...and sofar as anyone knows,the system works because we have ...what proof?
Russia questions missile defense plans

By MARIA DANILOVA, Associated Press Writer Tue Mar 6, 5:04 PM ET

MOSCOW - The United States has not adequately answered Russia's questions on its plans to build components for its missile defense system in former Soviet satellite states in Europe, Russia's top diplomat said Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's remarks were the latest expression of irritation from Moscow over Washington's plans to base parts of the system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Washington says the defense system is intended to defend against missile attacks from countries such as
Iran, not Russia. But Moscow has warned the system would disrupt the balance of power in the region and that it would take countermeasures.

"We are discussing this with our American colleagues and we are asking them to answer our questions, the concerns that we have, which are absolutely fair and justified," Lavrov told reporters.

"Meetings devoted to this are being held, briefings are being organized for us, quite useful ones, but we haven't received intelligible answers to the majority of our questions," he said.

Lavrov, speaking at the end of talks with his South Korean counterpart, stressed "the need to resolve such questions in a transparent, democratic way and not unilaterally."

He also claimed the United States was announcing plans to deploy the defense installations without first consulting the countries in question, citing Ukraine as an example.

Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering, the general in charge of developing U.S. missile defenses, said last month the United States was looking for ways to involve Ukraine in its plans.

Ukraine has refrained from giving an official response to Washington's plans. Its leaders, however, have been sending mixed signals. The prime minister has warned it could hurt relations with neighboring countries, while the president has indicated tacit support for the plan.

Obering said last week that Washington might also seek to base an anti-missile radar site somewhere in the Caucasus — the strategic region consisting of ex-Soviet republics Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia that lies between the Caspian and Black seas.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin warned the three Caucasus states against considering any such offers, according to Russian news agencies.

All three countries have denied they were considering any such offers.

It's whats for dinner!
Cloned beef: It's what's for dinner
The FDA declared it safe last year. And in a taste test, diners couldn't tell the difference.
By Karen Kaplan and Betty Hallock, Times Staff Writers
March 4, 2007

Cloned beef

The cloning genie is out of the bottle. It's going to happen in food distribution systems where people who eat the food could care less whether it's labeled this or that. It's just something that's going to keep them alive.

The cloned steak was served medium rare.

Inside the unusually hushed atrium of Campanile, the guests lifted slices of beef onto their plates. Executive chef Mark Peel had prepared the porterhouse with fleur de sel and cracked black pepper before pan-searing it with a little canola oil — a simple preparation to highlight the meat's natural flavor.

It was the centerpiece of a dinner party convened to taste the future of food.

After years of research, meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring are moving toward supermarkets, restaurants and backyard barbecues. The Food and Drug Administration recently declared the fare safe to eat, although it took scientists 678 pages to make their case. They said the meat was so much like regular beef that special labeling would be unnecessary.

Thousands of consumers, unswayed by the promise of genetically superior steaks, have written the agency in opposition. Still, cloned products could become part of the food supply by year's end.

The general public has been shielded from cloned meat by a voluntary moratorium issued by the FDA in 2001. But six intrepid diners agreed to participate in cloned beef's debut on the culinary scene in a private dinner convened by The Times.

Several prospective diners declined the invitation.

Eric Schlosser, author of "Fast Food Nation" and self-described omnivore, said: "I'd rather eat my running shoes than eat meat from a cloned animal."

Spago chef Lee Hefter, who recently opened the Beverly Hills steakhouse Cut, agreed to host this dinner before abruptly changing his mind.

"I don't want people to think that I would ever use it," he said. "I don't want to condone cloned beef. I don't want to eat it. I don't want it in my kitchen."

But Evan Kleiman, host of the weekly radio show "Good Food" on KCRW, accepted the invitation in spite of her initial revulsion at the idea of eating cloned meat.

USC sociologist Barry Glassner, author of "The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong," was so enthusiastic he asked whether his wife could join the party.

In the kitchen, Peel laid out the porterhouse steaks on his stainless steel worktable, along with packages of ground chuck and sirloin, which he molded into thick patties and sprinkled with salt and pepper.

The cloned meat, provided by the Collins Cattle ranch in Frederick, Okla., was accompanied by corresponding cuts of conventional beef. All were prepared in identical fashion. Peel's idea was to conduct a double-blind taste test — a 21st century version of the Pepsi Challenge.

"I'm actively trying not to guess," he said as he prepared his cast-iron skillets and copper sauteuses. "I don't want to say, 'This one feels more supple, this one feels less supple.' My hypothesis is that they will be very close, if not identical."

As the dinner guests sampled caramelized onion tarts with feta cheese, Peel considered whether cloned beef was the most unusual thing he'd prepared since his landmark restaurant opened in Los Angeles 18 years ago.

"Yes," he said. "I think so."

First course: the science

THE guests took their seats at the well-appointed table and began munching on grissini and sipping glasses of Bandol red wine.

UC Davis animal geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam pulled out a photo of a stout, jet-black Chianina bull from Canute, Okla., named Full Flush — one of the most sought-after sires of recent times.


