Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 431

By Kathleen M. Howley

May 27 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Air Force Technical Sergeant Jeffrey VerSteegh, who repairs F-16 jets for the 132nd Fighter Wing, departed Des Moines, Iowa, in April for his third tour in Iraq.

The father of four may lose his home when he returns.

The four-bedroom farmhouse he and his wife, Kathleen, own near the Iowa State Fairgrounds went into default in December after their monthly mortgage costs doubled to $1,100. Kathleen missed work because of breast cancer and they struggled to keep up the house payment, falling behind on other bills. Their bankruptcy was approved by the court a week after VerSteegh left for Iraq.

In the midst of the worst surge in mortgage defaults in seven decades, foreclosures in U.S. towns where soldiers live are increasing at a pace almost four times the national average, according to data compiled by research firm RealtyTrac Inc. in Irvine, California. As military families like the VerSteeghs signed up for the initial lower rates and easier terms of subprime mortgages, the number of people taking out Veterans Administration loans fell to the lowest in at least 12 years.

``We've never faced a situation like this, not in the Vietnam War, World War II, or the Korean War, where so many military are in danger of losing their homes,'' said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, a Washington-based advocacy group started in 2002 by Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans. ``No one asked them for their credit score when we asked them to fight for us.''

Military Foreclosures

Foreclosure filings in 10 towns and cities within 10 miles of military facilities, including Norfolk, Virginia, home of the Navy's largest base, rose by an average 217 percent from January through April from a year earlier. Nationally, the rate was 59 percent in the same period, according to RealtyTrac, which tallies bank seizures, auctions and default notices.

The biggest surge was in Columbia, South Carolina, home to Fort Jackson, where the Army trains recruits for combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Properties in some stage of foreclosure rose 492 percent from a year earlier, RealtyTrac said. The second-biggest increase was 414 percent in Woodbridge, Virginia, next to the Marine Corps Base Quantico.

Foreclosure filings tripled in the cities surrounding Norfolk Naval Base and the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base near Oceanside, California, RealtyTrac said. Havelock, North Carolina, site of Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, saw foreclosures more than double.

Weak Credit

Military families were targeted as customers during the boom in subprime lending because their frequent moves, overseas stints, and low pay meant they were more likely to have weak credit ratings, said Rudi Williams of the National Veterans Foundation in Los Angeles. In 2006, at the peak of U.S. subprime lending, the number of VA loans fell to barely a third the level of two years earlier, according to VA data.

VA loans totaled 135,000 last year, its fourth consecutive annual decline.

An Army or Marine Corps sergeant with four years of experience makes $27,000 a year, plus combat pay of $225 a month, according to the 2008 Military Authorization Act, which increased basic pay rates 3.5 percent from a year ago.

Soldiers authorized to live off-base also receive a housing allowance that this year starts at about $500 a month, 7.3 percent higher than in 2007, paid even when they are deployed.

Counting the stipends, they still fall short of the 2007 median U.S. household income of $59,224 as measured by the National Association of Realtors in Chicago.

Legislative Effort

``Think about how much stress comes with a foreclosure, and then imagine you're walking the same tightrope while being employed in Baghdad,'' said Paul Rieckhoff, 33, the head of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and a former 1st lieutenant with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

The Servicemembers' Civil Relief Act protects soldiers and sailors from losing homes for nonpayment of mortgages only while on active duty and for 90 days after they return home.

Members of Congress, including Senator Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican, and Representative Bob Filner, a Democrat from California, are trying to extend that to a year, saying three months isn't enough.

Another flaw in the current law is it puts the burden on the soldiers, sailors or the families they left behind to come up with the paperwork and notify the bank, said Sullivan of the Washington Veterans' group. Unlike in other wars, members of the military often are able to telephone home or receive e-mails, creating a ``morale problem'' as they try to deal with foreclosure notices, he said.

VA Mortgages

``It's heartbreaking to see people struggling with a foreclosure while they or someone they love is in a war zone, or when they're trying to adjust after coming back from one,'' said Sullivan, a Cavalry Scout with the Army's 1st Armored Division during the 1991 Gulf War.

Lenders aren't required to keep records on the status of non-government loans to military members or veterans, said Mike Frueh, the VA's assistant director for loan management in Washington. Judging solely by data on VA mortgages, active military and veterans in the current housing slump are getting into trouble with their home loans at a pace only slightly above the civilian rate, he said.

The share of VA mortgages in foreclosure was 1.12 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with 0.96 percent for so-called prime borrowers with the highest credit scores, the Washington- based Mortgage Bankers Association said in a March 6 report.

`Stench of Death'

``My data comes from those that have VA loans, and we haven't seen, as I understand it, a big jump'' in foreclosures, said James Peake, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs in Washington, in a May 20 interview.

The increase may yet be coming: the share of VA loans with payments 30 days or more overdue was 6.49 percent in the fourth quarter, double the rate of 3.24 percent for prime borrowers.

The share of VA mortgages more than 90 days overdue was 1.54 percent, also double the prime rate, according to the bankers' report.

Monique Kelly, a disabled Iraq War veteran, said she is on the verge of adding to those VA delinquency numbers. The former Army staff sergeant in the First Armored Division paid her May mortgage bill halfway through the month and said she won't be able to make June's payment for her house in Owings Mills, Maryland.

Kelly, designated disabled by the VA because of post- traumatic stress disorder, said she bought the property in January for $305,000 and had to spend $10,000 fixing structural problems that were not disclosed to her.

``We fought for our country, and now we have to fight to save our homes,'' said Kelly. ``After living with the stench of death in Iraq, it seems like we shouldn't have to face problems like this when we come back.''

Help for Veterans

The VA has nine regional loan centers in the U.S. that last year provided counseling for 85,000 veterans who had problems with government-backed mortgages, Frueh said. He said he contacted Kelly to see if he can help her.

Counselors also try to help veterans who fall behind on non- VA loans, he said, though they don't track the number of those cases.

``We will always try to intercede on a veteran's behalf,'' said Frueh. ``If they have a VA-guaranteed loan, we can do more for them.''

Military families or veterans refinancing a mortgage have limited resources for VA-backed loans, Frueh said. The government can only guarantee refinanced veteran loans up to $144,000, Frueh said. The median price of a U.S. home was $219,000 last year, according to the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors.

By PAULINE JELINEK

WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of troops with new cases of post-traumatic stress disorder jumped by roughly 50 percent in 2007 amid the military buildup in Iraq and increased violence there and in Afghanistan.

Records show roughly 40,000 troops have been diagnosed with the illness, also known as PTSD, since 2003.

Officials believe that many more are likely keeping their illness a secret.

``I don't think right now we ... have good numbers,'' Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker said Tuesday.

Defense officials had not previously disclosed the number of PTSD cases from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Army statistics showed there were nearly 14,000 newly diagnosed cases across the services in 2007 compared with more than 9,500 new cases the previous year and 1,632 in 2003.

Schoomaker attributed the big rise over the years partly to the fact that officials started an electronic record system in 2004 that captures more information, and to the fact that as time goes on the people keeping records are more knowledgeable about the illness.

He also blamed increased exposure of troops to combat.

Factors increasing troop exposure to combat in 2007 included President Bush's troop buildup and the fact that 2007 was the most violent year in both conflicts.

More troops also were serving their second, third or fourth tours of duty - a factor mental health experts say dramatically increases stress. And in order to supply enough forces for the buildup, officials also extended tour lengths to 15 months from 12, another factor that caused extra emotional strain.

Officials have been encouraging troops to get help even if it means they go to civilian therapists and don't report it to the military.

``We're trying very hard to encourage soldiers and families to seek care and to not have them feel in any way, shape or form that we're looking over their shoulder or that we're invading their privacy,'' Schoomaker told a group of defense writers.

Noting that stigma is a problem in American civilian society, not just the military, he said, ``I think that's the preferred way to do it.''

