Sewage Doubtfire

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

2008-09-19T21:40:00.000-07:00

(AP)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The casinos are actually starting to lay off employees.

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

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

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

by Dahr Jamail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-09-17T18:29:00.000-07:00

By Erica Werner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Frederic J. Frommer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-09-15T17:53:00.000-07:00

By Andrew Ross Sorkin, Ben White and Jenny Anderson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-09-13T02:06:00.000-07:00

By Tom Kishken

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All about money

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So they send them to the hospital.

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

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

Many are wary of authority

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

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

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

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

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

Filled to saturation

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doctors at other emergency rooms say the same thing.

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

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

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

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

Taking the easy way out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Renee Schoof (McClatchy)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-09-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Sopan Joshi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-09-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

By Dino Cappiello

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(AP)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008-09-08T21:33:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Bradley Brooks (AP)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 472

2008-09-05T22:58:00.000-07:00

By Kathleen M. Howley

Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Foreclosures accelerated to the fastest pace in almost three decades during the second quarter as interest rates increased and home values fell, prompting more Americans to walk away from homes they couldn't refinance or sell.

New foreclosures increased to 1.19 percent, rising above 1 percent for the first time in the survey's 29 years, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a report today. The total inventory of homes in foreclosure reached 2.75 percent, almost tripling since the five-year housing boom ended in 2005. The share of loans with one or more payments overdue rose to a seasonally adjusted 6.41 percent of all mortgages, an all-time high, from 6.35 percent in the first quarter.

Tumbling home prices are making it difficult for even the most creditworthy owners with adjustable-rate mortgages to sell or get a new loan as their financing costs rise, said Jay Brinkmann, MBA's chief economist. Prime ARMs accounted for 23 percent of new foreclosures and subprime ARMs were 36 percent, he said.

``People chose the lowest payment option to get into some of the very expensive housing markets and now that prices are coming way down, they can't sell and they can't afford the higher payments,'' Brinkmann said in an interview. The unadjusted rate for new foreclosures was 1.08 percent, also a record, he said.

The three-year-old housing slump has slowed growth of the world's largest economy, caused more than half a trillion dollars of losses at banks such as Citigroup Inc. and UBS AG, and crimped earnings for companies such as Home Depot Inc. and Lowe's Cos. that rely on home purchases to fuel demand.

Economic Growth

The drop in home sales and values, along with tighter credit conditions and higher energy costs, probably will ``weigh on economic growth over the next few quarters,'' Federal Reserve policy makers said Aug. 5 when they decided to hold their benchmark rate at 2 percent. The central bankers cut the rate seven times in the last year in an attempt to avert a U.S. recession.

The Fed probably will keep the rate level for the next few months, according to the price of Fed funds futures. There's an 81 percent chance of no change at the Sept. 16 meeting and a 75 percent chance of no action at the Oct. 29 meeting, they indicate.

Foreclosures started on prime mortgages rose to 0.67 percent from 0.54 percent and the foreclosure inventory increased to 1.42 percent from 1.22 percent, the report said. The share of seriously delinquent prime mortgages was 2.35 percent, up from 1.99 percent.

Prime Mortgages

The share of new foreclosures on prime ARMs was 1.82 percent, triple the 0.58 percent in the year-earlier quarter, and the total foreclosure inventory was 4.33 percent, up from 1.29 percent, the report said. The share of seriously delinquent prime ARMs was 6.78 percent, rising from 2.02 percent a year ago.

New foreclosures on subprime loans rose to 4.7 percent from 4.06 percent in the first quarter, according to the report.

The total foreclosure inventory increased to 11.81 percent from 10.74 percent and the so-called seriously delinquent share of loans that are 90 days or more overdue rose to 17.85 from 16.42 percent.

The bankers' report cites percentages without providing the number of mortgages. The U.S. had $10.6 trillion of outstanding home loans at the end of March, according to a June 5 report by the Federal Reserve. Mortgage lending fell to $320.9 billion in the first quarter, down from $782.6 billion a year earlier, the Fed report said.

Existing home sales fell to a 10-year low in the second quarter and the median price for a single-family house dropped 7.6 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors in Chicago.

Market Bottom

Tumbling prices and foreclosure sales by banks may be helping to form a bottom for the housing market, said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts.

``People who have been waiting on the sidelines -- and there have been quite a number of them -- are starting to see prices come down to the point where they perceive good value,'' Bethune said in an interview. ``Foreclosures do provide opportunities and induce some people to come back into the market.''

Sales of previously owned homes rose 3.1 percent in July to an annualized pace of 5 million, boosted by foreclosures that accounted for about a third of all transactions, the National Association of Realtors said in an Aug. 25 report.

The Mortgage Bankers report is based on a survey of 45.4 million loans by mortgage companies, commercial banks, thrifts, credit unions and other financial institutions.

By Jim Kuhnhenn (AP)

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.

Some examples:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform _ not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of doll ars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state _ by population.

MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 perso nnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right _ change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington _ throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 471

2008-09-02T22:28:00.000-07:00

By Ishtiaq Mahsud (AP)

At least 15 people, including women and children, were killed in an attack involving U.S.-led forces in a remote Pakistani village near the border with Afghanistan, intelligence officials and a witness said Wednesday.

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said it had no report of such an incursion, said to have happened in the militant-infested South Waziristan tribal region. Pakistan's army confirmed an attack but did not specify if it believed foreign troops were involved.

The U.S. and Pakistan, allies in the war on terror, have had tensions over cross-border attacks, including suspected American missile strikes in Pakistani territory. In one high-profile incident earlier this year, Pakistan said 11 of its soldiers died when U.S. aircraft bombed their border post.

Habib Khan Wazir, an area resident, said the latest incident happened before dawn, shortly after an American helicopter landed in the village of Musa Nikow in South Waziristan.

He said as the owner of a home nearby came outside with his wife, the "American and Afghan soldiers starting firing."

Khan said later the troops entered the house and killed seven other people, including women and children. He said the troops also killed six other residents.

Two local intelligence officials confirmed the account on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. One official said 19 people died.

The U.S. embassy in Islamabad declined to comment.

Maj. Murad Khan, a spokesman for Pakistan's army, said it could confirm an attack on a house near the Pakistan-Afghan border.

"We are collecting details," Khan said, without specifying if Americans were involved.

American officials say Pakistan's tribal regions along the Afghan border have turned into havens for al-Qaida and Taliban-linked militants involved in attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. South Waziristan is the base for Pakistan's top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud.

The U.S. has pushed Pakistan to crack down on the militancy inside its territory, and there have been debates in Washington over how far the U.S. can go in carrying out its own strikes.

U.S. rules of engagement allow ground forces to go a few miles into Pakistan when in "hot pursuit" and when forces were targeted or fired on by the enemy. U.S. rules also allow aircraft to go several miles into Pakistan air space.

By David Ljunggren (Reuters)

A huge 19 square mile (55 square km) ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a "massive and disturbing" rate, the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote region, scientists said on Tuesday.

They said the Markham Ice Shelf, one of just five remaining ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic, split away from Ellesmere Island in early August. They also said two large chunks totaling 47 square miles had broken off the nearby Serson Ice Shelf, reducing it in size by 60 percent.

"The changes ... were massive and disturbing," said Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec.

Temperatures in large parts of the Arctic have risen far faster than the global average in recent decades, a development that experts say is linked to global warming.

"These substantial calving events underscore the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic," said Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario.

"These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present," he said in an e-mailed statement from the research team sent late on Tuesday.

Mueller said the total amount of ice lost from the shelves along Ellesmere Island this summer totaled 83 square miles -- more than three times the area of Manhattan island.

The figure is more than 10 times the amount of ice shelf cover that scientists estimated on July 30 would vanish from around the island this summer.

"Reduced sea ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf losses," said Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa.

BLEAK FUTURE

"Extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the largest remaining ice shelf, the Ward Hunt, mean that it will continue to disintegrate in the coming years," he said.

The first sign of serious recent erosion in the five shelves came in late July, when sheets of ice totaling almost eight square miles broke off the Ward Hunt shelf. Since then that shelf has lost another 8.5 square miles.

Ellesmere Island was once home to a single enormous ice shelf totaling around 3,500 square miles. All that is left of that shelf today are the four much smaller shelves that together cover little more than 300 square miles.

Scientists say the ice shelves, which contain unique ecosystems that had yet to be studied, will not be replaced because they took so long to form.

The rapid melting of ice in the Canadian Arctic archipelago worries Ottawa, which fears foreign ships might try to sail through the waters without seeking permission first.

Last week Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada would toughen reporting requirements for ships entering its waters in the Far North, where some of those territorial claims are disputed by the United States and other countries.

By John Byrne

As the nation focuses on Sen. John McCain's choice of running mate, President Bush has quietly moved to expand the reach of presidential power by ensuring that America remains in a state of permanent war.

Buried in a recent proposal by the Administration is a sentence that has received scant attention -- and was buried itself in the very newspaper that exposed it Saturday. It is an affirmation that the United States remains at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban and "associated organizations."

Part of a proposal for Guantanamo Bay legal detainees, the provision before Congress seeks to “acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.”

The New York Times' page 8 placement of the article in its Saturday edition seems to downplay its importance. Such a re-affirmation of war carries broad legal implications that could imperil Americans' civil liberties and the rights of foreign nationals for decades to come.

It was under the guise of war that President Bush claimed a legal mandate for his warrantless wiretapping program, giving the National Security Agency power to intercept calls Americans made abroad. More of this program has emerged in recent years, and it includes the surveillance of Americans' information and exchanges online.

"War powers" have also given President Bush cover to hold Americans without habeas corpus -- detainment without explanation or charge. Jose Padilla, a Chicago resident arrested in 2002, was held without trial for five years before being convicted of conspiring to kill individuals abroad and provide support for terrorism.

But his arrest was made with proclamations that Padilla had plans to build a "dirty bomb." He was never convicted of this charge. Padilla's legal team also claimed that during his time in military custody -- the four years he was held without charge -- he was tortured with sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, forced stress positions and injected with drugs.

Times reporter Eric Lichtblau notes that the measure is the latest step that the Administration has taken to "make permanent" key aspects of its "long war" against terrorism. Congress recently passed a much-maligned bill giving telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for their participation in what constitutional experts see as an illegal or borderline-illegal surveillance program, and is considering efforts to give the FBI more power in their investigative techniques.

"It is uncertain whether Congress will take the administration up on its request," Lichtblau writes. "Some Republicans have already embraced the idea, with Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on th e Judiciary Committee, introducing a measure almost identical to the administration’s proposal. 'Since 9/11,' Mr. Smith said, 'we have been at war with an unconventional enemy whose primary goal is to kill innocent Americans.'"

If enough Republicans come aboard, Democrats may struggle to defeat the provision. Despite holding majorities in the House and Senate, they have failed to beat back some of President Bush's purported "security" measures, such as the telecom immunity bill.

Bush's open-ended permanent war language worries his critics. They say it could provide indefinite, if hazy, legal justification for any number of activities -- including detention of terrorists suspects at bases like Guantanamo Bay (where for years the Administration would not even release the names of those being held), and the NSA's warantless wiretapping program.

Lichtblau co-wrote the Times article revealing the Administration's eavesdropping program along with fellow reporter James Risen.

He notes that Bush's language "recalls a resolution, known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001... [which] authorized the president to 'use all necessary and appropriate force' against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks to prevent future strikes. That authorization, still in effect, was initially viewed by many members of Congress who voted for it as the go-ahead for the administration to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the0ATaliban, which had given sanctuary to Mr. bin Laden."

"But the military authorization became the secret legal basis for some of the administration’s most controversial legal tactics, including the wiretapping program, and that still gnaws at some members of Congress," he adds.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 470

2008-09-01T17:09:00.000-07:00

(AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan - The United Nations said Tuesday it has found "convincing evidence" that U.S. coalition troops and Afghan forces killed some 90 civilians, including 60 children, in airstrikes in western Afghanistan.

The U.N. said it based its findings solely on the testimony of villagers and meetings with Afghan officials, and did not provide photos or evidence that its investigators saw any graves.

President Hamid Karzai's government, in a harshly worded statement, ordered its ministries of foreign affairs and defense to regulate the presence of foreign troops and try to negotiate an end to "airstrikes on civilian targets, uncoordinated house searches and illegal detention of Afghan civilians."

The U.S. coalition has said it killed 25 militants and five civilians in an operation in Shindand district of Herat province on Friday.

Karzai's statement appears to be aimed at both international forces operating in Afghanistan: the U.S.-led coalition, which conducts special forces counterterrorism operations and trains the fledgling Afghan army and police, and the U.N.-mandated NATO-led force tasked to provide security for the war-ravaged nation.

The accusation from the world body will likely fuel tensions among the U.S. coalition, the U.N. and the Afghan government.

Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said Tuesday that the decision was made after Afghan officials "lost patience" with foreign forces, and the killings and detentions of civilians during raids in remote villages.

"We do not want international forces to leave Afghanistan until the time our security institutions are able to defend Afghanistan independently," Hamidzada told reporters Tuesday.

But the presence of those forces has to be based "within the framework of Afghan law with respect to international law," Hamidzada said.

Hamidzada says circumstances have changed. "Afghanistan of 2001 is different from Afghanistan today," he said. He said the government has not discussed any timetable for the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan.

Capt. Mike Windsor, a spokesman for the NATO-led force, said the force had seen media reports about the government's decision but had not received "any official notification so far."

He pointed out that NATO's "mission is based on a U.N. mandate and carried upon the invitation of the Afghan government."

There was no immediate comment from the U.S.-led coalition.

The U.N. finding backed up the government claim. The U.N. said their investigation "found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men."

"Fifteen other villagers were wounded or otherwise injured," the U.N. said in a statement.

U.S.-led coalition troops, which were supporting Afghan commandos during the raid, said they believe that 25 militants, including a Taliban commander, and five civilians were killed during the Friday raid in Azizabad village of Herat province. The top coalition commander in the country has ordered an investigation.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters Monday that foreign forces in Afghanistan "take every precaution to try to avoid innocent civilian casualties."

Asked about Karzai's concerns about civilian casualties, Fratto said an investigation was under way. He said the Defense Department believes "it was a good strike."

NATO and U.S. officials insist that they take great care in their targeting and accuse the militants of hiding in civilian areas, thus putting innocent people at risk.

The decision also comes a year ahead of Afghanistan's presidential elections amid growing criticism that Karzai's government is unable to contain the insurgency and deal with the deep-rooted corruption that afflicts officials in the government.

Karzai has said he will run in the election. No date has been set yet.

NEW YORK (AP) -- This Labor Day finds workers in worse shape than they've been in years, according to a scorecard released Monday by Rutgers University.

In its first national labor scorecard, the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations said that more than 10 percent of Americans are unemployed, discouraged from seeking work or underemployed. That is a nearly 25 percent increase from one year earlier.

Professor Douglas Kruse, a labor economist who created the scorecard, said that a sharp decline in the number of Americans able to find full-time jobs, along with growing consumer debt and health care costs, was a cause for concern.

"But there are some bright spots long term," Kruse said, including improvements in workplace safety, a small but growing percentage of employers offering support for child care and employee wellness programs, and more Americans who are completely satisfied with their jobs.

Meanwhile, the Labor Department said last week that the number of people signing up for jobless benefits declined for the third straight period but remained above 400,000, an indicator of a slowing economy.

The Rutgers labor scorecard offered other sobering findings:

About 530,000 were subject to mass layoffs in the last year, growth of nearly 5 percent but a lower rate than five and 10 years ago.

The median weekly earnings for American workers have not grown in real terms over the past eight years.

At $6.55, the federal minimum wage is worth 40 cents less per hour, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was a decade ago.

Although employer-assisted child care and employee wellness programs have grown quickly over the past decade, they still cover less than one quarter of American workers.

Roughly 4 percent of the work force wants to work full-time but is working part time because they can't find full-time work.

By Alison Vekshin and Ari Levy

Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Integrity Bank of Alpharetta, Georgia, was closed by U.S. regulators today, the 10th bank to collapse this year amid a surge in soured real-estate loans stemming from the worst housing slump since the Great Depression.

Integrity Bank, with $1.1 billion in assets and $974 million in deposits, was shuttered by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Regions Financial Corp., Alabama's biggest bank, will assume all deposits from Integrity, which was run by Integrity Bancshares Inc. The failed bank's five offices will open on Sept. 2 as branches of Regions, the FDIC said.

``Depositors will continue to be insured with Regions Bank so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain their deposit insurance,'' the FDIC said.

Banks are being closed at the fastest pace in 14 years as financial companies report more than $505 billion in writedowns and credit losses since 2007. California lender IndyMac Bancorp Inc., which had $32 billion in assets, was closed July 11 in the third-largest bank seizure, contributing to a 14 percent drop in the U.S. deposit insurance fund that had $45.2 billion at the end of the in the second quarter.

Regions will buy about $34.4 million in assets and will pay the FDIC a premium of 1.01 percent to assume the failed bank's deposits, the FDIC said. The FDIC estimates the cost of the Integrity failure to its deposit-insurance fund will be $250 million to $300 million.

Told to Raise Capital

Integrity was ordered by federal and state regulators in May to present a capital-raising plan within 60 days. At the time, the company had been trying without success for at least eight months to raise $40 million after loans to residential and commercial developers were hurt by the collapse of the real estate market.

``Banks must meet certain regulatory minimums to ensure safety and soundness,'' Georgia bank commissioner Rob Braswell said in a telephone interview. ``When those minimums are not able to be met and solvency is in jeopardy, we have no choice but to close the institution and to place it into receivership.''

Integrity Bancshares, which sold for more than $14 a share in January 2007, closed today at 4 cents in over-the-counter trading.

The FDIC insures deposits of up to $100,000 per depositor per bank, and up to $250,000 for some retirement accounts at 8,451 institutions with $13.3 trillion in assets.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 469

2008-08-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

By Alison Vekshin and Ari Levy

Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Columbian Bank and Trust Co. of Topeka, Kansas, was closed by U.S. regulators, the nation's ninth bank to collapse this year amid bad real-estate loans and writedowns stemming from a drop in home prices.

The bank, with $752 million in assets and $622 million in total deposits, was shuttered by the Kansas state bank commissioner's office and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the FDIC said yesterday in a statement.

Citizens Bank and Trust will assume the failed bank's insured deposits. Columbian Bank's nine branches will open Aug. 25 as Citizens Bank and Trust offices, the FDIC said. Customers can access their accounts over the weekend by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards.

``There is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain their deposit insurance coverage,'' the FDIC said.

The pace of bank closings is accelerating as financial firms have reported more than $500 billion in writedowns and credit losses since 2007. The FDIC's ``problem'' bank list grew by 18 percent in the first quarter from the fourth, to 90 banks with combined assets of $26.3 billion.

Prior to yesterday, the FDIC had closed 36 banks since October 2000, according to a list at fdic.gov. The U.S. shut 12 banks in 2002, the highest in the period, and 2005 and 2006 had no closures.

U.S. bank regulators closed Florida's First Priority Bank on Aug. 1; Reno-based First National Bank of Nevada, Newport Beach, California-based First Heritage Bank, and Pasadena-based IndyMac Bancorp Inc. in July; Staples, Minnesota-based First Integrity Bank and ANB Financial in Bentonville, Arkansas, in May; Hume Bank in Hume, Missouri, in March; and Douglass National Bank in Kansas City, Missouri, in January.

By Jason Straziuso and Rahim Faiez

Scores of Afghan civilians who had gathered in a small village for the memorial ceremony of a militia commander were killed when U.S. and Afghan soldiers launched an attack in the middle of the night, officials and villagers said Saturday.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the early Friday operation in western Afghanistan and said most of the dead were civilians. The U.S. coalition, however, said it believed only five civilians were among those killed and said that it would investigate the Afghan claims.

An Afghan human rights group that visited the site of the operation said Saturday that at least 78 people were killed. The Ministry of Interior has said 76 civilians died, including 50 children under the age of 15, though the Ministry of Defense said 25 militants and five civilians were killed.

Meanwhile, a school principal and police official said Afghan soldiers tried to hand out food and clothes Saturday in Azizabad — the village in Herat province where the operation took place. But villagers started throwing stones at the soldiers, who then fired on the villagers and wounded up to eight people.

An Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission researcher visited Azizabad in Herat province and found that 15 houses had been destroyed and others were damaged, said Ahmad Nader Nadery, the group's commissioner.

Nadery said the information was preliminary and the group would publish a final report. He did not provide a breakdown of how many were civilians or militants, and said 20 women were among the dead and that children also were killed.