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Studying the Hole in the World...!
Missing: a huge chunk of the earth's crust

By Stefano Ambrogi Mon Mar 5, 11:22 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - A team of British scientists has set sail on a voyage to examine why a huge chunk of the earth's crust is missing, deep under the Atlantic Ocean -- a phenomenon that challenges conventional ideas about how the earth works.

The 20-strong team aims to survey an area some 3,000 to 4,000 metres deep where the mantle -- the deep interior of the earth normally covered by a crust kilometres thick -- is exposed on the sea floor.

Experts describe the hole along the mid-Atlantic ridge as an "open wound" on the ocean floor that has puzzled scientists for the five or so years that its existence has been known because it defies existing tectonic plate theories of evolution.

"We know so little about it," said Bramley Murton, a senior research scientist at Southampton's National Oceanography Center.

"It's a real challenge to our established understanding of what the earth's surface looks like underneath the waves," he told Reuters by telephone from the brand new, hi-tech British research ship RRS James Cook.

Mid ocean ridges are places where new oceanic crust is born, with red-hot lava spewing out along the seafloor.

What scientists are keen to know is whether the crust was ripped away by huge geological faults, or whether it never even developed in the first place.

The primary motivation for the project was to understand how the earth continues to evolve.

"The area that we are looking at is part of a mountain range that spans thousands of square kilometres, but we are beginning to realize that there are probably millions of square kilometres where the ocean floor is missing," Murton said.

The six week mission, led by geophysicist Roger Searle of Durham University and Chris MacLeod of Cardiff University's School of Earth, Ocean and Planetary Sciences, will recover sample cores of rock by drilling into the mantle using a rig lowered on to the sea floor.

Asked if the discovery posed a threat to the environment, Murton replied: "It's not problematic for the earth because it is a natural earth process -- but in terms of knowing how the earth works and how the world is put together it is important."

Murton also said the expedition would shed light on the composition of sea water amongst other initiatives.

Crust formation is a fundamental mechanism of the earth which affects the chemistry of the world's oceans.

Progress by the research team can be monitored via a live web link to the ship at: http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/gg/classroom@sea/JC007/.

Maybe the kids could have been motivated to fix the place.
Crews tear down Copenhagen youth center

By JAN M. OLSEN, Associated Press Writer 34 minutes ago

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Demolition crews started tearing down a graffiti-sprayed brick building Monday, prompting tears and cries of protest from youths whose eviction from the makeshift cultural center led to three nights of rioting.

Workers wore face masks under their helmets to conceal their identities as an excavator tore into the so-called Youth House.

As dust from the demolition filled the air, angry youth yelled obscenities at police who had cordoned off the area around the building. Others hugged and cried.

Riot police kept a growing crowd away from the demolition site. Six people were arrested in the area for refusing to obey police orders, or trespassing, but no violence was reported.

"They are breaking my heart. I cannot stand it," said Birgitte, a black-clad 21-year-old woman with dreadlocks. She refused to give her last name, saying using one name was the norm among the people frequenting the building.

A police anti-terror squad evicted squatters from the building on Thursday, triggering three nights of clashes with youths that turned parts of the city into a battle zone.

More than 650 people, including scores of foreign activists, were arrested and at least 25 were injured as protesters hurled cobblestones at riot police and set fire to cars and trash bins in Copenhagen's worst riots in 14 years.

The Youth House served for years as a popular cultural center for anarchists, punk rockers and left-wing groups. The squatters considered it free public housing, but courts ordered them out after the city sold the building to a Christian congregation.

Ruth Evensen, leader of the small congregation that bought the Youth House in 2001, said the four-story structure had to be torn down because it was "a total wreck" and posed a fire hazard.

"It would cost us a fortune to have it fixed," she said, declining to reveal the congregation's plans for the site.

Local left-wing lawmakers and a construction workers union tried to halt the demolition, citing health hazards caused by dust containing carcinogenic asbestos, but a demolition company representative denied there was any danger.

Environmental officials visited the site and gave the green light for the work to continue.

Those arrested in the riots included more than 140 protesters from Sweden, Norway, Germany and the United States, police said.

They said 189 people were remanded in custody, while 26 were released. Others were still awaiting court hearings.

A demonstration was planned Monday afternoon outside Copenhagen jail, where many of the alleged rioters were being held. Organizers encouraged participants to make noise by banging drums, playing loud music and blowing whistles in a show of support for those in jail.

The riots were Denmark's worst since May 1993, when police fired into a crowd of rioters protesting the outcome of a
European Union referendum. Ten protesters were wounded.

Question: Why does Coulter have her name written on the back of her belt?
Controversial columnist draws fire for gay slur

Sun Mar 4, 3:28 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Outspoken U.S. conservative columnist Ann Coulter is drawing fire from Republicans and Democrats alike after publicly using a derogatory gay slur in reference to Democratic presidential hopeful
John Edwards.

"Ann Coulter not only once again went out of her way to use a nasty epithet, she pushed her offensiveness up a notch," Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, said on Sunday.