The accounting of diagnosed cases released Tuesday shows those hardest hit last year were Marines and Army personnel, the two ground forces bearing the brunt of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army reported more than 10,000 new cases last year, compared with more than 6,800 new cases the previous year. More than 28,000 soldiers altogether were diagnosed with the disorder over the last five years, the data showed.

The Marine Corps had more than 2,100 new cases in 2007, compared with 1,366 in 2006. More than 5,000 Marines have been diagnosed with PTSD since 2003, the data showed.

Navy officials who would have data on Marine health issues did not return a phone call seeking to confirm the numbers released by Schoomaker's office.

Schoomaker said he believes PTSD is widely misunderstood by the press and the public - and that what is often just normal post-traumatic anxiety and stress is mistaken for full-blown PTSD.

Experts say many troops have symptoms of stress, such as nightmares and flashbacks, and can get better with early treatment.

The Pentagon had previously only given a percentage of troops believed affected by depression, anxiety, stress and so on - saying up to 20 percent return home with symptoms of mental health problems. A recent private study estimated that could mean up to 300,000 of those who've served have symptoms.

The Veterans Affairs Department said recently it has seen some 120,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have received at least a preliminary mental health diagnosis, with PTSD being the most common diagnosis at nearly 60,000.

An undisclosed number of troops also go to private care providers who are part of the huge military health care system. Schoomaker noted that National Guard and Reserve troops often go home to communities where there is not a veterans facility nearby.

``We're working very hard with the VA and with the National Guard and Reserves to get a better feel for, a grasp on, how big this is,'' Schoomaker said, adding that over time officials will be able to collect data and get ``a better feel for, handle on, the numbers.''

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 430

By Sandi Doughton

Climate models predicted it wouldn't happen until the end of the century.

So a team led by Seattle researchers was stunned to discover that vast swaths of acidified seawater already are showing up along the Pacific Coast as greenhouse-gas emissions upset the oceans' chemical balance.

In surveys from Vancouver Island to the tip of Baja California, reported Thursday in the online journal Science Express, the scientists found the first evidence that large amounts of corrosive water are reaching the continental shelf — the shallow sea margin where most marine creatures live.

Off Northern California, the acidified water was only four miles from shore.

"What we found ... was truly astonishing," said oceanographer Richard Feely, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. "This means ocean acidification may be seriously impacting marine life on the continental shelf right now."

All along the coast, the scientists found regions where the water was acidic enough to dissolve the shells and skeletons of clams, corals and many of the tiny creatures at the base of the marine food chain. Acidified water also can kill fish eggs and a wide range of marine larvae.

"Entire marine ecosystems are likely to be affected," said co-author Debby Ianson, an oceanographer at Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

Though it hasn't received as much attention as global warming, ocean acidification is a flip side of the same phenomenon. The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from power plants, factories and cars that is raising temperatures worldwide also is to blame for the increasing acidity of the world's oceans.

Normally, seawater is slightly alkaline. When carbon dioxide from the atmosphere dissolves into the water, it forms carbonic acid — the weak acid that helps give soda pop its tang. The process also robs the water of carbonate, a key ingredient in the formation of calcium carbonate shells.

Since the Industrial Revolution, when humans began pumping massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, Feely estimates the oceans have absorbed 525 billion tons of the man-made greenhouse gas — about one-third of the total released during that period.

By keeping some of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, the oceans have blunted the temperature rise due to global warming. But they've suffered for that service, with a more than 30-percent increase in acidity.

The acidified water does not pose a direct threat to people. "We're not talking battery acid here," said co-author Burke Hales, an oceanographer at Oregon State University.

On the pH scale, which measures acidity, strongly alkaline materials such as oven cleaner measure about 13. Hydrochloric acid has a pH of 1. Seawater usually measures around 8.1. The most acidic water the scientists found off the Pacific Coast measured 7.6 on the pH scale. The numerical difference may seem slight, but it represents a threefold increase in acidity, Hales said.

Until now, researchers believed the most acidified water was confined to the deep oceans. Cold water, which holds more carbon dioxide, sinks. Deep waters also are naturally high in carbon dioxide, which is a byproduct of the decay of plankton.

Feely and his NOAA colleague Christopher Sabine previously have shown that zones of acidified water are growing and moving closer to the surface as the oceans absorb more man-made carbon dioxide.

During surveys on the Pacific Coast last year, a team including Feely and Sabine discovered the natural upwelling that occurs along the West Coast each spring and early summer is pulling the acidified water onto the continental shelf.

"I think this is a red flag for us, because it's right at our doorstep on the West Coast," said Victoria Fabry, a biological oceanographer at California State University, San Marcos, who was not involved with the study. "It's telling us that we really need more monitoring to figure out what's going on."

Climate scientist Ken Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University, said the finding underscores the limitations of computer models.

"This is another example where what's happening in the natural world seems to be happening much faster than what our climate models predict," he said.

And there's worse to come, the scientists warn.

A network of currents shuffles ocean water around the globe. The acidified water upwelling along the coast today was last exposed to the atmosphere about 50 years ago, when carbon-dioxide levels were much lower than they are now.

That means the water that will rise from the depths over the coming decades will have absorbed more carbon dioxide and will be even more acidic.

"We've got 50 years worth of water that's already left the station and is on its way to us," Hales said. "Each one of those years is going to be a little bit more corrosive than the one before."



















By Borzou Daragahi

BEIRUT -- Lebanon's long-simmering political crisis lurched deeper into violent civil conflict Thursday as bands of Shiite and Sunni gunmen battled in the streets for a second day and politicians took to the airwaves to denounce each other for pushing the country toward war.

Explosions and bursts of gunfire rattled central Beirut as groups allied with the Hezbollah-led opposition and the United States-backed government fired machine guns, assault rifles and grenade launchers at each other and into the air, apparently in shows of strength. The deep thuds of occasional mortar fire shook the ground as night fell.

Throughout the day, panicked civilians scurried for cover or loaded up on basic supplies, emptying supermarket shelves of frozen meats. Gunmen had blocked roads to the country's only international airport as well as the main highways to Damascus, the Syrian capital, and to southern Lebanon, in effect placing the capital under siege.

Lebanese news sources said at least four people were killed in fighting Thursday and a female bystander died of injuries sustained in the previous day's clashes. But information was scant as paramedics and security officials avoided entering areas of intense fighting that witnesses said resembled the level of the civil war that engulfed the country from 1975 to 1990.

By late night, government allies were calling for "dialogue" with the Shiite group Hezbollah, even as fighting continued and allegations mounted that its militiamen were raiding homes and offices of government supporters.

"We are trapped in our homes," one Sunni militiaman aligned with the pro-government Future movement said Thursday night, speaking by telephone from his central Beirut home. He spoke on condition of anonymity. "They shot at my building and at my car. We are trying to call the army to protect us and hoping we won't be taken from our homes but they will know sooner or later where we live."

The violence comes amid heightened regional tensions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which strongly back the government, and Iran and Syria, which support Hezbollah and the opposition. In Lebanon, as well as the Palestinian territories and Iraq, the U.S. has begun increasing pressure on Iranian allies.

U.S. officials blamed Hezbollah for the unrest in Lebanon.

"Hezbollah needs to make a choice: Be a terrorist organization or be a political party, but quit trying to be both," U.S. national security council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Thursday. "They need to stop their disruptive activities now."

Tensions escalated Tuesday after the government voted to outlaw Hezbollah's communications network, which the group was allegedly expanding, and sack the Hezbollah-allied head of security at the international airport, who had allegedly begun harassing visitors believed to have political ties to the government.

The fiercest battles broke out after a televised speech Thursday afternoon by Hezbollah's chief, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

He said the Cabinet's decision to declare the group's fiber-optic system illegal was tantamount to a declaration of war and put the government squarely in the camp of Hezbollah's enemies, Israel and the United States, which consider it a terrorist organization.

"This decision is first of all a declaration of war and the launching of war by the government . . . against the resistance and its weapons for the benefit of America and Israel," Nasrallah told reporters via teleconference.

