hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 348

The rate at which infants die in the United States has dropped substantially over the past half-century, but broad disparities remain among racial groups, and the country stacks up poorly next to other industrialized nations.

In 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available, roughly seven babies died for every 1,000 live births before reaching their first birthday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. That was down from about 26 in 1960.

Babies born to black mothers died at two and a half times the rate of those born to white mothers, according to the CDC figures.

The United States ranks near the bottom for infant survival rates among modernized nations. A Save the Children report last year placed the United States ahead of only Latvia, and tied with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia.

The same report noted the United States had more neonatologists and newborn intensive care beds per person than Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom - but still had a higher rate of infant mortality than any of those nations.

Doctors and analysts blame broad disparities in access to health care among racial and income groups in the United States.

Not surprisingly, the picture is far bleaker in poorer countries, particularly in Africa. A 2005 World Health Organization report found infant mortality rates as high as 144 per 1,000 births - more than 20 times the U.S. rate - in Liberia.

Right to GIVE Arms
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 — As the insurgency in Iraq escalated in the spring of 2004, American officials entrusted an Iraqi businessman with issuing weapons to Iraqi police cadets training to help quell the violence.

By all accounts, the businessman, Kassim al-Saffar, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, did well at distributing the Pentagon-supplied weapons from the Baghdad Police Academy armory he managed for a military contractor. But, co-workers say, he also turned the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of some American officials and executives, selling AK-47 assault rifles, Glock pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand — Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors.

“This was the craziest thing in the world,” said John Tisdale, a retired Air Force master sergeant who managed an adjacent warehouse. “They were taking weapons away by the truckload.”

Activities at that armory and other warehouses help explain how the American military lost track of some 190,000 pistols and automatic rifles supplied by the United States to Iraq’s security forces in 2004 and 2005, as auditors discovered in the past year.

These discoveries prompted criminal inquiries by the Pentagon and the Justice Department, and stoked fears that the arms could fall into enemy hands and be used against American troops. So far, no missing weapons have been linked to any American deaths, but investigators say that in a country awash with weapons, it may be impossible to trace where some ended up.

While the Pentagon has yet to offer its own accounting of how the weapons channel broke down, it is clear from interviews with two dozen military and civilian investigators, contracting officers, warehouse managers and others that military expediency sometimes ran amok, the lines between legal and illegal were blurred and billions of dollars in arms were handed over to shoestring commands without significant oversight.

RUDY! RUDY! RUDY!

Three weeks after 9/11, when the roar of fighter jets still haunted the city’s skyline, the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, toured Ground Zero. Although a member of the emir’s own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the attack—a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM—al-Thani rushed to New York in its aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, principally to the families of its victims. Rudy Giuliani, apparently unaware of what the FBI and CIA had long known about Qatari links to Al Qaeda, appeared on CNN with al-Thani that night and vouched for the emir when Larry King asked the mayor: “You are a friend of his, are you not?”

* * *
In retrospect, Giuliani’s embrace of the emir appears peculiar. But it was only a sign of bigger things to come: the launching of a cozy business relationship with terrorist-tolerant Qatar that is inconsistent with the core message of Giuliani’s current presidential campaign, namely that his experience and toughness uniquely equip him to protect America from what he tauntingly calls “Islamic terrorists”—an enemy that he always portrays himself as ready to confront, and the Democrats as ready to accommodate.

The contradictory and stunning reality is that Giuliani Partners, the consulting company that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the Qatar trough, doing business with the ministry run by the very member of the royal family identified in news and government reports as having concealed KSM—the terrorist mastermind who wired funds from Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who also sold the idea of a plane attack on the towers to Osama bin Laden—on his Qatar farm in the mid-1990s.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 347

Group: Churches sell sweatshop crosses

By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 31 minutes ago

A labor rights group alleged Tuesday that crucifixes sold in religious gift shops in the U.S. are produced under "horrific" conditions in a Chinese factory with more than 15-hour work days and inadequate food.

"It's a throwback to the worst of the garment sweatshops 10, 20 years ago," said Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee.

ernaghan held a news conference in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral to call attention to conditions at a factory in Dongguan, a southern Chinese city near Hong Kong, where he said crosses sold at the historic church and elsewhere are made.

Spokespeople for St. Patrick's and another New York landmark, the Episcopal Trinity Church at Wall Street, said the churches had removed dozens of crucifixes from their shops while they investigate the claims.

"I don't think they have a clue where these crucifixes were made — in horrific work conditions," Kernaghan said.

Kernaghan said the factory's mostly young, female employees work from 8 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. seven days a week and are paid 26 cents an hour with no sick days or vacation. Workers live in filthy dormitories and are fed a watery "slop."

Kernaghan said factory workers took photos and smuggled out documents detailing practices there. While none of the crucifixes sold in New York were identified as made in China, they bore serial numbers matching products made at the factory in question, Kernaghan said.

Joe Zwilling, a spokesman for St. Patrick's, said church officials had not heard about the issue before Tuesday. Trinity spokeswoman Diane Reed said her church had been "under the impression that these were mass-produced in Italy."

St. Patrick's and Trinity bought the crosses from the Singer Co., a religious goods company based in suburban Mount Vernon. Co-owner Gerald Singer said the religious objects were made in China and purchased through a Chinese manufacturer called Full Start.

"Whether they came out of a sweatshop, we do not know," Singer said. "We asked Full Start to sign off that there are no sweatshop conditions involved, and no children and that they abide by Chinese law. This is a black eye for us."

An after-hours call to a U.S. office of Full Start Ltd. in East Providence, R.I., was not immediately returned Tuesday.

A man at the Full Start factory in Dongguan said the allegations were "totally incorrect."

The working conditions at the factory were "fine," said the man, who refused to give his name. The 200-plus employees work from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. each day, with an hour and a half break for lunch, he said.

The employees were rarely asked to work overtime, but were compensated when they did, he said. When pressed for more details, the man said he wasn't in charge of those issues and hung up the phone.

Kernaghan said the crosses were exhibited at an annual trade show organized by the Association for Christian Retail, a Colorado-based trade association that works with thousands of religious stores across the country.

Bill Anderson, president and chief executive of the Christian trade association, issued a statement saying: "While we occasionally hear this issue raised, and believe there are factories in China where human rights are violated, we believe claims that products sold through CBA member stores are made in these shops are irresponsible and unfounded."

Dongguan lies at the center of China's export manufacturing industry, which relies heavily on low wages to remain competitive. Factories there have been accused in the past of labor abuses, including those making products for McDonald's, Disney, Mattel and the Beijing Olympics.




SUPPORT THE TROOPS OR ELSE!!
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ―

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.

To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.

Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills.

He finds solace in the hundreds of boxes he loads onto a truck in Carnegie. In each box is a care package that will be sent to a man or woman serving in Iraq. It was in his name Operation Pittsburgh Pride was started.

Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye.

A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.

"I tried to do my best and serve my country. I was unfortunately hurt in the process. Now they're telling me they want their money back," he explained.

It's a slap for Fox's mother, Susan Wardezak, who met with President Bush in Pittsburgh last May. He thanked her for starting Operation Pittsburgh Pride which has sent approximately 4,000 care packages.