Nadery confirmed reports from villagers that a memorial ceremony was being held for a deputy militia commander allied with the Afghan police named Timor Shah, who had died in a personal dispute several months ago. Because of the memorial, relatives and friends from outside Azizabad were staying overnight in village homes, he said.

An AP photographer who visited Azizabad on Saturday said he saw at least 20 graves, including some graves with multiple bodies in them. He said he saw around 20 houses that had been destroyed.

Originally the U.S. coalition said the battle killed 30 militants, including a wanted Taliban commander, but U.S. coalition spokeswoman Rumi Nielson-Green said Saturday that five civilians — two women and three children connected to the militants — were among the dead.

The U.S. said it would investigate.

"Obviously there's allegations and a disconnect here. The sooner we can get that cleared up and get it official, the better off we'll all be," said U.S. coalition spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry. "We had people on the ground."

The competing claims by the U.S. coalition and the two Afghan ministries were impossible to verify because of the remote and dangerous location of the battle site.

Complicating the matter, Afghan officials are known to exaggerate civilian death claims for political payback, to qualify for more compensation money from the U.S. or because of pressure from the Taliban.

Still, the U.S. has killed dozens of civilians in past strikes even though it first denied any civilians had been hit.

In early July, U.S. bombs killed 47 civilians walking to a wedding party in Nuristan province, according to the findings of a government commission.

The U.S. military originally said it believed only combatants had been killed, and suggested that reports of civilians deaths were based on propaganda from militants. The U.S. later acknowledged that there may have been civilian casualties but never gave a specific number.

Civilian deaths creates massive amounts of pressure on Karzai, and on Saturday the president said his government would soon announce "necessary measures" to prevent civilian casualties, but provided no details.

Ghulam Azrat, 50, the director of the middle school in Azizabad, said he collected 60 bodies Friday morning after the bombing.

"We put the bodies in the main mosque," he told The Associated Press by phone, sometimes pausing to collect himself in between tears. "Most of these dead bodies were children and women. It took all morning to collect them."

Azrat said villagers on Saturday threw stones at Afghan soldiers who tried to give food and clothes to them. He said the soldiers fired into the crowd and wounded eight people, including one child critically wounded.

"The people were very angry," he said. "They told the soldiers, 'We don't need your food, we don't need your clothes. We want our children. We want our relatives. Can you give it to us? You cannot, so go away.'"

A spokesman for Afghan police in western Afghanistan, Rauf Ahmadi, confirmed that the demonstration took place against the soldiers, who he said fired into the air. Ahmadi said two Afghans were wounded by the gunfire.

The early Friday operation was led by Afghan National Army commandos, with support from the coalition, Nielson-Green said.

It was launched after an intelligence report that a Taliban commander, Mullah Siddiq, was inside the compound presiding over a meeting of militants, Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said. Siddiq was one of those killed during the raid, Azimi said.

More than 3,500 people — mostly militants — have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to figures from Western and Afghan officials.

On Saturday, a roadside bomb killed 10 civilians as they rode in a small bus in southern Kandahar province, according to an Afghan police chief, Matiullah Khan. Roadside bombs are typically aimed at Afghan and NATO troops but often are triggered early and kill civilians.

By Megan Holland

A feud within the family of Gov. Sarah Palin spilled into the public Thursday with accusations she tried to get a state trooper fired and she then fired the trooper's boss because he wouldn't act on her request.

In an interview Thursday, Palin vigorously denied that her dismissal last week of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan had anything to do with her dislike of state trooper Mike Wooten, her sister's ex-husband.

"To allege that I, or any member of my family, requested, received or released confidential personnel information on an Alaska State Trooper, or directed disciplinary action be taken against any employee of the Department of Public Safety, is, quite simply, outrageous," Palin said in a statement also released Thursday.

Monegan on Thursday said he could not talk about whether the governor ever discussed Wooten, saying it was a personnel matter. "It's the law, and I took an oath." he said.

He says he still does not know, though, why he lost his job.

The governor continues to say she dismissed Monegan and replaced him with Kenai Police chief Chuck Kopp last week because she wants a new direction for the department.

The Wooten accusation came initially on the blog of former state Rep. Andrew Halcro, who ran against Palin in the 2006 gubernatorial race and who has been a staunch critic of her and her administration since.

Later in the day, a spokesman for the troopers' labor union, the Public Safety Employees Association, held a press conference saying Wooten has been unfairly targeted by the governor's family.

The spokesman, John Cyr, also released a several-inch-thick file of the troopers' own investigation into charges from Palin, her husband, Todd, and other members of her family that Wooten committed unethical and illegal acts, which they said included drunken driving and illegal hunting.

The charges were made in 2005, as Wooten and Palin's sister were divorcing and before Palin ran for governor. They concerned Wooten's behavior in the preceding years. The acrimony continues today.

For the most part, trooper investigators found that the accusations were unsubstantiated, but in at least two cases -- Wooten's illegally killing of a moose in 2003 and his Tasering of his 11-year-old stepson -- were confirmed. The troopers later disciplined him for them.

Cyr said he released the investigation file at Wooten's request. Wooten could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Wooten and Palin's younger sister, Molly McCann, initiated their divorce in 2005 and finalized it that same year. But their case remains open as they battle over the couple's two young children, child support and visitation rights.

Sarah and Todd Palin became involved after the couple separated.

Palin was protective of her sister, according to court documents.

The Palins, at the time, encouraged the press to look into Wooten's behavior. In August 2005, Sarah Palin wrote an e-mail to then-Col. Julia Grimes, who was head of the troopers, about Wooten, calling him, "a ticking timebomb," according to an e-mail Todd Palin forwarded to the Daily News around that time.

The state troopers launched an investigation in 2005. In the end, Wooten was reprimanded for the moose and Taser incidents. Regarding the Taser, Cyr said Wooten was teaching the child about what if feels like to be hit by the stun gun. The trooper was disciplined without pay for 10 days, which was eventually, under Monegan, reduced, Cyr said.

Cyr believes Wooten is a good cop who has been unfairly targeted by people in power.

Palin said that since she took office in December 2006, the only mention she has made of Wooten to anyone in the Public Safety Department was when she sat down with Monegan at the beginning of her term to discuss her security detail.

She told Monegan that Wooten had "threatened to kill my dad and bring me down."

She told Monegan allegations of unethical and illegal behavior. But, she said, she thought that was the end of it. "I don't believe my discussion went anywhere," she said on Thursday in a phone interview.

Palin said she never has asked for another trooper investigation.

When people ask her if Wooten is her brother-in-law, she said she embarrassingly answers yes, and tells them he is the father of her niece and nephew.

Todd Palin said that since his wife took office he contacted the troopers regarding Wooten only once, in April 2007.

He said Wooten was on worker's compensation for a back injury but Todd Palin saw him numerous times around Wasilla looking like he did not have a back injury -- jumping up and down at local games. Then Palin saw him 110 miles from Wasilla on a snowmobile, demonstrating what he thought was an abuse of his worker's comp. Palin took a photo and forwarded it to Wooten's boss.

On Thursday, the governor held little regard for the trooper. She and her husband said they do not believe Wooten has what it takes to be a state cop.

"Based on what I know of trooper Wooten and his threat to kill a person, saying they will 'eat an f'in bullet,' and you know he said this with a gun on his hip; knowing of his drinking in a patrol car, knowing of his illegally killing of the moose, knowing of his tasering I believe at that time his 11-year-old stepson; knowing of his verbal abuse of minors, my daughter. ... I would question any trooper driving a car where the logo is printed on the side of that car being 'integrity, (loyalty, and courage')."

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 468

2008-08-26T23:41:00.000-07:00

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At a communal water station in a Baghdad slum, a young boy's skinny arms fly up and down as he uses a bicycle pump to coax water from the dry ground.

His efforts produce a languid stream that will tide over his family -- and the families of the children waiting near him to fill their cooking pots -- until the next day.

This is a daily ritual for millions of Iraqis who lack access to sufficient clean water and proper sewage five years after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

Water and sewage are perennial challenges in this arid country, where the overhaul of decrepit public works has been hindered by years of war and neglect.

Nearly a billion liters of raw sewage is dumped into Baghdad waterways each day -- enough to fill 370 Olympic-sized pools.

The United Nations estimates that less than half of Iraqis get drinking water piped into their homes in rural areas. In the capital, people set their alarm clocks to wake them in the middle of the night so they can fill storage tanks when water pressure is under less strain.

New investments in water and sanitation are only slowly bearing fruit even as Iraq seeks to capitalize on a dramatic drop in violence over the past year.

Iraqi and U.S. officials have been working to refurbish existing water plants, distribution lines and sewage works, but they say major infrastructure improvements will take years.

Since 2003, the United States has spent about $2.4 billion on Iraq's water and sanitation sector, and the Iraqi government has now taken over funding major construction. But the World Bank estimates that at least $14 billion is needed.

In the apartment bloc where Suhad Mohammed lives in eastern Baghdad, water pressure is so weak that water doesn't reach the top floors. Each morning, her husband and son help her fill plastic jugs from a communal tap downstairs and lug them up several flights of stairs.

"It gets even more complicated in the summer," she said.

The shortages are also causing health problems.

Acute cases of diarrhea are three times more common in eastern Baghdad, where water service is most problematic, than in the rest of the city, the United Nations says. That side of the city has also seen a higher incidence of cholera.

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND

Officials say the water system was neglected for decades under Saddam Hussein and was ill-equipped to keep pace with a rapidly growing population in the Iraqi capital.

Electricity, which flickers on in Baghdad for just a few hours a day, is another major problem. Back-up power systems at water plants are not designed to operate as often as they do.

"Every power cut, even if it lasts for just a few minutes, delays water production by three hours," said Sadiq al-Shimari, director general of water facilities for Baghdad.

He said water production now amounts to about 2.8 million cubic meters a day in Baghdad, still far below daily demand of 4 million cubic meters.

The state of Baghdad's sewage system may be even more bleak.

"Out of sight and out of mind," an official at the U.S. embassy said on condition of anonymity. "There wasn't a lot of focus from the (former) regime on the long-term consequences of dumping raw sewage onto river banks," he said.

The United Nations says that sewage seeping and being dumped into water supplies has "grave implications" for Iraqis' health and the environment.

Waste and illicit use of water supplies abound, too, as they do in electricity distribution and other basic services.

"We have people illegally siphoning water from the pipelines, using potable water to irrigate their gardens and fill their fish pools," complained one Baghdad official.

"Even water used by car washes -- this wasted water could be used in areas already suffering from shortages."

NO OTHER CHOICE

At the northern edge of Sadr City, a poor, largely Shi'ite area, a man named Ali points across a dusty, trash-strewn yard to the murky canal where he and his children bathe.

"The water is dirty, but what can we do? We don't have any other choice," he says, laughing bitterly.

"People like us, who earn three or four dollars a day, we spend it all on generators," he said, referring to the informal network of neighborhood diesel generator operators who supply Baghdad's electricity when the power goes out.

The recently opened Sadr City water treatment plant, still in its pilot phase, is expected to provide a major boost to the city's water supply once it is operating fully.

Other government renovation and construction projects are underway, and city officials say the volume of water moving through the system has already increased substantially.

"As soon as you build new plants, and you lay down new networks, you will be able to service more people," another U.S. official said. "It's as simple as that, but it takes time."

In the meantime, the government, the United Nations, and some aid groups dispense water from trucks in some of the neediest areas of Baghdad, said Vinod Alkari, a water and sanitation expert with the United Nations Children's Fund.

The Iraqi government has been criticized for dragging its feet in spending money budgeted for vital reconstruction.

"Now they apparently have enough resources, and they're slowly moving toward using those resources," Alkari said.

"But the task is immense. Even with all the money in the world, it would still take time."

By David M. Halbfinger

PHOENIX — When Senator John McCain is in Washington, he lives in a luxury high-rise condominium in Arlington, Va., owned by his wife, Cindy Hensley McCain. Mrs. McCain also owns their condos in Phoenix, San Diego and Coronado, Calif., and their vacation compound near Sedona, Ariz. And it is the beer business, Hensley & Company, she inherited from her father that is the source of the McCain family fortune.

That fortune makes Mr. McCain one of the richest members of the Senate. Yet barely a sliver of it is in his name.

Democrats have increasingly highlighted Mr. McCain’s wealth. Senator Barack Obama ridiculed him on Thursday for being unable to say how many homes he owned, saying it showed that Mr. McCain was out of touch with ordinary Americans. But with the McCains’ money in Cindy McCain's name, as dictated by a prenuptial agreement, the senator’s finances are more difficult to assess and scrutinize than those of many other political candidates.

The husbands and wives of senators are subject to fewer disclosure requirements than their office-holding spouses. In addition, Mrs. McCain, who files separate tax returns from her husband, controls a privately held company and invests mainly through a web of limited-liability corporations and trusts that have few disclosure requirements. She declined to be interviewed.

“Cindy is a private person, and I think in many ways that defines her,” said Robert Delgado, her father’s successor as chief executive of Hensley & Company, who spoke at the McCain campaign’s behest.

But the Hensley family wealth, from its rough-and-tumble origins to prominence in Arizona’s corporate world, is also the fortune that propelled John McCain into national politics. A clearer picture of that fortune emerges from a review of public records and interviews with employees, business associates, friends and relatives.

Hensley & Company has grown from a tiny operation in the 1950s to the dominant beer wholesaler in Arizona and the third-largest Budweiser distributor in the country, with more than $300 million in annual sales. It plays a leading role in corporate Phoenix — Andy McCain, the senator’s stepson from his first marriage and a top executive of the beer company, is now president of the city’s Chamber of Commerce — and is a forceful presence in state politics on the issues that matter to it.

But by all accounts, Mrs. McCain is far from a forceful presence at the company, where she is chairwoman.

She crisscrosses the country on the company jet, keeps an accountant on the company payroll to mind her personal finances, drives a company Lexus with “MS BUD” plates and says she oversees the company’s “strategic planning and corporate vision.” Yet she almost never shows up in the office, is deemed an absentee owner by Anheuser-Busch and has left scarcely a mark on the company, present and former executives say.

Mrs. McCain has spent far more time as a volunteer on behalf of needy children. She is a board member of CARE and Operation Smile, which provides cleft-palate surgery for impoverished children; when she visited Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh 17 years ago, she brought a baby girl back for the surgery and then adopted her.

Her business, however, recently found itself at odds with advocates for pediatric hospital beds in Arizona’s neediest communities and for a statewide childhood education program. When the advocates proposed initiatives that would raise liquor taxes, Hensley opposed them.

Mrs. McCain has not said how she would handle her business if her husband were elected president. The federal government has domain over issues important to the alcohol industry, like excise taxes, marketing to under-age drinkers and beverage labeling.

Anheuser-Busch documents suggest that Mrs. McCain’s ownership of Hensley & Company could also create an unusual circumstance. The brewer’s contracts with wholesalers require that absentee owners supervise their managers, attend meetings and make timely decisions, meaning that the business would be overseen by the first lady. And if she chose to withdraw from ownership, Anheuser-Busch would have the right to approve whoever bought her shares, or to make an offer to buy them.

A Colorful Inheritance

He was a young husband and father before he went off to war. Wounded in combat, he returned home a hero, but stunned his wife by divorcing her to marry another woman. The warrior in this case was not Cindy McCain’s husband, but her father, James W. Hensley.

Jim Hensley’s first marriage was to his Phoenix high school sweetheart, Mary Jeanne Parks. Family lore says he was treading water in the English Channel, after his B-17 was shot down, when his daughter, Kathleen Anne Hensley, was born in February 1943.

The marriage ended there, according to that daughter, now Kathleen Portalski. Recuperating far from home, he fell in love with Marguerite Smith, a woman from Tennessee with a 10-year-old daughter. By March 1945, he was divorced, and they married.

Back in Phoenix, he and his brother, Eugene, went into the liquor business with Kemper Marley, a businessman who had cornered much of the market in Arizona after Prohibition ended.

In March 1948, a federal jury convicted both Hensleys of concealing sales of black-market liquor. Jim Hensley’s six month sentence was suspended. A second indictment, in 1953 for falsifying records to evade taxes, was dismissed.

The Hensleys bought a New Mexico horse track in 1952. Eugene Hensley’s role at the track led to lawsuits, tax-evasion charges and prison. In 1969, he sold out to a mob-connected company with close ties to Mr. Marley, according to published reports. (The Phoenix police named Mr. Marley as the man they believed ordered the 1976 assassination of Don Bolles, an investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic. Mr. Marley, who died in 1990, was never charged.)

Jim Hensley sold his stake in the track in 1955, and took a job at a beer wholesaler. After buying the business, in 1959 he got a federal wholesaler’s permit as Hensley & Company.

Selling Bud in steel cans and Michelob draft, Hensley & Company started with a 6 percent market share. But Mr. Hensley, bent on building the “Cadillac of beer companies,” lured workers with generous pay and benefits.

Few big cities have only one Budweiser wholesaler, but Phoenix had just 107,000 residents in 1950. A decade later, its population had quadrupled. Hensley’s market share shot to 50 percent in 1987, from 20 percent in 1970; it now has nearly two-thirds of the market.

Those who knew Mr. Hensley, who died at 80 in June 2000, invariably sing his praises. If he had one flaw, they add, it was being unable to say no to his wife or their daughter, Cindy Lou, who was born in 1954.

At her father’s funeral, Cindy McCain told of his gentle reaction when she wrecked the car he had bought her after she graduated from the University of Southern California, according to people who were there. She did not mention, as a former employee recalled, that it was a Porsche and that he replaced it with a Mercedes-Benz. When the young Cindy Hensley began teaching high school and was criticized for driving a fancy car, the ex-employee said, her father bought her a Volkswagen to drive to school.

Mr. Hensley also quietly subsidized his first daughter, Mrs. Portalski, and her family. He paid for her children’s schooling, gave them credit cards and wrote company checks of $40,000 a year to Mrs. Portalski and her husband, the couple said in an interview.

But in his will, Mr. Hensley left Mrs. Portalski just $10,000 and her offspring nothing. “It’s so disappointing, just being pushed aside,” she said. Mrs. Portalski said Mrs. McCain added insult to that injury by referring to herself, in her eulogy for her father, as his only child — while her half-sister sat in a front pew.

Shortly after Jim Hensley’s death, Mrs. Portalski’s daughter said, she tried charging a meal and had her company credit card rejected. Her son says he learned that Mr. Hensley’s promise to pay his graduate-school tuition was no longer operative.

A McCain campaign spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, said Mr. Hensley’s will did not provide for continuing his periodic gifts to relatives.

Absent, and Entitled

Her father’s death left Mrs. McCain with full control over his company, though she has seldom intervened, executives say. “She’s never been a day-to-day manager in this business,” said Mr. Delgado, the chief executive.

In the late 1980s, she set up a charitable organization out of Hensley headquarters, distributing medical supplies in developing countries. But she disbanded the group in the early 1990s after she became addicted to painkillers and was caught stealing from its supply of drugs.

Since then, her parking space has seldom been occupied. In fact, Anheuser-Busch treats her as an absentee owner, requiring Mr. Delgado to have total control over business operations and capital investments.

Mr. Delgado confirmed that after Jim Hensley died, Anheuser-Busch approached Mrs. McCain about buying the distributorship, because the brewer prefers hands-on owners. But he said Mrs. McCain decided she wanted to be the steward of her father’s legacy.

But others who have seen the company’s books gave another reason: The company is handsomely profitable. She owns a controlling 34 percent share of a company with net profits estimated at more than $5 million a year.

In addition, Meghan, Jack and James, the biological children of Mr. and Mrs. McCain, each have 7.73 percent of Hensley & Company. Andy McCain, 45, the senator’s stepson, has 6.8 percent. Bridget McCain, the McCain’s adopted daughter, has shares worth 3.4 percent. (Ms. Hazelbaker of the McCain campaign said Bridget’s stake would eventually equal her siblings’.)

Mr. Delgado declined to discuss equity stakes or distribution of profits and said Mrs. McCain spoke to him a few times a week, often about personal financial issues. He said she took an interest in Hensley’s charitable giving and in “things that could affect the company’s existence.” For example, when he proposed taking on debt to build a large warehouse in Tempe, he said Mrs. McCain’s input was “advice and consent.” He praised her for otherwise letting management run the business.

Another person knowledgeable about the company’s finances said Mrs. McCain’s involvement in Hensley was more limited. “Delgado will tell her how much money they made, so she can tell him how much she’ll take out,” this person said. As controlling owner, Mrs. McCain is entitled to distribute profits to shareholders whenever she sees fit.