"The communications network is the significant part of the weapons of the resistance," said Nasrallah. "I had said that we will cut the hand that targets the weapons of the resistance. . . . Today is the day to fulfill this decision."

The celebratory gunfire that punctuates the end of political speeches here escalated into armed confrontations and sustained gunfire that continued past midnight.

Saad Hariri, leader of Lebanon's Sunni community and head of the parliamentary majority, appeared on television saying the government would ask the army to enforce the decision to uproot the telecommunications network and remove the head of airport security.

"You say you don't want Sunni-Shiite strife and we don't want this to happen either," he said.

An analyst called the proposal a "small retreat" by Hariri's camp, because the Lebanese army lacks the strength or unity to confront Hezbollah or any other of the country's major political groups. The army also coordinates closely with Hezbollah on security matters and has affirmed its support for "resistance" to Israel, which has repeatedly invaded and occupied Lebanon over the last several decades.

Supported by Iran and Syria, Hezbollah operates as a state within a state, with strongholds in southern and western Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs. Its armed wing fought Israel to a standstill in the summer of 2006. Hezbollah claimed victory in that conflict, but the war upset Lebanon's fragile sectarian balance and precipitated a political crisis that has left the country without a president since November.

Government supporters said they were angered by what they considered Hezbollah's attempts to exploit the crisis to expand its domestic surveillance and communications abilities, as well as its armed capacity.

"Hezbollah is launching a gradual coup against the state of Lebanon," said Walid Jumblatt, leader of Lebanon's Druze community and a staunch government supporter.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 429

By Elizabeth Williamson

A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department who revised scientific reports to minimize protection of endangered species has resigned, officials said yesterday.

Julie A. MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, had been criticized by Interior's inspector general, and Congress was preparing to scrutinize her performance in an upcoming hearing.

Interior Department spokesman Hugh Vickery confirmed MacDonald's resignation, delivered in a letter late Monday. Her departure came as the agency was discussing plans to demote her, said a person in the agency familiar with the matter. Vickery declined to comment on that possibility.

Reached at her home, MacDonald said that she resigned for personal reasons, including an illness in her family, and that "I have nothing but respect for people at the department." She would not comment on whether potential disciplinary action influenced her decision.

Environmental groups late last year documented a pitched battle between MacDonald and Fish and Wildlife Service employees over whether to safeguard plants and animals from oil and gas drilling, power lines, and real estate development.

In March, Inspector General Earl E. Devaney referred MacDonald's case to top Interior officials for possible administrative action. In an investigation, Devaney's office found that MacDonald, who has a degree in civil engineering and no science background, repeatedly instructed Fish and Wildlife scientists to change their recommendations on identifying "critical habitats."

MacDonald often argued with and mocked career staff members and scientist reports for urging that species such as the white-tailed prairie dog and the Gunnison sage grouse be classified as threatened or endangered, documents showed. After reviewing a scientific report on the possibility that a proposed road might further degrade the sage grouse's habitat, MacDonald wrote in the margin: "Has nothing to do with sage grouse. This belongs in a treatise on 'Why roads are bad'?"

Environmental groups praised her departure.

"Increasing transparency in the decision-making process would make other political appointees think twice before altering or distorting scientific documents," said Francesca Grifo, director of the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which requested the documents under the Freedom of Information Act.













By Jim Vandehei and Josh Kraushaar

Just a few years after the Republican Party launched a highly publicized diversity effort, the GOP is heading into the 2008 election without a single minority candidate with a plausible chance of winning a campaign for the House, the Senate or governor.

At a time when Democrats are poised to knock down a historic racial barrier with their presidential nominee, the GOP is fielding only a handful of minority candidates for Congress or statehouses — none of whom seem to have a prayer of victory.

At the start of the Bush years, the Republican National Committee — in tandem with the White House — vowed to usher in a new era of GOP minority outreach. As George W. Bush winds down his presidency, Republicans are now on the verge of going six — and probably more — years without an African-American governor, senator or House member.

That’s the longest such streak since the 1980s.

Republicans will have only one minority governor, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, an Indian-American, when the dust settles on the ’08 elections. Democrats have three minority governors and 43 African-American members of Congress, including one — Illinois Sen. Barack Obama — who is their likely presidential nominee. Democrats also have several challengers in winnable House races who are either black or Hispanic.

Despite having a Spanish-speaking “compassionate conservative” in the White House, Republicans’ diversity deficit seems to have only widened.

“In 1994, when I first ran, we had 14 African-American Republicans running for Congress. ... I was the only one that won that year, but we had 14, and we had some good candidates,” said former Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts, one of the party’s most recognized African-American voices. “I am grateful for what Ken Mehlman did when he was RNC chairman, but I knew that wouldn’t last — that was one person. I’ve never gotten the impression that it was institutionalized.”

By Arthur H. Rotstein

A decorated Marine Corps staff sergeant who apparently fatally shot his brother before killing himself at the end of a long police chase in Arizona served four tours in Iraq, met President Bush and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, his wife said Thursday.

Pinal County sheriff's spokesman Mike Minter said no motive has been established for why Travis N. "T-Bo" Twiggs, 36, killed his 38-year-old brother, Willard J. "Will" Twiggs, and himself on Wednesday.

Nor is it known why the brothers earlier in the week may have tried to commit suicide by attempting to drive

their car into the Grand Canyon.

"All this violent behavior, him killing his brother, that was not my husband. If the PTSD would have been handled in a correct manner, none of this would have happened," Kellee Twiggs, the wife of Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, said in a telephone interview from Stafford, Va.

She said her husband began changing after his second tour of duty in Iraq. His condition worsened after he returned from his third stint there, when he lost two good friends from his platoon.

"He went and saw a physician's assistant who said that was the severest case of PTSD she'd seen in her life," Kellee Twiggs said.

Travis Twiggs was given medications for mood elevation and sleeping to get him calmed down before beginning therapy. But again he was sent back to Iraq "and he was very, very different, angry, agitated, isolated and so forth," upon his return, Kellee Twiggs said. "He was just doing crazy things."

She said her husband was treated in the psychiatric ward of Bethesda Naval Medical Center and then sent to a Veterans Affairs Department facility for four months. But Kellee Twiggs said she couldn't understand why he was not sent to a specialized PTSD clinic in New Jersey.

"They let him out. He was OK for a while and then it all started over again," she said, adding that Travis Twiggs was working with the Wounded Warrior Regiment and had accompanied a group to Washington a few weeks ago where he met President Bush at the White House.

"He said, 'Sir, I've served over there many times, and I would serve for you any time,' and he grabbed the president and gave him a big hug," Kellee Twiggs said.

She said she believes her brother-in-law joined her husband in driving West "because T-Bo was hurting so bad and for so long that Will's life was a little in chaos. For them to both drive off into the Grand Canyon, they both apparently wanted to end their lives," she said.

Travis Twiggs, who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993 and held the combat action ribbon, wrote a lengthy article in the January issue of the Marine Corps Gazette detailing his efforts to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The symptoms disappeared yet again when he returned to Iraq for his fourth tour, he wrote, but worsened when he came home again. "All of my symptoms were back, and now I was in the process of destroying my family," he wrote. "My only regrets are how I let my command down after they had put so much trust in me and how I let my family down by pushing them away."

Most recently, Twiggs was assigned to the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory at Quantico, Va.

A spokesman at Quantico, 1st Lt. Brian Donnelly, said the corps is committed to providing full medical, psychological and social support to anyone with a combat-related injury, including PTSD, through organizations such as the Wounded Warrior Regiment and local deployment health clinics.

"Our leaders are trained to be alert for signs of PTSD in their Marines and to provide a supportive climate in which Marines can feel comfortable seeking help."

Travis Twiggs had been absent without leave since May 5.

On Wednesday, Twiggs and his brother led law enforcement agents on a chase across more than 80 miles of Interstate 8 after speeding away from a Border Patrol checkpoint in southwestern Arizona.