He then sent her a letter expressing his concern over her son's injuries, so she cannot understand the U.S. Government's apparent lack of concern over injuries to countless U.S. Soldiers and demands that they return their bonuses.

While he's unsure of his future, Fox says he's unwavering in his commitment to his country.

"I'd do it all over again... because I'm proud of the discipline that I learned. I'm proud to have done something for my country," he said.

But Fox feels like he's already given enough. He'll never be able to pursue his dream of being a police officer because of his wounds and he can't believe he's being asked to return part of his $10,000 signing bonus.

KDKA contacted Congressman Jason Altmire on his behalf. He says he has proposed a bill that would guarantee soldiers receive full benefit of bonuses.

Wall St bonuses to separate haves and have-lots

By Joseph A. GiannoneWed Nov 21, 4:13 PM ET

Wall Street bonuses, on average, will be little changed this year, but not since 1998 will the gap between the haves and have-lots be so great.

The collapse in mortgage markets and the broader credit crunch this year triggered about $50 billion in losses and thousands of job cuts at investment banks in hard-hit fixed income businesses. Concern about deeper losses and a slowdown in deal activity has hammered bank stocks.

Yet year-end bonuses, which make up the vast bulk of annual pay for bankers and traders, overall will be flat compared with record 2006 payouts, recruiters and headhunters say. Beneath the surface, though, individuals will see everything from increased payouts to pink slips.

"There's going to be a tremendous variance in terms of pay this year," said Eric Moskowitz, a compensation consultant at Options Group. "The only other year that compares is 1998."

That year, global bond market turmoil slashed fixed income profit, even as banking and equities businesses thrived.

Lost in all the recent noise about job cuts, write-downs and ousted chief executives is that Wall Street will generate record revenue this year -- an estimated $132 billion among the top 5 banks -- powered by a first-half frenzy in mergers and acquisitions, equities trading, stock offerings and money management.

The most successful advisers, equity traders, commodities and derivatives dealers will rake in bonuses that are 10 to 20 percent higher this year, according to Wall Street recruiters.

Average bonuses for managing directors in investment banking, using one example, will range from $2 million to $2.5 million, up 10 percent from last year, the recruiters said.

Meanwhile, colleagues in hard-hit businesses such as leveraged lending, mortgage securities and CDO underwriting will see bonuses cut by a third or slashed to zero, they predicted.

GOLDMAN THE OUTLIER

Then there's the chasm between Goldman Sachs Group, which is having a record year and projected no write-downs, and the rest of Wall Street, which has recorded big asset losses. The largest investment bank alone may pay out $22 billion in bonuses, roughly half the total pool.

A meltdown in securities backed by subprime mortgages has roiled debt and stock markets in the year's second half, and brought raging M&A activity to a screeching halt in July. Banks slashed roughly 10,000 mortgage, banking and fixed income jobs.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 346

UCLA researchers find that Latinos in the U.S. illegally are 50% less likely to visit emergency rooms.

By Mary Engel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 27, 2007

Illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries are 50% less likely than U.S.-born Latinos to use hospital emergency rooms in California, according to a study published Monday in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

The cost of providing healthcare and other government services to illegal immigrants looms large in the national debate over immigration.

In Los Angeles County, much of the focus of that debate has been on hospital emergency rooms. Ten have closed in the last five years, citing losses from treating the uninsured, and those that remain open are notorious for backlogs.

By federal law, hospitals must treat every emergency, regardless of a person's insurance -- or immigration -- status. Illegal immigrants, who often work at jobs that don't offer health insurance, are commonly seen as driving both the closures and the crowding.

But the study found that while illegal immigrants are indeed less likely to be insured, they are also less likely to visit a doctor, clinic or emergency room.

"The current policy discourse that undocumented immigrants are a burden on the public because they overuse public resources is not borne out with data, for either primary care or emergency department care," said Alexander N. Ortega, an associate professor at UCLA's School of Public Health and the study's lead author. "In fact, they seem to be underutilizing the system, given their health needs."

Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that lobbies for tougher immigration controls, said that usage rates are just one measure of illegal immigrants' effect on healthcare. The other factor, he said, is the cost to taxpayers, which Ortega's study did not examine.

Cost estimates vary widely. A Rand Corp. study published last year in the journal Health Affairs put the cost of healthcare for illegal immigrants nationwide at $1.1 billion a year, excluding care for those younger than 18 and older than 64.

FAIR called the Rand number a "low-ball" estimate. Its own study of healthcare costs of illegal immigrants and their dependents, including U.S.-born children, estimated California's portion alone to be about $1.5 billion a year.

Mehlman said $1.5 billion "is still a significant amount of money, unless you're Bill Gates."

Ortega's study is not the first to find that illegal immigrants use fewer healthcare services than people born in the U.S. But his study used the largest sample, analyzing data from 42,044 participants of the 2003 California Health Interview Survey, a randomized telephone survey conducted by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the California Department of Public Health.

And while other studies have attributed lower usage to immigrants simply being younger and healthier than the overall population, the study published Monday took into account age, health status, insurance status and poverty level. All such factors being equal, it found, immigrants still made fewer visits to physicians and were 30% less likely than U.S.-born Latinos to have a regular source of healthcare.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi soldiers detained two American security guards along with several other foreigners traveling in a private security convoy after they opened fire Monday in Baghdad, wounding one woman, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

U.S. military and embassy officials had no immediate information about the report, which follows a series of recent shootings in which foreign security guards have allegedly killed Iraqis. Last month, the Iraqi Cabinet sent parliament a bill to lift immunity for foreign private security companies that has been in effect since the U.S. occupation began in 2003.

Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said the convoy was driving on the wrong side of the road in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah when the shooting took place about midday.

Those arrested included two American guards, along with 21 people from Sri Lanka, nine from Nepal and 10 Iraqis, the Baghdad military spokesman said.

"We have given orders to our security forces to immediately intervene in case they see any violations by security companies. The members of this security company wounded an innocent woman and they tried to escape the scene, but Iraq forces arrested them," al-Moussawi told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

KBR, Inc., the global engineering and construction giant, won more than $16 billion in U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2004 to 2006—far more than any other company, according to a new analysis by the Center for Public Integrity. In fact, the total dollar value of contracts that went to KBR—which used to be known as Kellogg, Brown, and Root and until April 2007 was a subsidiary of Halliburton—was nearly nine times greater than those awarded to DynCorp International, a private security firm that is No. 2 on the Center's list of the top 100 recipients of Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction funds.

Another private security company, BlackwaterUSA, whose employees recently killed as many as 17 Iraqi civilians in what the Iraqi government alleges was an unprovoked attack, is 12th on the list of companies and joint ventures, with $485 million in contracts. (On November 14, the New York Times reported that FBI investigators have concluded that 14 of the 17 shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, and that Justice Department prosecutors are weighing whether to seek indictments.) First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting which immediately precedes Blackwater on the Top 100, came under fire in July after a pair of whistleblowers told a House committee that the company essentially "kidnapped" low-paid foreign laborers brought in to help build the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad. First Kuwaiti and the U.S. State Department denied the charges.

Other key findings from the Center's analysis:

• Over the three years studied, more than $20 billion in contracts went to foreign companies whose identities—at least so far—are impossible to determine.