Coulter made the comments on Friday during a speech at the influential American Conservative Union's Political Action Conference, calling Edwards a "faggot."

"We conservatives have enough trouble overcoming the false things that are said about us without paying for a platform upon which we shoot ourselves annually in the foot," Ridenour, whose group helped sponsor the conference, said in a statement on the center's Web site.

Coulter said the comment was a joke and on her Web site she carried the speech with the comment, "I'm so ashamed, I can't stop laughing." She then said Edwards' campaign chairman's main job was "fronting for Arab terrorists."

Edwards, a 2008 presidential contender and the party's 2004 vice presidential candidate, said Coulter's comments were "un-American and indefensible."

"The kind of hateful language she used has no place in political debate or our society at large," he wrote in comments posted to his Web site on Saturday.

"I believe it is our moral responsibility to speak out against that kind of bigotry and prejudice every time we encounter it," Edwards added.

The candidate also posted a video of Coulter's comments, asking supporters to raise $100,000 in so-called "Coulter Cash" for his campaign to "fight back against the politics of bigotry."

Coulter's Friday speech raised objections from Republican presidential hopefuls Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) of Arizona, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as well as Democrats.

In a statement on Sunday, Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said, "It was an offensive remark. Political discourse ought to be more substantive and thoughtful." McCain, the only contender who did not attend the event, and Giuliani called Coulter's words inappropriate, according to the New York Times.

"Ann Coulter's words of hate have no place in the public sphere much less our political discourse," Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) of Massachusetts said in a statement released on Saturday.

Several conservatives were also quick to denounce Coulter's comments in a variety of online columns.

Coulter is no stranger to controversy.

At the same conference last year, she used the word "raghead" -- a slur against Muslims -- in referring to U.S. homeland security policies. In a column published in the National Review after the September 11 attacks she urged an invasion of Muslim countries and forced conversion to Christianity.

Ossenfuse, pilot, Nicaragua
We are having difficulty locating any information about this subject. Why?

The Dems JUST DISCOVERED the WAR is worse than a Dead End! Gosh! Who Knew?
Congress' Iraq struggle evokes Vietnam years

By Susan Cornwell Sat Mar 3, 8:39 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A large portrait of Mike Mansfield, dogged Democratic foe of the Vietnam war, hangs near the Senate chamber where a new generation of Democrats is trying to stop another unpopular conflict -- in
Iraq.

But Democrats who look back at Mansfield's experience may not be encouraged. As Senate majority leader from 1961-1977, he tried many times publicly and privately to end U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Congress spent years debating a slew of resolutions and funding limits on the Indochina war but failed to stop it or cut off funding for all combat operations until after the United States pulled its ground troops out of Vietnam in 1973.

"I think Mansfield's experience shows that political persuasion can only go so far if a president refuses to be persuaded," said Don Oberdorfer, who wrote a biography of the Montana lawmaker who died in 2001.

"Mansfield considered the war in Vietnam to be the greatest tragedy of his times and his inability to head it off, his greatest failure," said Oberdorfer, a journalist and professor at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

Decades later, Congress again is skirmishing over how to bring Americans home from a war the public largely opposes but that the president insists is a noble mission and many lawmakers say cannot be abandoned.

The four-year-old war in Iraq has revived constitutional arguments about the limits of congressional and presidential powers. Congress declares war and controls funding, but
President George W. Bush is commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces.

The Democratic-controlled House voted last month to denounce Bush's Iraq troop buildup. The Senate, despite having a 51-49 Democratic majority, bogged down on procedural rules and failed to follow suit.

Some House Democrats now want to attach conditions to the nearly $100 billion spending bill for military operations in Iraq, to be debated later this month. But others do not want to do anything that could be construed as undermining support for U.S. troops abroad.

'KICKS OF THE CAT'

"There were 31 kicks of the cat with Vietnam. We're on kick number three here," Democrat David Obey (news, bio, voting record) of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee that oversees spending, said on Wednesday as he and his colleagues sought consensus on their next move on Iraq.

During the Indochina conflict, Congress considered 21 proposals to restrict funding for military operations between 1970 and 1973, but only five were enacted, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

A 1971 provision, for example, prohibited using any appropriated funds to reintroduce U.S. ground troops into Cambodia.

There were also proposals that urged the president to withdraw forces, terminate military operations, seek congressional authorization for military operations and set a date for U.S. troop withdrawals.

President
Richard Nixon was drawing down U.S. troops from 1969 onwards but set no goal for total withdrawal. Only after U.S. ground forces withdrew following 1973 peace accords did Congress cut off combat funds, to keep Nixon from reintroducing U.S. troops and to stop the bombing of Cambodia, the CRS said.

In 1975, after Congress refused to send more aid to South Vietnam, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese.

"In a sense, the Vietnam experience just reiterates the obvious. Foreign and national security policy are nearly impossible to make from Capitol Hill," said Bradford Berenson, who was a White House associate counsel in Bush's first term.

Some see it differently.