After officers with the Tohono O'odham Police Department placed spike strips on the interstate, the car continued for about a mile. Police and Border Patrol agents heard two shots from the disabled car and later found both men slumped forward and dead in a vehicle they had carjacked Monday night within Grand Canyon National Park.

They are believed to have crashed their car at the canyon's edge and walked away from the scene, witnesses said, hours before the carjacking at gunpoint.

Park spokeswoman Shannan Marcak said that investigators believe, based on how the car was hung up on a tree, the men may had tried to drive off the road and into the canyon.

McCain's YouTube Problem Just Became a Nightmare

Countdown: Special Comment

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 428

Richard B. Schmitt

WASHINGTON -- Nearly seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI "has yet to make the dramatic leaps necessary" to become an effective intelligence-gathering organization and protect the country from terrorism, a congressional analysis released Thursday said.

The Senate Intelligence Committee recommended that the bureau yield more of its historic autonomy to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and that "performance metrics and specific timetables" be established to address a variety of shortcomings.

The panel found widespread problems in the FBI intelligence program, including gaps in the training and deployment of hundreds of analysts hired since Sept. 11, 2001, to assess threats to the nation. Field Intelligence Groups, which are considered the front lines of the intelligence effort in FBI field offices around the country, are "poorly staffed, are led overwhelmingly by special agents, and are often 'surged' to other FBI priorities," the report said.

The bureau has also struggled to fill key national security and intelligence positions at FBI headquarters. The report found that more than 20% of the supervisory positions in the section at headquarters that covers Al Qaeda-related cases were vacant.

The critique is the latest to question whether the bureau -- which is celebrating its centennial this year -- can effectively transform itself from a law enforcement organization to one that also roots out terrorists before they strike. Its progress was questioned by the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission, which gave the FBI a "C" in a December 2005 report card grading the implementation of its recommended reforms.

The bureau has recently acknowledged pressure from the White House Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which provides advice to the president on the quality and adequacy of intelligence operations. It has also conceded that it is having trouble starting up a program to collect intelligence on foreign powers operating in the U.S., two years after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence directed it to start collecting the information.

"There is an enormous gap between current and future capabilities," the bureau said in documents supporting its 2009 budget request to Congress.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told the House Judiciary Committee last month that the bureau was taking new steps to "accelerate our progress." Those moves, he said, included hiring the consulting firm of McKinsey and Co. and creating a "strategic execution team" of field and headquarters personnel to make changes more quickly.

The latest assessment was contained in a report accompanying a bill that sets out the intelligence community's policies, programs and spending for fiscal year 2009. An unclassified summary was released Thursday.

"While we will review the committee's report, over the last year the FBI has initiated a coordinated and sweeping set of programs to address many of the issues cited in the report," John Miller, the bureau's head of public affairs, said in a statement Thursday. "Nearly 100 bureau employees, more than half of them drawn from the field offices, have worked hand in hand with headquarters' managers to find lasting solutions."

Among the Senate committee's other findings:

* The FBI is still without an effective training program for intelligence analysts despite "revamping" training almost every year since 2002.

* Most intelligence analysts are supervised by special agents who have little or no experience conducting intelligence analyses.

* The bureau has hired just two "senior intelligence officers" two years after getting authority from Congress to fill 24 of the "critical" positions.

* Only a third of special agents and intelligence analysts have access to the Internet at their desktops. FBI personnel lack the ability to store and share images and audio files associated with intelligence investigations.

* A new weapons-of-mass-destruction directorate within the bureau is "poorly positioned to work across FBI programs that are likely to encounter WMD threats and investigations."

The report recommended that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence be required to submit semi-annual reports to Congress assessing the progress of the FBI. The committee said it also expected the FBI to "engage in a credible study" to identify why it has been unable to address "permanently the high position vacancy rates" in its national security and intelligence programs at FBI headquarters.

"It is just slow and bureaucratic. You have a lot of people trying hard. But there is a fair amount of turnover, and a lot of junior people in jobs," William C. Banks, a national security expert at Syracuse Law School, said of the FBI. "The technical problems are just legion, and they really haven't gotten better. They are inexcusable. What can you say?"

Last month, Mueller named Kevin Favreau, a 25-year FBI veteran, to head the bureau's
Directorate of Intelligence.















By Richard B. Schmitt
WASHINGTON -- The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court -- one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing -- has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously.

The trends, visible in new government data and a private analysis of Justice Department records, are worrisome to civil liberties groups and some legal scholars. They say it is further evidence that the government has compromised the privacy rights of ordinary citizens without much to show for it.

The emphasis on spy programs also is starting to give pause to some members of Congress who fear the government is investing too much in anti-terrorism programs at the expense of traditional crime-fighting. Other lawmakers are raising questions about how well the FBI is performing its counter-terrorism mission.

The Senate Intelligence Committee last week concluded that the bureau was far behind in making internal changes to keep the nation safe from terrorist threats. Lawmakers urged that the FBI set specific benchmarks to measure its progress and make more regular reports to Congress.

These concerns come as the Bush administration has been seeking to expand its ability to gather intelligence without prior court approval. It has asked Congress for amendments to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it clear that eavesdropping on foreign telecommunications signals routed through the U.S. does not require a warrant.

Law enforcement officials say the additional surveillance powers have been critically important in ways the public does not always see. Threats can be mitigated, they say, by deporting suspicious people or letting them know that authorities are watching them.

"The fact that the prosecutions are down doesn't mean that the utility of these investigations is down. It suggests that these investigations may be leading to other forms of prevention and protection," said Thomas Newcomb, a former Bush White House national security aide. He said there were half a dozen actions outside of the criminal courts that the government could take to snuff out potential threats, including using diplomatic or military channels.

Although legal experts say they would not necessarily expect the number of prosecutions to rise along with the stepped-up surveillance, there are few other good ways to measure how well the government is progressing in keeping the country safe.

"How does one measure the success? The short answer is we aren't in a great position to know," said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor. With prosecutions declining, he said, the public is left with imperfect and possibly misleading ways to gauge progress in the Bush administration's war on terrorism -- such as the number of secret warrants the government issues or the number of agents it assigns to terrorism cases.

"These are the only tracks in the snow left by terrorism investigations, if there are no more counter-terrorism prosecutions," Richman said. "This is why, more than ever, there is a pressing need for congressional oversight, for accountability at the top of the [Justice] department, and for public confidence in the department."

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 427

By Nicole Gaouette and RIchard Simon

WASHINGTON -- With high food prices prompting grocery-store apologies to customers and raising fears of starvation in impoverished countries, Congress suddenly faces renewed pressure to cut subsidies to the wealthiest farmers and incentives for ethanol production.

The American farmer, long an untouchable political icon, has even become something of a political embarrassment on Capitol Hill, with President Bush earlier this week demanding an end to crop subsidies for "multimillionaire farmers."

Congress just last year required that more ethanol be added to the gasoline supply. The mandate is now blamed for inflating the price of corn and other staples.

"It's hard to believe that in five months our country has gone from a strong commitment to pay any price for energy security to the kind of backlash we've seen against ethanol," said Jon Doggett, a lobbyist for the National Corn Growers Assn.

In Congress, some lawmakers are calling for changes in the nation's commitment to ethanol as the biofuel of choice to replace oil. "This is a classic case of the law of unintended consequences. Congress surely did not intend to raise food prices by incentivizing ethanol, but that's precisely what's happened," said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who introduced legislation this week that would end federal support for ethanol.

Farm-state lawmakers and agriculture lobbyists are stepping up their efforts to protect ethanol, as well as farm subsidies, which have drawn a veto threat from Bush.

At a Capitol Hill news conference on Thursday, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a corn and soybean farmer, brandished a big box of Corn Flakes and said a farmer made less than a dime from the box, which cost him $5. "When a farmer gets so little out of a box of Corn Flakes, don't be blaming the farmer, and ethanol, for the high price of food," he said.