How much she receives in profits is not a matter of public record. Distributions to other shareholders, who discussed them only anonymously, suggest she receives hundreds of thousands of dollars several times a year. Mrs. McCain has released only a two-page Form 1040 from her 2006 return. It listed $4.5 million in income from S corporations (like Hensley), partnerships, rental real estate and other categories; capital gains of $743,000, and dividends of $283,000. Mr. McCain’s tax returns show that his wife received a salary from Hensley of more than $430,000 each of the last two years. (Mr. McCain listed $361,373 of his own income in 2007.)

Senate rules do not require spouses to specify the values of assets or income sources exceeding $1 million, and Mrs. McCain has many of them, including shares in Anheuser-Busch, which at a minimum are worth $2.7 million.

Mrs. McCain has also invested in banks, including one founded by Valley National Bank, where her father got his first business loan. Valley National, now part of JPMorgan Chase, holds a promissory note of $500,000 to $1 million that Mrs. McCain has been rolling over annually since 2003. And Hensley’s entire debt of $30 million is held by JPMorgan Chase, Mr. Delgado said.

Far more of Mrs. McCain’s money is invested in real estate. With Sharon Harper, a close friend, Mrs. McCain has stakes in three office complexes. At the Brophy College Preparatory School, where the McCains’ two sons went to high school, the Harper Balcony sits just over the McCain Colonnade.

Mrs. McCain owns 10 homes, including rental properties.

There are the condominium in the Crystal City section of Arlington; two in an oceanfront tower in Coronado; her father’s condo in the La Jolla section of San Diego; a $4.7 million condo atop one of Phoenix’s newest luxury towers; another unit on its fourth floor; and a $700,000 townhouse nearby.

Then there are Mrs. McCain’s vacation homes outside Sedona. In 1985, a Hensley entity bought the first, along Oak Creek. In 1996, Mrs. McCain bought an adjacent home for $750,000.

In 1992, the McCains and the Harpers formed a partnership to buy six acres of vacant land across the creek, and in 2000 they bought another neighbor’s spread. The Audubon Society turned the vacant land into a private bird sanctuary with help from the McCains.

While all of the family’s real estate is held by Mrs. McCain, the John and Cindy McCain Family Foundation is funded by Mr. McCain. From 2001 to 2006, its donations averaged about $260,000 a year. In addition to big donations to children’s causes, mine clearing and Parkinson’s research, the United States Naval Academy received $420,000 to run an ethics conference in the senator’s name; the Brophy school has received more than $250,000; Christ Lutheran, which Bridget and Jim attended, more than $100,000.

Protecting Interests at Home

The booming Hensley business financed John McCain’s entry into politics: after marrying Cindy, he retired from the Navy in 1981 and planned a run for Congress the next year. To that end, he took a public-relations job at Hensley and set about introducing himself to voters. His father-in-law’s wealth — Mrs. McCain was given $639,000 by a Hensley affiliate in 1982 — also enabled Mr. McCain to lend his campaign $167,000.

Today, Hensley & Company is a major donor to Arizona politicians, and has fought increases in the state excise tax, now about 1.5 cents a beer. The tax has risen only three times since the repeal of Prohibition, last in 1984, and remains 16 percent below the national median.

Its contributions have occasionally drawn bad publicity. In 1991, an Anheuser-Busch lobbyist accused Jim Hensley of passing him cash to give to lawmakers. But the lobbyist recanted, and no charges were filed. Hensley workers also told a local columnist in 1989 that they had been pressured to donate to specific political committees and to canvass for Mr. McCain’s first Congressional race in 1982. The company denied it. But workers say Doug Yonko, an executive and nephew of Jim Hensley, still buttonholes colleagues for donations. Mr. Yonko said all gifts were voluntary.

At the national level, the company’s priorities, fought for by the National Beer Wholesalers’ Association, include rolling back the national excise tax of about 5 cents a beer, last raised in 1991, and fighting efforts by hard-liquor distillers to require labels showing the amount of alcohol in a standard serving. The beer lobby also successfully opposed a bill to pay for television advertisements combating under-age drinking.

Still, industry critics acknowledge that Mr. McCain has consistently recused himself from alcohol-specific issues. Yet he has received more contributions from the industry than nearly any other senator.

The reason, beer executives say, is that Mr. McCain is sympathetic to business owners and shares their views on taxes and other economic issues.

But George A. Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a group that is a frequent opponent of the alcohol lobby, said the industry would benefit if a McCain administration steered clear of alcohol policy to avoid conflicts of interest. Inaction, Mr. Hacker said, is almost always better than action in the industry’s view.

Nothing better sums up the low-key but formidable political power of Hensley & Company than its response to two recent ballot initiatives.

Nadine Mathis Basha, the wife of a supermarket mogul, envisioned an early-childhood education program for toddlers statewide. To pay for it, Ms. Basha said, she approached Hensley in 2006 with a proposal to raise taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Mr. Delgado told her that while he supported such a program, a beer tax would “open the floodgates” nationwide and he would fight it, Ms. Basha recalled. Daunted, she went ahead with a tobacco-only tax increase, and her initiative passed.

This year, Phoenix Children’s Hospital proposed an initiative to raise money for pediatric hospital beds. Polling showed a liquor-tax increase would be an easy sell, but the hospital still offered a 30-year moratorium on any further liquor-tax increases. But Mr. Delgado said he learned that the moratorium was not ironclad and vowed to fight. The hospitals, lacking money for a costly advertisement campaign, folded, according to people involved.

But Hensley & Company is taking no chances. It is supporting another initiative that would require that any ballot measure imposing a tax increase be approved by a majority of all registered voters in the state, not just of those who turn out at the polls.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 467

2008-08-19T14:26:00.000-07:00

By Juliet Eilperin

A senior aide to Vice President Cheney is the leading contender to become a top official at the Energy Department, according to several current and former administration officials, a promotion that would put one of the administration's most ardent opponents of environmental regulation in charge of forming department policies on climate change.

F. Chase Hutto III has played a prominent behind-the-scenes role in shaping the administration's environmental policies for several years, the officials said, helping to rewrite rules affecting the air that Americans breathe and the waters that oil tankers traverse. In every instance, according to both his allies and opponents, he has challenged proposals that would place additional regulations on industry.

The move to elevate the domestic policy adviser to the post of assistant secretary for policy and international affairs signals the administration's determination to resist new environmental protections, environmentalists said.

The assistant secretary is the "primary advisor to the Secretary and the Department on energy and technology policy development," conducts overseas negotiations on energy issues such as climate change, performs environmental analyses, and "leads the Department's international energy initiatives," according to the agency's Web site.

Hutto did not respond to several requests for an interview. Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride would not comment on the matter, saying the office does not discuss pending nominations, but she confirmed that Hutto has helped shape administration policies on an array of issues, including proposed protections for endangered right whales and whether to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act.

"There is an interagency review process," McBride said in an interview. White House aides are "expected to offer opinions and participate in policy debates. That's the way the process works."

Jason K. Burnett, an administration critic who served as the EPA's deputy associate administrator until June, said of Hutto: "He always struck me as being naturally and philosophically opposed to regulation at the outset, and it took an enormous amount of discussion and analysis to convince him otherwise." He added: "I can't think of a case where Chase advocated more environmental or health protections."

Hutto, 39, a Michigan native and a veteran of several successful GOP campaigns, has spent almost his entire career working for Republicans in Washington. He started out as an opposition researcher working on Spencer Abraham's 1994 upset Senate victory and conducted similar research for two other Senate bids before serving on the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign as a vote-recount team leader in Duval County, Fla.

After receiving a bachelor's degree in business administration and a law degree, both from the University of Michigan, Hutto worked briefly in the private sector at the firm Venable, Baetjer, Howard and Civiletti before joining Abraham's staff on the Judiciary subcommittee on immigration in October 1997. As a Senate staffer, Hutto focused on issues such as electronic commerce and privacy; he shifted his focus when Abraham took over the Energy Department in January 2001 and Hutto became a senior policy adviser there.

Burnett said Hutto, a vocal proponent of the free market, argued during interagency climate policy meetings that Americans are attached to their cars and would be loath to sacrifice them to achieve greenhouse gas reductions.

At the White House, Hutto has been one of the oil and gas industry's key points of contact for energy and environmental issues.

His policy portfolio has expanded over time, giving him significant influence over energy and environmental matters. He was detailed to the National Security Council as an energy adviser in October 2004 and moved to Cheney's office a year later as deputy assistant to the vice president for domestic policy.

"He's got an incredible amount of authority and a portfolio seemingly without end," said a source familiar with policy discussions involving Hutto. "He's got his fingers in everything."

Appointment as assistant secretary would be a promotion, however, and could enhance Hutto's stature if he wanted to return to the private sector after President Bush leaves office.

Juleanna R. Glover, a former Cheney aide who worked with Hutto on Abraham's first Senate bid, said that he had earned his considerable power through his energy expertise and his "deeply principled conservatism."

"He's one of the foremost energy experts in Washington," she said, adding that he was "one of the original foot soldiers in the '94 recapture of Congress" by Republicans.

In recent months, Hutto has helped scale back a rule proposed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to protect North Atlantic right whales -- one of the most endangered animals on the planet -- from lethal ship strikes. The rule NOAA submitted 1 1/2 years ago originally would have required ships within 30 nautical miles of several East Coast ports to slow to 10 knots or less during parts of the year when the whales are migrating.

Acting on Cheney's behalf, Hutto questioned whether there was sufficient scientific evidence to justify the economic costs that the rule would impose on shippers. The White House plans to issue a revised ship strike rule next month that will reduce the perimeter around the ports from 30 to 20 nautical miles and will "sunset" the rule after five years.

New England Aquarium research scientist Amy Knowlton said those changes would "undermine the scientific integrity of the rule," since right whales have been spotted within 30 miles of the ports.

On other occasions, Hutto has questioned whether NOAA was responding too slowly to energy industry petitions. Shell Oil petitioned the agency last year for an "incidental harassment authorization" that would have allowed it to injure or kill a small number of marine mammals in connection with oil and gas drilling off Alaska in 2008; Hutto inquired about getting a quicker decision on Shell's request in light of the Arctic's limited drilling season.

Shell later withdrew its request.

An administration official, discussing internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity, said Hutto did not pressure NOAA to approve Shell's request. "Chase and others wanted a yes-or-no decision, understanding that the decision to deny or grant the permit is within an agency's discretion," the official said.

The conservative positions taken by Hutto and the vice president's office have held wide sway in internal policy debates, but occasionally he was stymied, participants said. Burnett said that this year Hutto opposed tightening federal rules for smog-forming ozone -- which is linked to thousands of premature deaths each year-- and in 2005 he questioned why the EPA needed to limit mercury emissions from power plants, because the agency had just issued a rule that would have the incidental effect of somewhat reducing the toxic pollutant. In both instances, the EPA strengthened the protections over these objections.

Sources both inside and outside the administration said it is unclear whether Bush will formally nominate Hutto for the Energy Department post or place him there in an acting capacity. Kathy Fredriksen, an acting assistant secretary, currently holds the job.

Francesca Grifo -- who directs the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group -- said that if Hutto takes the helm of the Energy Department's climate policy office, the impact could last well beyond Bush's term in office.

"It's not surprising that the Bush administration is considering a candidate who has a track record of putting politics ahead of science. Over and over again, appointments like this one have damaged the government's ability to protect the environment and public health," Grifo said, adding that in the coming months, Hutto could make policy decisions that the next administration would find difficult to reverse quickly.

BBC News

Six US sailors working as prison camp guards in Iraq face courts martial for abusing detainees, the US Navy said.

Eight detainees were allegedly sealed in a pepper spray-filled cell at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.

And it is claimed that two detainees were beaten, although suffered no broken bones, the US Navy said.

The assaults occurred on 14 May after some guards had been spat at and had human waste thrown at them by detainees, a naval spokeswoman said.

"Two detainees suffered minor abrasions as a result of the alleged assaults, eight others were confined overnight in a detainee housing unit which was sprayed with riot control agent and then the ventilation secured," the US Navy said in a statement.

The six sailors are charged with assault and will face courts martial at Camp Bucca within the next 30 days, Navy 5th Fleet spokeswoman Cmdr Jane Campbell said.

Seven other sailors received non-judicial punishments for failing to report the abuse at the sprawling desert camp, she said.

Two had their charges dismissed and others were given reductions in rank, with some also docked pay or confined to base for 45 days.

The latest abuse claims come after the US military said it had carried out reforms to its prison system.

In 2004 there was an international outcry after the release of pictures showing US soldiers humiliating detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad.

Abu Ghraib jail has since been closed and 11 US soldiers were convicted of breaking military laws.

By Robin McKie (The Guardian/UK)

Ice at the North Pole melted at an unprecedented rate last week, with leading scientists warning that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer by 2013.

Satellite images show that ice caps started to disintegrate dramatically several days ago as storms over Alaska’s Beaufort Sea began sucking streams of warm air into the Arctic.

As a result, scientists say that the disappearance of sea ice at the North Pole could exceed last year’s record loss.

More than a million square kilometres melted over the summer of 2007 as global warming tightened its grip on the Arctic. But such destruction could now be matched, or even topped, this year.

‘It is a neck-and-neck race between 2007 and this year over the issue of ice loss,’ said Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado. ‘We thought Arctic ice cover might recover after last year’s unprecedented melting - and indeed the picture didn’t look too bad last month. Cover was significantly below normal, but at least it was up on last year.

‘But the Beaufort Sea storms triggered steep ice losses and it now looks as if it will be a very close call indeed whether 2007 or 2008 is the worst year on record for ice cover over the Arctic. We will only find out when the cover reaches its minimum in mid-September.’

This startling loss of Arctic sea ice has major meteorological, environmental and ecological implications. The region acts like a giant refrigerator that has a strong effect on the northern hemisphere’s meteorology. Without its cooling influence, weather patterns will be badly disrupted, including storms set to sweep over Britain.

At the same time, creatures such as polar bears and seals - which use sea ice for hunting and resting - face major threats. Similarly, coastlines will no longer be insulated by ice from wave damage and will suffer erosion, as is already happening in Alaska.

Other environmental changes are likely to follow. Without sea ice to bolster them, land ice - including glaciers - could topple into the ocean and raise global sea levels, threatening many low-lying areas, including Bangladesh and scores of Pacific islands. In addition, the disappearance of reflective ice over the Arctic means that solar radiation would no longer be bounced back into space, thus heating the planet even further.

On top of these issues, there are fears that water released by the melting caps will disrupt the Gulf Stream, while an ice-free Arctic in summer offers new opportunities for oil and gas drilling there - and for political disputes over territorial rights.

What really unsettles scientists, however, is their inability to forecast precisely what is happening in the Arctic, the part of the world most vulnerable to the effects of global warming. ‘When we did the first climate change computer models, we thought the Arctic’s summer ice cover would last until around 2070,’ said Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University. ‘It is now clear we did not understand how thin the ice cap had already become - for Arctic ice cover has since been disappearing at ever increasing rates. Every few years we have to revise our estimates downwards. Now the most detailed computer models suggest the Arctic’s summer ice is going to last for only a few more years - and given what we have seen happen last week, I think they are probably correct.’

The most important of these computer studies of ice cover was carried out a few months ago by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Using US navy supercomputers, his team produced a forecast which indicated that by 2013 there will be no ice in the Arctic - other than a few outcrops on islands near Greenland and Canada - between mid-July and mid-September.

‘It does not really matter whether 2007 or 2008 is the worst year on record for Arctic ice,’ Maslowski said. ‘The crucial point is that ice is clearly not building up enough over winter to restore cover and that when you combine current estimates of ice thickness with the extent of the ice cap, you get a very clear indication that the Arctic is going to be ice-free in summer in five years. And when that happens, there will be consequences.’

This point was backed by Serreze.

‘The trouble is that sea ice is now disappearing from the Arctic faster than our ability to develop new computer models and to understand what is happening there. We always knew it would be the first region on Earth to feel the impact of climate change, but not at anything like this speed. What is happening now indicates that global warming is occurring far earlier than any of us expected.’

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 466

2008-08-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

By Carla K. Johnson (AP)

CHICAGO - National Guard and Reserve combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to develop drinking problems than active-duty soldiers, a new military study suggests.

The authors speculate that inadequate preparation for the stress of combat and reduced access to support services at home may be to blame.

The study, appearing in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, is the first to compare Iraq and Afghanistan veterans' alcohol problems before and after deployment.

It should help guide planning for future prevention and treatment programs, said study co-author Dr. Edward Boyko, who works for the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System.

The research is one of the first major studies to emerge from the Pentagon's landmark "Millennium" study, launched in 2001 because of concerns about possible health effects from the first Gulf War. It includes tens of thousands of military personnel and is designed to evaluate the long-term health effects of military service.

In the alcohol study, researchers analyzed data from nearly 80,000 military personnel, including more than 11,000 who were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. They looked at whether deployment and combat exposure were linked with new alcohol problems such as binge drinking.

They found that more than 600 combat troops who reported no binge drinking at the start of the study developed the problem after deployment and combat exposure. That accounted for about 26 percent of the estimated 2,400 military personnel exposed to combat who did not report binge drinking at the start of the study.

New patterns of regular heavy drinking and alcohol problems, such as missing work because of drinking, occurred more often in guard and reserve troops who experienced combat. Their risk of developing new drinking problems, compared to guardsmen and reservists who weren't deployed, was about 60 percent higher.

Alcohol abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression make up an "unholy trinity" that haunts some combat soldiers, said psychologist William Schlenger of the consulting firm Abt Associates Inc. in Durham, N.C. He was a principal investigator of the influential National Vietnam Veterans' Readjustment Study, but was not involved in the new research.

"They have intrusive recollections: 'I keep remembering it, I have nightmares about it, I can't escape it,' " Schlenger said. Vets try to escape the memories through alcohol or drugs, he said.

The military has leaned heavily on the National Guard and reserves in the current conflict. At certain times in 2005, the guard and reserves made up nearly half the troops fighting in Iraq.

Rome (AFP)

Global warming and limited access to land and other resources threaten many indigenous peoples, the UN food agency warned Friday.

"Indigenous peoples are among the first to suffer from increasingly harsh and erratic weather conditions, and a generalised lack of empowerment to claim goods and services," said indigenous peoples expert Regina Laub of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Many indigenous groups live in vulnerable environments such as mountainous areas, the Arctic, jungles or dry lands, added the FAO statement released on the eve of the International Day for the World's Indigenous Peoples.

The FAO noted that native populations also played a critical role in adapting to climate change.

Indigenous communities are often the custodians of unique knowledge and skills, the Rome-based agency noted, adding that some 80 percent of the world's remaining biodiversity "that may be vital in adapting to climate change" is found within their territories.

The world's indigenous peoples population is estimated at 370 million, representing at least 5,000 different groups in more than 70 countries.

"Defending the recovery of ancestral lands, the self-determination of indigenous peoples and their human rights is at the core of their claims," the statement added.

By Gregg Zoroya

LAWTON, Okla. — Mold infests the barracks that were set up here a year ago for wounded soldiers after poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center triggered a systemwide overhaul, soldiers say.

Twenty soldiers, who spoke to USA TODAY early last week, said their complaints about mold and other problems went unheeded for months. They also said they had been ordered not speak about the conditions at Fort Sill.

Officers at the Army base last week ordered that ventilation ducts in two barracks be replaced and soldiers be

surveyed, anonymously if they wished, about any concerns. Maj. Gen. Peter Vangjel, the commanding officer, said it was "inappropriate" for soldiers to be ordered not to talk about the mold.

"We're going in and we're going to take care of this for these guys," he said over the weekend.

Images of mold growing on walls of wounded-soldier bedrooms at Walter Reed last year, along with issues of bureaucratic delays in health care, led to an overhaul of the Army's wounded-care system. Warrior Transition Units (WTU) were created to expedite the care and treatment of wounded and ailing soldiers.

Army commanders testified before Congress on July 22 that the population of wounded and ailing soldiers in the units had doubled from 6,000 to 12,000 since the program's inception in June 2007, straining resources at several installations.

Col. Robert Bridgford, garrison commander at Fort Sill, said he ordered workers last week to replace ventilation ducts encrusted with mold in two 48-room wounded-soldier barracks at the base.

About 70 of the 142 patients who are part of the unit for wounded and ailing troops at Fort Sill live in the barracks, said Col. Ellen Forster, who oversees the WTU program. The soldiers are temporarily relocated during the repa ir work.

Early last week, soldiers told USA TODAY that in April they first noticed what looked like layers of mold in flexible air ducts above their rooms when ventilation covers were removed to be cleaned. "(The duct work) was just caked black," said Sgt. Willard Barnett, 51, an Iraq war veteran.