"Vietnam did come to an end because of an act of Congress," when it refused to send more aid to South Vietnam, said Walter Dellinger, who was acting solicitor general, the government's chief advocate before the Supreme Court, under then-President
Bill Clinton. "It could have ended a lot earlier."

One senator said current congressional pressure may have produced some results by helping goad the Bush administration into agreeing to attend a regional conference on Iraq to which
Iran and
Syria are also invited.

Bush has resisted dialogue with the two countries, which the administration accuses of fueling violence in Iraq.

"There's something going on here," said Sen. Jack Reed (news, bio, voting record), a Rhode Island Democrat who opposes the Iraq war. "Maybe we're not the catalyst but we're certainly part of it."

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MILWAUKEE OFFICIALS DROP PLANS FOR VA CENTER --

Say veterans' groups opposed their proposals.

Background here... http://www.vawatchdog.org/old%
20newsflashes%20JUL%2006/newsflash07-29-2006-4.htm

Story here... http://www.jsonline.com/
story/index.aspx?id=571325

Story below:

---------------

City officials drop plans for Zablocki VA center

Veterans groups opposed proposals

By TOM DAYKIN
tdaykin@journalsentinel.com



Mayor Tom Barrett's administration is dropping plans to create a high-tech business park and veterans housing at Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center, with city officials saying Tuesday that opposition from veterans groups killed the proposal.

Barrett's proposal called for preservation of five historic buildings on the VA grounds that are either vacant or largely unused. The restored buildings would include Old Main, the original Soldiers Home that opened in 1869 atop a hill that now overlooks Miller Park. The Soldiers Home grounds, which include several 19th-century buildings, are adjacent to the modern medical center complex.

Under the city's plan, Old Main would be converted into apartments for elderly veterans. CommonBond Communities, a St. Paul, Minn., housing developer, would have created 57 assisted-living units, along with 17 apartments set aside for veterans with spinal cord injuries.

CommonBond planned to renovate another building into 62 apartments for veterans. A 14,000-square-foot building would have been used as offices for veterans groups. The chapel would have been restored for its original use, and the former Ward Memorial Theater would have housed America's Freedom Center Museum.

Barrett also wanted to develop an office park on 27.5 acres of vacant land east of the medical center, near Miller Park Way and W. National Ave. The office park would have targeted biomedical firms and other high-tech companies.

Some veterans, however, said the office park would interfere with efforts to expand Wood National Cemetery, a burial ground for veterans that borders the medical center and the Soldiers Home grounds.

Wood National Cemetery should be expanded on to that vacant land to provide more burial plots, said Joe Campbell, vice president of the Allied Veterans Council of Milwaukee County. Campbell said the city's plan for a columbarium, a building for interment of ashes of cremated vets, amounted to a "token" gesture.

Campbell said commercial development of the vacant land would intrude on the tranquility of the cemetery and Soldiers Home grounds.

Also, both Campbell and Terry Troutman, state adjutant of the Wisconsin American Legion, said the city's plan would have allowed non-veterans to live in the CommonBond apartments if there were open units and no veterans to fill them.

"This should be for veterans only," Campbell said.

The apartments, working with veterans groups, would have maintained an active waiting list of veterans, said Andrea Rowe Richards, Department of City Development spokeswoman.

Barrett said the city's proposal respected the cemetery, complemented the Zablocki center's mission and sought to create job opportunities at the business park.

But the opposition was too strong, Barrett said. Even when city officials changed plans to accommodate the concerns of veterans, including the housing plan, those efforts were "met with derision," he said.

The city plan, including the development of vacant land, became "a very, very emotional issue" for some veterans, said Rocky Marcoux, Barrett's development secretary.
Funds for improvements

The city wanted to lease the land and buildings from the Department of Veterans Affairs and spend $21 million on the improvements. That money would have been repaid through property taxes generated by some of the new developments. Additional funding would have come from CommonBond and private fund-raising efforts.

City and federal officials also said the development would have created new revenue for the Department of Veterans Affairs, allowing it to plow more money back into maintaining and preserving the 19th-century buildings.

Campbell said local, state and federal officials should work with veterans groups to create an alternate plan to preserve the buildings. He said possible uses could include a recreation center for Zablocki patients, housing for families of veterans receiving long-term care at the medical center, and a facility to help homeless veterans.

---------------

Larry Scott --

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PANEL SAYS MILITARY MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM FAILS --

American Psychological Association finds Iraq War

veterans and families are not getting needed help.




American Psychological Association



APA Press Release here...
http://www.apa.org/releases/military_health.html

Full APA report here...
http://www.apa.org/releases/MilitaryDeploymentTaskForceReport.pdf

Story here... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/
2007/02/25/iraq/main2511948.shtml

Story below:

---------------

Panel: Military Mental Health System Fails

American Psychological Assoc. Finds Iraq War Veterans, Families Not Getting Needed Help



(AP) Many Iraq war soldiers, veterans and their families are not getting needed psychological help because a stressed military's mental health system is overwhelmed and understaffed, a task force of psychologists found.

The panel's 67-page report calls for the immediate strengthening of the military mental health system. It cites a 40 percent vacancy rate in active duty psychologists in the Army and Navy, resources diverted from family counselors and a weak transition for veterans leaving the military.