In the latest indication that high food prices have changed priorities in Washington, Bush asked Congress on Thursday to approve a sharp increase in spending on international food aid. "In recent weeks, many have expressed concern about the significant increase in global food prices. And I share this concern," the president said.

Soaring grocery bills have joined other pocketbook issues as major election-year concerns. Retail food prices are expected to increase by 4% to 5% this year, after a 4% rise last year, which was the largest annual increase since 1990.

At the Santa Ana Food Market in Orange County, owner Ken Lau said he has had to raise his prices. Small tortillas that once sold for 69 cents for three dozen are now 99 cents. "We have lots of customers with low-paying jobs and they are struggling now just to make it," he said. High food prices have inspired critics, including the president, to renew their attacks on subsidies for farmers. The nearly $300-billion, five-year farm bill, delayed for months, has become an easy target for opponents who cite a new outrage: Many farmers are making record incomes while consumers are shocked by dramatic price increases.

"They're talking about continuing $25 billion in these subsidies over the next five years at a time of record commodity prices and food prices," said Rep. Ron Kind, a Democrat from Wisconsin.

The Agriculture Department forecasts that the average farm household will earn more than $89,000 in 2008, up 6.3% from 2007. That's a third higher than the average U.S. household income, which is projected to be $67,000.

Despite that, farm-bill negotiators are fighting to keep $5.2 billion in direct payments, which go to farmers regardless of how much they earn or whether they are growing a crop.

The White House wants to cut off direct payments to farmers who earn $500,000 or more. Farm-state lawmakers want to reduce payments for farmers with incomes of $950,000 or more. In California, where many farms are enormous enterprises with multiple owners, those caps would apply individually to each owner.

"It's the illusion of reform," Kind said.

Farm-state lawmakers and lobbyists for the agriculture industry are reeling from the sudden shift in a political dynamic that has favored them for years. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said that a year ago he would not have believed Congress would consider scaling back a decades-old ethanol subsidy. "Today, I am concerned," he said.

One-fourth of the corn produced in the United States went to make fuel last year, an increase from less than 15% in 2005. But ethanol supporters note that the overall corn harvest is now larger. Corn sells at about $6 a bushel today, about three times the price of two years ago.

As more farmers switch to corn to take advantage of the high prices, fewer fields of grain and other food crops are planted, causing prices to rise for those as well.

Ethanol has long enjoyed a special place in American politics. Congress provided a tax break for the fuel in 1978. It is a key topic on the presidential campaign trail, which starts in Iowa -- first in the nation in ethanol production.

To win the votes needed to pass the 2005 energy bill, lawmakers added a requirement that ethanol be added to the nation's gasoline supply. In last year's energy bill, Congress ordered a fivefold increase by 2022 in the amount of ethanol and other biofuels that must be blended with gasoline. This year, ethanol is expected to make up about 6% of the gas supply.














By Marla Cone
California's peregrine falcons, once driven to the edge of extinction by the pesticide DDT, now are contaminated with record-high levels of other toxic chemicals that may threaten them again.

State scientists have found that peregrines in Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Francisco contain the highest levels of flame retardants found in any living organism worldwide.

The findings parallel studies that have detected high concentrations of the chemicals, known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, in human breast milk, particularly in California women.

The compounds, which mimic thyroid hormones and can damage developing nervous systems, have spread to wildlife and people worldwide, working their way up food webs.

The concentrations found in California's urban peregrines are similar to those that cause neurological damage in lab mice and rats, resulting in reduced motor skills and altered behavior.

Scientists said the peregrines, the fastest and most agile birds, are being contaminated with the industrial chemicals from eating urban pigeons that scavenge on city streets.

The chemicals are used as flame retardants on electronics and furniture cushions. They begin as indoor pollutants, building up in household dust, then migrate outdoors, where they pollute urban environments.

Kim Hooper, a scientist with the state Department of Toxic Substances Control's environmental chemistry laboratory who led the study, said the PBDE levels in the peregrines have doubled every 10 years, and might still be increasing.

Hooper and his colleagues suspected that because household dust contains PBDEs, top predators in big cities would have the worst contamination, so they tested the eggs of peregrines in 42 locations, including Los Angeles, Long Beach, Newport Beach, Coronado and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Their hunch was right. The eggs in rural inland and coastal areas had only trace amounts of PBDEs, but the urban eggs contained up to 52 parts per million, and one dead chick contained 95 ppm. Scientists consider those concentrations extremely high -- substantially higher than nearly any chemical measured in any species worldwide in recent years.

"We think urban wildlife are sentinels for exposure to indoor pollutants in big cities," Hooper said.

Hooper said a PBDE compound called deca is largely responsible for the birds' contamination. Deca, used in electronics since the 1970s, is produced in large amounts in the United States -- about 80 million pounds a year.

The peregrine is known for its torpedo-like dives, reaching speeds of up to 200 mph. Hunting from skyscrapers in large cities as well as from steep cliffs in rural areas, they inhabit much of North America. They normally shun prey on the ground, choosing to capture birds mid-flight.

One bird egg, taken from the Port of Long Beach, had the highest level of any egg -- 52 ppm. Other birds with highly contaminated eggs had nested on high-rises in San Francisco and downtown L.A., including the Union Bank building. Included was a popular pair that San Francisco residents named George and Gracie.

"We're always concerned when a high level of contaminants is found in a species," said Alex Pitts, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. PBDEs "are showing up everywhere and they are more concentrated in urban areas, which is challenging for urban wildlife."

Because the levels have been increasing, "it's very possible they could reach levels in the food web that could be unsafe for predators such as peregrine falcons," Pitts said.

Janet Linthicum of the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, said the high contaminant levels are "disappointing and disturbing" but she has "no idea whether there are any effects."

The two dead chicks and 95 unhatchable eggs that were tested came from the Santa Cruz group's archive and had been collected at nesting sites between 1986 and 2007.

Avian experts say if a bird's nervous system is altered, it might change how it hunts and raises its young, and perhaps eventually reduce populations.

"Whatever happens to the peregrines, we will be surprised by it, just like we were surprised when DDT thinned eggshells," Hooper said.

A half century ago, peregrines, bald eagles and brown pelicans were nearly wiped out by DDT, an insecticide that weakened their egg shells and caused nearly complete reproductive failure.

Like DDT, the brominated flame retardants are slow to break down in the environment and build up in animal tissues, reaching high levels in species that top the food web.

PBDE levels in the birds' eggs are about a hundredfold higher than the amounts found in the breast milk of California women, who have among the highest concentrations of women tested worldwide, the scientists said.

Children are five to 10 times more contaminated than adults because they are exposed to more dust from playing on floors.

The recovery of the peregrine, known as the bird of kings because of its prized role in falconry, has long been hailed as one of the nation's greatest ecological success stories.

In the 1970s, its numbers in North America plummeted to about 300 breeding pairs, including only two pairs in California. But its populations have been growing since DDT was banned in the United States in 1972, and the bird was removed from the nation's endangered species list in 1999. About 3,000 pairs inhabit North America, including about 200 pairs in California.

California recently banned two PBDEs, known as penta and octa, because they were accumulating in human breast milk, but deca is unregulated in the state. It is banned or being phased out only in Maine, Washington state and Sweden. However, some large manufacturers of computers and other electronics have voluntarily stopped using deca.

Until recently, deca wasn't detected much in the environment. In this study, the state scientists are reporting that it contaminates the birds by breaking down into the toxic compounds that were banned.

"What's striking is that the peregrines are contaminated with the highest brominated ones, the deca, which had not been found previously at such high levels," Hooper said. "It may be time to look for green alternatives for deca."

Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), has introduced a bill that would ban all brominated and chlorinated flame retardants. Chemical industry representatives oppose the bill, saying deca is important to protect people from fires in electronic equipment and that there is little evidence that it is responsible for the contamination.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 426

BENTONVILLE, Ark. (AP) -- Federal regulators says they've closed ANB Financial National Association banks after discovering "unsafe and unsound" business practices there.

