, with Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. in attendance, and it included top bankers. The Treasury and Federal Reserve had already stepped in on several occasions to rescue the financial system, forcing a shotgun marriage between Bear Stearns and JPMorgan Chase this year and backstopping $29 billion worth of troubled assets — and then agreeing to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The bankers were told that the government would not bail out Lehman and that it was up to Wall Street to solve its problems. Lehman's stock tumbled sharply last week as concerns about its financial condition grew and other firms started to pull back from doing business with it, threatening its viability.

Without government backing, Lehman began trying to find a buyer, focusing on Barclays, the big British bank, and Bank of America. At the same time, other Wall Street executives grew more concerned about thei r own precarious situation.

The fates of Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers would not seem to be linked; Merrill has the nation's largest brokerage force and its name is known in towns across America, while Lehman's main customers are big institutions. But during the credit boom both firms piled into risky real estate and ended up severely weakened, with inadequate capital and toxic assets.

Knowing that investors were worried about Merrill, John Thain, its chief executive and an alumnus of Goldman Sachs and the New York Stock Exchange, and Kenneth Lewis, Bank of America's chief executive, began negotiations. One person briefed on the negotiations said Bank of America had approached Merrill earlier in the summer but Thain had rebuffed the offer. Now, prompted by the reality that a Lehman bankruptcy would ripple through Wall Street and further cripple Merrill Lynch, the two parties proceeded with discussions.

On Sunday morning, Thain and Lewis cemented the deal. It could not be determined if Thain would play a role in the new company, but two people briefed on the negotiations said they did not expect him to stay. Merrill's "thundering herd" of 17,000 brokers will be combined with Bank of America's smaller group of wealth advisers and called Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.

For Bank of America, which this year bought Cou ntrywide Financial, the troubled mortgage lender, the purchase of Merrill puts it at the pinnacle of American finance, making it the biggest brokerage house and consumer banking franchise.

Bank of America eventually walked away from its talks with Lehman after the government refused to take responsibility for losses on some of Lehman's most troubled real-estate assets, something it agreed to do when JP Morgan Chase bought Bear Stearns to save it from a bankruptcy filing in March.

A leading proposal to rescue Lehman would have divided the bank into two entities, a "good bank" and a "bad bank." Under that scenario, Barclays would have bought the parts of Lehman that have been performing well, while a group of 10 to 15 Wall Street companies would have agreed to absorb losses from the bank's troubled assets, to two people briefed on the proposal said. Taxpayer money would not have been included in such a deal, they said.

Other Wall Street banks also balked at the deal, unhappy at facing potential losses while Bank of America or Barclays walked away with the potentially profitable part of Lehman at a cheap price.

For Lehman, the end essentially came Sunday morning when its last potential suitor, Barclays, walked away from a deal, saying it could not obtain a shareholder vote to approve a transaction before Monday=2 0morning, something required under London Stock Exchange listing rules, one person close to the matter said. Other people involved in the talks said the Financial Services Authority, the British securities regulator, had discouraged Barclays from pursuing a deal. Peter Truell, a spokesman for Barclays, declined to comment.

Lehman was expected to seek bankruptcy protection for its holding company by late Sunday in what would be the largest failure of an investment bank since the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert 18 years ago, people close to the matter said. Lehman's subsidiaries were expected to remain solvent while the firm liquidates its holdings, these people said. Under this scenario, a group of banks have tentatively agreed to provide a financial backstop to assist in an orderly winding down of the 158-year-old investment bank. Such an agreement could expose those banks to losses on Lehman's assets.

Herbert McDade III, Lehman's president, was at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York late Sunday, discussing terms of Lehman's dissolution with government officials. The Fed was expect to play a supporting role in the process by temporarily accepting lower-quality assets from banks in return for loans from the government.

Lehman's filing is unlikely to resemble those of other companies that seek bankruptcy protection. Because of the harsher treatment that federal bankrupt cy law applies to financial-services firms, Lehman cannot hope to reorganize and survive. It was not clear whether the government would appoint a trustee to supervise Lehman's liquidation or how big the financial backstop would be.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 476

By Tom Kishken

It's not the uninsured. It's not illegal immigrants.

The Californians most likely to crowd hospital emergency rooms — often with fevers or infections that could be treated elsewhere — are insured by the government and born in the United States, according to a new statewide study.

For every 100 people on Medi-Cal, 47 visits were made to emergency rooms in 2005, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. For every 100 people covered by Medicare, 46 visits were made to ERs. Californians without any insurance made 31 visits for every 100 people.

The report also challenged the perception that illegal immigrants are more likely to use the emergency room as a doctor's office, taking advantage of the federal law that compels the staff to treat anyone who walks in the door. It said about 12 percent of noncitizens reported they were likely to use an emergency room in 2005, compared to about 14 percent of people born in the United States.

Experts debate how much the tr ends contribute to the crowding of hospital ERs in Ventura County. The facilities are already so packed that ambulances were diverted from different hospitals for 7,400 hours last year, the equivalent of 308 days.

Others worry about increasing the financial burdens on hospitals that have closed some 70 emergency rooms in the state in the past decade.

To the people waiting in a county-run clinic in a Simi Valley strip mall, the numbers are a symptom of a healthcare system that pushes patients to rely on emergency care.

The homeless, uninsured woman sitting in a corner with a hand over her face walked into the clinic at 8:50 a.m. because of blurry vision and back pain. Carla Krisatis will be seen shortly after 11 a.m. A similar wait a couple of months ago sent her first to a Moorpark clinic that was also packed and finally to the Simi Valley Hospital emergency room, where she finally found treatment.

"At this point, I'm ready to go back there," Krisatis said as she waited.

The county healthcare system is designed to keep patients with routine conditions out of emergency rooms by emphasizing the use of clinics, urgent care centers and a special program for the uninsured. County officials say the clinics are seeing record numbers of people, while visits to the emergency room at Ventura County Medical Center have remained relatively flat.

But some of the people waiting in Simi Valley say they go to emergency rooms often, usually because they think it's their only or best choice.

Jakki Baker's 3-year-old daughter, Shaylee, developed a 103-degree fever on a Saturday during flu season when the county clinic was closed. They waited for five hours in the emergency room at Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks. Then a doctor told Baker to take her daughter home, give her Tylenol and fluids.

"It's ridiculous. I hate the emergency room. I try to avoid it like the plague," Baker said.

All about money

About 37 percent of the emergency room patients in Ventura County last year were insured by Medicare or Medi-Cal, according to the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. About 16 percent of ER patients were uninsured.

People on Medi-Cal are also the group most likely to use the emergency room for routine conditions that could be treated in a doctor's office or clinic, according to the report by the Public Policy Institute. It said about 44 percent of all California emergency room visits in 2005 could have been seen outside the ER.

Some Ventura County physicians think the trends are on the upswing, with emergency rooms continuing to see more insured people who can't get doctor's appointments. And it won't just be people covered by Medi-Cal and Medicare, said Dr. Jim Hornstein.

"The bottom line is they're the canary in the mine shaft," said the Ventura family doctor. "They're the first ones who can't get in."

Hornstein points an accusing finger at a primary care doctor shortage created in part by the reality that specialists make more money. Practices f or existing family care and internal care doctors are jam-packed with patients. Anyone new has trouble getting in the door.

The shortage has hit Medi-Cal beneficiaries first because of money. Fewer than half of the state's doctors accept Medi-Cal because the reimbursement rate is so low, according to the California Medical Association.

"I'd have gone broke a long time ago if I took Medi-Cal," said Dr. Ted Hole, another Ventura family practice doctor.

"They pay maybe $20 for an office visit. My overhead per visit is $40. How can you do that?"

Hole said private insurance companies also don't pay doctors enough to motivate them to see patients on weekends.

He said doctors get paid the same whether they see patients or refer them to the ER.

So they send them to the hospital.

Doctors want to provide the best care they can for patients, Hole said. But like people in every other profession, they are also trying to make a living.

"There is no aspect of medicine that is not somehow related to reimbursement," he said.

Many are wary of authority

Hospitals are barred by law from asking emergency room patients about immigration status. Public Policy Institute researchers acknowledged the population's healthcare visits are hard to track.

Still, they used the California Health Interview Survey to conclude that a greater percentage of people born in the United States were likely to use the emergency room than are naturalized citizens. Both groups were more likely to rely on emergency care than noncitizens.

"Are immigrants going to the emergency room? Yes. Are they going at a higher rate than others? No," said the study's co- author, Shannon McConville.

Some observers argue that illegal immigrants rely on community clinics and live in secrecy, worried that any public exposure could result in deportation.

"People who are desperately poor and come from a very different culture and speak a language that no one else speaks are very wary of authority figures in any setting," said Susan Haverland, leader of an outreach program that works with Mexican farmworkers who speak the indigenous language of Mixtecan.

Filled to saturation

In Ventura County, the busiest emergency room last year was the Ventura County Medical Center, with about 42,003 patients, according to state records. St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard was the second busiest, with 40,911 patients.

When ERs reach capacity, ambulances carrying all but the most critically ill patients are diverted to other hospitals.

That happens often in Ventura County, with ambulances diverted from three different hospitals — Los Robles in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley Hospital and St. John's in Oxnard — for more than 1,000 hours each last year.

The Oxnard hospital was saturated more than any other hospital, with about 2,646 hours of ambulance diversion, equal to about 110 days.

St. John's officials say their emergency room was more crowded last year because of the loss of 44 beds resulting from a now-completed construction project aimed at protecting the hospital from mold. The emergency room was also closed for 16 days while the hospital was fumigated for mold.

Like every other hospital, St. John's emergency room receives patients with conditions that could be treated elsewhere, said Lori Bigham, the hospital's vice president of patient care services. But the hospital has a rapid-exam area designed for less severe conditions, meaning the treatment doesn't intrude on the care of more critically ill patients, she said.

Doctors at other emergency rooms say the same thing.

"We do have issues with crowding, but it's not from patients coming in with minor problems," said Dr. David Lebell, assistant emergency room director at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura. "The crowding comes from the really sick patients, people who have to be admitted."

But any trend that sends more patients into the emergency room contributes to crowding, said Jan Emerson, spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association. If emergency rooms didn't have to deal with minor injuries and illnesses, they would have more resources for people injured in car crashes.

The average wait in a hospital emergency room throughout the state is four hours, she said, noting people wait nearly 11 hours at some hospitals in Los Angeles County.

"You look at overcrowding in the state, and it's getting worse," Emerson said, citing doctors who won't take on-call duty, Medi-Cal cuts and hospital closures that mean surviving emergency rooms have to care for more patients. "It's multifaceted, but avoidable20visits are a contributing factor."

Taking the easy way out

The visits may hurt hospitals most in the pocketbook. Care in an emergency room costs about five times what it would cost in a doctor's office, said Paul Lorenz, deputy director of the Ventura County Health Care Agency.

"It's absolutely the most expensive place to obtain care because hospitals have to run a 24-7 operation," added Emerson, listing the costs of nurses, physicians, laboratories and diagnostic testing.

The Public Policy Institute report calls for more access to healthcare outside of emergency rooms.

Lorenz said the county added a clinic and urgent care facility in Fillmore last year and plans to open urgent care centers in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley next year. In addition to plans to expand operating hours at clinics in Simi and several other cities, a program is being implemented to cut down on clinic wait times so patients don't turn to emergency rooms ou t of frustration.

"I think over the years we've had significant success in educating the patient population in how to use the emergency room," Lorenz said. "It takes time. It's nothing that's going to happen overnight."

Despite the programs and plans, some of the people waiting at Sierra Vista Clinic in Simi say they still go to emergency rooms.

Jessica Lindsey, a 22-year-old kickboxing instructor on Medi-Cal, has a bladder and kidney infection that means she has to see a doctor every three months to get a new prescription filled. It takes too long to get an appointment, so she goes to the emergency room. "Am I surprised?" she said when told many people do the same thing. "I'm surprised it took people this long to find out you can just go to the hospital."

By Renee Schoof (McClatchy)

WASHINGTON — A new scientific study adds evidence that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere fluctuated a bit over time, but that the sharp increase during the past few decades is bigger than anything in at least 1,300 years.

The report was published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Its conclusion is that temperature increased and decreased a little over the centuries, but the fluctuations were small enough that the line was roughly flat, like the shaft of a horizontal hockey stick. Then, from about 1980 to now, temperature increased sharply, more than any increase before — like the blade of the hockey stick.

For the past 10 years, climate-change skeptics have been calling the hockey stick bogus. Now the scientists who studied the climate record and produced the original hockey-stick graph have done a new study using more data from more sources — and they got the same pattern.

The new study "establishes further evidence that the recent warming isn't just part of a typical cycle," said climatologist Michael Mann , director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

"Of course, this alone doesn't establish the cause of that warming — that it must be due to human influences," Mann said. That's left to other scientific studies of the climate.

Forces of nature — changes in the output of the sun's energy and volcanic eruptions — and random variation explain the changes in climate before industrial times, Mann said. But only if human factors are taken into account — particularly the production of long-lasting, heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels — can scientists explain the unusually high recent temperature increase, he said.

Mann's group's study collected additional data for the centuries before the mid-19th century, when scientists began recording temperatures.

Their previous study depended on tree rings, and some critics said it was not a reliable way to reconstruct past clim ate over a long period. Mann said that while it's not always true that tree rings aren't reliable, his team decided to conduct a new study that didn't depend on them.

They took data from other natural sources of clues about past climate — corals, ice cores and lake and cave sediments.

"We found we got more or less the same answer," Mann said. The recent temperature increase is an anomaly over 1,300 years without using tree rings, and for 1,700 years if the tree-ring data are used, the study found.

Scientists have observed a warming of about 0.8 degrees Celsius during the past century. Mann said there was a burst of about 0.3 degrees from about 1900 to 1950. Then, in the 1950s to 1970s, temperatures were flat or showed a slight cooling, because heavy particle pollution, which has a cooling effect, masked the heating effect of greenhouse gases, Mann said.

Another, larger increase of temperature has been recorded in the past 30 years, he said, due largely to the increase of greenhouse gases. Particle pollution was reduced as a resul t of clean-air laws in the U.S. and other countries.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 475

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 -- Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

"America can never go back to that false sense of security that came before September 11, 2001," she said at the deployment ceremony, which drew hundreds of military families who walked from their homes on the sprawling post to the airstrip where the service was held.

Palin's return to Alaska coincided with her first extensive interview since she became the Republican vice presidential nominee. In the interview, with ABC News correspondent Charles Gibson, she was confronted with questions about the U.S. relationship with Russia and her fitness for office, and she appeared to struggle when asked to define the "Bush doctrine" on foreign policy. Palin drew repeated follow-up questions from Gibson about whether she believed in the right to "anticipatory self-defense" and crossing other nations' borders to take action against threats.

"I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists who are hellbent on destroying America and our allies," she said after several questions on the topic. "We have got to have all options out there on the table."

That response put her in line with a view expressed by Sen. Barack Obama, now the Democratic presidential nominee, in August 2007, when he stirred controversy by saying that if he were elected president, he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government. "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," Obama said. At the time, McCain called Obama's comments "naive."

Palin continued to take a hard line on national security issues when asked whether war with Russia could be necessary if Georgia were to join NATO and Russia crossed its borders again. Palin replied, "Perhaps so."

"I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help," she said.

In the interview, Palin said "I'm ready" when asked whether she had sufficient experience to serve as vice president. She added that she did not hesitate when McCain offered her the No. 2 spot on the ticket.

"I answered yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can't blink," she told Gibson.

The event Thursday, held on a barren Army post on the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, provided a powerful visual backdrop for Palin's first solo appearance after weeks of traveling alongside McCain and reading from a carefully prepared script.

McCain aides were adamant that the ceremony had not been coordinated with the campaign, and officers at the installation said the Alaska governor had agreed to attend months before she was chosen for the GOP ticket. Palin's son Track, 19, will deploy to Iraq with his unit later this month. McCain's son Jimmy is with his Marine Corp unit in Iraq, but the senator from Arizona has taken pains to keep him out of the campaign spotlight.

As she has been since McCain plucked her from relative obscurity two weeks ago, Palin continues to be surrounded by senior McCain advisers even here; the senator's top strategist, Steve Schmidt, and several others accompanied her to Alaska. The group is guiding Palin through a crash course on policy issues and is revising the campaign's original plan to send her on fundraising missions separately from McCain.

Instead, seeking to seize on the outpouring of enthusiasm for Palin, McCain advisers are "seriously considering" having McCain and Palin campaign together on the road. It would be an unusual arrangement -- running mates traditionally split up to cover as much ground as possible -- but aides believe it would help brand McCain and Palin as a single unit. It would also prevent Palin from having to contend with her own dedicated press contingent as she works to become more comfortable with an array of national and international issues. The campaign is also cognizant of the fact that McCain has consistently drawn bigger crowds since adding Palin to the ticket.

By Sopan Joshi

Americans are struggling to pay medical bills and are accumulating medical debt at an increasing rate, according to a survey released today.

"A perfect storm of negative economic trends is battering working families across the United States," said the survey by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports independent research on health care.

"Health-care costs are climbing much more rapidly than incomes or the growth in the overall economy," said Sara R. Collins, assistant vice president of the foundation and one of the authors of the study. As gas and food prices have soared and real estate values have fallen, the federal minimum wage is now $3 an hour lower, in real terms, than it was 40 years ago, the study said.

"What is notable is how these problems are spreading up the income scale," Collins said.

Two-thirds of the working-age population was uninsured, underinsured, reported a medical bill problem or did not get needed health care because of cost in 2007.

More than two in five adults in the 19-to-64 age group reported problems paying medical bills or had accumulated medical debt in 2007, up from one in three in 2005. Their difficulties included not being able to afford medical attention when needed, running up medical debts, dealing with collection agencies about unpaid bills, or having to change their lifestyle to repay medical debts.

Health-care costs are limiting expenditure on daily necessities. Of those facing mounting medical bills, 39 percent used all their savings, 30 percent incurred large credit card debt, and 29 percent said medical bills left them unable to pay for basic necessities such as food, heat or rent.

The survey found a sharp rise in the number of people spending more than 10 percent of their income on health care. Among people with annual income below $20,000, the figure more than doubled to 53 percent from 26 percent in 2001.

The survey found that 28 percent of working-age adults in 2007 were without insurance at some time during the previous year, up from 24 percent in 2001.

The insured also are facing increasing woes: 61 percent of those with medical debt or bill problems were insured at the time they needed medical attention.

Those without adequate insurance increased to 14 percent of the population in 2007 from 9 percent in 2003.

This was the foundation's fourth biennial survey since 2001. The foundation mentioned salient features of health-care plans of both Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama but struck a nonpartisan note.

The survey showed that the health-care gap between poor and moderate-income families is narrowing, and that even middle- and high-income groups are going without medical insurance at some time during the year.

Half of those with incomes below $20,000 went without insurance during 2007, up one percentage point from 2001.

But the figure among moderate-income ($20,000 to $40,000) families increased to 41 percent from 28 percent. Among middle-income ($40,000 to $60,000) families, the figure rose to 18 percent from 13 percent. And among those with incomes above $60,000, it rose to 8 percent from 4 percent.

Universal health-care insurance, the foundation argued, is key to improving health care, and its design would dictate its effectiveness.

President Karen Davis said the foundation has been conducting annual surveys of health-care experience in other countries since 1998, including Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand and Britain. "The U.S. stands out for being the only country . . . that reports significant fractions of the population not getting needed care," Davis said.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 474

By Dino Cappiello

WASHINGTON (AP) — Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties improperly engaged in sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday.

The alleged transgressions involve 13 former and current Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington.

Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with — and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from — oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department's inspector general.

The investigations reveal a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" by a small group of individuals "wholly lacking in acceptance of or adherence to government ethical standards," wrote Inspector General Earl E. Devaney.

D evaney's office spent more than two years and $5.3 million on the investigations.

The reports describe a fraternity house atmosphere inside the Denver Minerals Management Service office responsible for marketing the oil and gas that energy companies barter to the government instead of making cash royalty payments for drilling on federal lands. The government received $4.3 billion in such royalty-in-kind payments last year. The oil is then resold to energy companies or put in the nation's emergency stockpile.

Between 2002 and 2006, nearly a third of the 55-person staff in the Denver office received gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies, including Chevron, Shell, Hess Corp. and Denver-based Gary-Williams Energy Corp. the investigators found. Two oil marketers who received gifts and gratuities on at least 135 occasions displayed no remorse when confronted with their activities, Devaney said. He singled out Chevron as refusing to cooperate with the investigation.

Don Campbell, a Chevron spokesman, said Wednesday that the company "produced all of the documents that the government requested months ago."

The reports also said former head of the Denver Royalty-in-Kind office, Gregory W. Smith, used cocaine and had sex with subordinates. The report said Smith also steered government contracts to a consulting business that was employing him part-time.

Smith, contacted by e-mail by The Associated Press, said he had not seen the report and could not respond. He and nine other employees in the Denver office are mentioned in the reports.

MMS Director Randall Luthi, in an interview with the AP, said the agency was taking the report "extremely seriously" and would review the allegations and weigh taking appropriate action in coming months. The Inspector General is recommending that current employees implicated be fired and be barred for life from working within the royalty program.

House Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said "this whole IG report reads like a script from a television miniseries and one that cannot air during family viewing time. It is no wonder that the office was doing such a lousy job of overseeing the RIK program; clearly the employees had 'other' priorities in that office."

One of the employees named in the20investigation, Jimmy Mayberry, has already pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Washington to violations of conflict-of-interest laws. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Smith and former Associate Director of the Minerals Revenue Management program Lucy Querques Denett, who the report says manipulated contracts to ensure they were awarded to former Interior employees.

The findings are the latest sign of trouble at the Minerals Management Service, which has already been accused of mismanaging the collection of fees from oil companies and writing faulty contracts for drilling on government land and offshore. The charges also come as lawmakers and both presidential candidates weigh giving oil companies more access to federal lands, which would bring in more money to the federal government.

"This all shows the oil industry holds shocking sway over the administration and even key federal employees," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. "This is why we must not allow Big Oil's agenda to be jammed through Congress."

While most government royalties for drilling on federal lands are paid in cash, the government in recent years has been receiving a greater share of its oil and gas royalties in the actual product. More of that oil is also being sold on the open market, versus being deposited in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the nation's emergency oil stockpile.

Congress earlier this year passed a law halting deposits of oil to the reserve to alleviate high gasoline prices.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who was asked about the reports earlier in the day before they were given to him and congressional offices, said the investigation was prompted by a 2006 phone call from anemployee who said there were ethical lapses in the Denver office.

"I look forward to having the opportunity to review the inspector general's findings so we can take the appropriate actions," Kempthorne said.

















(AP)

Up to 300 ducks and other birds died when they flew on to a pool of oil that leaked from an idle well in Alberta, Canadian wildlife officials said Wednesday.

The deaths came just months after a similar incident dented the public image of Alberta's oil industry, which has been drawing criticism from environmentalists. A flock of 500 migratory ducks died in April after landing on a waste pond at Syncrude's oil sands mine in northern Alberta.

David Inkstrup, regional manager for the Canadian Wildlife Service, said the latest birds died in about 60 to 90 barrels of heavy crude oil that leaked from a well that had been taken out of production in southeastern Alberta. Such wells are plugged but not formally dismantled.

The leaking well, on the southwest portion of Canadian Forces Base Suffield, is licensed to Calgary-based Harvest Energy Trust. CEO John Zahary said the leak had been fixed and the company is investigating to determine how it happened.

Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner said the provincial government would also conduct a review.

Thousands of idle oil wells are scattered throughout Alberta but problems with them are rare, said Davis Sheremata, spokesman for Alberta's Energy Resources Conservation Board, which regulates the industry.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 473

BAGHDAD (AP) Cholera has broken out in a province south of Baghdad and at least 20 cases of the waterborne disease have been confirmed there, a Health Ministry official said Monday.

However, local authorities in Babil province insist the real figure is much higher and have complained that the government in Baghdad has been slow in responding to the outbreak.

Health Ministry official Dr. Ihsan Jaafar said the figure of confirmed cases was based on an examination of samples taken from the victims over the last week. He said one death — a 60-year-old man — had been confirmed.

He gave no date for the death or for when the outbreak was first reported.

"There are other suspect cases but 90 percent of them appear to be diarrhea," he said.

In the provincial capital of Hillah, a member of the ruling provincial council, Hassan Tofan, gave a much higher figure. He said that at least 300 cholera cases have been reported in Babil and that 10 people died recently.

The council issued a statement criticizing the provincial health department and the Health Ministry in Baghdad for being "so idle in measures to prevent the speared of disease," Tofan said.

He said local authorities had ordered all ice plants and many juice stands to close to prevent the spreading of the disease.

Cholera is endemic in Iraq, which lacks facilities to supply clean drinking water, especially in the countryside. Last year, a cholera outbreak in northern Iraq killed 14 people.

Cholera is a gastrointestinal disease typically spread by drinking contaminated water. It can cause severe diarrhea that, in extreme cases, can lead to fatal dehydration. It is preventable by treating drinking water with chlorine and improving hygiene conditions.

By Bradley Brooks (AP)

Amazon deforestation jumped 69 percent in the past 12 months — the first such increase in three years — as rising demand for soy and cattle pushes farmers and ranchers to raze trees, officials said Saturday.

Some 8,147 square kilometers (3,088 square miles) of forest were destroyed between August 2007 and August 2008 — a 69 percent increase over the 4,820 square kilometers (1,861 square miles) felled in the previous 12 months, according to the National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, which monitors destruction of the Amazon.

"We're not content," Environment Minister Carlos Minc said. "Deforestation has to fall more and the conditions for sustainable development have to improve."

Brazil's government has increased cash payments to fight illegal Amazon logging this year, and it eliminated government bank loans to farmers who illegally clear forest to plant crops.

The country lost 2.7 percent of its Amazon rain forest in 2007, or 11,000 square kilometers (4,250 square miles). Environmental officials fear even more land will be razed this year — but they have not forecast how much.

Minc says monthly deforestation rates have slowed since May, but environmental groups say seasonal shifts in tree cutting make the annual number a more accurate gauge.

Most deforestation happens in March and April, the start of Brazil's dry season, and routinely tapers off in May, June and July: Last month, 323 square kilometers (125 square miles) of trees were felled, 61 percent less than the area razed in June.

Environmentalists also argue that INPE's deforestation report wasn't designed to give accurate monthly figures, but to alert and direct the government to deforestation hot spots in time to save the land.

The Amazon region covers about 4.1 million square kilometers (1.6 million square miles) of Brazil, nearly 60 percent of the country. About 20 percent of that land has already been deforested.