The findings were released Sunday by the American Psychological Association.

More than three out of 10 soldiers met the criteria for a "mental disorder," but far less than half of those in need sought help, the report found. Sometimes that is because of the stigma of having mental health problems, other times the help simply was not available, according to the task force. And there are special difficulties in getting help to National Guard and Reserve troops, who have been used heavily in Iraq, the report said.

The special task force found no evidence of a "well-coordinated or well-disseminated approach to providing behavioral health care to service members and their families."

The psychology task force, chaired by an active military psychologist and comprised of psychologists working for the military or Veterans Administration, said "relatively few high-quality" mental health programs exist in the military now.

"There are tremendous needs; the system is stressed by these needs," said pediatric psychologist Jeanne Hoffman, a task force member and a civilian pediatric psychologist at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu.

The Defense Department's mental health experts had not read the report. Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said the military is proud of its mental health services record, including a new program this year that checks up on service members after they return home to their families.

"For the past four years, DOD has been aggressively reaching out to support our military personnel before and after deployments. This is unprecedented," Smith said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "We have assessed the health, including the mental health of more than 1 million service members before and after deployments. We have worked with their families and others to address mental health concerns associated with deployments and with war."

One of the major problems is that four out of 10 "active duty licensed clinical psychologist" slots in the Army and Navy are not filled, a problem worsened by the dire need to send mental health experts into war zones, the report said.

That high vacancy rate has several side effects. One is that the psychologists left are overwhelmed, the report said. It found that one-third of Army mental health personnel reported "high burn out" and 27 percent reported "low motivation for their work."

Because of the shortage, there are even fewer stateside therapists to help families of those deployed and to help returning soldiers readjust, the report found.

Hoffman, the pediatric psychologist, said she's seen children regress on toilet training, have severe headaches, stomach pains, and suffer in school because of the stress of having a parent deployed.

And for soldiers and veterans returning home, only 10 to 20 percent of the military's mental health experts are trained to help those with post-traumatic stress disorder, the report found.

"I know guys that are waiting for appointments," said Russell Terry, chief executive officer of the Iraq War Veterans Organization. "I know guys who are dealing with doctors who have no concept of PTSD."

Terry was on the phone with an Iraq war veteran last year when the vet killed himself.

Report co-chair Michelle Sherman, a psychologist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Oklahoma City, said the military and VA are "working very hard to meet the needs" of those returning from Iraq.

At VA headquarters, Antonette Zeiss, deputy chief consultant in the agency's office of mental health services, said the report "misses the mark by quite a way." She said her agency didn't have "an opportunity to present data (to the panel) about what the VA is really doing."

Sherman said the panel did seek data from the VA, but when asked if the agency provided information to the psychologists' panel, she said: "I'm not supposed to answer that question."

Zeiss said the VA has been increasing spending on mental health services yearly, opening new centers and hiring more psychological professionals.

"We have the strongest mental health system in the country and we are making it stronger," she said.

But veterans groups disagree.

"The system as it exists today ignores the readjustment needs specific to Iraq and Afghanistan service members," Veterans for America President Bobby Muller said in a statement. "We have to stop throwing money at a problem that requires a complete overhaul. The system is broken."

---------------

Larry Scott --

Don't forget to read all of today's VA News Flashes (click here)

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Scape-Goating is a clear indication of malfeasance! Make no mistake!
Army secretary quits in veterans scandal

By Steve Holland and Kristin Roberts 32 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Army Secretary Francis Harvey has resigned after reports that troops wounded in
Iraq and
Afghanistan were being poorly treated at the Army's top hospital, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday.

The resignation of Harvey, the top civilian at the
Pentagon overseeing the army, was announced a day after the head of the Walter Reed Medical Center hospital was fired. Gates said problems at the Washington hospital were due to leadership.

"I am disappointed that some in the Army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation pertaining to outpatient care at Walter Reed," Gates said.

"Some have shown too much defensiveness and have not shown enough focus on digging into and addressing the problems."

Gates said a new permanent chief of the medical center would be announced later on Friday.

The Bush administration has put Army surgeon-general Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, a former commander of Walter Reed, in temporary charge but that decision was criticized by some who noted Kiley had been accused of ignoring earlier complaints about outpatient care.

Problems at an adjunct building of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington were brought to light by a Washington Post investigation published last month. It found that recuperating soldiers were living in a dilapidated building infested with mice, mold and cockroaches.

The Washington Post reports were particularly embarrassing because
President George W. Bush and defense officials have repeatedly visited the wounded in the hospital to show their concern for those who served in battle.

Bush, scrambling to respond to the outcry over shoddy health care and the complex bureaucracy facing U.S. soldiers, said he would name a bipartisan panel to review medical care for military veterans.

"This is unacceptable to me, it is unacceptable to our country and it's not going to continue," Bush said in his weekly radio address, taped on Friday and released ahead of its usual Saturday morning delivery.