David Barr, a spokesman for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says many customers served by the bank's nine locations had accounts under $100,000, which will be fully insured by the government. Barr says customers can continue to write checks and draw money from ATMs through the weekend.

Barr says Pulaski Bank and Trust Co. agreed to assume control over ANB Financial's bank locations, which will be open Monday.

As of Jan. 31, federal regulators say ANB Financial had about $2.1 billion in assets and $1.8 billion in total deposits.

It was the third closure this year of an FDIC-insured bank. Douglass National Bank, a Missouri bank with $58.5 million in assets, was shut in January; another Missouri institution with assets of $18.7 million, Hume Bank, was shut down in March.

Both were dwarfed in size of ANB Financial, where regulators found lax lending standards, mostly for construction and development loans for projects in Utah, Idaho and Wyoming, as well as Arkansas.

Observers have been watching for signs of bank distress resulting from the mortgage crisis. Profits at federally insured U.S. banks and thrifts plunged to a 16-year low in the fourth quarter as institutions set aside a record-high amount to cover losses from sour mortgages.

The FDIC is planning to beef up its staff, including temporarily hiring up to 25 retired FDIC employees who worked in the agency's more than 200-person division that handles failed banks. They will handle an anticipated increase in bank failures.















By Borzou Daragahi Raed Rafei
BEIRUT -- In one swoop, the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah took over a large section of Lebanon's capital Friday, altering the country's political balance and demonstrating a level of military discipline and efficiency that left the pro-Western government struggling to exert its authority.

Within 12 hours, the Iranian-backed group dispatched hundreds of heavily armed Shiite fighters into the western half of Beirut, routing Sunni Muslim militiamen, destroying opponents' political offices and shutting down media outlets loyal to the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and to Sunni leader Saad Hariri's Future movement.

At least 10 people were killed in the fighting, security officials said. Hezbollah used a lot of gunfire but inflicted minimal damage to public infrastructure, they said.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese army largely stood aside, underscoring its reluctance to take sides in a political stalemate that has left the country without a president since November.

The clashes were troubling far beyond Lebanon's borders. The country, long an arena for competing regional interests, has become one of a number of political and military battlefields where allies of the United States compete against Iranian-backed interests. The U.S. sees the moderate, Western-leaning government as a model for the region; Iran, which nurtured Hezbollah from its birth, considers the Lebanese militia a major strategic asset.

The White House condemned the Hezbollah offensive, with spokesman Gordon Johndroe saying that the militant group had turned "its arms against the Lebanese people and challenged Lebanon's security forces for control of the streets."

On Friday, fighting that had raged for three days in the capital appeared to subside, though more confrontations were reported elsewhere, between Shiite militiamen and Druze and Sunni fighters. Beirut's international airport remained closed. Lebanese and foreigners fled the prospect of more fighting by heading across the Syrian border.

In West Beirut, Hezbollah fighters, wearing their signature ammo vests and black baseball caps, patrolled the streets, napped in the shade and directed traffic, politely stopping some vehicles to ask drivers and passengers for identification cards.

"During lunchtime if you place food on the table, by the time you've finished eating, we can take over," boasted one grizzled Hezbollah fighter patrolling famous Hamra Street.

He identified himself only by the nickname Zam-Zam. He held what he described as an Israeli-made M-16 assault rifle equipped with a night-vision scope and a laser sight.

"It was an insult for us to fight these people," he said of the Sunni militia loyal to the government. "We fight great armies."

However, few observers expect Hezbollah to try to take over Lebanon or even continue to police West Beirut, especially areas long dominated by its political rivals. The group's fighters avoided storming government buildings such as the Grand Serail, the gracious Ottoman-era palace that houses the prime minister.

















By Raed Rafei and Borzou Daragahi

BEIRUT -- Armed clashes Wednesday in the Lebanese capital between supporters of the Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition threatened this divided country's fragile calm.

The fighting began with opponents of the government setting tires ablaze to block the city's main roads, notably those leading to the international airport, where flights were suspended. Protesters said they were answering a call by labor unions to oppose government policies aimed at combating inflation, but the unions in the end canceled a planned march because of the chaos.

Tensions quickly took on a political character, with Sunni Muslim backers of the government and Shiite Muslim opposition supporters amassing in their respective neighborhoods and hurling stones at each other. Gunfire erupted in mixed Shiite-Sunni districts. Armed fighters with the Hezbollah-aligned Amal movement and the pro-government Future Movement stood on the corners of empty streets.

"I saw a lot of men armed with Kalashnikovs," said Jaber, a witness who asked that his last name not be published. "From one side Amal supporters and from the other side supporters of the Future Movement were in the building facing mine. They started shooting at each other."

There were no reported deaths but as many as a dozen injuries.

Lebanon's sectarian and political tensions mirror a broader regional conflict. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia support the Sunni-led government while Iran and Syria back the Shiite-led opposition. Lebanon has been without a president since November amid a political deadlock between the two rival camps.

The latest upsurge of chaos in Lebanon's political crisis began when pro-government politicians accused Hezbollah of spying on the airport to prepare for attacks and assassinations as well as for establishing a private telecommunications system. The Cabinet decided to remove the airport chief.

Hezbollah warned the government against laying hands on the group's communications network, equating it to the weapons it stockpiles to take on Israel. The Shiite militant group's supporters said they would continue what in effect is a shutdown of the airport, a key transport conduit for a country that has hostile relations with one neighbor, Israel, and strained relations with another, Syria.

The main road linking the heart of Beirut to the airport was blockaded with piles of sand and burned tires while hundreds of rioters roamed around on scooters. Television news channels showed trucks dumping heaps of sand in the roads and protesters setting garbage containers and cars on fire to block traffic.

Lebanese officials have counted on the relatively nonpolitical army to maintain security. Soldiers backed by tanks stood by Wednesday to prevent the clashes from escalating.

A protester who gave only the name Jihad, 25, said he was angered by escalating prices. "This government is not doing anything to help the poor," he said. "They should leave. . . . Today everybody will see what they have never seen before. The roads will stay closed."

Government supporters accused their rivals of throwing stones at them and threatening them. Fliers warning protesters against violence were distributed on the streets.

Most of the Sunni and Shiite parts of Beirut were closed and empty of passersby. Life continued normally in the rest of the country, especially the Christian areas, where people are politically divided between supporters of the government and the opposition.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 425

By Bob Moen

There isn't anything metropolitan about this tiny unincorporated town in southwest Wyoming, where a few single-family homes and a volunteer fire station stand against a skyline of snowcapped mountains.

But Boulder, with a population of just 75 people, has one thing in common with major metropolitan areas: air pollution thick enough to pose health risks.

"Used to be you could see horizon to horizon, crystal clear. Now you got this," said Craig Jensen as he gestured to a pale blue sky that he says is not as deeply colored as it used to be. "Makes you wonder what it's going to do to the grass, the trees and the birds."

The pollution, largely from the region's booming natural gas industry, came in the form of ground-level ozone, which has exceeded healthy levels 11 times since January and caused Wyoming to issue its first ozone alerts. Now the ozone threatens to cost the industry and taxpayers millions of dollars to stay within federal clean-air laws.

Sublette County is home to one of the largest natural gas reserves in North America, and it is dotted with hundreds of gas wells to supply the nation's growing demand for cleaner-burning fuel. Thousands more wells are planned for the future.

But pollution from vehicles and equipment in the gas fields — along with dust, weather and geography — have raised ozone to a level that rivals those of big cities in the summertime.

Wyoming's ozone problem comes at a time when the federal government has strengthened its ozone restrictions to better protect public health. In March, the Environmental Protection Agency set a new ozone standard of 75 parts per billion, down from 80 parts per billion.

The peak eight-hour average for ozone near Boulder reached 122 parts per billion on Feb. 21 and 102 parts per billion on March 11. By comparison, the Los Angeles area hit a peak average of 152 parts per billion last summer, and Denver recorded a peak of 98 parts per billion last July.