• Nearly a third of the companies and joint ventures on the Top 100 are based outside the United States. These foreign contractors, along with the $20 billion in contracts awarded to the unidentified companies, account for about 45 percent of all funds obligated to the Top 100.

• U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan have grown more than 50 percent annually, from $11 billion in 2004 to almost $17 billion in 2005 and more than $25 billion in 2006.

According to David Walker, the comptroller general of the United States, the outsourcing of government has escalated across the board over the past five years, although oversight of the process has shrunk during this same period. In an interview with the Center for Public Integrity, Walker noted particular problems with military contracting. "We have identified about 15 systemic, longstanding acquisition and contracting problems that exist within the Defense Department—which is the single biggest contractor within the U.S. government—that we are still not making enough progress on," said Walker, who heads the Government Accountability Office. "I mean, this stuff isn't rocket science."

While KBR earns the top spot among individual companies and their subsidiaries, the firm's $16 billion in obligated contracts is eclipsed by $20.4 billion in contracts that went to a nebulous collection of companies identified by the U.S. government only as "foreign contractors." The Center has filed a Freedom of Information request for the 50 largest contracts—collectively worth some $19.6 billion—awarded to these unnamed companies. The largest of these contracts is worth more than $6 billion—a sum that would catapult the unidentified recipient to the No. 2 spot on the Top 100.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 345

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- About eight million Iraqis -- nearly a third of the population -- are without water, sanitation, food and shelter and need emergency aid, a report by two major relief agencies says.

Oxfam and the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Coordination Committee in Iraq have issued a briefing paper that says violence in Iraq is masking a humanitarian crisis that has worsened since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The paper, called "Rising to the Humanitarian Challenge in Iraq," is the latest documentation of the misery faced by Iraqis.

"Eight million people are in urgent need of emergency aid; that figure includes over two million who are displaced within the country, and more than two million refugees. Many more are living in poverty, without basic services, and increasingly threatened by disease and malnutrition," said the relief agencies' report. The population of Iraq is 26 million.

It said that not addressing the needs of Iraqis in urgent need of water, sanitation, food and shelter would further create more unrest in the country.

"Despite the constraints imposed by violence, the government of Iraq, the United Nations, and international donors can do more to deliver humanitarian assistance to reduce unnecessary suffering. If people's basic needs are left unattended, this will only serve to further destabilize the country."

"The report found that about 43 percent of Iraq's population endure "absolute poverty," and that more than half "are now without work."

Child malnutrition rates have jumped from 19 percent before the invasion four years ago to 28 percent now, and there are two million internally displaced people, many of whom have no or little access to food rations.

The number of Iraqis "without access to adequate water supplies" is 70 percent, up from 50 percent since 2003. The country continues to suffer a "brain drain."

Iraq attacks kill 20, including 3 U.S. soldiers

By Doug Smith and Saif Hameed, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
November 19, 2007

BAGHDAD — Officials in the southern city of Samawah said a U.S. Army convoy opened fire Sunday in an unprovoked attack on motorists who were trying to get out of its way, injuring four and destroying a truckload of sheep.

In Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, three U.S. soldiers were killed Sunday in an assault involving a suicide vest, the military said. The military released no further details, but witnesses in the city, where American troops had lengthy battles with insurgents this summer, said there appeared to be military casualties when a roadside bomb exploded near a group of children clustered around soldiers on foot patrol. Three children were killed and seven others were wounded in the incident.

The U.S. military apologized for the incident in Samawah, the capital of Muthanna province, saying in a statement that two civilians were killed and four injured. Local officials said there were no deaths.

The incidents came on a day when insurgent attacks against military targets, police and a public official left at least 20 dead in Iraq.

After the Samawah shooting, Muthanna Gov. Ahmed Marzouq said he couldn't understand the behavior of the U.S. forces who, he said, acted inhumanely in firing on motorists who posed no threat and setting the truck of sheep ablaze.

"Usually they open fire when they get attacked or when in danger; however, the zones they passed through were safe," Marzouq said.

He said the troops had entered without notifying local officials, violating protocols laid down when the southern province took over responsibility for its own security in July 2006.

U.S. Considers Enlisting Tribes in Pakistan to Fight Al Qaeda

This article was reported and written by Eric Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti and Carlotta Gall.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 — A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.

If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agree to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists, officials said. The United States now has only about 50 troops in Pakistan, a Pentagon spokesman said, a force that could grow by dozens under the new approach.

The new proposal is modeled in part on a similar effort by American forces in Anbar Province in Iraq that has been hailed as a great success in fighting foreign insurgents there. But it raises the question of whether such partnerships can be forged without a significant American military presence on the ground in Pakistan. And it is unclear whether enough support can be found among the tribes.

Altogether, the broader strategic move toward more local support is being accelerated because of concern about instability in Pakistan and the weakness of the Pakistani government, as well as fears that extremists with havens in the tribal areas could escalate their attacks on allied troops in Afghanistan. Just in recent weeks, Islamic militants sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the Taliban have already extended their reach beyond the frontier areas into more settled areas, most notably the mountainous region of Swat.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 344

Army officer accused of taking bribes while in Iraq

The Associated Press

TACOMA — An Army captain based at Fort Lewis is facing charges of conspiracy to accept bribes while serving in Iraq, according to a complaint filed against him in U.S. District Court.

Capt. Cedar Lanmon, 30, has also been charged with importing antiquities and laundering bribe money. He made his first appearance in court on Friday and released on his own recognizance, said assistant U.S. Attorney David Resse Jennings.

Lanmon has not entered a plea and is expected in court Dec. 6 for a preliminary hearing.

Court papers say Lanmon accepted as much as $40,000 in bribes to help Iraqi citizens win U.S. government contracts in Iraq and stole an artifact from an archaeological dig in the city of Ur, reputed to be the home of the biblical figure, Abraham.

The officer also was ordered to stay away from his estranged wife while he awaits the outcome of his case. The case against Lanmon began in September, when his wife contacted Army criminal investigators with information about her husband's alleged bribe-taking in Iraq.

The women told authorities the couple used the proceeds for home-improvement projects, laser eye surgery for her and investments. She said her husbands accepted bribes during his two deployments in Iraq, according to court documents.

Abuse Risk Seen Worse As Families Change

By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- Six-year-old Oscar Jimenez Jr. was beaten to death in California, then buried under fertilizer and cement. Two-year-old Devon Shackleford was drowned in an Arizona swimming pool. Jayden Cangro, also 2, died after being thrown across a room in Utah.

In each case, as in many others every year, the alleged or convicted perpetrator had been the boyfriend of the child's mother - men thrust into father-like roles which they tragically failed to embrace.

Every case is different, every family is different. Some single mothers bring men into their lives who lovingly help raise children when the biological father is gone for good.

Nonetheless, many scholars and front-line caseworkers interviewed by The Associated Press see the abusive-boyfriend syndrome as part of a broader trend that deeply worries them. They note an ever-increasing share of America's children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures.

"This is the dark underbelly of cohabitation," said Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. "Cohabitation has become quite common, and most people think, 'What's the harm?' The harm is we're increasing a pattern of relationships that's not good for children."

The existing data on child abuse in America is patchwork, making it difficult to track national trends with precision. The most recent federal survey on child maltreatment tallies nearly 900,000 abuse incidents reported to state agencies in 2005, but it does not delve into how rates of abuse correlate with parents' marital status or the makeup of a child's household.

Similarly, data on the roughly 1,500 child-abuse fatalities that occur annually in the United States leaves unanswered questions. Many of those deaths result from parental neglect, rather than overt physical abuse. Of the 500 or so deaths caused by physical abuse, the federal statistics do not specify how many were caused by a stepparent or unmarried partner of the parent.

However, there are many other studies that, taken together, reinforce the concerns. Among the findings:

-Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents, according to a study of Missouri abuse reports published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005.

-Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents, according to several studies co-authored by David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center.

-Girls whose parents divorce are at significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father, according to research by Robin Wilson, a family law professor at Washington and Lee University.

"All the emphasis on family autonomy and privacy shields the families from investigators, so we don't respond until it's too late," Wilson said. "I hate the fact that something dangerous for children doesn't get responded to because we're afraid of judging someone's lifestyle."

Census data leaves no doubt that family patterns have changed dramatically in recent decades as cohabitation and single-parenthood became common. Thirty years ago, nearly 80 percent of America's children lived with both parents. Now, only two-thirds of them do. Of all families with children, nearly 29 percent are now one-parent families, up from 17 percent in 1977.



Forclosure is Patriotic

LAS VEGAS — In the foreclosure crisis of 2007, thousands of American families are losing their homes without ever missing a payment. They are renters in houses whose owners default on their mortgages — a large but little noticed class of casualties.

Louie and Lara Northern and their family have learned that their rented home in a new subdivision of Las Vegas is in foreclosure, which could force them to vacate with 72 hours’ notice.

Maj. Matt Belmonte lives with his wife, Diana, son, Nick, and dog in a leased house that is in foreclosure. He said: “These folks gambled on interest rates and lost. And now I lost, too.”

Some live in big apartments, others in houses owned by small investors who got in over their heads.

There are no exact figures for how many renters have been evicted because of foreclosures, but a survey taken this year by the Mortgage Bankers Association found that one in eight foreclosures was non-owner-occupied. This figure probably underestimates the problem, according to the association, because buildings receive tax benefits if they are registered as owner-occupied. More than one million properties are expected to enter foreclosure this year.

Many renters say they never even knew their buildings were heading for foreclosure.

“This is an explosion,” said Judith Liben, a lawyer at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. “This isn’t business as usual. These are investors that overleveraged themselves, and the renters are collateral damage in the mortgage crisis.”

Here in Nevada, which has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, 28 percent of mortgages that were in default earlier this year were for homes not owner-occupied, more than twice the national average, according to the bankers group. Arizona and Florida, both leaders in foreclosures, are also well above the national average. In California, 22 percent of the properties lost to foreclosure this year were not owner-occupied, according to Foreclosurerader.com, which tracks California foreclosure auctions.

Foreclosing lenders typically evict tenants in order to sell the property, said Vicki Vidal, senior director of loan administration and government affairs at the Mortgage Bankers Association.

“Banks don’t want to be landlords,” Ms. Vidal said. “They’re in the business of making mortgages. You need to recoup the money to keep the process moving.”

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 343

State Department official and brother queried on Blackwater

The State Department's top investigator and his brother will both be asked to testify to a committee of Congress about the brother's link to the Blackwater security firm, the committee announced on Friday.

Rep. Henry Waxman decided to call State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard and his brother A.B. "Buzzy" to the same hearing after they separately gave the committee conflicting accounts about Buzzy Krongard's ties with Blackwater, which protects U.S. diplomats and other State

Department officials in Iraq.

Earlier this week, Howard Krongard recused himself from probes into Blackwater after saying that he had just discovered -- during a break in a hearing of Waxman's government oversight panel -- that his brother had attended a meeting of Blackwater's advisory board.

Krongard, who acts as the State Department's independent internal investigator, had begun the hearing by denying the "ugly rumors" that his brother was associated with the company, which is under scrutiny for a September 16 shooting incident in Baghdad in which 17 Iraqis were killed.

Waxman said in a memo to his committee members on Friday that Buzzy Krongard now has called committee staff to assert that his brother was previously aware of his Blackwater ties.

"Yesterday, in response to a letter from the committee, Buzzy Krongard called the Committee staff and said that contrary to Howard Krongard's testimony, he did tell his brother about his relationship with Blackwater," Waxman said in the memo sent to his committee members.

"The information from Buzzy Krongard raises serious questions about the veracity of Howard Krongard's testimony before the committee. To help answer these questions, I expect the committee to hold a hearing immediately after the Thanksgiving recess at which Howard Krongard and Buzzy Krongard will be invited to testify."

WASHINGTON: The U.S. government has agreed to pay $2 million to an Oregon lawyer wrongly jailed in connection with the 2004 terrorist bombings in Madrid, and it has issued a formal apology to him and his family.

The settlement announced Wednesday capped a two-and-a-half year ordeal in which Brandon Mayfield went from being suspected as a terrorist operative to being a symbol, in the eyes of many people, of the administration's overzealousness in the war on terrorism.

"The United States of America apologizes to Mr. Brandon Mayfield and his family for the suffering caused" by his arrest, the government's apology began. It added that the FBI, which erroneously linked Mayfield to the Madrid bombings through a fingerprinting mistake, had taken steps to "to ensure that what happened to Mr. Mayfield and the Mayfield family does not happen again."

At an emotional news conference in Portland, Mayfield said he and his wife, an Egyptian immigrant, and their three children still suffered from the experience of government surveillance and from his imprisonment for two weeks in May 2004. "The horrific pain, torture and humiliation that this has caused myself and my family is hard to put into words," said Mayfield, a convert to Islam who was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

"The days, weeks and months following my arrest," he said, "were some of the darkest we have had to endure. I personally was subject to lockdown, strip searches, sleep deprivation, unsanitary living conditions, shackles and chains, threats, physical pain and humiliation."

Fingerprint examiners at the FBI erroneously linked Mayfield to the terrorist bombings in Madrid through a mistaken identification of a print lifted from a plastic bag containing detonator caps that was found at the scene of the bombings. The March 11, 2004, bombings killed 191 people and wounded 2,000.

Despite doubts from Spanish officials about the validity of the fingerprint match, U.S. officials opened an aggressive investigation of Mayfield soon after the bombings. The fact that he had represented a man in a child-custody case in Portland who was later suspected of terrorism spurred further interest in him.

Using expanded surveillance powers under the Patriot Act, the government wiretapped his conversations, conducted secret searches of his home and his law office, and imprisoned him for two weeks as a material witness in the case before a judge threw out his case.

The settlement includes an unusual condition that frees the government from future liability except in one important area: Mayfield is allowed to continue a lawsuit that seeks to overturn parts of the Patriot Act as a violation of the Constitution's protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

Several legal experts said they considered the settlement significant because of both the public apology and the substantial monetary damages.

"You almost never see something like this," said Peter Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project, a legal clinic in New York. "It's extraordinary. But the harm caused him was extraordinary. What I really think it speaks to is just how clearly the U.S. government crossed the line when it went after Mayfield."

Brian Libby contributed reporting from Portland, Oregon.



Global Ecological Holocaust

The United Nations' Nobel Prize-winning panel on climate change approved the final installment of its landmark report on global warming Friday, concluding that even the best efforts at reducing carbon-dioxide levels will not be enough. The world, the report says, also must focus on adapting to "abrupt and irreversible" climate changes.

New and stronger evidence developed in the past year also suggests that many risks cited in the panel's first three reports this year actually will be larger than projected and will occur at lower temperatures, according to a draft of the report.

The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarizes thousands of pages of research produced over six years by delegates from 140 countries and is expected to serve as a "how-to" guide for governments meeting in Bali, Indonesia, beginning Dec. 3 to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire in five years.

The panel and former Vice President Al Gore were awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their global-warming work.

The report — the fourth this year — says governments will have to spend billions of dollars every year to mitigate the effects of increased temperatures, but even that will not be adequate, and many countries simply will have to learn to live with the changes.

Failure to act will leave nearly 1 billion people at risk from water and food shortages, droughts, coastal flooding and severe storms, concluded the delegates, who have been meeting in Valencia, Spain.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 342

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, a move that Bush administration lawyers had argued strongly against.

A judge ordered the White House to keep copies of all e-mails.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy directed the Executive Office of the President to safeguard the material in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether the White House has destroyed e-mails in violation of federal law.

In response, the White House said it has been taking steps to preserve copies of all e-mails and will continue to do so. The administration is seeking dismissal of the lawsuits brought by two private groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive.

The organizations allege the disappearance of 5 million White House e-mails. The court order issued by Kennedy, an appointee of President Clinton, is directed at maintaining backup tapes which contain copies of White House e-mails.

The Federal Records Act details strict standards prohibiting the destruction of government documents including electronic messages, unless first approved by the archivist of the United States.

Justice Department lawyers had urged the courts to accept a proposed White House declaration promising to preserve all backup tapes.

"The judge decided that wasn't enough," said Anne Weismann, an attorney for CREW, which has gone to court over secrecy issues involving the Bush administration and has pursued ethical issues involving Republicans on Capitol Hill.

The judge's order "should stop any future destruction of e-mails, but the White House stopped archiving its e-mail in 2003 and we don't know if some backup tapes for those e-mails were already taped over before we went to court. It's a mystery," said Meredith Fuchs, a lawyer for the National Security Archive.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year.

"We're asking a lot of soldiers these days," said Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources for Army personnel. "They're humans. They have all sorts of issues back home and other places like that. So, I'm sure it has to do with the stress of being a soldier."

The Army defines a deserter as someone who has been absent without leave for longer than 30 days. The soldier is then discharged as a deserter.

According to the Army, about nine in every 1,000 soldiers deserted in fiscal year 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared to nearly seven per 1,000 a year earlier. Overall, 4,698 soldiers deserted this year, compared to 3,301 last year.

The increase comes as the Army continues to bear the brunt of the war demands with many soldiers serving repeated, lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military leaders - including Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey - have acknowledged that the Army has been stretched nearly to the breaking point by the combat. Efforts are under way to increase the size of the Army and Marine

Corps to lessen the burden and give troops more time off between deployments.

"We have been concentrating on this," said Wallace. "The Army can't afford to throw away good people. We have got to work with those individuals and try to help them become good soldiers."

Still, he noted that "the military is not for everybody, not everybody can be a soldier." And those who want to leave the service will find a way to do it, he said.

While the Army does not have an up-to-date profile of deserters, more than 75 percent of them are soldiers in their first term of enlistment. And most are male.

Soldiers can sign on initially for two to six years. Wallace said he did not know whether deserters were more likely to be those who enlisted for a short or long tour.

!!!!!!!!
White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, showed their utter disregard for Congress, the Constitution and the American people when they defied Congressional subpoenas in the United States attorneys scandal. The House Judiciary Committee rightly voted to hold them in contempt, and now the matter goes to the full House.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi should schedule a vote quickly, the House should hold them in contempt and Attorney General Michael Mukasey should ensure that they are punished for their defiance of the nation’s law.

The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten in connection with its investigation of the purge of nine top federal prosecutors and other apparent malfeasance in the Justice Department. Invoking executive privilege, Ms. Miers refused to appear and Mr. Bolten refused to turn over critical documents.

They had no right to refuse. Congress has the legal power to call witnesses to testify, and presidential advisers are not exempt. Conservative lawyers like Bruce Fein agree that the administration’s claims of executive privilege are baseless. If the White House believes specific matters are privileged, it needs to make those limited claims.

Such defiance is not only illegal, it has seriously obstructed Congress’s ability to get to the bottom of the United States attorneys scandal. It now appears that the scandal reaches beyond the nine federal prosecutors who were fired for refusing to allow their offices to be politicized. It seems quite possible that others, including Georgia Thompson, a civil servant in Wisconsin, and Don Siegelman, a former governor of Alabama, were put in prison — and Mr. Siegelman remains there — to help Republicans win elections.

Just as important, by ignoring valid Congressional subpoenas, Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten are dangerously challenging Congress’s power — and the careful system of checks and balances established by the founders.

The Judiciary Committee voted in favor of contempt in July and issued its final report 10 days ago. The full House should vote without further delay. If a majority supports a finding of contempt, as it should, the matter would go to the United States attorney for the District of Columbia. If Mr. Mukasey, the new attorney general, believes in the rule of law, he will see to it that Ms. Miers’s and Mr. Bolten’s cases are presented to a grand jury for criminal prosecution.

The Bush administration’s days are numbered. But the damage it has done to the balance of powers could be long-lasting. If Congress wants to maintain its Constitutional role, it needs to stand up for itself. A good place to start is by making clear that its legitimate investigative authority cannot be defied, and any who choose to do so will pay a heavy price.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 341

Over 35 million Americans faced hunger in 2006: USDA

By Christopher Doering

The U.S. government said the number of Americans who went hungry in 2006 was held in check at 35 million people from the prior year, but food advocacy groups said on Wednesday more needs to be done.

The U.S. Agriculture Department said a total of 12.65 million households were "food insecure," or 10.9 percent of U.S. homes, up from 12.59 million a year ago.

The USDA defines food insecurity - its metric for measuring hunger - as having difficulty acquiring enough food for the household throughout the year.

"It looks very stable from this year to last year," said Mark Nord, who co-authored the annual report for USDA's Economic Research Service.

Overall, 35.52 million people, including 12.63 million children, went hungry compared with 35.13 million in 2005. The survey was conducted in December 2006 and represented 294 million people, an increase of 2.5 million from 2005.

Food advocacy groups said the figures showed the United States was not doing enough to combat hunger, and feared conditions could worsen.

"As costs for food, energy, and housing continue to rise and wages stagnate or decline, households are finding themselves increasingly strapped," said Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center. "This may mean even worse numbers in 2007."

Very low food security was most prevalent in households with children headed by a single woman -- 10.3 percent in 2006, USDA said.

Rendition Victim Appeals Ruling Barring Suit

by William Fisher

NEW YORK - Maher Arar, arguably the world’s best-known victim of “extraordinary rendition”, went back to court last week to reverse a previous ruling barring him from suing the U.S. government for shipping him off to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured for close to a year.

The Syrian-born Canadian citizen was stopped by U.S. authorities at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002, as he returned from a vacation in North Africa en route to his home in Canada. He was detained in solitary confinement for nearly two weeks, interrogated, and denied meaningful access to a lawyer.

The U.S. then flew him to his native Syria against his will.

His detention was based on information provided to the U.S. by Canadian authorities, who alleged he was a terrorist who posed a threat to national security.

Following a year in a Syrian prison, he says he was tortured, forced to sign a coerced “confession”, and then released without charges and returned to Canada. A Canadian government commission spent two years investigating the case, which involved the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

The blue-ribbon body found no evidence that Arar was a terrorist or had any connection to terrorists. The head of the RCMP was forced to resign because of the incident. Arar received an official apology and a multi-million-dollar settlement from the Canadian government earlier this year.

Arar’s lawyer, David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Centre, underlined the importance of the current appeal. He told IPS, “The Canadians, who provided misinformation about Arar but did not acquiesce in sending him to Syria, have conducted a full investigation, written an 1,100-page report, formally apologised, and awarded Mr. Arar 10 million dollars in damages and legal fees. Meanwhile the United States, the far more culpable actor, maintains that it violated no rights, and that Mr. Arar has no remedy.”

Cole is working with the Centre for Constitutional Rights, an advocacy group, in the Arar case.

U.S. officials had confirmed that Arar “was placed on a terrorist lookout list based on information received from Canada”, adding that the decision to remove Arar was made “based on our own assessment of the security threat.” The U.S. declined further comment on the case and refused to cooperate with the Canadian inquiry.

Arar sought vindication through the U.S. court system. In January 2004, he filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against former Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and then-Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, as well as numerous U.S. immigration officials.

Arar asked for a jury trial, compensatory and punitive damages, and a declaration that the actions of the U.S. government were illegal and violated Arar’s constitutional, civil, and international human rights.

WASHINGTON, Illinois (CNN) -- Ty Ziegel peers from beneath his Marine Corps baseball cap, his once boyish face burned beyond recognition by a suicide bomber's attack in Iraq just three days before Christmas 2004.

He lost part of his skull in the blast and part of his brain was damaged. Half of his left arm was amputated and some of the fingers were blown off his right hand.

Ziegel, a 25-year-old Marine sergeant, knew the dangers of war when he was deployed for his second tour in Iraq.

But he didn't expect a new battle when he returned home as a wounded warrior: a fight with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

"Sometimes, you get lost in the system," he told CNN. "I feel like a Social Security number. I don't feel like Tyler Ziegel."

His story is one example of how medical advances in the battlefield have outpaced the home front. Many wounded veterans return home feeling that the VA system, specifically its 62-year-old disability ratings system, has failed them.

"The VA system is not ready, and they simply don't have time to catch up," Tammy Duckworth -- herself a wounded veteran who heads up the Illinois Department of Veteran Affairs -- told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee in March.

VA Acting Secretary Gordon Mansfield said cases like Ziegel's are rare -- that the majority of veterans are moving through the process and "being taken care of." He also said most veterans are fairly compensated.

"Any veteran with the same issue, if it's a medical disability, ... it is going to get the same exact result anywhere in our system," he said.

More than 28,500 troops have been wounded in Operation Iraqi Freedom, including about 8,500 that have needed air transport, according to the U.S. military.

A recent Harvard study found that the cost of caring for those wounded over the course of their lifetime could ultimately cost more than $660 billion.

In Ziegel's case, he spent nearly two years recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas.

Once he got out of the hospital, he was unable to hold a job. He anticipated receiving a monthly VA disability check sufficient to cover his small-town lifestyle in Washington, Illinois.

Instead, he got a check for far less than expected. After pressing for answers, Ziegel finally received a letter from the VA that rated his injuries: 80 percent for facial disfigurement, 60 percent for left arm amputation, a mere 10 percent for head trauma and nothing for his left lobe brain injury, right eye blindness and jaw fracture.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 340

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia — Massive waves split a Russian oil tanker in two during a fierce storm Sunday, spilling at least 560,000 gallons of fuel into a strait leading to the Black Sea. It was the worst environmental disaster in the region in years, and some officials said could take years to clean up.

The 18-foot waves also sank two Russian freighters nearby, in the Strait of Kerch, a narrow strait linking the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov to the northeast. Eight sailors from one freighter were missing, but rescuers saved all the crew members the other vessel.

The two ships together were carrying about 7,150 tons of sulfur, said Sergei Petrov, a spokesman for the regional branch of Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry.

In total, as many as ten ships sank or ran aground in the Strait of Kerch and in the nearby area of the Black Sea, and reports said three other sailors were dead or missing.

The Russian tanker's 13 crew members were rescued, emergency authorities said.

The tanker, the Volganeft-139 — loaded with nearly 1.3 million gallons of fuel oil — was stranded several miles from shore. Stormy weather was preventing emergency workers from collecting the spilled oil which was sinking to the sea bed, authorities said.

"There is serious concern that the spill will continue," Oleg Mitvol, the head of the state environmental safety watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, said on Vesti 24 television. He said it would take "several years" to clean the spill.

Two barges loaded with fuel oil also ran aground in the area but did not leak, Petrov told the AP. A Turkish freighter, Ziya Kos, also ran aground, he said.

Domestic spying inquiry restarted at DoJ

By DEVLIN BARRETT

The Justice Department has reopened a long-dormant inquiry into the government's warrantless wiretapping program, a major policy shift only days into the tenure of Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

The investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility was shut down last year, after the investigators were denied security clearances. Gonzales told Congress that President Bush, not he, denied the clearances.

"We recently received the necessary security clearances and are now able to proceed with our investigation," H. Marshall Jarrett, counsel for the OPR, wrote to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y. A copy of the letter, dated Tuesday, was obtained by The Associated Press.

Hinchey and other Democrats have long sought an investigation into the spying program to see if it complies with the law. Efforts to investigate the program have been rebuffed by the Bush administration.

"I am happily surprised," Hinchey said. "It now seems because we have a new attorney general the situation has changed. Maybe this attorney general understands that his obligation is not to be the private counsel to the president but the chief law enforcement officer for the entire country."

The OPR investigation was begun in February 2006 but was shut down a few months later when the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the security clearances to ask questions about the program. Justice Department officials said Gonzales recommended Bush approve the clearances, but the president said no.

White House officials referred questions to the Justice Department.

The investigation "will focus on whether the DOJ attorneys who were involved complied with their ethical obligations of providing competent legal advice to their client and of adhering to their duty of candor to the court. Because this matter involves a pending inquiry, I can't comment further," Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said in a statement.

U.S. policy on Iraq Shi'ites could aid Iran: report

By David Morgan

The Bush administration's courtship of the biggest Shi'ite party in Iraq could worsen a dangerous rift between rival Shi'ite groups and ultimately give Iran a greater political role, a think tank said on Wednesday.

The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC, a cornerstone of the political alliance behind Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has enjoyed close relations with Washington since the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003, unlike the rival Shi'ite movement led by anti-American cleric Moqtada al Sadr.

But the International Crisis Group urged the United States to adopt a more evenhanded approach to the majority Shi'ite community, saying in a report that Shi'ite rivalries are likely to have more influence on Iraq's future than the sectarian conflict between Shi'ites and Sunnis.