Bush, who learned of the problems by reading the newspaper, said he was deeply troubled by the reports. He said while most of the people working at the hospital are dedicated professionals, "some of our troops at Walter Reed have experienced bureaucratic delays and living conditions that are less than they deserve."

Members of the presidential commission are to be announced in coming days and will be given a deadline to report back. They will conduct a comprehensive review of the care that the U.S. government is providing the wounded.

The White House said the bipartisan panel's review would be separate from a similar investigation ordered by the Pentagon.

More than 10,000 U.S. troops in the Iraq war and more than 600 involved in the Afghan conflict have been wounded so seriously they were unable to return to duty within 72 hours, according to Pentagon statistics.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Gray)

Even "Attempted Kidnapping" does not adaquately apply. Comprehension of her mental state is being disregarded as relevant!
Lovelorn astronaut won't face murder charge

By Barbara Liston 1 hour, 46 minutes ago

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Astronaut Lisa Nowak, who stunned colleagues by driving from Houston to Orlando in a diaper to confront a woman she thought was a love rival, was charged with attempted kidnapping but not with attempted murder on Friday, prosecutors said.

The former space shuttle crew member also was formally charged on Friday with battery and using a weapon to attempt a car break-in. She is accused of pepper spraying the girlfriend of fellow astronaut Bill Oefelien, the prosecutors in Orlando said in a news release.

Shortly after Nowak was arrested on February 6, police said she was trying to kill U.S. Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman. The police then charged Nowak, 43, with attempted first-degree murder, which carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

But the murder accusation was dropped without explanation when prosecutors brought the formal charges almost a month later. The prosecutors declined to comment.

In February, Nowak's lawyer, Donald Lykkebak furiously accused police of adding the attempted murder charge at the last minute in order to delay Nowak's release on bail. Orlando Police Sgt. Barbara Jones denied that police tried to manipulate the system.

"The charges we brought forward, we believed the elements were there," Jones said. "We do the probable cause and they (prosecutors) have to decide the formal charges and what can they prove beyond a reasonable doubt and these are the charges."

Nowak, who has three children and recently separated from her husband, was freed on bail and allowed to return to her home in Houston. She was ordered to stay away from the Florida county where Shipman lives and was fitted with a global positioning device so authorities can track her movements.

Police said Nowak, a flight engineer who made her first trip into space in July to the
International Space Station aboard shuttle Discovery, sped the 950 miles from Houston to Orlando wearing diapers so she would not have to stop at a bathroom.

She disguised herself in a dark wig, glasses and trench coat to confront Shipman at Orlando International Airport but told police she "only wanted to scare" the woman into talking to her.

Nowak waited for Shipman's flight from Houston to arrive and then followed her to the parking garage armed with pepper spray, a steel mallet and a pellet gun, police said.

She also carried black gloves, a folding knife, rubber tubing and trash bags, they said.

Nowak tried to get into Shipman's car and sprayed the pepper spray through the window when Shipman refused to open the door, police said. Shipman alleged afterward in a court document that Nowak had been stalking her for nearly two months.

NASA placed Nowak on a 30-day leave of absence, which ends next week.

"There's no speculation beyond that," said James Hartsfield, a spokesman at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Nowak, who grew up in Rockville, Maryland, and attended the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, became an astronaut in 1996 and waited 10 years for her first space flight.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sounds a lot like Bush. It takes more brains than Bush has to do that!
U.S. Religious Leaders Urge Bush to Talk to Iran

Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Thu Mar 1, 3:11 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Mar 1 (OneWorld) - A delegation of U.S. religious leaders called Monday for Washington to negotiate with Tehran, following the delegation's landmark two-and-a-half-hour meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The 13-person religious delegation was the first to meet with an Iranian President since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

''It was a very cordial meeting,'' said Reverend Shanta Premawardhana of the National Council of Churches, an ecumenical coalition that includes more than 100,000 local congregations and 45 million people in the United States.

''It was late in the evening. It started at 8:00 PM and lasted until about 10:30,'' he told OneWorld. ''[Ahmadinejad] seemed a little tired. He had been traveling a lot, but we were grateful that he gave us a full two and a half hours.''

Premawardhana said the Iranian president told the group of United Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist, Catholic, Evangelical, Quaker, and Mennonite leaders that
Iran has no intention to acquire or use nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad also said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be solved through political--not military--means.

Upon their return to the United States, the religious leaders called for direct face-to-face talks between the U.S. and Iranian governments and more people-to-people exchanges, including among religious leaders and members of the Iranian Parliament and U.S. Congress.

''The Iranian government has already built a bridge toward the American people by inviting our delegation to come to Iran,'' the religious leaders said in a statement. ''We ask the U.S. government to welcome a similar delegation of Iranian religious leaders to the United States.''

Joe Volk of the Quaker Friends Committee on National Legislation told OneWorld he found Ahmadinejad to be ''compelling'' in the argument that Iran's nuclear program was being developed for energy production rather than weaponry.