Some soldiers said they have been affected by air in their rooms.

"When I wake up in the morning, I have crud in my eyes, and I have like this slimy phlegm in the back of my throat," said Spc. James Dodson, 26.

Vangjel and Forster said they were unaware of any complaints in April.

Bridgford said that Aug. 8 lab tests, taken in response to a July 25 inspector general's review, show the barracks have "common mold" that is not hazardous. He also said some vents were cleaned earlier this year.

Forster, a nurse who commands the Fort Sill hospital, told WTU soldiers Friday that the barracks are safe.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 465

2008-08-15T16:28:00.000-07:00

By Bina Venkataraman

Many coastal areas of the world's oceans are being starved of oxygen at an alarming rate, with vast stretches along the seafloor depleted of it to the point where they can barely sustain marine life, researchers are reporting.

The main culprit, scientists said, is nitrogen-rich nutrients from crop fertilizers that spill into coastal waters by way of rivers and streams.

A study to be published today in the journal Science says the number of these marine "dead zones" around the world has doubled about every 10 years since the 1960s. About 400 coastal areas have periodically or perpetually oxygen-starved bottom waters, many of them growing in size and intensity. Combined, the zones, one of which is in a bay off a Skagit County island, are larger than Oregon.

"What's happened in the last 40, 50 years is that human activity has made the water-quality conditions worse," said the study's leader author, Robert Diaz.

The trend portends nothing good for many fisheries, said Diaz, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary. "Dead zones," he said, "tend to occur in areas that are historically prime fishing grounds."

Low oxygen, or hypoxia, is a significant measure of the downstream effect of chemical fertilizers used in agriculture. Air pollution is another factor.

Hypoxia has been seen for decades in such places as the Chesapeake Bay, Lake Erie, the Gulf of Mexico and Long Island Sound, but Diaz's survey has found new zones in Washington state's Samish Bay, Oregon's Yaquina Bay, prawn culture ponds in Taiwan, the San Martin River in northern Spain and some fjords in Norway, Diaz said.

A dead zone has been newly reported off the mouth of the Yangtze River in China, Diaz said, but the area probably has been hypoxic since the 1950s. "We just didn't know about it," he said.

"We're saying that hypoxia is now everywhere, it seems," Diaz said. "We can say that human activities really screwed up oxygen conditions in our coastal areas."

Douglas Rader, chief ocean scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, said the chaos in the planet's nitrogen cycle is not only creating dead zones but also inciting the spread of toxic algae, such as the pfiesteria that has appeared in recent years in the Chesapeake.

"The next big challenge, after global warming, is going to be addressing the massive upset of the world's nitrogen cycle," Rader said.

While the size of dead zones is small relative to the total surface of the oceans, scientists said they account for a significant part of ocean waters that support commercial fish and shellfish species.

Seasonally, low oxygen levels wipe out fish and crustaceans from dead-zone bottom waters in places such as the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and the Baltic Sea, leaving little life other than microbes to survive.

Among places where dead zones have grown in recent years are coastal China and the Kattegat Sea, where the Norway lobster fishery collapsed.

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico this summer covers a swath nearly the size of Massachusetts. That zone has more than doubled in size in the last 20 years.

"There are large areas of the gulf where you can't catch any shrimp," said Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, who has studied the dead zone there for more than two decades. "It's sort of a losing battle."

Scientists attribute much of the creation of dead zones to a process that begins when nitrogen from agricultural runoff and sewage stimulates the growth of photosynthetic plankton on the surface of coastal waters. As the organisms decay and sink to the bottom, they are decomposed by microbes that consume large amounts of oxygen. As oxygen levels drop, most animals at the bottom cannot survive.

"The overwhelming response of the organisms in our coastal areas is to migrate or to die," Diaz said. "To adapt to low-oxygen water, it has to be a part of your evolutionary history. It's not something you can develop in a 40- or 50-year time period."

Many dead zones are cyclical, recurring each summer. But over time, they can permanently kill off entire species within the zone. They also have prevented the rebounding of species under protection after overfishing, such as the Baltic Sea's cod. Low oxygen levels also kill food sources for fish and crustaceans.

Once dead zones recur, "they are very hard to reverse," said Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

A few hypoxic ecosystems have improved in recent years due to better management of pollutants. Diaz identified the Indian River in Florida as showing signs of improvement. Globally, however, only 4 percent of the dead zones are recovering, the report said.

By James Risen (NY Times)

WASHINGTON — The United States this year will have spent $100 billion on contractors in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, a milestone that reflects the Bush administration’s unprecedented level of dependence on private firms for help in the war, according to a government report to be released Tuesday.

The report, by the Congressional Budget Office, according to people with knowledge of its contents, will say that one out of every five dollars spent on the war in Iraq has gone to contractors for the United States military and other government agencies, in a war zone where employees of private contractors now outnumber American troops.

The Pentagon’s reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling,20fraud and shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed American troops. The role of armed security contractors has also raised new legal and political questions about whether the United States has become too dependent on private armed forces on the 21st-century battlefield.

The budget office’s report found that from 2003 to 2007, the government awarded contracts in Iraq worth about $85 billion, and that the administration was now awarding contracts at a rate of $15 billion to $20 billion a year. At that pace, contracting costs will surge past the $100 billion mark before the end of the year. Through 2007, spending on outside contractors accounted for 20 percent of the total costs of the war, the budget office found, according to the people with knowledge of the report.

Several outside experts on contracting said the report’s numbers seemed to provide the first official price tag on contracting in Iraq and raised troubling questions about the degree to which the war had been privatized.

Contractors in Iraq now employ at least 180,000 people in the country, forming what amounts to a second, private, army, larger than the United States military force,20and one whose roles and missions and even casualties among its work force have largely been hidden from public view. The widespread use of these employees as bodyguards, translators, drivers, construction workers and cooks and bottle washers has allowed the administration to hold down the number of military personnel sent to Iraq, helping to avoid a draft.

In addition, the dependence on private companies to support the war effort has led to questions about whether political favoritism has played a role in the awarding of multibillion-dollar contracts. When the war began, for example, Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company run by Dick Cheney before he was vice president, became the largest Pentagon contractor in Iraq. After years of criticism and scrutiny for its role in Iraq, Halliburton sold the unit, which is still the largest defense contractor in the war, and has 40,000 employees in Iraq.

“This is the first war that the United States has fought where so many of the people and resources involved aren’t of the military, but from contractors,” said Charles Tiefer, a professor of government contracting at the University of Baltimore Law School and a member of an independent commission created by Congress to study contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This is unprecedented,” he added. “It was considered an all-out imperative by the administration to keep troop levels low, particularly in the beginning of the war, and one way that was done was to shift money and manpower to contractors. But that has exposed the military to greater risks from contractor waste and abuse.”

Dina L. Rasor, an author and independent expert on contracting fraud, said she believed that the $100 billion cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office might be low, since there were virtually no reliable audits of or controls on spending during the first years of the war. “It is a shocking number, but I still don’t think it is the full cost,” Ms. Rasor said. “I don’t think there have been any credible cost numbers for the Iraq war. There was so much money spent at the beginning of the war, and nobody knows where it went.”

Peter W. Singer, a defense contracting expert at the Brookings Institution, said the biggest problem was that the administration contracted out so much work in Iraq, almos t no thought had been given to an overall strategy to determine which jobs and functions should be handled by the government, and which could be turned over to private companies without damaging the military effort.

“These new numbers point to the overall question — when do you cross the line in terms of turning over too much of the public mission of defense to private firms,” Mr. Singer said. “There are some things that are appropriate for private companies to do, but others things that are not. But we don’t seem to have had a strategy for determining which was appropriate and which wasn’t. We have just handed over functions to contractors in a very haphazard way.”

Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said recently that the Pentagon’s outsourcing in Iraq had grown so large and raised so many unanswered policy questions that he had been pushing for the Senate to create a special war-contracting committee, like the panel that Harry S. Truman led in the Senate before he was tapped to be Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944.

“The Truman Committee held 60 hearings on waste, fraud and abuse,” Mr. Dorgan said. “It’s unfathomable to me that we don’t have a bipartisan investigative committee on contracting in Iraq.”

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 464

2008-08-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

By Martin Crutsinger

WASHINGTON — Consumer prices shot up in July at twice the expected rate, pushed higher by surging energy and food costs. The latest surge left inflation running at the fastest pace in 17 years.

The Labor Department reported today that consumer prices rose by 0.8 percent last month, twice the 0.4 percent gain that economists had been expecting.

It marked the third straight month of oversized inflation increases following jumps of 0.6 percent in May and 1.1 percent in June. And it leaves inflation rising by 5.6 percent over the past year, the biggest 12-month gain since January 1991.

Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, rose 0.3 percent in July, slightly higher than the 0.2 percent increase that economists had expected. For the past 12 months, core inflation has risen by 2.5 percent, the highest 12-month change since February.

The inflation surge presents a major problem for the Federal Reserve: Will inflation force it to start raising interest rates even as the economy struggles to avoid a recession?

The big rise in inflation left consumers even more squeezed. The Labor Department said that average weekly earnings, after adjusting for inflation, fell by 3.1 percent in July compared with a year ago, the biggest year-over-year decline since November 1990.

The Labor Department also reported that the number of newly laid off workers filing for unemployment benefits fell by 10,000 last week to 450,000. The decline was less than expected and showed the labor market remains under severe stress from the weak economy. The four-week average for claims rose to the highest level in six years.

The 0.8 percent rise in consumer prices reflected big increases for energy and food, a pattern that has been happening for months.

Energy prices jumped by 4 percent last month, driven upward by a 4.1 percent rise in gasoline prices. In July prices at the pump were=2 037.9 percent above where they were a year ago.

There could be some relief on the way, however, as gasoline prices, after hitting a record $4.11 per gallon nationwide in mid-July, have been falling in recent weeks. They now average around a nationwide $3.79 per gallon, according to the survey by auto club AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. The average Seattle area price is currently $4.01.

Crude oil prices are also down about $30 a barrel from a peak in early July and analysts are hoping that this decline will help relieve some of the pressures on energy costs.

Food costs shot up by 0.9 percent in July, reflecting higher costs for a wide variety of food products. Over the past 12 months, food prices have risen by 6 percent, reflecting surging commodity prices. The Agriculture Department reported this week that this year's corn and soybean harvests will be among the largest in history, though, easing fears that had been fueled after heavy flooding in the Midwest in June.

The core inflation figure was driven higher by a big 1.2 p ercent jump in clothing costs, the biggest increase in this area since August 1998. Airline ticket prices, which have been surging because of higher fuel costs, jumped another 1.3 percent in July.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal budget deficit soared in July, pushed higher by economic stimulus payments and $15 billion in outlays to protect depositors at failed banks.

The Treasury Department reported that the deficit for July totaled $102.8 billion, nearly triple the $36.4 billion deficit recorded in July 2007.

The deficit outstripped the $97 billion gap that Wall Street economists had been expecting for July.

The Treasury said outlays were pushed up by $15 billion because of payments the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. made to depositors at failed banks. The Treasury report did not identify the banks but federal regulators seized the assets of California-based IndyMac Bank, the largest regulated thrift to fail in U.S. history.

The FDIC is expected to be successful in recovering much of its outlays for failed banks, in part by selling the assets of seized institutions. The FDIC has also r aised the possibility that it will increase insurance premiums on healthy banks to cover the cost of what are expected to be rising bank failures as the current credit crisis unfolds.

Besides the payouts by the FDIC, government outlays were increased by the final bulk mailings of government stimulus payments in July. The July deficit also looked worse than the July 2007 deficit because last year's figure was artificially deflated by timing issues that shifted about $19 billion in normal outlays into the prior month.

So far this year, the budget deficit totals $371.4 billion, more than double last year's deficit through the same time period of $157.4 billion.

The Bush administration recently revised its forecast for this year's deficit, lowering it from an estimate of $410 billion, down to $389 billion. However, the Congressional Budget Office is more pessimistic, projecting the deficit for this year will total $400 billion when the current budget year wraps up on Sept. 30.

For the 2009 budget year, which begins Oct. 1, the administration is now projecting a deficit of $482 billion, which would be the highest in dollar terms in history, surpassing the old mark of $413 billion set in 2004.

Through July, government revenues total $2.094 trillion, down 1% from the same period a year ago. Revenues have been weaker this year, reflecting the sharp slowdown in the overall economy.

Government spending so far this budget year totals $2.466 trillion, 8.5% higher than a year ago. That's in part due to the $168 billion stimulus package Congress passed at the beginning of the year in an effort to keep the country out of a deep recession and because of increased spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lagos (AFP)

E-waste from European, US and Japanese manufacturers is contaminating the environment around the sites where it is dumped for recycling and disposal in Ghana, Greenpeace said in a statement received Wednesday.

Greenpeace said it visited two scrapyards -- one at Abogbloshie in the centre of Accra, the main centre for recycling computers in Ghana, and one in the city of Koforidua in the country's Eastern Region.

The scientist in the team took samples from the open-burning sites at both locations as well as from a shallow lagoon at Abogloshie.

"Some of the samples contained toxic metals including lead in quantities as much as 100 times above levels found in uncontaminated soil and sediment samples," the Amsterdam-based environmental campaigner said in a statement.

The group also noted the presence in most of the samples of other chemicals such as phthalates, which interfere with reproduction, and in one of the samples of a high level of chlorinated dioxins, known to promote cancer.

"The nature and extent of chemical contamination found at these sites in Ghana is similar to that previously exposed by Greenpeace for e-waste open-burning sites in China and India," the group said.

It pointed to the fact that many of those working on the sites were children and noted that hazardous chemicals may be more dangerous to children than to adults.

The children are employed to retrieve metal parts, mostly made of either aluminium or copper, for sale.

Greenpeace said container-loads of old and often broken computers, monitors and TVs arrive in Ghana from Germany, Korea, Switzerland and the Netherlands "under the false lable of 'second-hand goods'".

"Unless companies eliminate all hazardous chemicals from their electronic products and take responsibility for the entire lifecycle of their products, this poisonous dumping will continue," Martin Hojsik, Greenpeace International toxics campaigner was quoted as saying.

"Electronics companies must not allow their products to end up poisoning the poor around the world," he said.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 463

2008-08-13T12:59:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct.

The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.

New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft first obtained by The Associated Press.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said late Monday the changes were needed to ensure that the Endangered Species Act would not be used as a "back door" to regulate the gases blamed for global warming. In May, the polar bear became the first species declared as threatened because of climate change. Warming temperatures are expected to melt the sea ice the bear depends on for survival.

The draft rules would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats.

"We need to focus our efforts where they will do the most good," Kempthorne said in a news conference organized quickly after AP reported details of the proposal. "It is important to use our time and resources to protect the most vulnerable species. It is not possible to draw a link between greenhouse gas emissions and distant observations of impacts on species."

If approved, the changes would represent the biggest overhaul of the Endangered Species Act since 1986. They would accomplish through regulations what conservative Republicans have been unable to achieve in Congress: ending some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects.

The changes would apply to any project a federal agency would fund, build or authorize that might harm endangered wildlife and their habitat. Government wildlife experts currently perform tens of thousands of such reviews each year.

"If adopted, these changes would seriously weaken the safety net of habitat protections that we have relied upon to protect and recover endangered fish, wildlife and plants for the past 35 years," said John Kostyack, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation's Wildlife Conservation and Global Warming initiative.

Under current law, federal agencies must consult with experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service to determine whether a project is likely to jeopardize any endangered species or to damage habitat, even if no harm seems likely. This initial review usually results in accommodations that better protect the 1,353 animals and plants in the United States listed as threatened or endangered and determines whether a more formal analysis is warranted.

The Interior Department said such consultations are no longer necessary because federal agencies have developed expertise to review their own construction and development projects, according to the 30-page draft obtained by the AP.

"We believe federal action agencies will err on the side of caution in making these determinations," the proposal said.

The director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, H. Dale Hall, said the changes would help focus expertise on "where we know we don't have a negative effect on the species but where the agency is vulnerable if we don't complete a consultation."

Responding to questions about the process, Hall said, "We will not do anything that leaves the public out of this process."

The new rules were expected to be formally proposed immediately, officials said. They would be subject to a 60-day public comment period before being finalized by the Interior Department, giving the administration enough time to impose them before November's presidential election. A new administration could freeze any pending regulations or reverse them, a process that could take months. Congress could also overturn the rules through legislation, but that could take even longer.

The proposal was drafted largely by attorneys in the general counsel's offices of the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Interior Department, according to an official with the National Marine Fisheries Service, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan hadn't yet been circulated publicly. The two agencies' experts were not consulted until last week, the official said.

Between 1998 and 2002, the Fish and Wildlife Service conducted 300,000 consultations. The National Marine Fisheries Service, which evaluates projects affecting marine species, conducts about 1,300 reviews each year.

The reviews have helped safeguard protected species such as bald eagles, Florida panthers and whooping cranes. A federal government handbook from 1998 described the consultations as "some of the most valuable and powerful tools to conserve listed species."

In recent years, however, some federal agencies and private developers have complained that the process results in delays and increased construction costs.

"We have always had concerns with respect to the need for streamlining and making it a more efficient process," said Joe Nelson, a lawyer for the National Endangered Species Act Reform Coalition, a trade group for home builders and the paper and farming industry.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called the proposed changes illegal.

"This proposed regulation is another in a continuing stream of proposals to repeal our landmark environmental laws through the back door," she said. "If this proposed regulation had been in place, it would have undermined our ability to protect the bald eagle, the grizzly bear and the gray whale."

The Bush administration and Congress have attempted with mixed success to change the law.

In 2003, the administration imposed similar rules that would have allowed agencies to approve new pesticides and projects to reduce wildfire risks without asking the opinion of government scientists about whether threatened or endangered species and habitats might be affected. The pesticide rule was later overturned in court. The Interior Department, along with the Forest Service, is currently being sued over the rule governing wildfire prevention.

In 2005, the House passed a bill that would have made similar changes to the Endangered Species Act, but the bill died in the Senate.

The sponsor of that bill, then-House Resources chairman Richard Pombo, R-California, told the AP Monday that allowing agencies to judge for themselves the effects of a project will not harm species or habitat.

"There is no way they can rubber stamp everything because they will end up in court for every decision," he said.

But internal reviews by the National Marine Fisheries Service and Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that about half the unilateral evaluations by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management that determined wildfire prevention projects were unlikely to harm protected species were not legally or scientifically valid.

Those had been permitted under the 2003 rule changes.

"This is the fox guarding the hen house. The interests of agencies will outweigh species protection interests," said Eric Glitzenstein, the attorney representing environmental groups in the lawsuit over the wildfire prevention regulations. "What they are talking about doing is eviscerating the Endangered Species Act."

By Tanya Schevitz, SF Chronicle

Record numbers of college students are lining up for financial aid - and asking for more of it - as the nation's economic woes hit campuses across the country.

Nationally, 8.9 million students filed federal student aid forms during the first half of 2008, a 16.3 percent increase over the same period last year.

In California, 999,594 students requested federal financial aid during that period - an increase of nearly 20 percent. Bay Area campuses reflect the same trend.

From Santa Clara University and San Jose State University in the South Bay to UC Berkeley and Mills College in the East Bay, financial aid officers say families are increasingly struggling to pay rising college costs while they deal with layoffs, home foreclosures and skyrocketing living expenses.

"What we are seeing is more people filling out requests for financial aid, and for those who do, more people are qualifying and the aggregate need is increasing," said Richard Toomey, associate vice provost at the private Santa Clara University. "Students who haven't needed assistance before are coming in. You had to expect that this was going to happen with all the news of companies laying off thousands of people."

While individual campuses are still sorting out the numbers, data from the U.S. Department of Education show that far more students are filling out the federal financial aid forms than in the past.

The federal data show a 20 percent increase in applications from Santa Clara University students, 21.6 percent from those at San Jose State, 17.1 percent at Mills College, and 19.4 percent at UC Berkeley.

"It does show a pretty dramatic increase," said Justin Draeger, a spokesman for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. The need for financial aid has been rising in the past few years, he said, but given the slumping economy, it is not surprising that it is more acute this year.

In addition, he said, California and other states facing budget problems are contributing less to public colleges and universities. As a result, many universities systems such as the University of California and California State University are increasing tuition.

Ricardo Vazquez, a spokesman for the 220,000-student UC system, said the university is increasing financial aid.

"We expect UC undergraduates to receive about $1 billion in grants and scholarships from UC this year in state, federal aid and other sources, and that is about $100 million more than our students received in 2007-08," he said.

Some private universities, such as Stanford, which have multibillion-dollar endowments, have launched efforts to cushion many of their students who need aid, such as eliminating tuition for students whose parents earn less than $100,000 a year.

But many other private schools are struggling to meet their students' needs. At Santa Clara University, for example, the financial need unmet by federal aid for students has increased 33 percent, from $15 million to $20 million this year.

Hillarie Woods, 19, who should be entering her sophomore year at Santa Clara University this fall, said she might have to drop out because she cannot get enough financial aid to cover the school's $34,950 tuition and her living expenses.

Her mother, a mortgage underwriter, lost her job in November and has been unable to find new employment, Woods said.

"It is the economy. I tried calling the financial aid office many times. They say there is nothing they can do about it. They said they just don't have enough federal aid, and they don't have anything else to give me," she said. "Because my FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) says what my mom made last year, the government won't give me aid either."

Her sister Kaleigh, 18, will be a freshman this fall at UC Santa Cruz, which increased her grant package after she told the school about her changed financial circumstances.

But most institutions don't have the money to provide students the extra help they need in scholarships and grants, Toomey said.

"We are talking to families who are seeing really bad economic times. Investments no longer hold their value. I expect we will see more unemployed parents," said Priscilla Muha, director of financial aid at Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga.

While four-year schools saw a rise in financial need among students and their families during the dot-com bust of 2000, this time it is worse, financial aid officers say.

Instead of seeing just one parent out of work, more students are coming in with two unemployed parents. And there are many going through foreclosure on their homes.

Some of the increase in federal aid applications at individual schools could be connected to a rise in applications but financial aid officers say that they are also seeing an increasing need among families for help in paying for college.

"We are seeing students whose parents in the past have been able to get money from equity lines. Those sources are drying up, and the cost of living and tuition has gone up, and so that contributes to it," said Jeff Bialik, vice president for finance and enrollment management at Dominican University in San Rafael. "Last year and the year before, it was a lot easier to get money."

The 2,100-student Dominican campus has increased its scholarship funding by about $1 million this year and has bumped up the percentage of tuition going to financial aid from 39 percent to 41 percent.

Coleeta McElroy, interim director of financial aid at San Jose State University, said she has noticed a higher need of financial aid across the board for students.

"It is just the change in the economy," she said. "We have awarded aid to more students. And more students are seeing the need to take out loans."

David Gin, associate vice president for student finance at Mills College in Oakland, said his office is seeing a lot more families appealing their financial aid packages than it has in the past.

"We had a number of students who have had the economic hard times of parents losing jobs or their assets. What they can liquidate now is different than in January or February, when they filed their forms," Gin said.

Because he can't meet all the new financial need, his office is extending repayment plans beyond the normal term and is even helping families to erase adverse credit marks to make getting loans easier.

He said he hopes students won't end up dropping out.

"I wouldn't be surprised that if in the next couple weeks, those that we haven't heard from may decide (not to come). We are working very hard to prevent that," Gin said.

By Matthew Mosk and Jeffrey H. Bimbaum

Sen. John McCain's top foreign policy adviser prepped his boss for an April 17 phone call with the president of Georgia and then helped the presumptive Republican presidential nominee prepare a strong statement of support for the fledgling republic.

The day of the call, a lobbying firm partly owned by the adviser, Randy Scheunemann, signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government in Washington.

The McCain campaign said Georgia's lobbying contract with Orion Strategies had no bearing on the candidate's decision to speak with President Mikheil Saakashvili and did not influence his statement. "The Embassy of Georgia requested the call," said campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.

But ethics experts have raised concerns about former lobbyists for foreign governments providing advice to presidential candidates about those same countries. "The question is, who is the client? Is the adviser loyal to income from a foreign client, or is he loyal to the candidate he is working for now?" said James Thurber, a lobbying expert at American University. "It's dangerous if you're getting advice from people who are very close to countries on one side or another of a conflict."

At the time of McCain's call, Scheunemann had formally ceased his own lobbying work for Georgia, according to federal disclosure reports. But he was still part of Orion Strategies, which had only two lobbyists, himself and Mike Mitchell.

Scheunemann remained with the firm for another month, until May 15, when the McCain campaign imposed a tough new anti-lobbyist policy and he was required to separate himself from the company.

Rogers said Scheunemann "receives no compensation of any type from Orion Strategies and has not since May 15, 2008." Scheunemann declined to be interviewed for this story.

As a private lobbyist trying to influence lawmakers and Bush administration staffers, Scheunemann at times relied on his access to McCain in his work for foreign clients on Capitol Hill. He and his partner reported 71 phone conversations and meetings with McCain and his top advisers since 2004 on behalf of foreign clients, including Georgia, according to forms they filed with the Justice Department.

The contacts often focused on Georgia's aspirations to join NATO and on legislative proposals, including a measure co-sponsored by McCain that supported Georgia's position on South Ossetia, one of the Georgian regions taken over by Russia this weekend.

Another measure lobbied by Orion and co-sponsored by McCain, the NATO Freedom Consolidation Act of 2006, would have authorized a $10 million grant for Georgia.

For months while McCain's presidential campaign was gearing up, Scheunemann held dual roles, advising the candidate on foreign policy while working as Georgia's lobbyist. Between Jan. 1, 2007, and May 15, 2008, the campaign paid Scheunemann nearly $70,000 to provide foreign policy advice. During the same period, the government of Georgia paid his firm $290,000 in lobbying fees.

Since 2004, Orion has collected $800,000 from the government of Georgia.

Rogers said Orion's representation of Georgia had no bearing on McCain's decision to speak with Saakashvili in April.

"The Embassy of Georgia requested the call because of Georgian concerns over recent Russian actions dealing with South Ossetia and Abkhazia," he said.

McCain has said that he has worked closely with Georgia and its top officials since the mid-1990s. On the campaign trail yesterday, McCain referred to Saakashvili as a close friend.

But Rogers acknowledged that "Scheunemann and others on the foreign policy staff are involved in call requests and statements on foreign policy issues."

After the April call, McCain issued a statement that day voicing support for Georgia's position.

"We must not allow Russia to believe it has a free hand to engage in policies that undermine Georgian sovereignty," McCain said in the statement. "Georgia has acted with restraint in its response and should continue to do so."

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said it may be impossible to know whether Scheunemann's advice to McCain was truly unvarnished.

"The question is, whose views are you really espousing?" Sloan said. "Are they really your own views, or are they the views that are bought and paid for by the clients of your top aides? McCain probably would be sympathetic to Georgia regardless, but having a guy like Scheunemann as a top aide raises questions."

Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the Democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, said Scheunemann's business ties to Georgia raise questions about how much he influenced McCain's position on the Georgia conflict.

"It's these sorts of appearances of a conflict of interest that are a natural consequence of having a campaign run by lobbyists, staffed by lobbyists and being ensconced in a lobbyist culture for over a quarter of a century," Sevugan said.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 462

2008-08-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

By Alicia A. Caldwell (AP)

Nearly all illegal guns seized in Mexico come from the United States, the head of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Monday.

ATF acting director Michael Sullivan said investigators have traced 90 to 95 percent of the weapons found in Mexico to the U.S. Generally, only law-enforcement officers or military personnel can legally possess guns in Mexico.

Sullivan, speaking at the fifth annual Border Security Conference at the University of Texas at El Paso, said the weapons are being traced as part of an effort by the U.S. and Mexico to stop the illegal flow of guns south.

"In Mexico, investigators have provided some tremendous leads ... to weapons trafficking organizations," Sullivan said.

One bust came in May, when the owner of a Phoenix gun shop was arrested on charges that he knowingly sold hundreds of weapons to "straw purchasers" who funneled the weapons to violent drug cartels in Mexico. Two Mexican men accused of helping to set up the sales also were arrested.

Many of the weapons being found in Mexico have been traced to smuggling points in Southern California, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico, Sullivan said. But he added that weapons are being traced to sellers in "virtually every state, as far north as Washington state."

Sullivan said recent successes in tracking guns thought to be fueling an increasingly violent drug cartel war are attributed to an "e-trace" system that allows officials on both sides of the border to quickly track weapons.

"Tracing where these weapons are from is critical in the early stages," Sullivan said.

The weapons tracking program is only part of the U.S. effort to help curb drug violence in Mexico and in the U.S., Sullivan said.

FBI Director Robert Mueller, who also spoke at the border conference Monday, said the FBI is working directly with Mexican officials as part of an anti-kidnapping effort in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. His agency has also developed a task force to focus on the "very few law enforcement officials who assist drug cartels" in the U.S., as well as helping curb the growth of prison gangs such as the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.

"We have slowed drug trafficking, tracked down violent fugitives and rescued kidnapping victims," Mueller said.

By Jennifer C. Kerr (AP)

Unlike the rest of us, most U.S. corporations and foreign companies doing business in the United States pay no federal income tax, according to a new report from Congress.

The study by the Government Accountability Office, expected to be released Tuesday, said two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, and about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.

"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called "S" corporations pay taxes under individual tax codes.

"Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code," Edwards said.

The GAO study did not investigate why corporations weren't paying federal income taxes or corporate taxes and it did not identify any corporations by name. It said companies may escape paying such taxes due to operating losses or because of tax credits.

More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

The GAO said it analyzed data from the Internal Revenue Service, examining samples of corporate returns for the years 1998 through 2005. For 2005, for example, it reviewed 110,003 tax returns from among more than 1.2 million corporations doing business in the U.S.

Dorgan and Levin have complained about companies abusing transfer prices — amounts charged on transactions between companies in a group, such as a parent and subsidiary. In some cases, multinational companies can manipulate transfer prices to shift income from higher to lower tax jurisdictions, cutting their tax liabilities. The GAO did not suggest which companies might be doing this.

"It's time for the big corporations to pay their fair share," Dorgan said.

By Daniel Costello (LA Times)

Century City Doctors Hospital, a small but key healthcare provider on Los Angeles' Westside, is coping with deteriorating finances and weighing options that include a sale of the struggling hospital.

The 176-bed facility, located in the Century City Medical Plaza, has tried for months to get in better financial shape but has struggled to pay its growing debt, which the hospital estimates is as much as $60 million.

In an interview, hospital Chief Executive John Reynolds said, "Like many hospitals in the Los Angeles marketplace and across the state, Century City Doctors Hospital has been faced with significant financial challenges for an extended period of time."

Reynolds said the hospital had been for sale for several months but was seeking to close a deal as soon as possible.

"After considering all of the options available for addressing the financial needs of the hospital, we have decided to pursue a qualified buyer to ensure the long-term financial stability of this important community asset."

If a sale isn't completed soon, the hospital could be forced to file for bankruptcy as early as this month, people familiar with the matter said.

The hospital opened in October 2005, featuring cutting-edge technology including an all-digital medical records system and top-flight amenities such as wireless Internet in each room, gourmet meals that patients could order any time and movies on demand.

But the hospital has struggled financially from the start. The largest problem has been a lack of patient volume, hospital administrators said. It has recently been averaging about 60 beds filled each day -- far fewer than what's needed financially, Reynolds said.

The hospital would not confirm or deny the possibility of an imminent bankruptcy petition, but officials indicate that it is not expected to close.

Until recently, Century City Doctors Hospital's prospects appeared to be good. The hospital, previously known as Century City Hospital, was closed in April 2004 by Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. But it was then acquired by Beverly Hills-based Salus Surgical Group, which invested about $100 million to renovate the facility.

Although many larger hospitals in affluent areas continue to thrive financially, many smaller hospitals around the state are severely struggling.

Since 1996, 70 community hospitals have closed across the state, with a disproportionate share -- more than 50 -- in Southern California. Regionally, 14 emergency rooms have closed in the last five years, including 10 in Los Angeles County.

Some worry that the trend is worsening and increasingly afflicting crucial areas and facilities.

Four years ago, Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne shut down. Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in Willowbrook was closed in August when the federal Medicare and Medicaid agency pulled half the hospital's funding. That closure followed nearly four years of failed attempts to reform the troubled institution formerly known as Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. Brotman Medical Center in Culver City filed for bankruptcy protection last fall.

Hospital experts say that as many as two dozen other area hospitals are under severe financial strain.

Because of its relatively affluent location, where hospitals are not as likely to be overburdened with high numbers of uninsured and underinsured patients, the Century City hospital was thought to be in better shape. Its financial troubles are raising worries that an even broader shakeout in the regional hospital system than recently expected could be in the future.

One issue of concern to local health officials: Even if the hospital is sold, there is a risk that administrators could have to close its money-losing emergency room, officials said.

One option currently on the table, they said, is to turn the hospital into a specialty facility focused primarily on orthopedic care.

Such specialty hospitals, which typically don't have emergency rooms because most care is done through scheduled visits, are increasingly popular across the region and country.

The potential loss of another emergency room in Los Angeles, in particular, is a major concern to local health officials. Emergency rooms throughout the region are swamped with the sick, injured and uninsured -- and the loss of any ERs would exacerbate the problem, officials say.

"We have lost 10 ERs in the past five years and this is such a critical situation that we cannot afford to lose even one more," said Carol Meyer, director of governmental affairs at the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

Meyer added that recent state cuts had made the situation even more precarious.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 461

2008-08-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

By Marc Kaufman

One of the most infamous examples of what can happen when a nonnative species is introduced into a new environment involves the brown tree snake -- a voracious, semi-venomous species that in less than 50 years all but destroyed bird life on the northern Pacific island of Guam. Introduced inadvertently from the South Pacific just after World War II, apparently on a cargo ship, the snake has killed off 10 bird species on the island and is in the process of wiping out the remaining two.

The virtual extermination of Guam's birds has been bemoaned for decades, but new research suggests that the damage to the ecology of the narrow, 30-mile-long island did not stop there.

The hundreds of thousands of snakes, researchers say, are now changing the way Guam's forest grows and will most likely cause substantial thinning and clumping of trees in the years ahead. In addition, the snakes appear to be indirectly responsible for an explosion in the spider population.

Guam, which is 3,800 miles west of Hawaii, did not have predatory snakes before the brown tree snakes arrived, and as a result the birds were not afraid of such creatures and not prepared for the onslaught. The snakes have few natural predators on the island and have at times climbed electric poles in their search for young birds, causing power outages.

"The brown tree snake has often been used as a textbook example for the negative impacts of invasive species, but after the loss of birds no one has looked at the snake's indirect effects," said Haldre Rogers, a University of Washington doctoral student in biology who presented her findings last week at the Ecological Society of America's annual meeting.

Rogers, who first went to Guam in 2002 as part of a U.S. Geological Survey "rapid response team" in a bid to keep the snakes from spreading, said she has studied tree growth on Guam and neighboring islands and has found "amazing" differences.

Without birds, which eat the seeds of certain trees and then spread them in their droppings, those trees are losing out to others that do not depend as much on bird middlemen. The seeds of the trees that relied on birds are now falling mostly near the trunks of the parent trees, where they are more likely to be spoiled by fungus and less likely to grow into healthy trees. The result, Rogers said, will either be the loss of some tree species or the clumping of those trees in isolated patches.

"It seems inevitable that the forest will change and some of the native species will lose out," she said. Birds typically make up a small part of the life of a forest, but they are important not only for spreading seeds but also for pollinating flowers and controlling some insects that feed on plants.

To test her theory, Rogers built traps of fine-mesh screen-door netting to collect falling seeds. She set 119 traps beneath and near Premna obtusifolia, or false elder, trees on Guam and on the nearby island of Saipan, which does not have the snakes. She set two traps directly beneath each tree's canopy, two about three feet away, three at 16 feet, three at 33 feet and seven at 65 feet away.

On Saipan, she found seeds in nearly every trap -- though, not surprisingly, there were more seeds closer to the trees. But on Guam, there were no seeds at all beyond the canopy of the trees. Most of the bird-dispersed seeds on Saipan also had their outer coverings removed, something that most likely occurred in the gut of a bird. Bare seeds germinate faster and result in speedier growth of new trees. None of the seeds on Guam had their coverings removed.

Rogers' team also randomly searched for seedlings of the Aglaia mariannensis (or mupunyao) tree and each seedling's most likely parent on Guam, Saipan and two other nearby islands, Tinian and Rota. All the Guam seedlings were found within 16 feet of the nearest adult tree -- most within six feet. On the other islands, the adult trees were two to three times as far from the seedlings.

Gregory Butcher, director for bird conservation at the National Audubon Society, said Rogers's research is consistent with the widely held view that birds provide "invaluable ecological services," especially in spreading plant seeds.

"We know that if birds are not present to fulfill that role, there often is nothing else that can do it," Butcher said. "The implications are severe, and that's why we consider bird conservation to be so important."

Rogers said other recent studies have shown a steady decline in bird populations, and that up to one-quarter of American species are threatened with extinction.

The population of brown tree snakes peaked on Guam in the mid-1980s, but the island remains one of the most snake-infested places on Earth -- with as many as 3,000 per square mile, some of them 10 feet long. The snakes, which are nocturnal and will eat adult birds as well as eggs, can harm young children but are not considered a danger to others. With most of the birds now gone, they live on rodents and lizards, the endangered Mariana fruit bat, and sometimes inhabitants' garbage.

Island officials continue to work to control the explosion, but Rogers said it is no longer possible to eradicate the snakes. Officials concentrate on making sure they are not on cargo ships leaving the island.

Rogers said Guam also appears now to be swarming with spiders, and her team -- which receives public, private and academic funding -- plans to survey that population as well as doing more research into the effect of birdlessness on trees. The spiders used to be controlled by the birds, she said, but now they, too, have few predators. Although a few nonnative birds have come to Guam, she said, the numbers remain small.

"Unfortunately, Guam is a laboratory of sorts for what happens when an invasive species brings major change," she said. "You can't really see it yet, but it appears that the indirect consequences for the forest can be as important as the direct consequences we saw on the bird population."

(CNN) -- The young Afghan girl sits in the center of the room, weeping. Using her hand and her blue scarf to hide her face, she recounts how she was brutally raped by five gunmen.

The girl's tragic case is one of many in war-torn Afghanistan, activists say.

The 12-year-old girl's family members say they'll take their own lives unless justice is served.

"We will all commit suicide -- this is not living," cries the mother of the girl, whose gang-rape occurred in Northern Afghanistan.

The girl's adolescent voice pleads for help from Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan.

The girl's elderly and immobilized father trembles and can only raise a quivering hand as he sobs. He is rendered helpless in a country where a man's dignity and honor is protecting his family.

Her little brother sits in the back, far too young to understand the situation but still traumatized by the devastated cries around him. He wipes away his tears.

The children's mother sobs. "We've been violated, we can't live our lives, we can't sit, we can't sleep at night," she says.

Video of the crushed family aired on the privately owned Ariana TV two weeks ago before it was posted on the Internet by an activist group, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).

In a country riddled with corruption, despair and lawlessness, the family has risked their lives by coming forward

They have since met with Karzai, according to an aide who said the president wept with the family and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. Karzai has since sacked the police chief from the city where the attack occurred, the aide said.

The family currently lives in a government-provided safe house in Kabul, Afghanistan.

"This is just an example among thousands of other cases," Shaima, a member of RAWA, tells CNN. "The rest
go unnoticed by the media."

Shaima is not her real name; she uses it to protect her identity. RAWA members themselves have often been targeted for raising taboo issues in a culture in which women and children are often treated as second-class citizens.

"Women and girls, especially young girls, are the most unprotected people of Afghanistan. They are raped, kidnapped and murdered," Shaima says.

Just last week, a 3-year-old girl was kidnapped and raped by unidentified men, a government official confirms. The toddler was later released and, the official says, is recovering.

"Rapists are roaming around with impunity," Shaima says, turning her attention to a man -- said to be the son of a powerful official -- who is accused of raping 22 girls in the northern province of Sar-I-Pul.

Sayed Nurallah says his 14-year-old daughter was one of the aforementioned victims. Speaking to CNN, Nurallah says that coming forward with his daughter's story makes him a target -- which he firmly accepts. He says seeking justice for his daughter is a matter of integrity.

"She wakes up in the middle of the night screaming," Nurallah says of his daughter. "Her arms, legs, her body -- she is always tense and frightened."

Nurallah also pleads for justice. "I have one question for Mr. Karzai: If this was your little girl, what would you do?"

His firm tone changes to one of grief. He breaks into quiet sobs.

"I just want justice for my child," he says.

Shaima says justice is hard to find.

"These criminals are never brought to justice because police and government authorities are either involved or they can't handle the crimes," she explains. "With criminals and warlords in the political scene we cannot expect justice to be served."

Another factor that impedes victims from coming forward is Islamic Sharia law. In order for a rape to be validated, victims must have four male witnesses to the crime -- if not, the victims can be charged with fornication or adultery.

Statistics quantifying crimes against children are hard to come by in Afghanistan, an impoverished nation ravaged by three decades of war.

In March, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said deteriorating security in large parts of the country, a growing culture of criminal impunity, weak law enforcement institutions, poverty and other factors had contributed to increasing violence against women, such as rape and torture.

The AIHRC also said that Afghan girls also are often forced into marriages against their will.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. special representative for children in armed conflict, plans to release a report in October on the state of Afghan children.

Coomaraswamy went to Afghanistan earlier this summer to establish a monitoring and reporting system on what is deemed as grave violations committed against children.

"In many cases of violence against children, there is a sense of impunity. People continue to violate children's rights without any sense of feeling that they will be held accountable," Coomaraswamy said at a news conference at the end of her trip.

She found that sexual violence against young boys is also a problem. In what is known as "bacha-bazi" -- or "child's play" -- little boys are forced to dress in female attire, dance and perform sexual acts.

"I can't think of any country in the world in which children suffer more than in Afghanistan," Coomaraswamy says. "In all our meetings with children, it takes a lot of time to make them smile. That to me shows that there is not happiness in their hearts."

She hopes that the monitoring program will deter people from taking advantage of the vulnerability of children in the combat zone. Coomaraswamy does concede that the Afghan government alone cannot do much right now.

"War has completely destroyed that administrative infrastructure," Coomaraswamy says, "even if they had the laws, it is impossible to implement."

By Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili (AP)

Israel has decided to halt all sales of military equipment to Georgia because of objections from Russia, which is locked in a feud with its smaller Caucasus neighbor, Israeli defense officials said Tuesday.

The officials said the freeze was partially intended to give Israel leverage with Moscow in its attempts to persuade Russia not to ship arms and equipment to Iran. They spoke on condition of anonymity as Israel does not officially publish details of its arms sales.

Russia has repeatedly refused to comment on reports its is selling S-300 air defense missiles to Iran.

Among items Israel has been selling to Tbilisi are pilotless drone aircraft. Russian fighters shot one down in May, according to U.N. observers.

Russia sent Israel a letter of protest after the shooting incident asking it to stop supplying military hardware to Georgia "as Russia from time to time complies with Israel's requests not to supply weapons systems" to states seen as threatening Israel, according to a report Tuesday in the Israeli daily Maariv.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry declined to comment Tuesday on the reported arms trade freeze.

Georgian Cabinet minister Temur Yakobashvili denied the report.

"There has been no decision by Israel to stop selling weapons. The gossip about that in the Israeli media is linked to the internal political process in Israel," Yakobashvili said.

Israel is one of the world's leading arms exporters but does not detail the contents or value of its trade with individual countries.

In addition to the spy drones, Israel has also been supplying Georgia with infantry weapons and electronics for artillery systems, and has helped upgrade Soviet-designed Su-25 ground attack jets assembled in Georgia, according to Koba Liklikadze, an independent military expert based in Tbilisi. Former Israeli generals also serve as advisers to the Georgian military.

Tensions between Israel and Iran are high, with Israeli officials warning of a possible military strike against what it says is a nuclear weapons program under development by Tehran. The sale by Russia of anti-aircraft weapons could help Iran fend off an attack.

Iran denies it has nuclear arms ambitions, saying its program is for peaceful purposes.

The disagreement between Russia and Georgia centers on two breakaway Georgian provinces which have close ties with Russia.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 460

2008-08-05T10:30:00.000-07:00

By Charles J. Hanley and Jae-Soon Chang (AP)

South Korean investigators, matching once-secret documents to eyewitness accounts, are concluding that the U.S. military indiscriminately killed large groups of refugees and other civilians early in the Korean War.

A half-century later, the Seoul government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has more than 200 such alleged wartime cases on its docket, based on hundreds of citizens' petitions recounting bombing and strafing runs on South Korean refugee gatherings and unsuspecting villages in 1950-51.

Concluding its first investigations, the 2 1/2-year-old commission is urging the government to seek U.S. compensation for victims.

"Of course the U.S. government should pay compensation. It's the U.S. military's fault," said survivor Cho Kook-won, 78, who says he lost four family members among hundreds of refugees suffocated, burned and shot to death in a U.S. Air Force napalm attack on their cave shelter south of Seoul in 1951.

Commission researchers have unearthed evidence of indiscriminate killings in the declassified U.S. archive, including a report by U.S. inspectors-general that pilots couldn't distinguish their South Korean civilian allies from North Korean enemy soldiers.

South Korean legislators have asked a U.S. Senate committee to join them in investigating another long-classified document, one saying American ground commanders, fearing enemy infiltrators, had adopted a policy of shooting approaching refugees.

The Associated Press has found that wartime pilots and declassified documents at the U.S. National Archives both confirm that refugees were deliberately targeted by U.S. forces.

The U.S. government has been largely silent on the commission's work. The U.S. Embassy here says it has not yet been approached by the Seoul government about compensation. Spokesman Aaron Tarver also told the AP that the embassy is not monitoring commission findings.

The commission's president, historian Ahn Byung-ook, said the U.S. Army helped defend South Korea in the 1950-53 war, but also "victimized" South Korean civilians. "We feel detailed investigation should be done by the U.S. government itself," he said.

The citizen petitions have accumulated since 1999, when the AP, after tracing Army veterans who were there, confirmed the 1950 refugee killings at No Gun Ri, where survivors estimate 400 died at American hands, mostly women and children.

In newly democratized South Korea, after decades of enforced silence under right-wing dictatorships, that report opened floodgates of memory, as families spoke out about other wartime mass killings.

"The No Gun Ri incident became one of the milestones, to take on this kind of incident in the future," said Park Myung-lim of Seoul's Yonsei University, a Korean War historian and adviser to the truth commission.

The National Assembly established the 15-member panel in December 2005 to investigate not only long-hidden Korean War incidents, including the southern regime's summary executions of thousands of suspected leftists, but also human rights violations by the Seoul government during the authoritarian postwar period.

Findings are meant to "reconcile the past for the sake of national unity," says its legislative charter.

The panel cannot compel testimony, prosecute or award compensation. Since the commission may shut down as early as 2010, the six investigators devoted to alleged cases of "civilian massacre committed by U.S. soldiers" are unlikely to examine all 215 cases fully.

News reports at the time hinted at such killings after North Korea invaded the south in June 1950. But the extent wasn't known. Commission member Kim Dong-choon, in charge of investigating civilian mass killings, says there were large numbers of dead — between 50 and 400 — in many incidents.

As at No Gun Ri, some involved U.S. ground troops, such as the reported killing of 82 civilians huddled in a village shrine outside the southern city of Masan in August 1950. But most were air attacks.

In one of three initial findings, the commission held that a surprise U.S. air attack on east Wolmi island on Sept. 10, 1950, five days befor e the U.S. amphibious landing at nearby Incheon, was unjustified. Survivors estimate 100 or more South Korean civilians were killed.

In clear weather from low altitude, "U.S. forces napalmed numerous small buildings, (and) strafed children, women and old people in the open area," the commission said.

Investigator Kang Eun-ji said high priority is being given to reviewing attacks earlier in 1950 on refugees gathered in fields west of the Naktong River, in North Korean-occupied areas of the far south, while U.S. forces were dug in east of the river. One U.S. air attack on 2,000 refugees assembled Aug. 20, 1950, at Haman, near Masan, killed almost 200, survivors reported.

"There were many similar incidents — refugees gathered in certain places, and there were air strikes," she said.

The declassified record shows the Americans' fear that enemy troops were disguising themselves as civilians led to indiscriminate attacks on "people in white," the color worn by most Koreans, commission and AP research found.

In the first case the commission confirmed, last November, its investigators found that an airborne Air Force observer had noted in the "Enemy" box of an after-mission report, "Many people in white in area."

The area was the village of Sanseong-dong, in an upland valley 100 miles southeast of Seoul, attacked on Jan. 19, 1951, by three waves of Navy and Air Force planes. Declassified documents show the U.S. X Corps had issued an order to destroy South Korean villages within 5 miles of a mountain position held by North Korean troops.

"Everybody came out of their houses to see these low-flying planes, and everyone was hit," farmer Ahn Shik-mo, 77, told AP reporters visiting the apple-growing village. "It appeared they were aiming at people."

At least 51 were killed, the commission found, including Ahn's mother. Sixty-nine of 115 houses were destroyed in what the panel called "indiscriminate" bombing. "The U.S. Air Force regarded all people in white as possible enemy," it concluded.

"There never were an y North Koreans in the village," said villager Ahn Hee-duk, a 12-year-old boy at the time.

The U.S. military itself said there were no enemy casualties, an acknowledgment made Feb. 13, 1951, in a joint Army-Air Force report on the Sanseong-dong bombing, an unusual review undertaken because Korean authorities questioned the attack.

Classified for a half-century, that report included a candid admission: "Civilians in villages cannot normally be identified as either North Koreans, South Koreans, or guerrillas," wrote the inspectors-general, two colonels.

The Eighth Army commander, Lt. Gen. Matthew Ridgway, held, nonetheless, that Sanseong-dong's destruction was "amply justified," the AP found in a declassified document. Today's Korean commission held otherwise, recommending that the government negotiate for U.S. compensation.

A U.S. airborne observer in that attack, traced by the AP, said it's "very possible" the Sanseong-dong mission could be judged indiscriminate. George P. Wolf, 88, of Arlington, Texas, also said he remembered orders to strafe refugees.

"I'm very, very sorry about hitting civilians," said the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, who flew with the 6147th Tactical Control Squadron.

The day after the Sanseong-dong attack, the cave shelter at Yeongchun, 120 miles southeast of Seoul, came under repeated napalm and strafing attacks from 11 U.S. warplanes.

Hundreds of South Korean civilians, fearing their villages would be bombed, had jammed inside the 85-yard-long cave, with farm animals and household goods outside.

Around 10 a.m., Cho Byung-woo, then 9, was deep in the narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel when he heard screams up front, and saw choking fumes billowing inside. Air Force F-51 Mustangs dropped napalm firebombs at the cave's entrance, a declassified mission report shows.

"I ran forward and all I could hear were people coughing and screaming, and some were probably already dead," Cho recalled, revisiting the cave with AP reporters. His father flung the boy out the entrance, his hair singed. Outside, Cho saw more planes strafe people fleeing into surrounding fields.

He and other survivors said surveillance planes had flown over for days beforehand. "There was no excuse," Cho said. "How could they not tell — the cows, the pieces of furniture?"

Survivors said the villagers had tried days earlier to flee south, but were turned back at gunpoint at a U.S. Army roadblock, an account supported by a declassified 7th Infantry Division journal.

Villagers believe 360 people were killed at the cave. In its May 20 finding, the commission estimated the dead numbered "well over 200." It found the U.S. had carried out an unnecessary, indiscriminate attack and had failed — with the roadblock — to meet its responsibility to safeguard refugees.

The commission also pointed out that Ridgway — in a Jan. 3, 1951, order uncovered by AP archival research — had given units authority to fire at civilians to stop their movement.

Five months earlier, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea confidentially informed Washington that the U.S. Army, fearing infiltrators, had adopted a policy of shooting South Korean refugees who approached its lines despite warnings. Ambassador John J. Muccio's letter was dated July 26, 1950, the day U.S. troops began shooting refugees at No Gun Ri.

American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz reported his discovery of the declassified Muccio letter in his 2006 book "Collateral Damage." But the Army had learned of the letter earlier, during its 1999-2001 No Gun Ri investigation, and had not disclosed its existence.

The Army now asserts it omitted the letter from its 2001 No Gun Ri report because it discussed "a proposed policy," not an approved one. But the document unambiguously described the policy as among "decisions made" — not a proposal — at a high-level U.S.-South Korean meeting, and AP research found declassified documents in which U.S. commanders in subsequent weeks repeatedly ordered troops to fire on refugees.

In a May 15 letter to Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the then-vice speaker of Seoul's National Assembly, Lee Yong-hee, called on Congress to investigate whether the Army intentionally suppressed the Muccio letter in its inquiry.

Since targeting noncombatants is a war crime, "this is a matter of deep concern to the Korean people," wrote Lee, whose district includes No Gun Ri.

Lee, who has since lost his leadership position as a result of elections, suggested a joint U.S.-Korean congressional probe. Frank Jannuzi, the Senate committee's senior East Asia specialist, said its staff would seek Pentagon and State Department briefings on the matter.

In 2001, the U.S. government rejected the No Gun Ri survivors' demand for an apology and compensation, and the Army's report claimed the No Gun Ri killings were "not deliberate."

But at a Seoul news conference on May 15 with survivors of No Gun Ri and other incidents, their U.S.-based lawyers pointed out that powerful contrary evidence has long been available.

"The killings of Korean civilians were extensive, intentional and indiscriminate," lawyers Michael Choi and Robert Swift said in a statement.

In its 2001 report, the Army said it had learned of other civilian killings by U.S. forces, but it indicated they would not be investigated.

By Mike Allen

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’”
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The Telegraph story by Con Coughlin (which, coincidentally, ran the day Hussein was captured in his “spider hole”) was touted in the U.S. media by supporters of the war, and he was interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"Over the next few days, the Habbush letter continued to be featured prominently in the United States and across the globe," Suskind writes. "Fox's Bill O'Reilly trumpeted the story Sunday night on 'The O'Reilly Factor,' talking breathlessly about details of the story and exhorting, 'Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda—Saddam.'"

According to Suskind, the administration had been in contact with the director of the Iraqi intelligence service in the last years of Hussein’s regime, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti.

“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justifica tion to invade Iraq. There is no link.”

The White House flatly denied Suskind’s account. Tony Fratto, deputy White House press secretary, told Politico: “The allegation that the White House directed anyone to forge a document from Habbush to Saddam is just absurd.”

The White House plans to push back hard. Fratto added: "Ron Suskind makes a living from gutter journalism. He is about selling books and making wild allegations that no one can verify, including the numerous bipartisan commissions that have reported on pre-war intelligence."

Before “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism,” Suskind wrote two New York Times bestsellers critical of the Bush administration – “The Price of Loyalty” (2004), which featured extensive comments by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, and “The One Percent Doctrine” (2006).

Suskind writes in his new book that the order to create the letter was written on “creamy White House stationery.” The book suggests that the letter was subsequently created by the CIA and delivered to Iraq, but does not say how.

The author claims that such an operation, part of “false pretenses” for war, would apparently constitute illegal White House use of the CIA to influence a domestic audience, an arguably impeachable offense.

Suskind writes that the White House=2 0had “ignored the Iraq intelligence chief’s accurate disclosure that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.

“They secretly resettled him in Jordan, paid him $5 million – which one could argue was hush money – and then used his captive status to help deceive the world about one of the era’s most crushing truths: that America had gone to war under false pretenses,” the book says.

Suskind writes that the forgery “operation created by the White House and passed to the CIA seems inconsistent with” a statute saying the CIA may not conduct covert operations “intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies or media.”

“It is not the sort of offense, such as assault or burglary, that carries specific penalties, for example, a fine or jail time,” Suskind writes. “It is much broader than that. It pertains to the White House’s knowingly misusing an arm of government, the sort of thing generally taken up in impeachment proceedings.”

Habbush is still listed as wanted on a State Department website designed to help combat international terrorism, with the notation: “Up to $1 Million Reward.”

Suskind20is scheduled to discuss the book’s findings – and his assertion that the country has “diminished moral authority” -- in a pair of interviews by NBC’s Meredith Vieira on the “Today” show at 7:10 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“[B]y placing so much on its secret ledger,” Suskind writes in his final chapter, “the administration profoundly altered basic democratic ideals of accountability and informed consent.”

The book (HarperCollins, $27.95) was not supposed to be publicly available until Tuesday, but Politico purchased a copy Monday night at a Washington bookstore.

Suskind, an engaging and confident Washingtonian, writes that the book was “one tough project.” He won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where he worked from 1993 to 2000.

The White House said Suskind received no formal cooperation. He writes in the acknowledgments section at the end of the book: “It should be noted that the intelligence sources who are quoted in this book in no way disclosed any classified information. None crossed the line.”

Among the 415-page book’s other highlights:

--John Maguire, one of two men who oversaw the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group, was frustrated by what Suskind describes as the “tendency of the White House to ignore advice it didn’t want to hear – advice that contradicted i ts willed certainty, political judgments, or rigid message strategies.”

And Suskind writes that the administration “did not want to hear the word insurgency.”

--In the first days of his presidency, Bush rejected advice from the CIA to wiretap Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2001 in Vienna, where he was staying in a hotel where the CIA had a listening device planted in the wall of the presidential suite, in need only of a battery change. The CIA said that if the surveillance were discovered, Putin’s respect for Bush would be heightened.

But Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, advised that it was “too risky, it might be discovered,” Suskind writes. Bush decided against if as “a gut decision” based on what he thought was a friendship based on several conversations, including during the presidential campaign. The CIA had warned him that Putin “was a trained KGB agent … [who] wants you to think he’s your friend.”

--Suskind reports that Bush initially told Cheney he had to "‘step back’ in large meetings when they were together, like those at the NSC [National Security Council], because people were addressing and deferring to Cheney. Cheney said he understood, that he’d mostly just take notes at the big tables and then he and Bush would meet privately, frequently, to discuss options and action.”

--Suskind contends Cheney established “deniability” for Bush as part of the vice president’s “complex strategies, developed over decades, for how to protect a president.”

“After the searing experience of being in the Nixon White House, Cheney developed a view that the failure of Watergate was not the break-in, or even the cover-up, but the way the president had, in essence, been over-briefed. There were certain things a president shouldn’t know – things that could be illegal, disruptive to key foreign relationships, or humiliating to the executive.

“They key was a signaling system, where the president made his wishes broadly known to a sufficiently powerful deputy who could take it from there. If an investigation ensued, or a foreign leader cried foul, the president could shrug. This was never something he'd authorized. The whole point of Cheney’s model is to make a president less accountable for his action. Cheney’s view is that accountability – a bedrock feature of representative democracy – is not, in every case, a virtue.”

--Suskind is acidly derisive of Bush, saying that he initially lost his “nerve” on 9/11, regaining it when he grabbed the Ground Zero bullhorn. Suskind says Bush’s 9 p.m. Oval Office address on the fifth anniversary was “well along in petulance, seasoned by a touch of self-defensiveness.”

“Moving on its own natural arc, the country is in the process of leaving Bush – his bullying impulse fused, permanently, with satisfying vengeance – in the scattering ashes of 9/11,” Suskind writes. “The high purpose his angry words carried after the attacks, and in two elections since, is dissolving with each passing minute.”

--Suskind writes in the acknowledgments that his research assistant, Greg Jackson, “was sent to New York on a project for the book” in September 2007 and was “detained by federal agents in Manhattan. He was interrogated and his notes were confiscated, violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights.” The author provides no further detail.

By Drew DeSilver

Struggling wood-products giant Weyerhaeuser said this morning it will cut 1,500 jobs at its Federal Way headquarters, as it moves toward being a smaller, more focused — and eventually, it hopes, more profitable — company.

The cuts will take place between now and the end of 2009, chief executive Dan Fulton said in a conference call with analysts.

His comments came as Weyerhaeuser reported a $96 million net loss for the second quarter, or 45 cents per share — wider than the Wall Street consensus of 23 cents per share.

About 2,500 people work at Weyerhaeuser's sleek, tree-ringed headquarters off I-5.

The U.S. housing slump has hit the company hard, both in its lumber and other building materials business and in its real-estate development segment. Weyerhaeuser took a $311 pretax charge in the quarter to write down the value of its homebuilding and land-related charges, on top of a $56 million charge in the first quarter.

However, Fulton indicated that=2 0he plans to hold onto both those segments in anticipation of an eventual recovery, though he said one likely won't begin until late 2009 at the earliest.

Instead, Weyerhaeuser has spent the past two years unloading businesses deemed "noncore." Just Monday it closed the $6 billion sale of its containerboard and packaging business to International Paper; after taxes, that sale should generate proceeds of $4 billion to $4.5 billion, much of which will go to pay down Weyerhaeuser's $7 billion-plus in debt.

The company sold off its Australian operations last month, and has put its shipping and rail lines on the market. It also dissolved its Uruguayan joint venture, leading to a one-time after-tax gain of $101 million.

But Fulton characterized those sales, and other moves that might be down the road, as "fine-tuning the portfolio," and indicated that the company's plan now is to get as much out of its current businesses as possible.

He also hinted that the eventual conversion of Weyerhaeuser into a real estate investment trust, while not imminent, was stil l on the table. He told analysts on the conference call that, with the company smaller and more focused on its land-based businesses, it could choose "the right structure, for the right reasons, at the right time."

One bright spot in today's report was the pulp and liquid packaging board business, which saw higher market prices.

Although those were more than offset by higher maintenance expenses and shipping and energy costs, the completion of most of the planned maintenance closures should mean "significantly higher" earnings from that segment going forward.

Weyerhaeuser also disclosed that it had earned $22 million in the first half of the year from leases and royalties on its mineral rights — largely due to oil and natural gas exploration on a tract of land it owns in Louisiana.

In late morning trading, shares of Weyerhaeuser were little changed from Monday's close of $54.56.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 459

2008-08-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) An insurance company's attorney suggested during a sworn deposition that former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott urged witnesses to give false information in a Hurricane Katrina lawsuit, according to court records.

The implication was made last week during a deposition with Lott's nephew, Zach Scruggs, who represented the former Mississippi Republican senator after his Pascagoula home was destroyed by the 2005 storm. Zach Scruggs is the son and law partner of disgraced former attorney Richard ''Dickie'' Scruggs, Lott's brother-in-law.

''Has it been your custom and habit in prosecuting litigation to have Senator Lott contact and encourage witnesses to give false information?'' State Farm Fire & Casualty Cos. attorney Jim Robie asked, according to a transcript of the deposition.

''I invoke my Fifth Amendment rights in response to that question,'' Zach Scruggs responded.

Bret Boyles, with Lott's lobbying firm, the Breaux-Lott Leadership Group, said Wednesday the former senator was unavailable for comment.

State Farm accused Richard Scruggs during a separate deposition last week of orchestrating an elaborate ploy after Hurricane Katrina to make it appear that the company was covering up fraud in its handling of homeowners' claims.

Both Richard and Zach Scruggs, who report to federal prison next month on charges stemming from an unrelated bribery case, invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on every question.

Richard Scruggs' attorneys had wanted to keep the depositions secret. They said public knowledge that he refused to answer the questions could undermine ''the presumption of innocence'' if he faceod to subpoena the documents as part of a criminal investigation.

''General Hood subpoenaed the document, State Farm couldn't produce it, and you were able to report to the press that they were shredding or deep sixing or destroying evidence that you knew they didn't have; isn't that a fact?'' State Farm attorney Jim Robie asked during the deposition.

''I respectfully decline to answer based on my Fifth Amendment privilege,'' Scruggs replied.

State Farm has accused Hood of using the threat of criminal charges to pressure the Bloomington, Ill.-based insurer to settle civil claims with attorneys like Scruggs, who donated heavily to Hood's campaigns. Hood did not immediately respond to a message Wednesday. He has denied the allegations in the past.

Scruggs negotiated a multimillion dollar settlement with State Farm, but that eventually led to his downfall when he and other lawyers began fighting over the money. Scruggs was indicted in November along with his son and several associates and accused of conspiring to bribe the judge $50,000 for a favorable ruling in the bitter legal battle over how to split the money. Scruggs pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years. Zach Scruggs got 14 months for knowing about the crime and not reporting it.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two U.S. soldiers were charged Saturday with the murder of an Iraqi detainee.

The coalition command in Iraq charged Staff Sgt. Hal M. Warner and 1st Lt. Michael C. Behenna with premeditated murder, assault, making a false official statement and obstruction of justice, according to a statement Saturday from the Multi-National Division.

The charges stemmed from a criminal investigation into the death of Ali Mansur Mohamed, a detainee initially believed to have been released by coalition forces in May, the statement said, without elaborating on the case.

Officials believe Mohamed was killed on or around May 16.

Behenna's charge sheet says that a few days later, he lied when he told another soldier that he dropped off Mohamed and another detainee with a branch of the Sons of Iraq, who are U.S.-allied Sunni fighters, said Maj. Margaret Kageleiry, a coalition spokeswoman.

A pretrial investigation for Warner is scheduled to start August 15 at a base near Tikrit. A date has not been set for Behenna's investigation.

No other details were immediately released.

Both soldiers are assigned to D Company, 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry at Forward Operating Base Summerall, near

Bayji, about 120 miles south of Mosul.

In other developments, two suspected al Qaeda in Iraq members were seized in connection with the June 26 suicide bombing that left three U.S. Marines and several U.S.-backed Sunni sheikhs dead.

The blast occurred at a tribal sheikhs' meeting in Anbar province. The Islamic State of Iraq, a propaganda front for al Qaeda in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the strike, saying it targeted members of the "awakening" -- a grass-roots movement that opposes al Qaeda in Iraq.

The U.S. military said Friday that Iraqi soldiers detained the pair north of Baghdad on July 18. The military believes the two are linked to various al Qaeda in Iraq efforts, including one said to recruit "young boys" for suicide bombing missions.

Lt. Col. Max A. Galeai, 42, of Pago Pago, American Samoa, died in the blast. Galeai was a battalion commander who led more than 1,000 troops. He was one of the highest-ranking American officers to die in the war-torn country this year.

Capt. Philip J. Dykeman, 38, of Brockport, New York, and Cpl. Marcus W. Preudhomme, 23, of North Miami Beach, Florida, were also among the 25 people slain.

By Martin Crutsinger

Consumer spending, after adjusting for inflation, fell in June as shoppers were hit with the biggest increase in prices in nearly three decades.

The Commerce Department reported Monday that consumer spending dipped by 0.2 percent in June, after removing the effects of higher prices, the poorest showing since a similar drop in February. The higher prices reflected a big surge in gasoline costs and helped to drive an inflation gauge tied to consumer spending up by 0.8 percent in June, the biggest increase since a 1 percent rise in February 1981.

The big rise in inflation ate up a part of the billions of dollars in stimulus payments delivered during the month. Personal incomes rose by a tiny 0.1 percent in June following a giant 1.8 percent increase in May.

Wall Street headed toward a slightly lower opening Monday after the disappointing report on consumer spending. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 13, or 0.11 percent, to 11,293.

The performance of incomes were skewed by how the department accounts for the billions of dollars in stimulus payments that have been made over the past three months. Those payments totaled $1.9 billion in April, when the program was just getting started, then $48.1 billion in May and $27.9 billion in June.

Those payouts made incomes and after-tax incomes soar in May compared to April but weaken in June since the level of June payments was lower than they had been in May.

Consumer spending before removing inflation rose by 0.6 percent in June after a big 0.8 percent increase in May.

Much of that spending went to pay higher prices for gasoline and other items, however. Removing inflation, spending edged up by a more modest 0.3 percent in May and fell by 0.2 percent in June.

The overall economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, grew at a 1.9 percent rate in the April-June quarter, more than double the 0.9 percent increase in the January-March quarter.

Economists believe the $168 billion stimulus program will continue to lift the economy in the current quarter. They predict there will be a significant slowdown in the final three months of this year and early next year, though.

Some analysts believe GDP will shrink in those two quarters, giving the country back-to-back GDP declines, the traditional definition of a recession.

The spending and incomes report showed that prices shot up by 0.8 percent. Excluding food and energy, the increase was 0.3 percent, up from a 0.2 percent rise in May and the biggest one-month gain since a similar 0.3 percent rise last September.

After-tax incomes fell by 1.9 percent in June following a huge 5.7 percent surge in May, both months heavily influenced by how the government accounted for the stimulus payments. Excluding those payments, after-tax incomes would have rise by 0.3 percent in June after a 0.4 percent rise in May.

The savings rate, as a percent of after-tax incomes, dropped to 2.5 percent in June after having shot up to 4.9 percent in May.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 458

2008-08-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

By Jeannine Aversa (AP)

WASHINGTON — The nation's unemployment rate climbed to a four-year high of 5.7 percent in July as employers cut 51,000 jobs, dashing the hopes of an influx of young people looking for summer work.

Payroll cuts weren't as deep as the 72,000 predicted by economists, however. And, job losses for both May and June were smaller than previously reported.

July's reductions marked the seventh straight month where employers eliminated jobs. The economy has lost a total of 463,000 jobs so far this year.

The latest snapshot, released by the Labor Department on Friday, showed a lack of credit has stunted employers' expansion plans and willingness to hire. Fallout from the housing slump and high energy prices also are weighing on employers.

The increase in the unemployment rate to 5.7 percent, from 5.5 percent in June, in part came as many young people streamed into the labor market looking for summer jobs. This year, fewer of them were able to find work, the government said. The unemployment rate for teenagers jumped to 20.3 percent, the highest since late 1992.

The economy is the top concern of voters and will figure prominently in their choices for president and other elected officials come November. The faltering labor market is a source of anxiety not only for those looking for work but also for those worried about keeping their jobs during uncertain times.

Job losses in July were the heaviest in industries hard hit by the housing, credit and financial debacles. Manufacturers cut 35,000 positions, construction companies got rid of 22,000 and retailers shed 17,000 jobs.

Temporary help firms — also viewed as a barometer of demand for future hiring — eliminated 29,000 jobs. Those losses swamped job gains elsewhere, including in the government, education and health care.

In May and June combined, the economy lost 98,000 jobs, according to revised figures. That wasn't as bad as the 124,000 reductions previously reported.

GM, Chrysler LLC, Wachovia Corp., Cox Enterprises Inc. and Pfizer are among the companies that have announced job cuts in July.

GM Friday reported the third-worst quarterly loss in its history in the second quarter as North American vehicle sales plummeted and the company faced expenses due to labor unrest and its massive restructuring plan.

On July 15, GM announced a plan to raise $15 billion for its restructuring by laying off thousands of hourly and salaried workers, speeding the closure of truck and SUV plants, suspending its dividend and raising cash through borrowing and the sale of assets.

By Ann Zimmerman and Kris Maher

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise.

The actions by Wal-Mart -- the nation's largest private employer -- reflect a growing concern among big business that a reinvigorated labor movement could reverse years of declining union membership. That could lead to higher payroll and health costs for companies already being hurt by rising fuel and commodities costs and the tough economic climate.

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.

"If anyone representing Wal-Mart gave the impression we were telling associates how to vote, they were wrong and acting without approval," said David Tovar, Wal-Mart spokesman. Mr. Tovar acknowledged that the meetings were taking place for store managers and supervisors nationwide.

Wal-Mart's worries center on a piece of legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act, which companies say would enable unions to quickly add millions of new members. "We believe EFCA is a bad bill and we have been on record as opposing it for some time," Mr. Tovar said. "We feel educating our associates about the bill is the right thing to do."

Other companies and groups are also making a case against the legislation to workers. Laundry company Cintas Corp., which has been fighting a multiyear organizing campaign by Unite Here, relaunched a Web site July 14 called CintasVotes. The site instructs visitors to take action by telling members of Congress to oppose the legislation.

"We feel it's important that our employee partners fully understand the implications that the Employee Free Choice Act could have on their work environment and benefits," said Heather Trainer, a Cintas spokeswoman.

Business-backed organizations are also running ads aimed at building opposition to the bill, including the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which counts several hundred industry associations as members. Another group, the Employee Freedom Action Committee, is run by former tobacco lobbyist Rick Berman. The groups, which aren't affiliated with each other, say they have a total of $50 million in funding. Neither will disclose which companies or individuals have provided funding.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has made defeat of the legislation a top priority. In the past six months, it has flown state and local Chamber members to Washington to lobby members of Congress. On Thursday, the Chamber began airing a television ad in Minnesota and plans to run ads in other states as part of a broader campaign.

The bill was crafted by labor as a response to more aggressive opposition by companies to union-organizing activity.

The AFL-CIO and individual unions such as the United Food and Commercial Workers have promised to make passage of the new labor law their No. 1 mission after the November election.

First introduced in 2003, the bill came to a vote last year and sailed through the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, but was blocked by a filibuster in the Senate and faced a veto threat by the White House. The bill was taken off the floor, and its backers pledged to reintroduce it when they could get more support.

The November election could bring that extra support in Congress, as well as the White House if Sen. Obama is elected and Democrats extend their control in the Senate. Sen. Obama co-sponsored the legislation, which also is known as "card check," and has said several times he would sign it into law if elected president. Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, opposes the Employee Free Choice Act and voted against it last year.

Wal-Mart's labor-relations meetings are led by human-resources managers who received training from Wal-Mart on the implications of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Wal-Mart may be walking a fine legal line by holding meetings with its store department heads that link politics with a strong antiunion message. Federal election rules permit companies to advocate for specific political candidates to its executives, stockholders and salaried managers, but not to hourly employees. While store managers are on salary, department supervisors are hourly workers.

However, employers have fairly broad leeway to disseminate information about candidates' voting records and positions on issues, according to Jan Baran, a Washington attorney and expert on election law.

Both supporters and opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act believe it would simplify and speed labor's ability to unionize companies. Currently, companies can demand a secret-ballot election to determine union representation.

Those elections often are preceded by months of strident employer and union campaigns.

Under the proposed legislation, companies could no longer have the right to insist on one secret ballot. Instead, the Free Choice, or "card check," legislation would let unions form if more than 50% of workers simply sign a card saying they want to join. It is far easier for unions to get workers to sign cards because the organizers can approach workers repeatedly, over a period of weeks or months, until the union garners enough support.

Employers argue that the card system could lead to workers being pressured to sign by pro-union colleagues and organizers. Unions counter that it shields workers from pressure from their employers.

On June 30 the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Wal-Mart illegally fired an employee in Kingman, Ariz., who supported the UFCW and illegally threatened to freeze merit-pay increases if employees voted for union representation. The decision came eight years after the organizing campaign failed, and four years after the case was originally heard.

"We've always maintained the termination was not related to the union and that there was nothing unlawful about an answer provided an associate about merit pay," said Mr. Tovar, the Wal-Mart spokesman. "Following the decision, we were considering offering reinstatement, but that is on hold, since the [union] appealed the decision."

Unions consider the Employee Free Choice Act as vital to the survival of the labor movement, which currently represents 7.5% of private-sector workers, half the percentage it did 25 years ago. The Service Employees International Union said the legislation would enable it to organize a million workers a year, up from its current pace of 100,000 workers a year.

The business-backed lobbying groups are running ads in states where a win by a Democratic Senate candidate would boost support for the legislation in the Senate, saying the loss of secret ballots exposes workers to bullying labor bosses. In one, they use an actor from the "Sopranos" TV series about mob life to hammer home their point.

Business groups say they're the underdogs since they will be outspent by unions by a wide margin. Labor has pledged to spend $300 million on the election and securing passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, compared with under $100 million by business groups, according to Steven Law, chief legal officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber's strategy is to focus on the Senate, where labor needs eight more supporters of the legislation to reach the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

"This is a David-and-Goliath confrontation, but we believe we'll have enough stones in the sling to knock this out," said Mr. Law.

Wal-Mart is a powerful ally. Through almost all of its 48-year history, Wal-Mart has fought hard to keep unions out of its stores, flying in labor-relations rapid-response teams from its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters to any location where union activity was building. The United Food and Commercial Workers was successful in organizing only one group of Wal-Mart workers -- a small number of butchers in East Texas in early 2000. Several weeks later, the company phased out butchers in all of its stores and began stocking prepackaged meat. When a store in Canada voted to unionize several years ago, the company closed the store, saying it had been unprofitable for years.

Labor has fought back with a campaign to portray Wal-Mart as treating its workers poorly. The UFCW helped employees file a series of complaints about the company's overtime, health-care and other policies with the National Labor Relations Board. Dozens of class-action lawsuits were filed on behalf of workers, many of which are still winding their way through the courts.

Wal-Mart has been trying to burnish its reputation by improving its worker benefits and touting its commitment to the environment. On the political front, it's hedging its bets, spreading its financial contributions on both sides of the political divide.

Twelve years ago, 98% of Wal-Mart's political donations went to Republicans. Now, as the Democrats seem poised to gain control in Washington, 48% of its $2.2 million in political contributions go to Democrats and 52% to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization that tracks political giving.

(AFP)

California said Thursday it planned to sue the US government for failing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from ships, aircraft, construction and agricultural equipment.

In the latest legal threat from the state against the Environmental Protection Agency, California's Attorney General Jerry Brown said the body was "wantonly ignoring" its duty to set pollution standards.

California is already suing the EPA over the agency's failure to approve the state's proposed standards for vehicle emissions.

"Ships, aircraft and industrial equipment burn huge quantities of fossil fuel and cause massive greenhouse gas pollution yet President (George W.) Bush stalls with one bureaucratic dodge after another," Brown said in a statement.

"Because Bush's Environmental Protection Agency continues to wantonly ignore its duty to regulate pollution, California is forced to seek judicial action."

Brown said under federal law the EPA was authorized to regulate greenhouse gases on ocean-going vessels and aircraft, as well as agricultural, construction and industrial equipment.

However Brown accused the EPA of failing to act to combat pollution from those sources and said California would sue if it failed to enforce regulations within six months.

The lawsuit threat comes one week after Californian environmental regulators approved stringent guidelines aimed at forcing ocean-going vessels visiting the state's ports to use cleaner fuel.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has made the environment a central plank of his tenure, signing a historic bill in 2006 that saw the state become the first in the United States to impose limits on global warming gases.

Under the plan, California will aim to slash the state's carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent by the year 2020, a figure that Schwarzenegger has said is equivalent to removing 6.5 million vehicles from the road.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 457

2008-07-31T22:45:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A congresswoman said Thursday that her "jaw dropped" when military doctors told her that four in 10 women at a veterans hospital reported being sexually assaulted while in the military.

A government report indicates that the numbers could be even higher.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, spoke before a House panel investigating the way the military handles reports of sexual assault.

She said she recently visited a Veterans Affairs hospital in the Los Angeles area, where women told her horror stories of being raped in the military.

"My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41 percent of the female veterans seen there say they were victims of sexual assault while serving in the military," said Harman, who has long sought better protection of women in the military.

"Twenty-nine percent say they were raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness and downward spirals many of their lives have taken since.

"We have an epidemic here," she said. "Women serving in the U.S. military today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq."

As of July 24, 100 women had died in Iraq, according to the Pentagon.

In 2007, Harman said, only 181 out of 2,212 reports of military sexual assaults, or 8 percent, were referred to courts martial. By comparison, she said, 40 percent of those arrested in the civilian world on such charges are prosecuted.

Defense statistics show that military commanders took unspecified action, which can include anything from punishment to dismissal, in an additional 419 cases.

But when it came time for the military to defend itself, the panel was told that the Pentagon's top official on sexual abuse, Dr. Kaye Whitley, was ordered not to show up despite a subpoena.

"I don't know what you're trying to cover up here, but we're not going to allow it," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, said to the Defense official who relayed the news of Whitley's no-show. "This is unacceptable."

Rep. John Tierney, the panel's chairman and a Democrat from Massachusetts, angrily responded, "these actions by the Defense Department are inexplicable."

"The Defense Department appears to be willfully and blatantly advising Dr. Whitley not to comply with a duly authorized congressional subpoena," Tierney said.

An Army official who did testify said the Army takes allegations of sexual abuse extremely seriously.

"Even one sexual assault violates the very essence of what it means to be a soldier, and it's a betrayal of the Army's core values," Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle said.

The committee also heard from Mary Lauterbach, the mother of Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, a 20-year-old pregnant Marine who was killed in December, allegedly by a fellow Marine.

Mary Lauterbach said her daughter filed a rape claim with the military against Marine Cpl. Cesar Laurean seven months before he was accused of killing her.

"I believe that Maria would be alive today if the Marines had provided a more effective system to protect the victims of sexual assault," she said.

In the months after her daughter filed the rape claim, she said, the military didn't seem to take her seriously, and the onus was on "Maria to connect the dots."

"The victim should not have the burden to generate evidence for the command," Lauterbach told the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. "Maria is dead, but there will be many more victims in the future, I promise you. I'm here to ask you to do what you can to help change how the military treats victims of crime and to ensure the victims receive the support and protection they need and they deserve."

Another woman, Ingrid Torres, described being raped on a U.S. base in Korea when she worked with the American Red Cross.

"I was raped while I slept," she said.

The man who assaulted her, she said, was a flight director who was found guilty and dismissed from the Air Force.

Fighting back tears, Torres added, "he still comes after me in my dreams."

The Government Accountability Office released preliminary results from an investigation into sexual assaults in the military and the Coast Guard. The GAO found that the "occurrences of sexual assault may be exceeding the rates being reported."

"At the 14 installations where GAO administered its survey, 103 service members indicated that they had been sexually assaulted within the preceding 12 months. Of these, 52 service members indicated that they did not report the sexual assault," the GAO said.

The office found that the military and Coast Guard have established policies to address sexual assault but that the implementation of the programs is hampered by an array of factors, including that "most, but not all, commanders support the programs."

"Left unchecked, these challenges can discourage or prevent some service members from using the programs when needed," the GAO said.

By Renee Schoof

McClatchy

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency told the Bush administration that by law California should be able to set air-quality standards tougher than federal law, but President Bush rejected the advice and made clear he wanted a single national standard, a former EPA official said Tuesday.

The testimony from whistle-blower Jason Burnett came as the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee's chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer, is investigating what the California Democrat charges is an effort by the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office to cover up the threat from global warming.

Burnett told the committee that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson went to the White House last year with a plan to grant California a waiver that would allow it to set tougher standards, at least for several years.

Bush made it clear he preferred a single national standard, Burnett said, and in the end Johnson denied California's request. Johnson has said that there was nothing unique in California's situation that supported granting the waiver and he made the decision independently.

The administration has denied Boxer's requests for e-mails and other documents. She plans to hold a vote Thursday in her committee to subpoena the documents but needs at least two Republican members to attend for a quorum.

A key e-mail that Boxer wants disclosed is an EPA document that describes how global warming endangers public health and welfare. Burnett sent the e-mail to the White House in December. He said Tuesday he sent it only after making last-minute checks that the agency was ready to release it and the White House Office of Management and Budget was ready to receive it.

The White House asked Burnett to withdraw the e-mail, but he refused. The OMB declined to open it. By not officially receiving the e-mail, the OMB ensured that it couldn't be made public.

The finding Burnett helped draft and sent the OMB was the agency's response to a Supreme Court ruling in April 2007.

"This president, I believe, made a decision that flies in the face of a Supreme Court case, and so I believe it is clearly unlawful," Boxer said.

Burnett described for the committee how the EPA produced a report based on the findings of thousands of scientists whose peer-reviewed work on how emissions of heat-trapping gases were causing the Earth to warm was produced or endorsed by the government.

Burnett said that officials from the White House, the vice president's office, the Department of Energy and other agencies agreed at a Cabinet-level meeting in November that greenhouse gases endangered the public and regulation was needed.

But soon afterward, the administration decided to get public comment instead of proceeding with EPA regulation of vehicles under the Clean Air Act. On Dec. 19, the White House announced it was denying California's request.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Tuesday that Johnson had taken the views of administration officials into account but made his own decision.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 456

2008-07-30T14:27:00.000-07:00

(AP)

EDMONTON, Alberta (July 29) -- A chunk of ice spreading across seven square miles has broken off a Canadian ice shelf in the Arctic, scientists said Tuesday.

Derek Mueller, a research at Trent University, was careful not to blame global warming, but said it the event was consistent with the theory that the current Arctic climate isn't rebuilding ice sheets.

"We're in a different climate now," he said. "It's not conducive to regrowing them. It's a one-way process."

Mueller said the sheet broke away last week from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada's far north. He said a crack in the shelf was first spotted in 2002 and a survey this spring found a network of fissures.

The sheet is the biggest piece shed by one of Canada's six ice shelves since the Ayles shelf broke loose in 2005 from the coast of Ellesmere, about 500 miles from the North Pole.

Formed by accumulating snow and freezing meltwater, ice shelves are large platforms of thick, ancient sea ice that float on the ocean's surface. Ellesmere Island was once entirely ringed by a single enormous ice shelf that broke up in the early 1900s.

At 170 square miles and 130-feet thick, the Ward Hunt shelf is the largest of those remnants. Mueller said it has been steadily declining since the 1930s.

Gary Stern, co-leader of an international research program on sea ice, said it's the same story all around the Arctic.

Speaking from the Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen in Canada's north, Stern said he hadn't seen any ice in weeks.

Plans to set up an ice camp last February had to be abandoned when usually dependable ice didn't form for the second year in a row, he said.

"Nobody on the ship is surprised anymore," Stern said. "We've been trying to get the word out for the longest time now that things are happening fast and they're going to continue to happen fast."

By David Goldman

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Renewed fears about the battered housing market and rising unemployment sent stocks into a tailspin Thursday.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost 283 points, tumbling 2.4%. The Dow finished 30 points higher Wednesday as investors cheered falling oil prices despite a cautious report on the economy from the Federal Reserve.

The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index (SPX) index fell 2.3% from Wednesday's close. The Nasdaq composite index (COMP) sank 2% in Thursday trading.

The double whammy of slumping existing home sales and a jump in jobless claims renewed investor jitters that tough economic times are far from over.

That sent financial sector stocks plummeting, dragging the rest of the market down with them. With recent steep bank losses, dour economic indicators led investors to fear that the nation's lingering credit crisis would continue for the long-haul.

"Investors don't see any turn in the housing market," said Robert Philips, president and chief investment officer of Walnut Asset Management.

The subprime mortgage meltdown led to a crisis in lending and credit, the main sources of revenue for banks.

"That compounds all the issues that confront financials," Philips added.

Stocks opened mixed in the first few minutes of trading, as techs got a boost from a strong quarterly earnings report from Amazon.com, while an $8.7 billion loss from Ford Motor pressured blue chips. But stocks quickly turned much lower as the weak economic news was absorbed.

Investors will see if the economy can produce some better news Friday, as reports on durable goods orders, consumer sentiment and new home sales are due. Economists, however, expect all three indicators to weaken further Friday.

Economic woes: A report from the U.S. Labor Department showed new unemployment claims rose much more than expected last week. New applications filed for jobless benefits rose by a seasonally adjusted 34,000 to 406,000 - a level not seen since hurricanes devastated the Gulf Coast in September 2005.

"Investors are concerned over the weaker economic data that's coming through Thursday," said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist with PNC Wealth Management. "With more jobless claims, people can't pay their bills, which means more write-offs for companies."

Also driving down stocks was a report from the National Association of Realtors that showed homeowner sales fell 2.6% to a lower-than-expected 4.86 million annual rate in June. The economy has remained in a slump as home sales continue to decline, leading to a slowdown in consumer spending as American homeowners' purchasing power dries up.

Furthermore, the percentage of vacant homes available for sale in the second quarter of 2008 fell just slightly from the record high set in the first quarter, according to Census Bureau figures released Thursday.

That helped drag down shares of homebuilders, as the large inventory of homes must be sold off before contractors can profit from building new ones.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 455

2008-07-29T22:25:00.000-07:00

By Joseph Neff

Blackwater obtained dozens of small business contracts worth more than $110 million even though the private security company may have exceeded size limits for a small business, according to a federal audit released today.

The Inspector General of the Small Business Administration said Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., obtained 39 contracts set aside for small businesses from 2005 through 2007. Of these, 32 contracts worth $2.1 million were set aside for companies with annual revenues of $6.5 million or less.

Blackwater's revenues have exceeded $200 million each of those years, according to federal contracting data.

The Inspector General also found fault with the handling of aviation contracts worth $107 million that the Defense Department awarded Blackwater. The contract was set aside either for a company with less than $25.5 million in annual revenue, or a company with less than 1,500 employees.

The report said the company may have improperly classified Blackwater guards in Iraq and Afghanistan as independent contractors rather than employees.

The report also criticized the Small Business Administration for not examining Blackwater's contention that its security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are not employees, but independent contractors.

The audit was requested in March by Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said the company had not yet seen the audit and could not comment.

By Michael Astor (AP)

Hundreds of baby penguins swept from the icy shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead on Rio de Janeiro's tropical beaches, rescuers and penguin experts said Friday.

More than 400 penguins, most of them young, have been found dead on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro state over the past two months, according to Eduardo Pimenta, superintendent for the state coastal protection and environment agency in the resort city of Cabo Frio.

While it is common here to find some penguins — both dead and alive — swept by strong ocean currents from the Strait of Magellan, Pimenta said there have been more this year than at any time in recent memory.

Rescuers and those who treat penguins are divided over the possible causes.

Thiago Muniz, a veterinarian at the Niteroi Zoo, said he believed overfishing has forced the penguins to swim further from shore to find fish to eat "and that leaves them more vulnerable to getting caught up in the=2 0strong ocean currents."

Niteroi, the state's biggest zoo, already has already received about 100 penguins for treatment this year and many are drenched in petroleum, Muniz said. The Campos oil field that supplies most of Brazil's oil lies offshore.

Muniz said he hadn't seen penguins suffering from the effects of other pollutants, but he pointed out that already dead penguins aren't brought in for treatment.

Pimenta suggested pollution is to blame.

"Aside from the oil in the Campos basin, the pollution is lowering the animals' immunity, leaving them vulnerable to funguses and bacteria that attack their lungs," Pimenta said, quoting biologists who work with him.

But biologist Erli Costa of Rio de Janeiro's Federal University suggested weather patterns could be involved.

"I don't think the levels of pollution are high enough to affect the birds so quickly. I think instead we're seeing more young and sick penguins because of global warming, which affects ocean currents and creates more cyclones, making the seas rougher," Costa said.

Costa said the vast majority of penguins turning up are baby birds that have just left the nest and are unable to out-swim the strong ocean currents they encounter while searching for food.

By Susan Schmidt and Glenn R. Simpson

Influential former Pentagon official Richard Perle has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan, according to people with knowledge of the matter and documents outlining possible deals.

Mr. Perle, one of a group of security experts who began pushing the case for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein about a decade ago, has been discussing a possible deal with officials of northern Iraq's Kurdistan regional government, including its Washington envoy, according to these people and the documents.

It would involve a tract called K18, near the Kurdish city of Erbil, according to documents describing the plan. A consortium founded by Turkish company AK Group International is seeking rights to drill there, the documents say.

Potential backers include two Turkish companies as well as Kazakhstan, according to individuals involved.

AK's chief executive is Aydan Kodaloglu, who, like Mr. Perle, has been involved with the American Turkish Council, an advocacy group in Washington. She didn't respond to requests for comment. Phyllis Kaminsky, who identified herself as the U.S. contact for Ms. Kodaloglu, said she herself was aware of the drilling plan but referred questions about it to Mr. Perle.

"Richard would know the most," Ms. Kaminsky said. "He is involved, I know that."

People with knowledge of the discussions said they involve Alexander Mirtchev, a Washington consultant and adviser to the government of Kazakhstan, and an associate of his, Kaloyan Dimitrov. Mr. Perle has attended events promoting the interests of Kazakhstan, an oil-rich nation whose ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is involved in a long-running U.S. investigation of 1990s-era oil-company bribery. Mr. Perle has publicly lauded President Nazarbayev as "visionary and wise," according to a publication distributed by the Kazakh embassy in Washington.

Mr. Perle said by email that Mr. Mirtchev is a friend of his who once spent a night at his vacation home in France. Mr. Perle said Mr. Mirtchev is "justly...proud of his influence on the liberalization of the Kazakh economy."

Asked about pursuing oil concessions, Mr. Perle said, "I am not involved in any consortium involving Mr. Mirtchev or Mr. Dimitrov, nor am I 'framing plans for a consortium'" involving either one. He declined to elaborate.

Brian Shaughnessy, a lawyer for Mr. Mirtchev, said his client "is not working on oil related projects in Kazakhstan or Kurdistan with Richard Perle, nor have they done any business deals of this nature." A lawyer for Mr. Dimitrov didn't respond to questions about oil discussions.

A spokesman for Qubat Talabani, the Kurdistan regional government's representative in the U.S., confirmed that the envoy had been approached by Mr. Perle. In a statement, Mr. Talabani said "one of my duties...is to seek out potential investors for our new, growing economy in Iraqi Kurdistan as well as respond...to all legitimate requests for investment information."

Kurdish authorities have been granting oil-drilling contracts even though Iraq's central government and the Bush administration want them to hold off until a national oil law is passed.

The K18 concession, which is estimated to hold 150 million or more barrels of oil, would potentially be operated by Houston-based Endeavour International, according to documents and people familiar with the discussions. A spokeswoman for Endeavour said, "At this point we wouldn't have anything definitely going on, and we wouldn't comment on anything that hadn't been publicly announced."

Mr. Perle also has explored obtaining an oil concession in Kazakhstan in tandem with a northern Iraq deal, according to people familiar with those discussions.

Mr. Perle, who was an assistant Defense secretary in the Reagan administration, is known for his strong support of Israel and hawkish views on arms control. In the early days of the Bush administration, he was one of the most influential proponents of U.S. military action to oust Iraq's President Hussein.

Mr. Perle was chairman of the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon, but resigned in March 2003 amid criticism of his role as an adviser to a telecom company that was seeking U.S. government approval for a sale to Asian investors. He is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute think tank.

Every year, Brazil airlifts dozens of penguins back to Antarctica or Patagonia.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 454

2008-07-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

By Richard Wolf (USA Today)

WASHINGTON — The White House has increased its estimate for next year's deficit to nearly $490 billion, a record figure that will saddle the next president with deepening budget problems in his first year in office, a report due out Monday shows.

The projected deficit for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 is being driven higher by the continuing economic slowdown and larger-than-anticipated costs of the two-year, $168 billion fiscal stimulus package passed by Congress, said two senior administration officials with direct knowledge of the report. In February, President Bush predicted the 2009 deficit would be $407 billion.

The budget update shows this year's deficit headed under $400 billion, at least $10 billion less than projected, according to the two officials. That's partly because tax revenue held up reasonably well despite the weaker economy.

The rising deficit for 2009 marks a sharp turnaround for Bush's fiscal legacy. He inherited a $128 billion surplus when he came into office in 2001. It soon turned to red ink because of a recession, the Sept. 11 attacks and the war on terrorism.

Curbing the deficit will fall to Bush's successor and the next Congress following a time when taxes were cut and major spending initiatives were undertaken, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, transportation projects, farm subsidies, Medicare prescription drug coverage and a recently passed expansion of veterans' education benefits.

The actual 2009 deficit could climb still higher because the new projection does not reflect full funding for the wars. In addition, a worsening economy could add to the red ink by reducing tax revenue and increasing safety-net payments, such as jobless benefits and food stamps.

Both presidential candidates have proposed tax cuts that could further swell the deficit. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center estimates that Republican John McCain's cuts would cost $4.2 trillion and Democrat Barack Obama's $2.8 trillion over 10 years. Neither candidate has specified major spending cuts he would make to reduce the deficit.

"The picture's looking pretty dark out there," said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. He credited Bush's tax cuts with creating six years of economic growth but "on the spending side, their record is not good."

White House budget director Jim Nussle said that despite the surplus Bush started with, he faced a deficit in defense, intelligence and homeland security that had to be bolstered after 9/11.

"This is not just a mathematical exercise," he said in an interview with USA TODAY. Nussle said an economic recovery and a renewed effort by Congress to control spending could rein in the deficit.

Bush proposed in recent years to slow the growth of spending in programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Those efforts were ignored by Congress — most recently last week, when the House voted to sidestep a provision of the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law that would have required lower Medicare spending.

The biggest budget deficit recorded to date was $413 billion in 2004. In today's dollars, that would be about $478 billion. As a share of the economy, the 2009 deficit would be 3% to 4%, below the post-World War II record of 6% set in 1983.

By Lara Jakes Jordan (AP)

Top aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke the law by letting politics influence the hiring of career prosecutors and immigration judges at the Justice Department, says an internal report released Monday.

Gonzales was largely unaware of the hiring decisions by two of his most trusted aides, according to the report by Justice's Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility.

But it singles out his former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, for violating federal law and Justice Department policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't Republican or conservative loyalists.

"Goodling improperly subjected candidates for certain career positions to the same politically based evaluation she used on candidates for political positions," the report concluded.

In one instance, Justice investigators found, Goodling objected to hiring an assistant prosecutor in Washington because "judging from his resume, he appeared to be a liberal Democr at."

In another, she rejected an experienced terror prosecutor to work on counterterror issues at a Justice Department headquarters office "because of his wife's political affiliations," the report found. It also found she rejected at least one job applicant who was rumored to be a lesbian.

Goodling's attorney, John Dowd, declined comment Monday. Attempts to reach her were not immediately successful.

Additionally, a majority of immigration judge candidates considered by former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson were recommended by the White House's political affairs office — including one name forwarded by then-top adviser Karl Rove. Sampson told investigators that he did not consider those jobs to be protected from political considerations.

His lawyer, Brad Berenson, described those hiring decisions as an honest mistake and said that Sampson "immediately agreed with the recommendation to put a stop to this process" when he first learned he may have been wrong.

The federal government makes a distinction between so-called "career" appointees and "political" appointees, and the long-accepted custom has been that career workers are not hired on the basis of political affiliation or allegiance.

The 140-page report does not indicate whether Goodling or Sampson could face any charges. None of those involved in the discriminatory hiring still work at Justice, meaning they will avoid any departmental penalties.

However, Justice investigators said that bar associations that license lawyers have asked about the report's findings on Goodling — indicating she could be sanctioned there, potentially including losing her ability to practice law.

Congressional investigators said they also were considering asking the Justice Department to pursue perjury charges against Goodling, Sampson and possibly Gonzales as a result of their spoken or written congressional testimony during House and Senate investigations last year. Lying to Congress is a crime.

Democrats said the report affirms their charges of White House meddling in the hiring and firing of Justice Department employees.

"The cost to our nation of these apparent crimes was severe, as qualified individuals were rejected for key positions in the fight against terrorism and other critical department jobs for no reason other than political whim," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich.

"The report also indicates that Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson, and Alberto Gonzales may have lied to the Congress about these matters," Conyers added. "I have directed my staff to closely review this matter and to consider whether a criminal referral for perjury is needed."

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said "it is crystal clear that the law was broken" by the political hiring process.

"But since it is unlikely that Monica Goodling acted on her own," Schumer added, "the question is, how many others were involved."

In their report, Justice investigators sought to find whether Republican politics were driving hiring polices at the nation's premier law enforcement agency whose appointees are expected to be selected on a nonpartisan basis. The investi gation is one of several that examine accusations that Bush administration politics drove prosecution, policy and employment decisions within the Justice Department.

Those accusations were initially spurred by the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in late 2006 and culminated with Gonzales' resignation under fire as attorney general last September.

Gonzales, who has kept a low profile since leaving the department said in a statement that "political considerations should play no part in the hiring of career officials at the Department of Justice. ...I agree with the report's recommendations." His attorney, George Terwilliger, defended Gonzales by saying "it's simply not possible for any Cabinet officer to be completely aware of and micromanage the activities of staffers, particularly where they don't inform him of what's going on."

The man who replaced Gonzales, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, said he is "of course disturbed" by the findings.

"I have said many times, both to members of the public and to department employees, it is neither permissible nor acceptable to consider political affiliations in the hiring of career departm ent employees," Mukasey said in a statement shortly after the report was released Monday morning. "And I have acted, and will continue to act, to ensure that my words are translated into reality so that the conduct described in this report does not occur again at the department."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said the report indicates that the effort to politicize federal law enforcement was not just the actions of a few "bad apples," but administration policy.

He called it "a clear indication of the untoward political influence of the Bush administration on traditionally nonpolitical appointments."

(ACLU)

Memo Dated January 28, 2003, from CIA to OLC
Contains "communications from the CIA to OLC on a matter in which the CIA requested legal advice from OLC" and shows that CIA interrogators were permitted to use both "Standard Techniques" and "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" and that in each CIA interrogation session in which an Enhanced Technique was employed, a "contemporaneous record" was created setting forth, among other things, "the nature and duration of each such technique employed" and "the identities of those present."

Memo Dated August 4, 2004, from CIA to OLC
Contains "communications from the CIA to OLC on a matter in which the CIA requested legal advice from OLC" and shows that CIA interrogators were told that the Justice Department had concluded that certain interrogation techniques, "including the waterboard," did not violate the torture statute. The document also indicates that CIA interrogators were told to take into account the possibility that their actions would ultimately be subject to judicial review.

Memo Dated August 1, 2002, from OLC to CIA
Memo "advising the CIA regarding interrogation methods it may use against al Qaeda members," and includes information "regarding potential interrogation methods and the context in which their use was contemplated." The document also discusses "alternative interrogation methods," a phrase that was echoed by President Bush in a September 2006 speech promoting the Military Commissions Act. Though heavily redacted, the document shows that the Justice Department authorized alternative interrogation methods after concluding that "those carrying out these procedures would not have the specific intent to inflict severe physical pain or suffering" or "to cause severe mental pain or suffering." The memo explains: "Prolonged mental harm is substantial mental harm of sustained duration, e.g. harm lasting months or even years after the acts were inflicted upon the prisoner." The memo also includes this sentence: "Your review of the literature uncovered no empirical data on the use of these procedures, with the exception [redacted]." The memo is signed by Jay Bybee, who also signed the "organ failure" memo issued to the CIA the same day, and who is now a federal appellate judge.