"The U.S. has fully backed (SIIC) in this rivalry. This is a risky gambit," the Belgium-based think tank said.

It warned that U.S. reliance on fighters from SIIC's Badr Organization as a counterweight to Sadr's Mehdi Army militia is "bound to backfire, polarizing the Shi'ite community and creating the foundations for endemic intra-Shi'ite strife."

"While Washington is intent on stabilizing Iraq, for example, (SIIC) is bent on ruling it," the report said.

It described SIIC's rivalry with Sadr as a class struggle between a Shi'ite merchant elite represented by SIIC and the far more numerous Shi'ite urban underclass devoted to Sadr.

SIIC members are believed to make up a sizable segment of Iraq's security forces, and the party holds about one-quarter of the parliament seats occupied by Maliki's ruling Shi'ite Alliance.

But SIIC could not prevail alone in free elections and would face a tough challenge from the Sadr movement even if it sought power at the head of a coalition of political parties, the think tank said.

"SIIC's empowerment through U.S. protection and support may open the door to greater Iranian involvement, especially once U.S. forces begin to withdraw," it said.

"SIIC's control over government security forces is far from complete and is challenged by many. As a result, it may seek even greater Iranian support in its battle for power."

SIIC was founded in Iran in 1982 by Iraqi Shi'ite exiles who returned to Iraq after the 2003 invasion toppled Saddam.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 339

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 — Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, told Congress today that the economy is going to get worse before it gets better, a message that got a chilly reception from both Wall Street and politicians.

On a day when stock prices swung wildly, the dollar hit another new low against the euro and further signs emerged that consumers are growing more cautious about spending, Mr. Bernanke warned that the economy is about to “slow noticeably” as the housing market continues to spiral downward and financial institutions tighten up on lending.

But in a disappointment to investors, Mr. Bernanke offered no signal that the central bank might soften the blow by lowering interest rates for a third time this year at its next policy meeting on Dec. 11.

Stock prices, which had plunged Wednesday, went on a roller-coaster ride after Mr. Bernanke testified. The Dow Jones industrial average first fell 205 points by mid-afternoon, but then clawed back most of the way and ended the day at 13,266.29, down just 33 points.

Testifying before the Joint Economic Committee, the Fed chairman said that the two rate cuts in September and October “should” be enough to keep the economy from slipping into a recession. Without being specific, he reinforced statements by other Fed policymakers that the economy would have to show signs of stalling out entirely before they would reduce rates again.

Asked if he saw any risks of a recession, Mr. Bernanke demurred. “We have not calculated the probability of a recession,” he responded. “Our assessment is for slower growth, but positive.”

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) - Bernard Kerik, a protege of Rudy Giuliani who once led the nation's largest police department, pleaded not guilty Friday to a wide-ranging indictment charging him with "selling his office" and lying to cover up the scheme.

Kerik's case could prove to be an ongoing embarrassment for Giuliani, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president.

The indictment accuses Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, of conspiring while a public official with a mob-connected construction firm to accept tens of thousands of dollars in renovations to his Bronx apartment, and then lying to cover up the scheme. It also claims he made false statements during his failed bid to head the nation's homeland security department.

"This is a battle," Kerik said, fighting through a media crush as he left court. "I'm going to fight."

Kerik surrendered earlier Friday to the FBI in suburban White Plains, where he was fingerprinted and processed before his court appearance.

Standing before the judge, Kerik appeared calm and spoke only to say, "Not guilty, your honor," and answer a few personal questions. He was ordered to surrender his passport and any firearms, and to have no contact with potential witnesses. He was to be released on $500,000 bond, secured by his home in New Jersey.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Six U.S. troops were killed when insurgents ambushed their foot patrol in the high mountains of eastern Afghanistan, officials said Saturday. The attack, the most lethal against American forces this year, made 2007 the deadliest for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

The troops were returning from a meeting with village elders late Friday afternoon in Nuristan province when militants attacked them with rocket propelled grenades and gunfire, Lt. Col. David Accetta told The Associated Press.

"They were attacked from several enemy positions at the same time," said Accetta, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force and the U.S. military. "It was a complex ambush."

The six deaths brings the total number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan this year to at least 101, according to a count by the AP. That makes this year the deadliest for Americans here since the 2001 invasion, a war initially launched to oust Taliban and al-Qaida fighters after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, but one that has evolved into an increasingly bloody counterinsurgency campaign.

The death toll mirrors the situation in Iraq, where U.S. military deaths this month surpassed 850, a record high since the 2003 invasion there.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 338

Study: 1 Out of 4 Homeless Are Veterans

By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday.

And homelessness is not just a problem among middle-age and elderly veterans. Younger veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are trickling into shelters and soup kitchens seeking services, treatment or help with finding a job.

The Veterans Affairs Department has identified 1,500 homeless veterans from the current wars and says 400 of them have participated in its programs specifically targeting homelessness.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness, a public education nonprofit, based the findings of its report on numbers from Veterans Affairs and the Census Bureau. 2005 data estimated that 194,254

homeless people out of 744,313 on any given night were veterans.

In comparison, the VA says that 20 years ago, the estimated number of veterans who were homeless on any given night was 250,000.

Some advocates say the early presence of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan at shelters does not bode well for the future. It took roughly a decade for the lives of Vietnam veterans to unravel to the point that they started showing up among the homeless. Advocates worry that intense and repeated deployments leave newer veterans particularly vulnerable.

"We're going to be having a tsunami of them eventually because the mental health toll from this war is enormous," said Daniel Tooth, director of veterans affairs for Lancaster County, Pa.

While services to homeless veterans have improved in the past 20 years, advocates say more financial resources still are needed. With the spotlight on the plight of Iraq veterans, they hope more will be done to prevent homelessness and provide affordable housing to the younger veterans while there's a window of opportunity.

waterboarding to the extreme max!

HENRI ALLEG: Well, I have described the waterboarding I was submitted to. And no one can say, having passed through it, that this was not torture, especially when he has endured other types of torture -- burning, electricity and beating, and so on. So I am really astonished that this is a big question in the States about this, because the real question is not waterboarding or not waterboarding, it’s the use of torture in such a war, and this use of torture, torture in general.

A man liked General Massu, who was the chief organizer of torture in Algeria and who died about two years ago, asked about three months before his death what he thought of torture and the use of -- the general use of torture in Algeria, said that he regretted it and that the war could have been -- could have gone on without torture. In fact, torture is not the main thing in such a war. The war was against the Algerian people, and every kind of torture used against an Algerian man or woman would only help the Algerians to fight back, and that when a son knew that his father was tortured, he had only one idea, that is, join the fighters who had tortured his father. So, I don’t think this is the good question.

But to answer precisely your question, it is a terrible way of torturing a man, because you’re bringing -- you bring him next to death and then back to life. And sometimes he doesn’t come back to life. So, the use of torture, in my opinion, is a way of making all people fear that if they fight, if they join the fighters against Algeria, they would undergo such a treatment. So it’s the use of terror against the people who fight. It’s not a way of getting whatever information; sometimes they get it, but most of the time it’s useless. So it is not a way of winning a war, even if the people who lead this war say that they have -- it’s an obligation for them to use this method if they want victory at the end of the war. That’s my opinion.

AMY GOODMAN: Henri Alleg, I realize it was, what, about a half a century ago that you were held, interrogated and tortured. But I was wondering, since obviously I think most people, most in the civilian population, even soldiers, are not really familiar with what exactly waterboarding is. It has become almost a kind of catchphrase. Can you explain exactly what happened to you?

HENRI ALLEG: Well, I was put on a plank, on a board, fastened to it and taken to a tap. And my face was covered with a rag. Very quickly, the rag was completely full of water. And, of course, you have the impression of being drowned. And --

AMY GOODMAN: The “tap,” meaning you were put under a water faucet?

HENRI ALLEG: A tap, yes, tap water. So, very quickly, the water ran all over my face. I couldn’t, of course, breathe. And after a few minutes, fighting against the impression of getting drowned, you can’t resist. And you feel as if you were drowning yourself. And this is a terrible impression of coming very near death. And so, when the paratroopers, the torturers, see that you’re drowning, they would stop, let you breathe, and try again. So that impression of getting near to death, every time they helped you to come back to life by breathing, it’s a terrible, terrible impression of torture and of death, being near death. So, that was my impression. But it’s difficult to say that this --

AMY GOODMAN: In the context -- explain the context for us, Henri Alleg, as they held you under the faucet and the water filled your lungs, what did the French military -- what were they demanding of you, and how did you stop it? How did it start again?

HENRI ALLEG: They just wanted me to, first of all, say what I was doing in the moments I was illegal, because I stopped, of course, going to the newspaper, because it was suppressed. So I had to hide, because I knew that I would be taken and sent to a concentration camp. So they wanted to know who were the people I met during that illegal period, what was the people that I had met and what they were doing. That’s what they wanted from me --

AMY GOODMAN: Did you tell them?

HENRI ALLEG: -- is to denounce my friends, and I refused to open my mouth to say a word about that. I wouldn’t betray my friends. They didn’t know much more about me. And that is what they wanted. And I didn’t want to help them in any way that would be possible.

AMY GOODMAN: When the water came into your lungs, how did you remain conscious? How did you resist it?

HENRI ALLEG: Well, they said to me, “When you want to talk, you just move your fingers.” Move your fingers. Of course, I was strapped to a board. And the first time I -- they started that, I didn’t realize even that I was moving desperately my fingers. So I moved my fingers, and they shouted around me, “So he’s going to talk! He’s going to talk!” So they let me breathe. And as soon as I got a little breath again, I denounced it, and I still refused. So they started again. They said, “He’s making a joke out of us.” So they gave me very heavy blows on my chest and on my belly to make the -- get out the water of my lungs and of my body. And they started again afterwards.

And suddenly, as I have explained it -- I think it was the third time -- I just fainted. And I heard them after a while saying, “Oh, he’s coming back. He’s coming back.” They didn’t want me to die at once, and I knew afterwards, a long time afterwards, that many of the people who went under that waterboarding, as you call it, after having had some moments of fainting, some of them would die, drowned, “asphyxier,” as we say in French. It’s completely -- it’s impossible to breathe, so they die, as if they were drowned, and this kind of “accident,” as they call, was very frequent.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you, Henri Alleg, have the sensation of dying?

HENRI ALLEG: Pardon?

AMY GOODMAN: Did you feel the sensation of dying?

HENRI ALLEG: Yes, and that’s a terrible sensation.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you feel?

HENRI ALLEG: Well, You feel that you're going to die. Of course, you don’t want to die, and in the same time you don’t want to accept the conditions that they make around you to let you live. So, finally, at this third time, before I fainted, I was really decided to die and not to answer at any cost.

But once again, I’m really surprised that this is the big question put before the American opinion now and not another question: Is such a war a war that can be accepted with such -- in such conditions and with such tools? Is it a civilized country that can use such things? And is the fact that this way of fighting -- as some military say, it can’t be otherwise -- is it acceptable? I think it is not acceptable, especially that the way to legalize such a way of fighting, some military say, we cannot do otherwise. It has no meaning at all. The people who lead a fight for freedom and liberty, even if some of them accept the conditions of the people who torture them, they help hundreds and thousands of other people to join the fight, because it appears to them as something that cannot be accepted by any man who thinks that his fight is honorable and justified.

AT&T gave feds access to all Web, phone traffic, ex-tech says

The 1986 Stored Communications Act forbids telephone companies and computer-service providers from giving the government records showing who customers had dialed or e-mailed without a warrant or court order. Because the law allows consumers to recover a minimum of $1,000 for each violation, AT&T and a handful of other companies could be on the hook for billions of dollars in civil liability, some experts in telecommunications law have said.

WASHINGTON — His first inkling that something was amiss came in summer 2002, when he opened the door to admit a visitor from the National Security Agency (NSA) to an AT&T office in San Francisco.

"What the heck is the NSA doing here?" Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, said he asked himself.

A year or so later, he stumbled upon documents that, he said, show the agency gained access to massive amounts of e-mail, Web search and other Internet records of more than a dozen global and regional telecom providers. AT&T allowed the agency to hook into its network and, according to Klein, many of the other telecom companies probably knew nothing about it.

Klein will be on Capitol Hill today to share his story in the hope it will persuade Congress not to grant legal immunity to telecommunications firms that helped the government in its warrantless anti-terrorism efforts.

Klein, 62, said he may be the only person in a position to discuss firsthand knowledge of an important aspect of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance. He is retired, so he isn't worried about losing his job. He carried no security clearance, and the documents in his possession were not classified, he said. He has no qualms about "turning in," as he put it, the company where he worked for 22 years until he retired in 2004.

In summer 2002, Klein was working in an office responsible for Internet equipment when an NSA representative arrived to interview a management-level technician for a special, secret job.

The job entailed building a "secret room" in another AT&T office 10 blocks away, he said. By coincidence, in October 2003, Klein was transferred to that office. He asked a technician about the secret room on the sixth floor, and the technician told him it was connected to the Internet room a floor above. The technician handed him wiring diagrams.

"That was my 'aha' moment," Klein said. "They're sending the entire Internet to the secret room."

The diagram showed splitters glass prisms that split signals from each network into two identical copies. One copy fed into the secret room. The other proceeded to its destination, he said.

"This splitter was sweeping up everything, vacuum-cleaner-style," he said. "The NSA is getting everything. These are major pipes that carry not just AT&T's customers but everybody's."

One of Klein's documents listed links to 16 entities, including Global Crossing, a large provider of voice and data services in the United States and abroad; UUNet, a large Internet provider now owned by Verizon; Level 3 Communications, which provides local, long-distance and data transmission in the United States and overseas; and more familiar names, such as Sprint and Qwest. It also included data exchanges MAE-West and PAIX, or Palo Alto Internet Exchange, facilities where telecom carriers hand off Internet traffic to each other.

"I flipped out," he said. "They're copying the whole Internet. There's no selection going on here. Maybe they select out later, but at the point of handoff to the government, they get everything."

Qwest has not been sued because of media reports last year that said the company declined to participate in an NSA program to build a database of domestic phone-call records out of concern that it may have been illegal. What the documents show, Klein said, is that the NSA apparently was collecting several carriers' communications, probably without their consent.