''He said 'Look at it practically,''' Volk quoted the Iranian president. '''Nuclear weapons didn't save the apartheid regime in South Africa, didn't save the Soviet Union, and why would it save us? Secondly, if we had nuclear weapons we'd be in a deterrence situation. It's not something we could use and if we did use them there'd be overwhelming force in the other direction. We really are not crazy. '''

On Sunday, while the religious delegation was on a plane back to the United States, Ahmadinejad gave a speech about his country's nuclear program.

"Enemies have no concern about enrichment in Iran,'' Ahmadinejad said, according to his country's state news agency. ''They are worried that they might yield to determination of the Islamic Revolution and lose their dignity through Iran's access to nuclear technology."

He added, "By the grace of God, enemies will be obliged to succumb to the Iranian nation's will. Enemies have pinned hope on certain individuals inside the country who chant for disdain and surrender.''

Reflecting on the speech, Joe Volk of the Quaker Friends Committee on National Legislation said, ''If you listen to the public rhetoric of the government of Iran and if you listen to the public rhetoric of the government of the United States you would say the gap between these two governments is so great that it simply cannot be overcome. But when you look at the national interests that the U.S. has stated and the national interests that Iran has stated, they're much closer together than the rhetoric would indicate. The differences are relatively small.''

Volk cited a proposal the Iranian government allegedly made to Washington through a Swiss ambassador in 2003. The proposal, according to former U.S. Congressional aid Trita Parsi, contained promises to disarm the Lebanese political and paramilitary organization Hezbollah and end support to other groups the Bush administration has put on its terrorist watch list including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Iranian proposal also supposedly agreed to recognize a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and promote peace in
Iraq.

The Bush administration did not respond to the proposal.

As predicted, a comitee will be appointed to investigate so the RIGHT assessment will come out?
Bush to form panel to review wounded soldiers' care

By Steve Holland 2 hours, 37 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scrambling to answer an outcry over shoddy health care for U.S. soldiers wounded in
Iraq, the White House announced on Friday that
President George W. Bush will appoint a bipartisan commission to review health care for military veterans.

The announcement comes a day after the head of the U.S. Army's top hospital was fired after troops wounded in Iraq and
Afghanistan were found to be living in substandard conditions and struggling with a complex bureaucracy.

Problems at an adjunct building of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington were brought to light by a Washington Post investigation published last month. It found that recuperating soldiers were living in a dilapidated building infested with mice, mold and cockroaches.

The administration also faces questions over a decision to put Army surgeon-general Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley in temporary charge at Walter Reed. An ex-commander of the hospital, Kiley has been accused of ignoring complaints about outpatient care.

The Washington Post reports were particularly embarrassing because Bush has repeatedly visited the wounded in the hospital to show his concern for those who served in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush would announce formation of the commission in his weekly radio address on Saturday. Members of the group will be named in coming days.

They will conduct a comprehensive review of the care that the U.S. government is providing the wounded.

"The review will examine their treatment from the time they leave the battlefield to their return to civilian life as veterans, so that we can assure that we're meeting their physical and mental health needs," Perino said.

WHY KILEY?

An Army statement on Thursday said Maj. Gen. George Weightman was removed from his job in charge of Walter Reed and that top
Pentagon officials had lost confidence in his ability to address solutions for soldier outpatient care.

But the Washington Post reported that Kiley, appointed to take temporary charge, heard years ago from a veterans advocate and a member of Congress that outpatient care at Walter Reed was squalid and disorganized but did little about it.

"Why is Gen. Kiley back in charge at Walter Reed?" the paper asked in an editorial on Friday.

Army spokesman Col. Dan Baggio noted Kiley's appointment was an interim measure and said he had extensive experience with the Army medical system, including running Walter Reed.

"From a very pragmatic standpoint, he's probably the most qualified person for the job," Baggio said.

The White House said the bipartisan panel's review would be separate from a similar investigation ordered by the Pentagon. The Pentagon is looking solely at Walter Reed while the White House panel will look at all veterans' hospitals.

More than 10,000 U.S. troops in the Iraq war and more than 600 involved in the Afghan conflict have been wounded so seriously they were not able to return to duty within 72 hours, according to Pentagon statistics.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Gray)

Was she or wasn't she...?
Fayed wins Diana legal challenge

By Paul Majendie 1 hour, 52 minutes ago

LONDON (Reuters) - The father of Princess Diana's lover won a significant legal battle on Friday when the High Court decided that the inquest into their deaths in a Paris car crash 10 years ago should be heard by a jury.

Mohamed al Fayed, who is convinced his son and Diana were murdered, had sought to overturn a ruling by Britain's former top woman judge Elizabeth Butler-Sloss to handle the official inquiries on her own.

Three senior judges ordered that the coroner hearing the inquest "shall do so sitting with a jury."

Speaking to reporters outside the court, Fayed said: "We want to be sure that the jury are an independent jury."

He said he hoped Diana's ex-husband Britain's
Prince Charles and ex-father-in-law the Duke of Edinburgh would be called as witnesses.

Appeal court judge Janet Smith, handing out the High Court ruling, said: "Mr Al Fayed has alleged that the Duke of Edinburgh and the Security Services conspired to kill the Princess and Dodi Al Fayed.