Failure to meet federal air-quality standards could result in mandatory pollution-cutting measures ranging from restricting wood-burning stoves in homes to placing limits on the booming oil and gas industry.

Jeremy Nichols, director of the Denver-based Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action, said all economic development in the region — not just the energy industry — could be affected.

"If we don't get ahead of the curve, we could be suffering serious consequences in the future," Nichols said.

Conservation groups have seized on the ozone alerts in their efforts to curb drilling for natural gas in the area.

"Obviously, the pace and level of development is just too much," said Linda Baker of the Upper Green River Valley Coalition.

The energy industry says it has been working with regulators to ease the problem and insists drilling should not be curtailed.

Ozone is a component of smog, a yellowish haze of pollutants that lingers near ground level and can raise the risk of asthma and heart attacks, especially among the elderly and children with respiratory illnesses.

Ozone needs sunlight to form, and state environmental officials believe the ozone levels in Wyoming this past winter and spring were exacerbated by heavy snowcover, which intensified the sunlight by reflecting it off the snow. In 2007, when the area had little snowcover, there were no elevated ozone readings.

Also contributing to the situation are rare temperature inversions, when cold air is trapped close to the ground, and the surrounding mountains, which enclose the pollution in the Green River valley.

Gas developers in the area are sharing information on how best to reduce ozone, according to Randy Teeuwan, a spokesman for Encana Corp., one of the largest gas suppliers. Encana already is using natural gas-powered drilling rigs that emit less pollution, and it is consolidating field operations to reduce emissions.

State officials are working with the industry to reduce emissions without waiting for new federal regulations to take effect.

"We understand that the people who are living up there cannot wait two or three years for us to develop regulatory tools," said David Finley with the state Department of Environmental Quality.

For instance, the state is considering a plan that, when conditions appear ripe for ozone formation, would ask companies to curtail truck traffic or use more drilling rigs powered by cleaner-burning natural gas.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management is reviewing a proposal by several companies to allow nearly 4,400 more wells in the county.

Jim Sewell, environmental project manager with Shell Exploration and Production, said the expansion project would have lower emissions than existing facilities. The companies also are offering $36 million to pay for environmental monitoring and other measures that lessen the effects of drilling on air quality, wildlife and plants.

Jensen, whose family has lived in this part of Wyoming for four generations, said he has seen both sides of gas development.

On one hand, he has received royalties from wells on his land, enabling him to buy a boat, snowmobiles and other "toys."

But the pollution leaves Jensen longing for the days of clear skies, little traffic and fewer people.

"I'd give it up right now if all them rigs moved," he said.

By Farah Stockman

WASHINGTON - In March 2005, one of the Pentagon's most trusted contractors - Virginia-based MPRI, founded by retired senior military leaders - won a $400 million contract to train police in Iraq and other hotspots. Two months later, MPRI set up a company in Bermuda to which it subcontracted much of the work.

It was not the first time that MPRI executives had used a shell company in an offshore tax haven to perform government-funded work. A year earlier, MPRI headed a joint venture that won a $1.6 billion contract to provide US peacekeeping forces in Kosovo and elsewhere. Three months later, MPRI set up a company in the Cayman Islands to do the work.

Like MPRI's Bermuda subsidiary, the Cayman Islands company appears to have no phone number, website, or staff of its own there.

Rick Kiernan, an MPRI spokesman, declined to explain why the company created the two offshore entities and stressed that MPRI operates in "total adherence or compliance with the current law."

But tax lawyers say that MPRI appears to be avoiding the payment of roughly $4 million dollars a year in Social Security and Medicare taxes for the police-training contract alone and is sidestepping scrutiny by hiring workers through offshore entities based outside the jurisdiction of the Internal Revenue Service.

"The employer is trying to take itself out of the audit reach of the IRS," said California-based tax lawyer James R. Urquhart III.

If MPRI had not set up the shell company, it would have been vulnerable to an audit, tax specialists said, because it classifies a significant portion of its roughly 400 American police trainers and advisers working in Iraq and elsewhere as self-employed independent contractors, a practice that allows MPRI to avoid paying Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment taxes.

As a result, workers cannot receive unemployment compensation when their jobs end and may be deprived of other protections under US law.

"They are taking steps to reduce the audit risk," said H. David Rosenbloom, director of the International Tax Program at New York University Law School. "If there is concern about the classification [of workers], as there undoubtedly is, from the company's standpoint they are better off being in a foreign corporation."

Workers classified as self-employed must pay Social Security and Medicare taxes themselves, the equivalent of 15.3 percent of their salaries. If they were classified as employees of MPRI, rather than independent contractors, they would split the cost with their employer.

But sometimes the taxes are not paid at all. A former MPRI worker in Iraq said he was unaware of his tax obligations
and did not pay self-employment tax for an entire year on his salary of $154,000. Such levies are very difficult for the IRS to collect, specialists say, and frequently go unpaid.

To combat the problem, the IRS has aggressively audited companies registered in the United States that try to avoid payroll taxes by reporting their workers as independent contractors. The IRS conducts a rigorous test to determine whether a worker is genuinely self-employed and applies heavy penalties to companies that misclassify their workers.

But the IRS cannot conduct audits on overseas employers, such as the shell companies that MPRI set up in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Companies that use such offshore entities to avoid taxes, even as they profit from lucrative federal contracts, have captured the attention of Congress in recent months.

After a Globe article in March detailed how former Halliburton subsidiary KBR avoided hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll taxes by hiring employees through a Cayman Island shell company, the House of Representatives passed a bill prohibiting the practice. Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois are cosponsoring a similar effort in the Senate, and they have called on a Senate subcommittee to investigate the practice.

Two weeks ago, Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who heads the House Oversight Committee, launched an investigation, sending letters to 15 federal contractors seeking information about their offshore subsidiaries.

But the business community has begun to defend the practice.

"There is nothing wrong with tax avoidance, particularly for work that is done outside the United States," said Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president of the Professional Services Council, a trade association of companies that perform government work.

Initially, a spokesman for L-3 Communications, the defense giant that owns MPRI, told the Globe that L-3 does not use offshore subsidiaries to hire its American workers.

But a Globe investigation found that MPRI, which L-3 acquired in 2000, hires roughly 400 American workers through its Bermuda shell company, called MPRI International Services. Some workers are classified as employees of the Bermuda company, allowing both the workers and MPRI to avoid paying payroll taxes, resulting in a net loss to Social Security and Medicare funds.

Others are hired as independent contractors, a practice that forces the worker to shoulder the entire tax burden and makes it more difficult for the IRS to collect. Classifying workers as independent contractors has enabled MPRI and some other defense contractors working in Iraq to hire and fire more easily and to avoid some legal obligations to its workers.

Georgetown professor Albert Lauber said it is unlikely that police trainers in Iraq would pass the IRS test for self-employment. He said that genuine independent contractors come into a job with their own equipment, require little training and oversight, and generally get the job done on their own schedule.

MPRI's police trainers, who asked not to be identified, said they do not work that way. One former trainer working for MPRI in Iraq said that police trainers in Baghdad received letters at the end of 2005 saying that they might experience a brief disruption in their payments because "payroll was being moved to Bermuda to satisfy US tax code."

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 424

By Pamela Hess
The House Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to compel a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney to testify to the committee about the Bush administration's interrogation practices.

David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, refused to testify without a subpoena. No date has been set for his appearance before Congress.

Addington is one of several lawyers believed to have played a key role in crafting the administration's interrogation policies shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, policies which some say amounted to torture.

John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who wrote a now-repudiated memo allowing the harsh interrogations of military prisoners agreed late Monday to testify to Congress about those practices, averting a subpoena. Yoo is now a law professor at University of California-Berkeley.

Yoo's memo, dated March 14, 2003, outlines a legal justification for military interrogators to use harsh tactics against al-Qaida and Taliban detainees overseas — so long as they did not specifically intend to torture their captives.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and former Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin have also agreed to give testimony at a future hearing. Former CIA Director George Tenet is still in negotiations with the committee, according to House Judiciary Committee spokeswoman Melanie Roussell.

The Judiciary Committee hearings are meant to determine what role administration lawyers played in creating and approving interrogation procedures that went far beyond those traditionally used by U.S. forces, and whether any of them violated their legal or ethical obligations, said Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich.














By Craig Whitlock
ADEN, Yemen -- Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials.

Jamal al-Badawi, a Yemeni who helped organize the plot to bomb the Cole as it refueled in this Yemeni port on Oct. 12, 2000, has broken out of prison twice. He was recaptured both times, but then secretly released by the government last fall. Yemeni authorities jailed him again after receiving complaints from Washington. But U.S. officials have so little faith that he's still in his cell that they have demanded the right to perform random inspections.

Two suspects, described as the key organizers, were captured outside Yemen and are being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Many details of their alleged involvement remain classified. It is unclear when -- or if -- they will be tried by the military.

The collapse of the Cole investigation offers a revealing case study of the U.S. government's failure to bring al-Qaeda operatives and their leaders to justice for some of the most devastating attacks on American targets over the past decade.

A week after the Cole bombing, President Bill Clinton vowed to hunt down the plotters and promised, "Justice will prevail." In March 2002, President Bush said his administration was cooperating with Yemen to prevent it from becoming "a haven for terrorists." He added: "Every terrorist must be made to live as an international fugitive with no place to settle or organize, no place to hide, no governments to hide behind and not even a safe place to sleep."

Since then, Yemen has refused to extradite Badawi and an accomplice to the United States, where they have been indicted on murder charges. Other Cole conspirators have been freed after short prison terms. At least two went on to commit suicide attacks in Iraq.

"After we worked day and night to bring justice to the victims and prove that these Qaeda operatives were responsible, we're back to square one," said Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent and a lead investigator into the bombing. "Do they have laws over there or not? It's really frustrating what's happening."

To this day, al-Qaeda trumpets the attack on the Cole as one of its greatest military victories. It remains an improbable story: how two suicide bombers smiled and waved to unsuspecting U.S. sailors in Aden's harbor as they pulled their tiny fishing boat alongside the $1 billion destroyer and blew a gaping hole in its side.

Despite the initial promises of accountability, only limited public inquiries took place in Washington, unlike the extensive investigations that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Basic questions remain about which individuals and countries played a role in the assault on the Cole.

Some officials acknowledged that pursuing the Cole investigation became less of a political priority with the passage of time. A new administration took power three months after the bombing. Then came Sept. 11.

"During the first part of the Bush administration, no one was willing to take ownership of this," said Roger W. Cressey, a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations who helped oversee the White House's response to the Cole attack. "It didn't happen on their watch. It was the forgotten attack."

A Clash of Cultures and Wills

The day after the attack, a planeload of armed FBI agents arrived in Aden. But they quickly ran into resistance from Yemeni officials, who didn't like the idea of foreigners operating on their soil and telling them what to do.

The Cole bombing represented an enormous political embarrassment for Yemen, which had lobbied the U.S. Navy to use the port of Aden as a refueling stop. As the poorest country in the Arab world, Yemen was also unprepared for some of the FBI's demands.

"This is a country that didn't even have fingerprint powder, and now they're dealing with the most sophisticated law enforcement agency in the world," said Barbara K. Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen at the time. "DNA is a complete fantasy to them."

Bodine said the FBI was slow to trust Yemeni authorities, and kept the U.S. Embassy in the dark as well, hampering the probe. She described the Yemeni government as generally cooperative, but said some officials dug in their heels and "certainly didn't like us."

The FBI was "dealing with a bureaucracy and a culture they didn't understand," she said. "Yemen operates on a different timeline than we do. We had one group working on a New York minute, and another on a 4,000-year-old history."

The FBI and some White House officials, in turn, suspected Bodine was too sympathetic toward the Yemenis. The FBI special agent in charge, John O'Neill, was forced to return to New York after butting heads too many times with the ambassador.

Michael A. Sheehan, then the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, said both sides were to blame.

"Basically, I was in the middle of this thing," he recalled. "I felt both sides were over the top -- the FBI in demanding complete autonomy in a foreign country and State in being too protective of the host country. And eventually it just turned into a clash of wills."

"Sometimes, when you deal with a host country, you can push too hard and it backfires and you get less cooperation," Sheehan added. "We needed to find a middle ground, and we had difficulty getting there."

Two in U.S. Custody

Amid the friction, U.S. and Yemeni investigators soon identified the ringleader of the attack as Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national of Yemeni descent who served as al-Qaeda's operations chief in the Arabian Peninsula.

At the time, Yemeni authorities insisted that Nashiri had fled the country before the Cole bombing. But a senior Yemeni official said that was not the case and that Yemeni investigators had located Nashiri in Taizz, a city about 90 miles northwest of Aden, soon after the attack. The official said Nashiri spent several months in Taizz, where he received high-level protection from the government. "We knew where he was, but we could not arrest him," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation.

Nashiri eventually left Yemen to prepare other attacks on U.S. targets in the Persian Gulf, U.S. officials said. He was captured in the United Arab Emirates in November 2002 and handed over to the CIA. He was detained in the CIA's secret network of overseas prisons until he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006.

In a hearing at Guantanamo last year, Nashiri said he confessed to masterminding the Cole attack only because he had been tortured.

"From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me," he said, according to a transcript. "I just said those things to make the people happy."

Another al-Qaeda leader, Tawfiq bin Attash, who also played an organizing role in the Sept. 11 hijackings, was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, in May 2003 and confessed last year to overseeing the Cole plot. In a separate appearance before a Guantanamo tribunal, he said he had helped buy the explosives and the motorboat. He also said he had recruited operatives for the plot but was in Afghanistan at the time of the attack.

Bin Attash and Nashiri were both named unindicted co-conspirators in the Justice Department's investigation into the Cole attack. A decision was made not to indict them because pending criminal charges could have forced the CIA or the Pentagon to give up custody of the men, U.S. officials said in interviews.

A Special Deal

After a long trial, a Yemeni court condemned Badawi, the organizer, to death in 2004, although his sentence was reduced on appeal to 15 years in prison. Four other conspirators were given prison sentences ranging from five to 10 years.

The convicts were sent to a maximum security prison in Sanaa, the capital. They didn't stay there long.

On Feb. 3, 2006, prison officials announced that 23 al-Qaeda members, including most of the Cole defendants, had vanished. They escaped by digging a tunnel that snaked 300 feet to a nearby mosque.

It was Badawi's second successful jailbreak. Three years earlier, he had wormed out of another maximum security prison in Aden; Yemeni officials said he had picked a hole through the bathroom wall.

Badawi surrendered about 20 months after his second escape. But Yemeni authorities cut him a deal. They said they would let him remain free if he would help them search for the other al-Qaeda fugitives.

The arrangement was kept secret until Yemeni newspapers reported shortly afterward that Badawi had been spotted at his home in Aden.

U.S. officials said they were stunned. After his first escape, Badawi had been indicted in U.S. District Court in New York for the Cole killings, and the United States had posted a $5 million bounty for his capture. But U.S. officials couldn't get their hands on him. "This was someone who was implicated in the Cole bombing," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at the time. "He needs to be in jail."

U.S. officials withheld $20 million in aid to Yemen and canceled a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Yemeni officials said they quickly put Badawi back behind bars. But reports persist that his incarceration remains a day-to-day affair.

In December, a Yemeni newspaper reported that Badawi had again been seen roaming free in public. One source close to the Cole investigation said there is evidence that Badawi is allowed to come and go, despite the periodic requests by U.S. officials to inspect his prison cell.

Diplomatic relations soured further in February, when the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa learned that Fahd al-Quso, another Cole conspirator, had been secretly freed nine months before. Like Badawi, Quso faces U.S. charges in the Cole case and has a $5 million bounty on his head.