Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 362

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats on Thursday announced an investigation of the Environmental Protection Agency's refusal to let California implement its tailpipe emissions law, the first step in what will likely be a fierce legal and political battle.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., sent a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson demanding "all documents relating to the California waiver request, other than those that are available on the public record."

Waxman told Johnson to have EPA staff preserve all records. The decision against California "appears to have ignored the evidence before the agency and the requirements of the Clean Air Act," Waxman wrote. He asked for all the relevant documents by Jan. 23.

Johnson on Wednesday denied his decision was political, saying it was based on legal analysis of the Clean Air Act. His refusal blocks California and at least 16 other states that wanted to adopt California's law slashing greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks by a third.

President Bush stood by the decision of his EPA administrator.

"The question is how to have an effective strategy. Is it more effective to let each state make a decision as to how to proceed in curbing greenhouse gases or is it more effective to have a national strategy," Bush said at a news conference Thursday.

Johnson said California's emissions limits weren't needed because Congress just passed energy legislation raising fuel economy standards nationwide.
"The director in assessing this law and assessing what would be more effective for the country said we now have a national plan," said Bush. "It's one of the benefits of Congress passing this legislation."






WASHINGTON — The demise of the bridge to nowhere notwithstanding, Sen. Ted Stevens and other Republicans remain the kings of pork-barrel spending, proving that GOP mastery of "earmarks" can withstand public scorn, a president's rebuke and even a Democratic takeover of Congress.

The Senate's two biggest sponsors of this year's pet spending projects are Republicans Stevens of Alaska and Thad Cochran of Mississippi, according to preliminary reviews of fiscal 2008 spending bills by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan group. Two of the House's three biggest claimants of earmarks also are Republicans: Bill Young of Florida and Jerry Lewis of California, the group found.

Their continued success at steering billions of taxpayer dollars to their constituents is all the more impressive — or arguably hypocritical — since President Bush and other prominent Republicans sharpened their criticisms of earmarks after Democrats took over the House and Senate majorities in January.

It underscores the cozy and murky nature of appropriating, in which longtime friendships and mutual back-scratching seem to trump the steely partisanship seen elsewhere in Congress. It also reflects Democrats' calculation that there is political safety in granting the GOP about 40 percent of all earmark spending — the same proportion Democrats enjoyed when they were in the minority — rather than appear vengeful and antagonistic by cutting the Republicans' share more deeply.

"It kind of takes the sting out of their accusations if they are taking 40 percent of the pie," said one House Democratic aide.
Most of all, the continued enthusiasm for earmarks by some of Congress' most senior members proves that voters crave the health clinics, community centers and thousands of other projects that earmarks fund — even if they criticize the practice in the abstract.

Elected officials reflect the public's ambivalence, often denouncing earmarks before enacting them into law. Last month in Indiana, President Bush ridiculed a labor-health-education spending bill, which he vetoed, because it contained "wasteful projects" such as a prison museum, sailing school and "Portuguese as a second language" program. "Congress needs to cut out that pork," Bush said.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 361

BEIJING, Aug. 25 — No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.

China’s industrial growth depends on coal, plentiful but polluting, from coal mines like this one in Shaanxi Province behind a village store.

But just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents.

Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.

Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.

China is choking on its own success. The economy is on a historic run, posting a succession of double-digit growth rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available, and dirtiest, source.

“It is a very awkward situation for the country because our greatest achievement is also our biggest burden,” says Wang Jinnan, one of China’s leading environmental researchers. “There is pressure for change, but many people refuse to accept that we need a new approach so soon.”

China’s problem has become the world’s problem. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides spewed by China’s coal-fired power plants fall as acid rain on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research.






WASHINGTON — The United States lost a years-long battle when Russia delivered nuclear fuel on Monday for an Iranian power plant that is at the center of an international dispute over Iran's nuclear program. Iran, for its part, rejected the idea that the delivery might mean it no longer needed to do its own uranium enrichment to make fuel, citing work on a second power plant.

In announcing that it has delivered the first fuel shipment to the power plant at Bushehr in southern Iran, Russian officials said that the fuel would be under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency while it is in Iran, and that the Iranian government had given guarantees that the fuel would be only be used for the power plant.

The Bush administration, for its part, took pains not to publicly criticize the Russian move, and said that the fuel delivery means Iran should suspend its nuclear enrichment program. “If the Iranians accept that uranium for a civilian nuclear power plant, then there’s no need for them to learn how to enrich,” President Bush told reporters on Monday.

“There is no doubt that Russia and the rest of the world want to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” a White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said. “And today’s announcement provides one more avenue for the Iranians to make a strategic choice to suspend enrichment.”

But Iran said that it needed to enrich uranium for another new nuclear power plant in the south of the country. That announcement came through the Fars news service.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran’s Atomic Organization, said that Iran needs to produce fuel for a second plant under construction. “We are building a 360-megawatt indigenous power plant in Darkhovin,” Mr. Aghazadeh said.





WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House must release its visitor logs and cannot hide behind a shield of privilege, a federal judge ruled Monday. The Bush administration has resisted public disclosure while it fights a lawsuit over alleged political influence by conservative Christian leaders.

The Bush administration has been fighting the release of White House visitor logs.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth concluded the information is part of the public record and is subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act as "agency records."

"Because the Secret Service creates, uses and relies on, and stores visitor records, they are under its control," said Lamberth.
He ordered the Secret Service to produce records within 20 days.

The White House claimed exclusive control of the documents, subject to the complete discretion of the president over their release.

Secret Service records have been an important tool for advocacy groups and members of Congress seeking information on the inner workings of the executive branch.

Congressional investigators used the records a decade ago in their investigations of the various Whitewater scandals involving President Clinton and his associates, as well as allegations of influence peddling by the Clinton campaign in the 1996 elections.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 360

Facing growing criticism of his agenda and tactics, a defiant Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, refused senators’ requests Thursday to delay a vote next week on his plan to loosen restrictions on owning a newspaper and broadcast station in the same city.

Martin endured three hours of aggressive questioning from the Senate Commerce Committee, with members accusing him of rushing to help big media companies at the public’s expense.

“If you move ahead and do it, you’re a braver man than I am,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). She accused Martin of having an “obsession” with changing media ownership rules that was distracting the FCC from the more important issue of guiding the nation’s 2009 transition to digital television.

Amid complaints from within the commission and Capitol Hill about a lack of openness at the FCC, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) called for Congress next year to overhaul the agency’s procedures and alter its deregulatory bent.

“I am becoming increasingly concerned that the FCC appears to be more concerned about making sure the policies they advocate serve the needs of the companies that they regulate and their bottom lines rather than the public interest,” Rockefeller said. “We cannot allow this to happen.”

Martin was grilled about pushing the FCC to vote Tuesday on his plan to ease a 32-year-old restriction on the ownership of a newspaper and broadcast station in the same market. Martin wants to lift the so-called cross-ownership ban in the top 20 U.S. markets and allow such combinations in smaller markets if the FCC determines that they would be in the public interest.

Critics say the FCC chairman is moving too fast and failing to take into account public opposition to the plan. Asked by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) if he would delay the vote, Martin replied, “No.”

The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.

The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.

The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.

The report is the latest to document the growing concentration of income at the top, a trend that President Bush said last January had been under way for more than 25 years.

Earlier reports, based on tax returns, showed that in 2005 the top 10 percent, top 1 percent and fractions of the top 1 percent enjoyed their greatest share of income since 1928 and 1929.

The budget office report takes into account a broader definition of income than tax returns that is known as comprehensive income. It includes untaxed Social Security benefits, welfare, food stamps and part of the value of Medicare benefits, giving a fuller picture of incomes at the bottom than tax data.

Much of the increase at the top reflected the rebound of the stock market after its sharp drop in 2000, economists from across the political spectrum said. About half of the income going to the top 1 percent comes from investments and business.



SOME GOOD NEWS

The number of states refusing federal money for "abstinence-only" sex education programs jumped sharply in the past year as evidence mounted that the approach is ineffective.

At least 14 states have either notified the federal government that they will no longer be requesting the funds or are not expected to apply, forgoing more than $15 million of the $50 million available, officials said. Virginia was the most recent state to opt out.

Two other states -- Ohio and Washington -- have applied but stipulated they would use the money for comprehensive sex education, effectively making themselves ineligible, federal officials said. While Maryland and the District are planning to continue applying for the money, other states are considering withdrawing as well.

Until this year, only four states had passed up the funding.

"We're concerned about this," said Stan Koutstaal of the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the program. "My greatest concern about states dropping out is that these are valuable services and programs. It's the youths in these states who are missing out."

The number of states spurning the money has grown even as Congress considers boosting overall funding for abstinence-only education to $204 million, with most of it going directly to community organizations.

The trend has triggered intense lobbying of state legislators and governors around the country. Supporters of the programs are scrambling to reverse the decisions, while opponents are pressuring more states to join the trend.

"This wave of states rejecting the money is a bellwether," said William Smith of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, a Washington-based advocacy and education group that opposes abstinence-only programs. "It's a canary in the coal mine of what's to come."

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 359

Washington - American officials have detained thousands of insurgents in the months since the surge of forces began this spring, in an effort that most agree has improved security in Iraq. But now the commander of the American detention facilities in Iraq is wondering aloud if holding all those detainees is breeding a "micro-insurgency" and asking whether it's time to begin releasing thousands of people.

The two main detention facilities operated by the US military in Iraq, at Camp Bucca near Basra and Camp Cropper in Baghdad, have swollen to hold nearly 30,000 detainees. That's not the 40,000 individuals Army Gen. David Petraeus allotted for when American forces began to implement the Baghdad security plan this spring. But it may be too many, says Marine Maj. Gen. Doug Stone, who oversees detainees for the US-led force.

Holding thousands of "moderate detainees," marked by green jumpsuits at Camp Bucca, runs counter to the notion of winning over a population in a classic counterinsurgency, he says. General Stone believes many of these Iraqi insurgents were never motivated by anything more than money and most only desire to live peacefully. Many can be safely released back to society, back to their families and in their neighborhoods without straining security or their communities, he says.

Stone believes that there should be debate about how many detainees US forces continue to hold and how many should now be freed.

"I am of the strong viewpoint that there is [now] enough confidence in the process that I'm a champion for releasing those for whom the process has worked and who are essentially a reduced security threat to the coalition," says Stone in a phone interview from Camp Bucca.




MORE TRANSPARENCY

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer Wed Dec 19, 5:13 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The former chief executive officer of Fannie Mae says the Bush administration helped orchestrate an accounting scandal that cost him his job and that he wants to use White House documents to defend himself in a shareholder lawsuit.

Franklin Raines, who served as President Clinton's budget director, argues in court documents that the Bush administration felt the government-chartered agency wielded too much power in the mortgage industry. His attorneys say the White House pushed regulators to weaken Fannie Mae and triggered a $6 billion accounting scandal.

Raines subpoenaed the White House for documents in July. Justice Department lawyers will go before a federal judge Thursday to fight it.

Relying primarily on articles by financial journalists and the testimony of industry analysts, Raines describes in court documents an unofficial task force dubbed "Noriega" that was formed to weaken Fannie Mae and drive down its stock price.

Fannie Mae is the largest U.S. buyer and backer of home loans. It was created by Congress but is publicly traded. Raines says the Bush administration wanted to undermine confidence in the agency so it could push for tighter government controls.

Raines names as task force members Assistant Treasury Secretary Wayne Abernathy; presidential economic adviser Keith Hennessey; Kevin Warsh, a special assistant to President Bush for economic policy; Jeffrey Kupfer, who served in 2003 as special assistant to Bush's chief of staff; Associate White House Counsel Reginald J. Brown; and Stephen S. McMillin, an official in the president's budget office.

He accuses the task force of influencing an investigation by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Raines is also seeing documents related to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

Chemical Contamination in Our Bodies

Toxic chemicals from everyday products contaminate the bodies of every person in this country. Shower curtains, water bottles, baby bottles, toys, shampoo, cosmetics, couch cushions, computers, and hundreds of other common products that ordinary people use every day contain toxic chemical ingredients that leach out of the products and into our bodies.

Thirty-five Americans from seven states participated in a national biomonitoringproject in the spring of 2007. This is the broadest non-governmental project of its kind to measure toxic chemicals in the bodies of average Americans.

Each participant was tested for contamination by twenty toxic chemicals from three chemical families: phthalates (THA-lates), bisphenol A, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs).

The project found toxic chemicals in every person tested.

• All 35 participants had at least 7 of the 20 chemicals in their bodies.
• All 33 participants who contributed urine samples had phthalates in their bodies.
• All 33 participants who contributed urine samples had bisphenol A in their urine.
• All 35 participants had six types of PBDEs in their bodies, and all but one had decaBDE.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 358

State accuses Blue Shield of illegal cancellations

By Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 13, 2007

California's top insurance regulator has accused Blue Shield, one of the state's largest health plans, of 1,262 violations of claims-handling laws and regulations that resulted in more than 200 people losing their medical coverage.

Calling the allegations "serious violations that completely undermine the public's trust in our healthcare delivery system and are potentially devastating to patients," Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner said he would announce today that he would seek a $12.6-million fine.

Blue Shield called the charges "grossly unfair" and vowed to vigorously contest them and the proposed fine.

In a statement issued to The Times on Wednesday, Duncan Ross, president of Blue Shield of California Life & Health Insurance Co., said "we are outraged by the excessive penalties for nonsubstantive issues," and called the actions "a radical departure from the [Department of Insurance's] widely accepted and long-standing interpretation of the law."

"The department's position penalizes practices that have previously been approved by the department and have been followed for years by all health insurers," Ross said.

The company has long maintained that its cancellation practices follow the law and are an important guard against insurance fraud. In any event, the company has said, only a small portion of its policies are affected.

The enforcement action is based on an investigation of Blue Shield of California Life & Health, which covers about 167,000 people in individual and group policies licensed by the Department of Insurance.

The action does not include another Blue Shield unit that has about 2.3 million members in health maintenance organizations overseen by the Department of Managed Health Care. The state's HMO regulator is conducting a separate investigation of the company's cancellation practices that is expected to be completed early next year.

CIA failed to fully inform Congress on tapes, director says

By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 13, 2007

WASHINGTON -- CIA Director Michael V. Hayden acknowledged Wednesday that the agency failed to keep key congressional committees adequately informed of the CIA's decision to destroy videotapes of secret interrogations.

"I think that it's fair to say that, particularly at the time of the destruction, we could have done an awful lot better in keeping the committee alerted and informed as to that activity," Hayden said in brief remarks after a three-hour meeting with the House Intelligence Committee on the tapes controversy.

Hayden's comment appeared to be a retreat from his initial statement on the matter last week, when he told the CIA's workforce in a written memo that congressional oversight committees had known of the agency's intention to dispose of the tapes and were notified after they were destroyed.

Hayden's acknowledgment comes at a time when the director has been on a public relations campaign touting the agency's commitment to congressional oversight as part of an effort to build public trust in the CIA's handling of its activities in the war on terrorism.

The leaders of the House Intelligence Committee chastised the CIA for failing to keep the panel informed on a series of issues, including the creation and subsequent destruction of videotapes showing agency operatives using harsh interrogation techniques on Al Qaeda operatives.

"There is a tremendous amount of frustration," said Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), the committee chairman. "We feel, on a bipartisan level, that our committee was not informed, has not been kept informed, and we are very frustrated about that issue."



EMPIRE
Rupert Murdoch won his long-coveted prize Thursday when shareholders of Dow Jones & Company gave their blessing to a takeover by Mr. Murdoch’s global media empire, the News Corporation.

The vote gives Mr. Murdoch control over The Wall Street Journal, one of the world’s most respected newspapers. It was also the last act of ownership by the Bancroft family, a deeply private group that had held a controlling stake in Dow Jones for 105 years.

A few hours after the vote, Mr. Murdoch appeared in The Journal’s offices in Lower Manhattan to assure Dow Jones employees that while they might be nervous about the change, his aim was to make The Journal better and more competitive. Standing in the main newsroom, he told hundreds of employees — some listening in by phone — that he understood “the very high bar you’ve set for yourselves.” He added, “If anything, you’ll find we set a higher bar.”

The legal and operational handoff from one company to the other was already taking place by midday. Several high-level Dow Jones executives, including the publisher, L. Gordon Crovitz, were told to vacate their offices by day’s end, and in some cases their successors are expected to be in place Friday morning, according to Dow Jones officials who were briefed on the matter.

Mr. Murdoch was accompanied in the newsroom by two of those successors: Robert J. Thomson, editor of The Times of London, is the new publisher of The Journal, and Les Hinton, executive chairman of the British papers of the News Corporation, will head all of Dow Jones as it is integrated into its new parent.

“While it’s right to be respectful of the past, these days it’s certainly fatal to be haunted by history,” Mr. Thomson said. “He who stands still will be overrun.”

The newsroom’s leader, Marcus W. Brauchli, managing editor of The Journal, is staying on. He did not speak and was not acknowledged by Mr. Murdoch.

ACTUAL F****** QUOTE

THE PRESIDENT: That's good. I'm going to tell you something -- we have fabulous health care in America, just so you know. I think it's very important -- before people start griping about the health care system here -- and of course there's always grounds for complaint -- just to compare it with other systems around the world. And one of the reasons our system is expensive is because some of the new technologies that are coming online, they happen to be saving lives. And can we become more efficient deliverers of health care? You bet. Are there things we can do? Absolutely. But whatever we do, we don't want to undermine the fact that we've got great health care. I'm very proud of our docs, nurses, researchers. There's some just fabulous research going on in our country. To me that's in our national interest that we spend money on medical research, so that we can stay on the leading edge of change.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 357

Senate to consider contempt for Karl Rove, Josh Bolten

By LAURIE KELLMAN
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee voted for a contempt citation against presidential confidants Karl Rove and Josh Bolten on Thursday, the latest move in an inquiry into possibly politically motivated firings of federal prosecutors.

The 12-7 vote sent the citation against the two to the full Senate, but it was not certain to advance further.

Rove, the architect of President Bush's two campaigns for the White House, and Bolten, the president's chief of staff, have refused to comply with subpoenas demanding testimony and documents in the congressional probe.

Rove, who recently left government, and Bolten claim the information Congress demands is off-limits under executive privilege. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate dispute that.

The Senate Judiciary Committee vote means that contempt citations against Bush administration officials await floor action in both chambers of Congress.

It's not clear they will advance any further.

Even if the citations receive floor votes, the issue likely would land in federal courts in a drawn-out constitutional showdown over what White House information should be made available for congressional oversight.

Any court proceedings would almost certainly survive the Bush administration.

"They should be fully aware of the futility of pressing ahead on this," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "It has long been understood that, in circumstances like these, that the constitutional prerogatives of the president would make it a futile and purely political act for Congress to refer contempt citations to U.S. attorneys."

Lawmakers of both parties say Congress shouldn't threaten to cite someone with contempt and not follow through.

"I vote for the contempt citations knowing that it's highly likely to be a meaningless act," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said. "In this context we have no alternative."

Specter and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, joined 10 Democrats to report the citation to the full Senate. All seven no votes came from Republicans.

The House's contempt citations name Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, who also refused to testify. Leaders of that chamber had planned a floor vote since September and say it's still possible.

Congress is expected to adjourn next week until January.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate on Friday approved a $286 billion farm bill with an election-year expansion of subsidies for growers and food stamps for the poor.

The bill, passed on a 79-14 vote, expands subsidies for wheat, barley, oat, soybeans and several other crops and creates new grants for vegetable and fruit growers.

It also increases loan rates for sugar producers, extends dairy programs and provides more dollars for renewable energy and conservation programs to protect environmentally sensitive farmland over the next five years.

President Bush has threatened to veto the legislation, saying it costs too much and should instead be cutting subsidies at a time of record-high crop prices. He also has threatened to veto a House version passed in July.

White House opposition and criticism from fiscal conservatives has so far had little impact on the politically popular bill.

Farm-state senators deflected several attempts to derail the bill and reduce government payments to large growers. Still, even some from farm country acknowledged the bill doesn't do enough to trim
the government's massive subsidy programs.

Senate Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, had hoped to take significant steps to reduce subsidies but was blocked by Southern lawmakers on the committee who favor current law.

Southern crops such as rice and cotton are more expensive to produce than corn, wheat and most other crops grown around the country.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, called the bill a "good beginning," though he said it wasn't everything that Harkin would have liked.

"We also had to deal with some of the realities of our different states," Conrad said.

Harkin called it a good bill after it passed.

"We can take it home," he said.

While the House and Senate bills are similar, significant differences will have to be worked out after Congress reconvenes in January.

One of them is the creation of new $5 billion fund for weather-related agricultural disasters in the Senate version that was added by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat who is up for re-election next year.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minnesota, has supported the idea of such a fund but ultimately decided that other programs were more important in the House bill.

Both bills attempt to limit subsidies somewhat. The Senate legislation would eventually ban payments to "nonfarmers" whose income averages more than $750,000 a year. The bill defines farmers as those who earn more than two-thirds of their income from agriculture. There would be no new income-based limits on what a farmer could collect, though the bill would ban some farmers from collecting payments for multiple farm businesses.





SACRAMENTO -- Up to 33,000 prisoners in California may be entitled to release earlier than scheduled because the state has miscalculated their sentences, corrections officials said Wednesday.

For nearly two years, the overburdened state prison agency has failed to recalculate the sentences of those inmates despite a series of court rulings, including one by the California Supreme Court. The judges said the state applied the wrong formula when crediting certain inmates for good behavior behind bars.

Some inmates released in recent months almost certainly stayed longer in prison than they should have, said corrections officials, employees and advocates for prisoners. Some currently in prison most likely should be free, they said. But many whose sentences are too long are not scheduled to be released for months or years.

The inmates in question -- 19% of the state prison population -- are serving consecutive sentences for violent and nonviolent offenses. The sentencing errors range from a few days to several years.

Corrections officials say they have been unable to calculate the sentences properly because of staffing shortages and outdated computer systems that force analysts to do the complex work by hand.

Keeping prisoners institutionalized for too long wastes millions of dollars a year. A preliminary analysis of the problem in August by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation concluded that the longer sentences boost the state's already swollen prison population by 600 inmates a day, at a cost of nearly $26 million annually.

The state has about 173,000 prisoners and has undertaken the addition of 53,000 more beds because of overcrowding -- a situation that has helped erode the state's shaky finances.

"This is another function of the overcrowding crisis," said Don Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, a Bay Area group that represents inmates in court. "They have to handle the number of prisoners who are in the system. They can't meet their medical or mental health needs. Now it appears that there is some reason to believe that they can't even calculate their release dates correctly."

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 356

BAGHDAD -- Three car bombs exploded in quick succession in Amarah on Wednesday, killing at least 41 people and injuring 128 in what has been a relatively calm Shiite Muslim city, police and hospital officials said.

The blasts ripped through the main market of the southern Iraqi city, where British forces in April turned over full responsibility for security to the provincial government. Within days, Britain is expected to hand over responsibility for neighboring Basra, the last province under its control, raising the specter of escalating bloodshed throughout oil-rich southern Iraq.

The blasts, which occurred within a 15-minute period, blew out shop doors and shattered windows. Shoes, clothing and torn body parts lay amid the blood.

It was the deadliest attack since August in Iraq, where U.S. officials have reported a 60% decline in violent incidents since they completed a 28,500-troop buildup in June. In recent days, there has been a spate of bombing attacks across the country that have caused double-digit casualties.

Major bombings have been rare in the overwhelmingly Shiite south, which has been spared the worst of the sectarian clashes that have beset Baghdad and other parts of the country.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but synchronized bombings are a hallmark of the Sunni insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq. U.S. commanders recently warned that Sunni extremists forced out of Baghdad and surrounding areas were moving elsewhere and could strike where security was less robust.

Violence also flares periodically between rival Shiite militias vying for political influence and control of the oil wealth in the region. Two southern governors were assassinated in August and a number of senior security officials have been slain, including Babil province's popular police chief, who died in a roadside bombing Sunday.

The explosives-rigged cars in the latest attack were parked in a lot opposite the main market in Amarah, the capital of Maysan province, a stretch of marshland and desert bordering Iran.

The blasts reverberated across the city, said Mohammed Alaq, a barber who came running to look for his mother. She left home in the morning to go shopping and had not been heard from since.

LEESBURG, Florida (CNN) -- Samuel Snow thought when he got a check from the Pentagon that the Army was finally ready to give him the apology and the compensation he'd been denied for 63 years. He was wrong.

The Army imprisoned Snow in 1944 for a crime he says he couldn't have committed. The military overturned his conviction this year and sent him his back pay for the 15 months he spent in prison: $725.

Snow is one of just two defendants still alive from one of the biggest military trials of World War II.

Twenty-eight black soldiers were sent to prison after an Italian prisoner of war, Guglielmo Olivotto, was found hanged to death following a night of brawling at Fort Lawton in Seattle, Washington.

At a time when the military forces were segregated, 41 black soldiers were tried in one large group and were provided two attorneys to defend them all.

According to the Army, 28 of the soldiers were convicted of rioting, including Pvt. Samuel Snow, who spent 15 months behind bars.

Two of those soldiers also were convicted of manslaughter in the death of the POW and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Thirteen of the men were acquitted.

After being released from prison, Snow returned to the segregated South. He arrived home with a criminal record, a bad conduct discharge and no benefits such as those provided by the GI Bill of Rights. He became a janitor.

In October, the Army Board for Corrections of Military Records determined the defendants were denied a fair trial. The board said the prosecutor refused to give defense attorneys access to confidential evidence.

BAGHDAD - A series of attacks on Iraqi police and volunteer patrols killed at least seven people in Baghdad and neighboring provinces on Saturday, including Diyala, where clashes erupted in villages ringing the provincial capital, officials said.

The U.S. military also announced the death of an American soldier shot Friday in northern Ninevah province.

Early Saturday in eastern Baghdad, a pair of synchronized roadside bombs targeted a passing police patrol, killing two civilians. The second bomb detonated about two minutes after the first, hitting bystanders who had gathered at the site, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details of the attack.

In the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Azamiyah, a member of a U.S.-backed volunteer patrol was killed by an explosives-rigged bag he received from a stranger who claimed to have found it in the street, according to Iraqi army Col. Riadh al-Samaraie. The explosion wounded a second security volunteer, al-Samaraie said.

Sunnis have been turning against al-Qaida in significant numbers and signing up for the volunteer security forces — partly in disgust at the militant group's brutal tactics, and partly to seek American protection against what they see as government-backed Shiite militias. American officials say the volunteers now number about 72,000 nationwide, and as their numbers grow, they are increasingly targeted.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 355

Fed Lowers Rates, Wall Street Tumbles
Tuesday December 11, 4:43 pm ET
By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer Fed Drops Key Rate for Third Time This Year; a Disappointed Wall Street Tumbles WASHINGTON

(AP) The Federal Reserve dropped its most important interest rate to a nearly two-year low on Tuesday and left the door open to additional cuts to prevent a housing and credit meltdown from pushing the economy into a recession.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and all but one of his colleagues agreed to trim the federal funds rate by one-quarter percentage point to 4.25 percent.

The rate reduction, the third this year, was needed to energize national economic growth, Fed officials said. The deepening housing slump is affecting the behavior of consumers and businesses alike, the Fed said.

"Economic growth is slowing, reflecting the intensification of the housing correction and some softening in business and consumer spending. Moreover, strains in financial markets have increased in recent weeks," the Fed said in a statement explaining its decision to cut rates again. The three rate cuts ordered thus far "should help promote moderate growth over time," the Fed added.

On Wall Street, stocks tumbled, reflecting disappointment among some investors who were hoping for a larger rate cut. The Dow Jones industrial plunged more than 200 points.

The funds rate affects many other interest rates charged to individuals and businesses and is the Fed's most potent tool for influencing economic activity.

In response, commercial banks, including Wachovia and Wells Fargo, lowered their prime lending rate by a corresponding amount, to 7.25 percent. The prime rate applies to certain credit cards, home equity lines of credit and other loans.



MORE SKEPTICISM

WASHINGTON (Dec. 11) - An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.

Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.

"The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.

This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."

So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models?

"The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming," said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. "Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines."



FUN IN THE SUN

AMARA, Iraq (AFP) - Four car bombs killed at least 33 people in Iraq on Wednesday, including 28 in the southern city of Amara, as Baghdad said it would retake control of Basra province from British forces on Sunday.

Triple car bombs in Amara killed at least 28 people and wounded another 151, 10 of them children, said Zamil Shia'a al-Oreibi, director general of Amara health department.

Amara police Lieutenant Ali Kadhim Hassan said the bombs exploded within minutes of each other, the first going off at 10:30 am (0730 GMT).

Hundreds of relatives rushed to hospitals to seek loved ones as Amara police announced a 24-hour curfew, an AFP correspondent reported.

"The security personnel must carefully check all the cars in the city, especially those entering the city," said Ali Hussein, 35, whose 11-year-old brother was wounded in the attack.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called the bombings a "desperate act aimed at shaking the security and stability in Maysan which had suffered under the former regime." Amara is the capital of Maysan province.

US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the attacks were by a "determined enemy" that "does not want the Iraqi people to live in security and freedom."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "Clearly violence in Iraq is something that has gone down significantly but is still a major problem."

She said Commander of US forces in Iraq General David Petraeus and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said that the security gains made were "quite significant."

"We in no way are out of the woods yet and we have got, still got a lot of work to do," Perino added.

British troops transferred security control of Maysan province to Iraqi forces in April but the region has seen intense Shiite infighting and battles between militias and Iraqi police.

British soldiers pulled out of Amara in August 2006 and the city of 350,000 residents immediately saw gangs of looters move in and strip the barracks bare.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 354

KIRKUK, Iraq — Even by the skewed standards of a country where millions are homeless or in exile, the squalor of the Kirkuk soccer stadium is a startling sight.

On the outskirts of a city adjoining some of Iraq’s most lucrative oil reserves, a rivulet of urine flows past the entrance to the barren playing field.

There are no spectators, only 2,200 Kurdish squatters who have converted the sporting dugouts, stands and parking lot into a refugee city of cinder-block hovels covered in Kurdish political graffiti, some for President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

These homeless Kurds are here not for soccer but for politics. They are reluctant players in a future referendum to decide whether oil-rich Tamim Province in the north and its capital, Kirkuk, will become part of the semiautonomous Kurdish regional government or remain under administration by Baghdad.

Under the Iraqi Constitution the referendum is due before Dec. 31. But in a nation with a famously slow political clock, one of the few things on which Kirkuk’s Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen communities agree is that yet another political deadline is about to be missed.

This unstable city can ill afford much more delay and uncertainty. The fusion of oil, politics and ethnic tensions make Kirkuk one of the most potentially explosive places in the country, and its fate is seen as a crucial issue by all sides in the debate about whether Iraq will eventually be partitioned among Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs.

What rankles the stadium’s impoverished Kurds most is that while they remain in a foul-smelling limbo, on the other side of town some of the Arabs who were forcibly moved here by Saddam Hussein still live in comfortable suburbs, a legacy of the dictator’s notorious 1980s Anfal campaign to depopulate Kurdish areas and “Arabize” Tamim.

FREEDOM ISN'T FREE

By BRIAN ROSS, MADDY SAUER & JUSTIN ROOD
Dec. 10, 2007

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

"It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."

Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.

"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer.

Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container.

According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally."

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.




THINGS ARE SO MUCH BETTER IN IRAQ
BAGHDAD -- Seven inmates were killed Monday when mortar shells slammed into an Interior Ministry jail here, Iraqi security officials said. A few miles south, fire broke out at one of Iraq's main oil refineries, a possible case of sabotage.

There were conflicting reports about the cause of the blaze, but police said a Katyusha rocket hit a gas tanker.

More than 450 attacks have been carried out against Iraq's oil installations or industry employees since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, said analysts who monitor security issues related to energy. Attacks occurred Friday and Saturday in the northern oil hub of Baiji.

Police, meanwhile, announced the arrest of four suspects in the weekend assassination of a popular police chief in the southern province of Babil.

Maj. Gen. Qais Hamza Mamouri and two bodyguards were killed Sunday in Hillah, capital of the predominantly Shiite Muslim province, after a bomb hit his convoy. The suspects, police said, were found to have significant traces of explosives on their bodies.

In the northern city of Kirkuk on Monday, a police colonel and two officers were killed when gunmen opened fire on their convoy. In Baghdad, the manager of the Rashad mental and psychiatric hospital was gunned down while driving home.

The violence was the latest reminder of the dangers Iraqis continue to face, despite significant security improvements throughout the country in recent months.

As the nation on Monday observed Human Rights Day, an annual international event, some Iraqis said they felt only slightly better off than when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq.

Key concerns include the treatment of detainees, growing violence against women and the fear of speaking out openly on political matters for fear of sectarian retaliation -- issues that underscore the unfulfilled goal of the invasion: bringing Iraq greater freedoms.

"Before 2003, there were [human rights] violations, but not like the violations we are seeing today," said Omar Jabouri, human rights advisor to Vice President Tariq Hashimi, who has been an outspoken critic of the treatment of detainees since the start of the war.

Jabouri said about 32,000 people were being held by Iraqi security forces. The number being held by U.S.-led coalition forces is 25,500, according to the U.S. military

U.S. military officials say they have gone to great lengths to eliminate abuses at their detention facilities in Iraq.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 353

HOOVER SAYS ECONOMY OKAY.

The nationwide housing slump and collapsed mortgage markets have taken yet another toll on Washington Mutual — specifically, on its employees and shareholders.

The Seattle-based thrift, one of the nation's largest home lenders, said Monday it will:

• Cut 3,150 jobs, mostly in its struggling home loans business;

• Shutter nearly two-thirds of its home-loan stores;

• Close its 5-year-old mortgage-backed securities brokerage;

• Slash its quarterly dividend to 15 cents per share, from 56 cents.

The company also said it would sell $2.5 billion worth of convertible preferred stock. That, along with the dividend cut and the other closures and reductions, should give WaMu $3.7 billion more in capital to work with as it tries to ride out the nation's worst financial crisis since the savings-and-loan debacle of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Employee reaction

Rumors and tension filled WaMu's home loan offices on Monday afternoon, with employees anxiously waiting to hear whether their jobs were safe. Workers said they did not see the cuts coming, despite a downturn in the mortgage market and WaMu's loan woes.

"We had no clue this was coming," said one Seattle-area loan consultant who has worked at WaMu for five years. "The market's slow, but that just means you call old clients and things like that."

He said he expects to stay in lending, even if his job at WaMu is cut, and he tries not to worry about it too much. "You can't be too concerned or you'll give yourself a heart attack," he said.

Iraq calmer, but more divided

By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 10, 2007

BAGHDAD -- The U.S. troop buildup in Iraq was meant to freeze the country's civil war so political leaders could rebuild their fractured nation. Ten months later, the country's bloodshed has dropped, but the military strategy has failed to reverse Iraq's disintegration into areas dominated by militias, tribes and parties, with a weak central government struggling to assert its influence.

In the south, Shiite Muslim militias are at war over the lucrative oil resources in the Basra region. To the west, in Anbar province, Sunni Arab tribes that once fought U.S. forces now help police the streets and control the highways to Jordan and Syria. In the north, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens are locked in a battle for the regions around Kirkuk and Mosul. In Baghdad, blast walls partition neighborhoods policed by Sunni paramilitary groups and Shiite militias.

"Iraq is moving in the direction of a failed state, a highly decentralized situation -- totally unplanned, of course -- with competing centers of power run by warlords and militias," said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group. "The central government has no political control whatsoever beyond Baghdad, maybe not even beyond the Green Zone."

The capital's Green Zone mirrors the chaos outside. Once the base of Saddam Hussein's dictatorial regime, it is now the seat of Iraq's fractured and dysfunctional representative government. The U.S. troop buildup was intended to help Iraq's national leaders overcome differences and give them space to pass compromise measures to end the country's sectarian war, but lawmakers remain divided and continue to harbor suspicions about each other's motives.

In the summer, the country's Sunni Arab minority quit the coalition government, leaving Shiites and Kurds with a razor-thin majority in parliament. They appear unable to push forward any solution to the country's problems, whether a national oil law, a review of Iraq's new constitution or legislation defining the powers of provincial councils. All efforts to define relations between Baghdad and outlying regions are stalled.

"The absence of government in a lot of areas has allowed others to move in, whether militias or others," said an American diplomat, who like others, spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.S. soldiers shoot 4 Iraqi civilians, one killed

Tue Dec 4, 3:56 AM ET

U.S. soldiers mistakenly shot four Iraqi civilians, killing one, during operations against al Qaeda militants, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

U.S. soldiers had detained a suspected al Qaeda fighter in Tarmiya, 30 km (20 miles) north of Baghdad, on Monday when they were approached by a car that did not obey an order to stop.

The car continued moving towards the soldiers despite two sets of warning shots. U.S. soldiers then fired on the car, hitting the four people inside. One of the passengers died while being taken to a military hospital for treatment.

"We regret when Iraqis are hurt or killed while coalition forces work diligently to rid this country of terrorist networks that threaten the security of Iraq and our forces," U.S. military spokesman Major Anton Alston said in a statement.

U.S. troops killed five Iraqi civilians, including a child, in two similar shootings last week, the military has said.

Iraqis have often been angered by what they describe as the heavy-handed use of force by U.S. troops since the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, especially in air strikes and by troops traveling in convoys of Humvee military vehicles.

RAPE

SEOUL, South Korea (Dec. 7) - A crane-carrying vessel collided with an oil tanker off of South Korea's west coast on Friday, causing more than 66,000 barrels of crude oil to spill in what was believed to be South Korea's largest offshore oil leak, officials said.

Officials at the Maritime and Fisheries Ministry, citing Coast Guard reports, initially said about 110,000 barrels had leaked from the Hong Kong-registered tanker. But the Coast Guard later said additional information indicated the amount was significantly lower - about 66,043 barrels.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 352

Scientists beg for climate action

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science WriterWed Dec 5, 6:47 PM ET

For the first time, more than 200 of the world's leading climate scientists, losing their patience, urged government leaders to take radical action to slow global warming because "there is no time to lose."

A petition from at least 215 climate scientists calls for the world to cut in half greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It is directed at a conference of diplomats meeting in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate the next global warming treaty. The petition, obtained by The Associated Press, is to be announced at a press conference there Wednesday night.

The appeal from scientists follows a petition last week from more than 150 global business leaders also demanding the 50 percent cut in greenhouse gases. That is the estimate that scientists calculate would hold future global warming to a little more than a 3-degree Fahrenheit increase and is in line with what the European Union has adopted.

In the past, many of these scientists have avoided calls for action, leaving that to environmental advocacy groups. That dispassionate stance was taken during the release this year of four separate reports by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But no more.

"It's a grave crisis, and we need to do something real fast," said petition signer Jeff Severinghaus, a geosciences professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. "I think the stakes are way way too high to be playing around."

The unprecedented petition includes scientists from more than 25 countries and shows that "the climate science community is essentially fed up," said signer Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in Canada. It includes many co-authors of the intergovernmental climate change panel reports, directors of major American and European climate science research institutions, a Nobel winner for atmospheric chemistry and a winner of a MacArthur "genius" award.

"A lot of us scientists think the problem needs a lot more serious attention than it's getting and the remedies have to be a lot more radical," said Richard Seager, a scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The organizers of the petition — two Australians, two Germans and an American — would not comment about their efforts before their 11 p.m. EST press conference. But several scientists who signed on talked of losing patience.

"Action needs to be taken and needs to be taken now," said Marika Holland, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who signed on. "The longer we wait, the worse it's going to become."

Negotiators in Bali are working on the initial groundwork for a treaty that would take effect after 2012, the expiration date of the Kyoto Protocol, a climate treat the United States didn't sign. However, no on expects concrete results at the closed-door sessions.

NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, who signed the petition, said "the time for half-measures and the time for voluntary agreements and the time for arguing about 1 percent here and 1 percent there — those things are no longer relevant."

Schmidt noted while scientists have been dismissed by some as unrealistic, the call for a 50 percent emissions cut by business leaders "helps give credence to the idea that it's achievable."

Policy analysts, who weren't part of either petition, split on how meaningful the two petitions are.

What's happening is people are agreeing "that the cost of inaction is on the high side and the cost of action is affordable," said Joseph Romm, a policy analyst at the liberal think-tank Center for American Progress, energy business consultant and trained physicist.

But Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute said "scientists are in no position to intelligently guide public policy on climate change." Scientists can lay out scenarios, but it is up to economists to weigh the costs and benefits and many of them say the costs of cutting emissions are higher than the benefits, he said.

Granger Morgan, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, said he sees "a growing realization among a wide variety of players that we've got to stop talking about this and start some action." But, he added, "I'm not going to hold my breath that we're going to get anything."

Cholera crisis hits Baghdad

Iraqi capital fears an epidemic if stricken sewerage system collapses as the rainy season arrives

David Smith
Sunday December 2, 2007

Baghdad is facing a 'catastrophe' with cases of cholera rising sharply in the past three weeks to more than 100, strengthening fears that poor sanitation and the imminent rainy season could create an epidemic.

The disease - spread by bacteria in contaminated water, which can result in rapid dehydration and death - threatens to blunt growing optimism in the Iraqi capital after a recent downturn in violence. Two boys in an orphanage have died and six other children were diagnosed with the disease, according to the Iraqi government. 'We have a catastrophe in Baghdad,' an official said.

The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) said 101 cases had been recorded in the city, making up 79 per cent of all new cases in Iraq. It added that no single source for the upsurge had been identified, but the main Shia enclave of Sadr City was among the areas hardest hit.

As Iraq's rainy season nears, its ageing water pipes and sewerage systems, many damaged or destroyed by more than four years of war, pose a new threat to a population weary of crisis. Claire Hajaj, a spokeswoman for Unicef, said: 'Iraq's water and sanitation networks are in a critical condition. Pollution of waterways by raw sewage is perhaps the greatest environmental and public health hazard facing Iraqis - particularly children. Waterborne diarrhoea diseases kill and sicken more Iraqi children than anything except pneumonia. We estimate that only one in three Iraqi children can rely on a safe water source - with Baghdad and southern cities most affected.'

Although US forces in Baghdad have found that security is improving, on daily patrols they face complaints from residents about streets plagued by piles of household waste and fetid cesspools, often near schools and where children are playing. Captain Richard Dos Santos, attached to the 3rd squadron of the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, said that in the al-Hadar area of south Baghdad sewage pumps were only 30 to 40 per cent operational. 'There is sewage near schools and there is an increased threat of cholera and flu in winter when resistance is low,' he said.

The UN has reported 22 deaths from cholera this year, and 4,569 laboratory-confirmed cases, almost exclusively in northern Iraq where it was first detected in Kirkuk in August. It has now spread to half of the country's 18 provinces, but anxiety is focused on Baghdad.

Unicef said it was providing oral rehydration salts and water purification tablets for families - it distributed three million to the worst hit areas two weeks ago - as well as jerrycans at water distribution points. It is transporting 180,000 litres (47,552 gallons) of safe water per day to Baghdad's worst hit districts.

Unicef issued an urgent appeal to the Iraqi government to clean water storage tanks in all institutions as one preventive measure. Hajaj said: 'Only 20 per cent of families outside Baghdad have access to sewage services, and Iraq's sewage treatment plants operate at just 17 per cent of capacity.'

Cholera is preventable by treating drinking water with chlorine and improving hygiene, but it is estimated that around 70 per cent of Iraqis do not have access to clean water. Many have been too poor or too afraid to go out to buy bottled water, relying instead on tap water, often from polluted sources. Companies responsible for collecting waste and sewage have been reluctant to enter Baghdad's most violent areas.

The government has been trying to educate Iraqis through advertisements on TV and in newspapers and with leaflets handed out at checkpoints. But it admits that six hospitals have unsafe water supplies.


BLOODREDWATER USA
Even as she accepted the resignation of State's security chief Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice quietly promoted two senior staffers who directly oversaw controversial Blackwater security operations, sources tell ABC News.

Justine Sincavage has been serving as director of the Overseas Protection Operation (OPO), which has direct responsibility for all State Department security contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan. That includes overseeing Blackwater, which has won more than $1 billion in security work from the State Department.

According to internal State Department documents, Sincavage was promoted Tuesday. Sincavage's predecessor as OPO director, Kevin Barry, was also promoted, the documents show.

hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 351

Military Overmedicating Troops, Counselors Charge


By MANSI MEHAN and DAVID SCHNEIDER
Nov. 30, 2007

Instead of providing proper counseling and care for Iraq war veterans suffering from physical and psychological pain, too often the U.S. military is trying to medicate the problem away, according to drug counselors and therapists.

Andrew Pogany, who works with service members nationwide as an investigator with the veterans advocacy group Veterans for America, said overmedicating veterans is a common problem.

"Pretty much every person in my caseload is medicated, heavily medicated," said Pogany. "There's potential for them to become addicted."

According to Pogany, a reliance on prescription drugs often leads veterans to reach for other coping mechanisms -- illegal drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and crystal meth.

Road to Addiction Can Start in Iraq

Army Spc. Adam Reuter joined the military in October 2001, shortly after 9/11. After Reuter was injured in a Humvee accident in Iraq, he said an Army doctor literally gave him a grab bag of painkillers and muscle relaxers.

"They gave them to me in a Ziploc bag with no instructions," said Reuter. Reuter said he became addicted to the medication and was able to quit his habit simply because of lack of access now that he's out of the Army.

Gamal Awad, a former major in the Marine Corps, says Marine doctors in Iraq gave him an array of antidepressants and sleep medication so he could continue to function in the field.

Awad was diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after his heroic response efforts at the Pentagon on 9/11. Despite his diagnosis, he was deployed to Iraq where he said he was haunted by depression, nightmares and thoughts of suicide.

"I would go out on convoys with the purpose to die," said Awad. "I just wanted to be hit by an IED or get shot. When we'd get hit with mortar rounds or rockets, I wouldn't take cover."

Awad said he was given more than a dozen prescription drugs, including Xanax, Ambien, Prasozin, Zoloft and Paxil to treat his PTSD. Awad complained that for him these drugs are highly addictive, and he is frustrated by his reliance.

Yucca Mountain Remains Nuclear Waste Dump Choice

by Ralph Vartabedian

LONE PINE, Calif. - Henry Williams, a Paiute Indian from Bishop, drove an hour south to a meeting hall to deliver his tribe’s verdict on the contested federal plan to bury nuclear waste inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, about 16 miles from the California border.

“I am here to speak for my Paiute family,” he told a public hearing last week held by federal government. “We have been here for thousands of years. Our spirits in this area are totally against this.”

The federal plan to bury nuclear waste at a dump in Yucca Mountain has encountered one setback after another in the courts. It is hated in much of the West. It looks like it is in deep political trouble in Congress. And a number of presidential candidates have attacked the dump.

But the wheels of the US Energy Department bureaucracy are still going through the exacting legal steps to get a license for Yucca Mountain, where it wants to bury 70 metric tons of spent commercial fuel and nuclear weapons waste.

In the last week, the department has held a series of public hearings on two environmental impact statements, a process required under federal law.

At the hearing in Hawthorne, Nev., only four local people showed up, greeted by 30 or so federal employees and contractors bused in from Las Vegas. About 55 people showed up for a meeting in Reno. A bigger turnout is expected in Las Vegas today and in Washington on Wednesday.

The only hearing in California was held Thursday in Lone Pine, part of Inyo County whose eastern border can be seen from the crest of Yucca Mountain. A few dozen area residents showed up, including a local book publisher, several American Indians, some retirees, a few antinuclear activists, and a lot of people in cowboy boots and worn blue jeans.

“We are putting a burden on future generations to watch and care for this waste longer than man has been on this earth,” said Roger Rasche, a retired proofreader from Lone Pine. “I hope future generations will be forgiving.”

Asked about public opposition to the dump, Ward Sproat, the Energy Department’s director of civilian radioactive waste management, said in an interview, “I wouldn’t expect anything less. This program has been around a long time and it has a lot of history.”

Government scientists insist that there is no chance any radioactivity could leak for 10,000 years and that the dump will be safe for hundreds of thousands of years after that.

The hearing also focused on another aspect of the plan: getting the waste to the dump.

The plan calls for 13,600 truck and rail shipments of waste, about 12 percent of which probably would move through California.

Feds Probe Sept. 11 Insurance Fund

By DEVLIN BARRETT

The Associated Press
Monday, December 3, 2007; 7:46 PM

WASHINGTON -- Federal officials said Monday they will investigate why a $1 billion Sept. 11 insurance fund created by Congress to cover claims of sick ground zero workers is fighting the cases in court rather than distributing money.

The World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company has come under increasing scrutiny from Congress and the federal government, as roughly 8,000 individual claims await judgment in the federal court system.

The inspector general for the Homeland Security Department indicated he intends to examine the issue, telling Congress in a report that his inquiry will determine why the insurance company "has chosen to litigate all claims instead of settling whenever possible."

According to documents sent to Congress and due to be released later this week, the inspector general's review will also determine "what procedures have been established to receive, review and pay medical, hospital, surgical and disability benefits to injured persons," as well as benefits to the relatives of those killed.

The $1 billion insurance company has also been challenged by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the chairman and ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Such questions have put lawyers for New York City on the defensive, since the city and some construction contractors are protected by the program.

The top lawyer for the city, Michael Cardozo, has defended the company as "an insurance company, not a compensation fund" and argued that as such, it is obliged to defend legal claims. A spokeswoman for the city's law department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday evening about the inspector general's inquiry.

The company issued a statement saying it was cooperating with the inquiry and welcomes the
review.

In July, attorneys for the thousands of workers who say they were sickened after working to clean up the site went to court to demand the insurance company spend the money on their health care.

The insurance company, once an afterthought of the $20 billion post-Sept. 11 aid package for New York, has taken on increasing importance amid mounting complaints that those who worked on the toxic debris pile need long-term health care. Many of the health complaints center around lung problems attributed to the dust, fumes and debris at the site.

Some advocates for those workers, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., have estimated it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to provide medical care for those workers.

The city's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has urged Congress to redirect the captive insurance company money to create a new compensation fund for sick workers, and give the city and the contractors immunity from such lawsuits.