"The allegation must be inquired into," she said.

Diana, 36, Fayed's son Dodi, 42, and their chauffeur Henri Paul were killed when their Mercedes limousine smashed at high speed into a pillar in a Paris road tunnel as they sped away from the Ritz Hotel, pursued by paparazzi on motorbikes.

A three-year British police investigation ruled at the end of last year that the crash was an accident and not part of an elaborate murder plot as Fayed claims.

The British inquiry backed a French probe which concluded that the driver was to blame because he was drunk, under the influence of anti-depressants and driving too fast.

Diana's children, Princes William and Harry had expressed the hope that the long-awaited inquest would be "open, fair and transparent" and completed as fast as possible.

Hello Magazine's royal correspondent Judy Wade told Reuters: "This just prolongs the agony for William and Harry but Mohamed al Fayed is a grieving father who wants a small triumph like this which would help give him some closure."

Evening Standard royal reporter Robert Jobson said: "The princes wanted it to be cleared up as quickly as possible which it clearly won't be. But everybody wants it to be a transparent and fair hearing."

Under British law an inquest is needed to formally determine the cause of death when someone dies unnaturally.

"Let them die and be quick about it!" - Scrooge (paraphrase) in Dickens' "A Christmas Carrol"
Cairo Journal
In Mighty Arab Hub, the Poor Are Left to Their Fate
Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

On a busy street in Cairo recently, three men discussed the sheep they had for sale. The city is a collection of poor villages often cut off from the law.

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: March 1, 2007

CAIRO, Feb. 23 — Ali Mezar has spent his life fishing a narrow, muddy patch of the Nile in this, one of the most crowded cities in the world. But Mr. Mezar has little contact with urban civilization. He sleeps in his boat, makes tea from the dirty Nile water and on good days earns a few dollars.

Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

A fisherman at work on the Nile in Cairo. Men like him live by their wits and earn a few dollars on a good day. More Photos >

Not far away, on the shoulder of a busy avenue, Karim Sayed, 21, herds sheep and goats matted with urban filth. He spends his days staring into oncoming traffic, hoping to make a sale before the police move him or confiscate a sheep.

At the city’s edge, in a packed neighborhood built entirely by its residents, Mina Fathy and his neighbors fix sewerage, water and electricity problems on their own because they say the government offers them virtually no service in such functions.

Cairo is home to 15 million and often described as the center of the Arab world, an incubator of culture and ideas. But it is also a collection of villages, a ruralized metropolis where people live by their wits and devices, cut off from the authorities, the law and often each other.

That social reality does not just speak to the quality and style of life for millions of Egyptians. It also plays a role in the nation’s style of governance.

The fisherman on the Nile, the shepherd in the road and residents of so-called informal communities say their experiences navigating city life have taught them the same lessons: the government is not there to better their lives; advancement is based on connections and bribes; the central authority is at best a benign force to be avoided.

“Everything is from God,” said Mr. Mezar, the fisherman, who was speaking practically, not theologically. “There is no such thing as government. The government is one thing, and we are something else. What am I going to get from the government?”
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Cairo has been the capital of Egypt for more than 1,000 years, and sits where the dry sands of the desert lead to the fertile Nile Delta. Egyptian officials like to say that this is where modern bureaucracy was invented, where the mechanics of governance first took shape.

While the Egyptian government is the country’s largest employer, it is by all accounts an utterly unreliable source of help for the average citizen. That combination, social scientists say, helps create a system that has stifled political opposition and allowed a small group to remain in power for decades.

One brick in the foundation of single-party rule has been public resignation. There is no widespread expectation that the authorities will give the common man a voice, and so there is rarely any outrage when they do not. The fisherman, the shepherd and Mr. Fathy all said that the most they could hope for from the government was that it stay out of their lives.

“We hope God keeps the municipality away from us,” Mr. Sayed said as he sat in a wooden chair, surveying his fetid flock of goats and sheep with headlights streaming by.

Such a feeling of separation is one reason that the leadership has been able to clamp down on opposition political activities without incurring widespread public wrath, political analysts say.

“People see the government as something quite foreign or removed from their lives,” said Diane Singerman, a professor in government at American University in Washington who has written extensively about Cairo. “Commuters to the city, or poor peddlers and working people, do not see the government as particularly interested in their lives, and they also see politics as quite elite and risky and something to stay away from.”

Officials say part of the disillusionment comes from unrealistic expectations, a holdover from the heady days of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s leader from 1954 to 1970, when government jobs were deemed a right and cradle-to-grave care a promise.

Mr. Mezar and his cousin Muhammad Hassan fish the Nile just as their parents and their grandparents did, living in the bottom of their small wooden boats. Dark from the sun, hands callused from their oars, they are the image of Egypt, and they often smile and wave dutifully as tour boats motor up the river, with tourists snapping their pictures.

They dock their boats beneath a busy overpass, waking each morning at 6, filling their glasses with tea made from water scooped directly from the Nile. They worry that despite their fishing licenses, the police will demand their fish or write a ticket for some invented infraction.

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Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting.