Penniless Jellyfish

WASHINGTON - A two-decade ban on people with HIV visiting or immigrating to the United States may end soon through a Senate bill aimed at fighting AIDS and other diseases in Africa and other poor areas of the world.

The U.S. is one of a dozen countries — including Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Russia — that ban travel and immigration for HIV-positive people.

Even China, said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., recently changed that policy, deciding it was "time to move beyond an antiquated, knee-jerk reaction" to people with HIV.

"There's no excuse for a law that stigmatizes a particular disease," Kerry said Tuesday at a speech to the Center for Strategic & International Studies HIV/AIDS Task Force. Even people with avian flu or the Ebola virus have an easier time than those with HIV when it come to applying for visas, he said.

Kerry and Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., are trying to repeal the ban, first implemented in 1987 and confirmed by Congress in 1993. The two have attached their measure to legislation — which the Senate may pass this week — that would provide $50 billion over the next five years to fight AIDS and other diseases in Africa and other poor areas.

Foreign citizens, students and tourists can apply for a difficult-to-obtain special waiver for short-term visits, but an HIV-positive person has little chance of obtaining permanent residency.

Adopted during widespread fear
Under current law, HIV is the only medical condition explicitly listed under immigration law. The Kerry-Smith provision would make HIV equivalent to other communicable diseases where medical and public health experts at the Health and Human Services Department — not consular officials at U.S. embassies — determine eligibility for admission.

Those with HIV seeking legal permanent residency would still have to demonstrate they have the resources to live in this country and would not become a "public charge."

The HIV ban was "adopted during a time of widespread fear and ignorance about the HIV virus," said Allison Herwitt, legislative director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian civil rights group.

Among the consequences, experts on HIV and AIDS who are themselves infected have been unable to attend conferences in the U.S. Students and refugees in the country who may be at risk of infection have been reluctant to seek testing or treatment.

"Health care professionals, researchers and other exceptionally talented people have been blocked from the United States," some 160 health and AIDS groups said recently in a letter urging Congress to end the current policy. "Since 1993, the International Conference on AIDS has not been held on U.S. soil due to this policy."

Herwitt said some HIV-positive people seeking visas lie on their applications and then don't bring their medications. "It's not only wrongheaded and discriminatory, but can also cause people to not tell the truth."

Still opposition
Both President George H.W. Bush and President Clinton sought to ease the policy and in 2006 the current President Bush asked the Homeland Security Department to streamline the waiver process. Congress so far has not gone along.

There's still opposition.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., may offer an amendment to eliminate the Kerry-Smith provision from the Senate bill. Sessions cited Congressional Budget Office estimates that the new immigrants coming in under the relaxed policy could cost the government more than $80 million over a 10-year period. "Most people just don't want to talk about that."

Sessions said the Health and Human Services Department already has considerable flexibility to grant entry visas.

The measure would offset the costs of new immigrants by raising the price of applying for a visitor's visa by $1 for three years and then $2 for the next five years.

The House version of the Africa AIDs bill does not have the travel and immigration provision, but advocates said it will be included in the final version of the bill that goes to the president.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., is sponsoring companion legislation in the House.

The Africa AIDS bill is S. 2731.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. discriminates against blind people by printing paper money that makes it impossible for them to distinguish the bills’ value, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling upholds a decision by a lower court in 2006. It could force the Treasury Department to redesign its money. Suggested changes have ranged from making bills different sizes to printing them with raised markings.

The U.S. acknowledges that the design hinders blind people but it argued they had adapted —some relied on store clerks for help, some used credit cards and others folded certain corners to help distinguish the bills.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that such adaptations were insufficient. The government might as well argue that, since handicapped people can crawl on all fours or ask for help from strangers, there’s no need to make buildings wheelchair accessible, the court said.

The court also ruled that the U.S. failed to explain why changing the money would be an undue burden. The Treasury Department has redesigned its currency several times in recent years and adding features to aid the blind would come at a relatively small cost, the court said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24725916/

ELDORADO, Texas - Law enforcement agents got access to an enormous temple on the grounds of a polygamist compound, but by Sunday morning they still had not found a 16-year-old girl whose initial report of abuse led to the raid.

"There were some tense moments last night, but everything has remained calm and peaceful and they are continuing their search," said Allison Palmer, a prosecutor from a nearby county handling the case, early Sunday.

Palmer said it was unclear whether the girl who made the report was among the nearly 200 women and children taken Friday and Saturday from the compound built by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs.

A busload of women were seen talking to law enforcement and a lawyer at a civic center early Sunday.

Palmer said Child Protective Services was still trying to identify the 16-year-old, and it wasn't clear if she was among those being interviewed or was even in the area.

State troopers armed with a search warrant raided the compound on Friday to look for evidence of a marriage between the girl, who allegedly had a baby at 15, and 50-year-old Dale Barlow.

Under Texas law, girls younger than 16 cannot marry, even with parental approval.

Barlow's probation officer told The Salt Lake Tribune that he was in Arizona.

"He said the authorities had called him (in Colorado City, Ariz.) and some girl had accused him of assaulting her and he didn't even know who she was," said Bill Loader, a probation officer in Arizona.

Palmer said Texas authorities have been in contact with those in Arizona but have not yet talked to Barlow. No arrests have been made.

Barlow was sentenced to jail time last year after pleading no contest to conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. He was also ordered to register as a sex offender for three years while he is on probation.

Seeking links between Barlow, baby
The search warrant instructed officers to look for marriage records or other evidence linking her to the man and the baby. The warrant authorized the seizure of computer drives, CDs, DVDs or photos.

Those inside the retreat did not respond to requests for comment.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, headed by Jeffs after his father's death in 2002, broke away from the Mormon church after the latter disavowed polygamy more than a century ago.

The compound sits down a narrow paved road and behind a hill that shields it almost entirely from view in town. Only the 80-foot-high, white temple can be seen on the horizon. It remained lit throughout the night.

The 1,700-acre property had been an exotic game ranch, dotted with many buildings. Palmer said she couldn't say whether authorities had entered all the buildings but called it "a detailed search."

Harry Cabluck / AP Children leave a polygamist retreat on Friday in El Dorado, Texas.

State officials said they did not know how many people lived at the retreat. Local officials estimated two years ago that about 150 people were there.

Jeffs is jailed in Kingman, Ariz., where he awaits trial for four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives.

In November, he was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl who wed her cousin in an arranged marriage in 2001.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23958307/

Good ol' corporate executives. Yes, lets give them more tax breaks, because they deserve it. They've worked hard to get where they are today, they deserve more money while the rest of us struggle to survive living from paycheck to paycheck. More money to do the leisurely activites they enjoy, such as child pornography. Whatta wholesome, christian man.

Federal agents have charged Pfizer Inc.'s global patent director with receiving, distributing and possessing child pornography and are holding him without bond.

Alan Hesketh, 61, of 202 Montauk Ave., Stonington, is accused of posing as a 28-year-old female while trading hundreds of images of children engaged in sexual acts.

He allegedly traded the images with a man from Buffalo, N.Y., while chatting with him online between June 2006 and May 2007.

The two men discussed, “among other things, the sexual molestation of children involving the use of human defecation,” according to a court document.

Hesketh allegedly used the screen name “Suzibibaby” during the online sessions.

Federal agents found he signed on as “Suzibibaby” from his home in Stonington and from several other Internet addresses, including one registered to Pfizer in New York and another at the Tudor Hotel at the United Nations, where he was a guest for three days in December 2007.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Hesketh at JFK International Airport in New York on Wednesday.

Hesketh is a British citizen and a permanent resident of the United States, where he has lived since 2002. It did not appear he was trying to flee the country at the time of his arrest, according to a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office.

Hesketh was presented in U.S. District Court in Hartford on Thursday, where Judge Donna F. Martinez scheduled a bond hearing for Monday afternoon.

Pfizer spokeswoman Liz Power said Thursday that Hesketh, whose office is in New London, is on a leave of absence from the company.

“Pfizer will cooperate with authorities in any investigation,” she said.

Hesketh is the company's vice president and global head of patents, which is a part of the legal division of Pfizer Inc.

According to an affidavit prepared by Special Agent Jason P. Dragon, an investigation that began in Buffalo in June 2007 led authorities to Hesketh.

Federal agents suspected Buffalo resident Gregory Nadolski of sharing and receiving images of child pornography via the Google “hello” file-sharing program, which enables users to share digital images with one another while chatting online.

The authorities seized two computers from Nadolski, who admitted to possessing child pornography and trading images online using the screen name “mrko9850.”

Nadolski's computer contained 27 “hello” chat logs between the screen names “mrko9850” and “Suzibibaby” — Hesketh's alleged screen name. The two shared more than 1,000 images, many of which appeared to contain child pornography.

The Buffalo office on Feb. 22 turned over a disk containing the images and video files to Dragon, the Hartford agent.

Dragon prepared a 40-page affidavit, dated March 26, that requests a judge's permission to search the Montauk Avenue, Stonington, home where Hesketh resides with Jan Hesketh and to seize Hesketh's computer. It was unclear Thursday evening whether the search has been conducted.

The affidavit contains the text of a “hello” chat conversation that allegedly took place between Hesketh and Nadolski in the early-morning hours of April 24, 2007. The two sent 85 photos back and forth to one another while carrying on an explicit discussion involving babies, feces and sexual acts.

At one point, “Suzibibaby” sent “mrko9850” a picture of “herself.” The pictured depicted a 25- to 30-year-old woman, according to the court document.

As a defendant in a federal court case, Hesketh is entitled to have the case presented to a grand jury. If he is indicted and convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and maximum term of 20 years for receiving and distributing child pornography and a maximum of 10 years in prison for possession of child porn. He also faces as much as $500,000 in fines.

Hesketh is being prosecuted as part of the U.S. Department of Justice's Project Safe Childhood Initiative, which is aimed at protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation.

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=6d7dffa2-7d41-431b-90c5-5f11fdabf4c4

VATICAN CITY - Italy's most prominent Muslim commentator, who has long spoken out against Islamic fanaticism and received death threats as a result, converted to Roman Catholicism on Saturday during the Vatican's Easter vigil service presided over by the pope.

Magdi Allam, 55, is the deputy editor of the Corriere della Sera newspaper and writes often on Muslim and Arab affairs. He was born a Muslim in Egypt, but was educated by Catholics and says he has never been a practicing Muslim.

Allam's criticism of Palestinian terrorism prompted the Italian government to provide him with a sizable security detail in 2003, after Hamas singled him out for elimination, Allam told the Il Giornale newspaper in a December interview.

Pope Benedict XVI baptized Allam and six other adults during the service in St. Peter's Basilica. The Easter vigil marks the period between Good Friday, which commemorates Jesus' crucifixion, and Easter Sunday, which marks his resurrection.

As a choir sang, Benedict poured holy water over Allam's head and said a brief prayer in Latin.

No longer 'in opposition'
In his homily, Benedict reflected on the meaning of baptism, saying through the sacrament, the Lord enters into the heart of the new Catholic.

"We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another," Benedict said. "Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close."

As he pronounced the words, Vatican television zoomed in on Allam, who sat in the front row of the basilica along with the other candidates for baptism.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said of Allam before the service that anyone who chooses to become a Catholic of his or her own free will has the right to receive the sacrament.

Lombardi said the pope administers the sacrament "without making any 'difference of people,' that is, considering all equally important before the love of God and welcoming all in the community of the Church."

Complicated relationship with Islam
In the Il Giornale interview, Allam explained his complicated relationship with Islam and his affinity for Israel.

"I was never practicing," he was quoted as saying. "I never prayed five times a day, facing Mecca. I never fasted during Ramadan." Yet he said he did make the pilgrimage to Mecca, as is required of all Muslims, with his deeply religious mother in 1991.

Married to a Catholic with a young son named Davide and two adult children from his first marriage, Allam indicated in the interview that he would have no problem converting to Christianity. He confessed he had even received Communion once — when he was 13 or 14 — "even though I knew it was an act of blasphemy, not having been baptized."

Allam also explained his decision to entitle a recent book "Viva Israel" or "Long Live Israel," saying he wrote it after he received the death threats from Hamas.

In 2006, Allam was a co-winner, with three other journalists, of the $1 million Dan David prize, named for the Israeli entrepreneur of the same name. Allam was cited for "his ceaseless work in fostering understanding and tolerance between cultures."

Apostasy under one interpretation
There is no overarching Muslim law on conversion. But under a widespread interpretation of Islamic legal doctrine, converting from Islam is apostasy and punishable by death — though killings are rare.

Egypt's highest Islamic cleric, the Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, wrote last year against the killing of apostates, saying there is no worldly retribution for Muslims who abandon their religion and that punishment would come in the afterlife.

Reaction to Allam's conversion was largely muted from Italy's Muslim community.

The Union of Islamic Communities in Italy — which Allam has frequently criticized as having links to Hamas — said the baptism was a personal choice. "He is an adult, free to make his personal choice," the Apcom news agency quoted the group's spokesman, Issedin El Zir as saying.

Osama bin Laden said in a new audio message posted Wednesday that drawings that he said insulted the Prophet Muhammad took place in the framework of a "new Crusade" against Islam, in which he said the pope has played a "large and lengthy role."

Lombardi said Thursday that bin Laden's accusation about the pope was baseless. He said Benedict repeatedly criticized the Muhammad cartoons, first published in some European newspapers in 2006 and republished by Danish papers in February.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23759188/

Fired and disciplined....that's it?? Those people violated the basic rights of Americans. I think they should get a year in prison...no exceptions. I bet they only reviewed Hillary's and John McCain's so that incase they did get caught, they wouldn't look like complete racists.

Washington — The passport files of all three major presidential candidates were breached by unauthorized searches by four employees, the State Department said Friday, prompting apologies from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, outrage from the candidates and calls by lawmakers for further probes.

The State Department had announced Thursday night that two contract employees had been fired and a third disciplined for separately examining Sen. Barack Obama's passport file in January, February and March. No sooner had Rice gotten off the phone Friday morning after expressing her regrets to the Illinois Democrat and pledging a full investigation when the department announced that the passport files of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had also been inappropriately reviewed. Rice quickly placed apologetic calls to Clinton and McCain, as well.

“We are going to do an investigation through the inspector general, who will get to the bottom of it and make certain that nothing more was going on,” Rice told reporters. She added that she told Obama “that I myself would be very disturbed if I learned that somebody had looked into my passport file.”

The nearly 200 million passport files maintained by the State Department contain individuals' passport applications, which include such raw data as each applicant's Social Security number and physical description. Otherwise, the files provide rather limited information; they do not contain records of overseas travel or visa stamps from previous passports.

Unless the people who accessed the candidates' files disclosed the data to an unauthorized person, they probably did not violate any law, outside lawyers said. The State Department said that it is examining whether any laws were broken, but spokesman Sean McCormack said the employees seemed motivated by little more than “imprudent curiosity.”

After receiving a 90-minute briefing from State Department officials, Obama's office issued a statement saying there were “still many unanswered questions.” Obama, speaking to reporters in Portland, Ore., said he expects “a full and thorough investigation” that “should be done in conjunction with those congressional committees that have oversight function so it's not simply an internal matter.”

Bush administration officials Friday struggled to explain why repeated attempts to look at the files were not known by senior officials until they received a reporter's inquiry Thursday. The incident jarred the race for the Democratic nomination and brought back memories of a passport scandal during the 1992 race between President Bush's father and Clinton's husband, when senior State Department officials examined Bill Clinton's passport files, resulting in a two-year probe by an independent prosecutor.

“We do feel like the system worked,” McCormack said, noting that the unauthorized searches were quickly identified to supervisors. “But the system isn't perfect.” The employees were caught because of a computer-monitoring system that is triggered when the passport file of a “high-profile person” is accessed, the State Department said.

Before entering a person's passport file, employees must answer “yes” or “no” in a screen that warns them: “You are permitted access to passport and consular personal records on a need to know basis” and “These are privileged records and are subject to the provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974.” Entry into the system does not give users access to other government records, officials said.

The two employees fired for examining Obama's file worked for Stanley, an Arlington, Va.-based firm that has handled passport processing for 15 years and just this week won a five-year, $570 million contract. The company's chairman, Philip Nolan of McLean, Va., contributed $1,000 to Clinton's campaign on Feb. 20, federal election records show. He has also contributed to moderate Republicans.

“We regret the unauthorized access of any individual's private information,” Stanley said in a statement. “In each of these instances the employee was terminated the day the unauthorized search occurred.”

A third contract employee, who looked in Obama's file on March 14, was discovered to have also examined McCain's file, McCormack said. That employee, who worked for the Analysis Corp. of McLean, has been denied access to passport applications, and his or her employment status is under review, McCormack said.

John Brennan, chief executive of The Analysis Corp., gave $2,300 to Obama on Jan. 28, records show. “We deeply regret that the incident occurred and believe it is an isolated incident,” the company said in an e-mailed statement. It noted that at the request of the State Department, it had delayed taking action against its employee until the IG completes its investigation. Brennan had a 25-year career with the CIA and has served as interim director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

A fourth employee, who accessed Clinton's file, is not a contractor but a State Department employee. The employee looked up Clinton's file during a training exercise last summer — trainees had been told to look up a parent's application — and was “admonished” but not fired, McCormack said.

While Rice has ordered a probe by State's inspector general, the two fired employees would no longer fall under the department's jurisdiction and could refuse to answer questions.

McCormack said the department hoped the former employees would cooperate in the probe. The State Department has also asked the Justice Department to help monitor the IG probe, he said.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.

Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed.

How do the drugs get into the water?

People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.

And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies — which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public — have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.

"We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Members of the AP National Investigative Team reviewed hundreds of scientific reports, analyzed federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study sites and treatment plants and interviewed more than 230 officials, academics and scientists. They also surveyed the nation's 50 largest cities and a dozen other major water providers, as well as smaller community water providers in all 50 states.

Here are some of the key test results obtained by the AP:

_Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds.

_Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

_Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

_A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco's drinking water.

_The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

_Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.

The situation is undoubtedly worse than suggested by the positive test results in the major population centers documented by the AP.

The federal government doesn't require any testing and hasn't set safety limits for drugs in water. Of the 62 major water providers contacted, the drinking water for only 28 was tested. Among the 34 that haven't: Houston, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, Phoenix, Boston and New York City's Department of Environmental Protection, which delivers water to 9 million people.

Some providers screen only for one or two pharmaceuticals, leaving open the possibility that others are present.

The AP's investigation also indicates that watersheds, the natural sources of most of the nation's water supply, also are contaminated. Tests were conducted in the watersheds of 35 of the 62 major providers surveyed by the AP, and pharmaceuticals were detected in 28.

Yet officials in six of those 28 metropolitan areas said they did not go on to test their drinking water — Fairfax, Va.; Montgomery County in Maryland; Omaha, Neb.; Oklahoma City; Santa Clara, Calif., and New York City.

The New York state health department and the USGS tested the source of the city's water, upstate. They found trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.

City water officials declined repeated requests for an interview. In a statement, they insisted that "New York City's drinking water continues to meet all federal and state regulations regarding drinking water quality in the watershed and the distribution system" — regulations that do not address trace pharmaceuticals.

In several cases, officials at municipal or regional water providers told the AP that pharmaceuticals had not been detected, but the AP obtained the results of tests conducted by independent researchers that showed otherwise. For example, water department officials in New Orleans said their water had not been tested for pharmaceuticals, but a Tulane University researcher and his students have published a study that found the pain reliever naproxen, the sex hormone estrone and the anti-cholesterol drug byproduct clofibric acid in treated drinking water.

Of the 28 major metropolitan areas where tests were performed on drinking water supplies, only Albuquerque; Austin, Texas; and Virginia Beach, Va.; said tests were negative. The drinking water in Dallas has been tested, but officials are awaiting results. Arlington, Texas, acknowledged that traces of a pharmaceutical were detected in its drinking water but cited post-9/11 security concerns in refusing to identify the drug.

The AP also contacted 52 small water providers — one in each state, and two each in Missouri and Texas — that serve communities with populations around 25,000. All but one said their drinking water had not been screened for pharmaceuticals; officials in Emporia, Kan., refused to answer AP's questions, also citing post-9/11 issues.

Rural consumers who draw water from their own wells aren't in the clear either, experts say.

The Stroud Water Research Center, in Avondale, Pa., has measured water samples from New York City's upstate watershed for caffeine, a common contaminant that scientists often look for as a possible signal for the presence of other pharmaceuticals. Though more caffeine was detected at suburban sites, researcher Anthony Aufdenkampe was struck by the relatively high levels even in less populated areas.

He suspects it escapes from failed septic tanks, maybe with other drugs. "Septic systems are essentially small treatment plants that are essentially unmanaged and therefore tend to fail," Aufdenkampe said.

Even users of bottled water and home filtration systems don't necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals, according to the industry's main trade group. The same goes for the makers of home filtration systems.

Contamination is not confined to the United States. More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world. Studies have detected pharmaceuticals in waters throughout Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe — even in Swiss lakes and the North Sea.

For example, in Canada, a study of 20 Ontario drinking water treatment plants by a national research institute found nine different drugs in water samples. Japanese health officials in December called for human health impact studies after detecting prescription drugs in drinking water at seven different sites.

In the United States, the problem isn't confined to surface waters. Pharmaceuticals also permeate aquifers deep underground, source of 40 percent of the nation's water supply. Federal scientists who drew water in 24 states from aquifers near contaminant sources such as landfills and animal feed lots found minuscule levels of hormones, antibiotics and other drugs.

Perhaps it's because Americans have been taking drugs — and flushing them unmetabolized or unused — in growing amounts. Over the past five years, the number of U.S. prescriptions rose 12 percent to a record 3.7 billion, while nonprescription drug purchases held steady around 3.3 billion, according to IMS Health and The Nielsen Co.

"People think that if they take a medication, their body absorbs it and it disappears, but of course that's not the case," said EPA scientist Christian Daughton, one of the first to draw attention to the issue of pharmaceuticals in water in the United States.

Some drugs, including widely used cholesterol fighters, tranquilizers and anti-epileptic medications, resist modern drinking water and wastewater treatment processes. Plus, the EPA says there are no sewage treatment systems specifically engineered to remove pharmaceuticals.

One technology, reverse osmosis, removes virtually all pharmaceutical contaminants but is very expensive for large-scale use and leaves several gallons of polluted water for every one that is made drinkable.

Another issue: There's evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.

Human waste isn't the only source of contamination. Cattle, for example, are given ear implants that provide a slow release of trenbolone, an anabolic steroid used by some bodybuilders, which causes cattle to bulk up. But not all the trenbolone circulating in a steer is metabolized. A German study showed 10 percent of the steroid passed right through the animals.

Water sampled downstream of a Nebraska feedlot had steroid levels four times as high as the water taken upstream. Male fathead minnows living in that downstream area had low testosterone levels and small heads.

Other veterinary drugs also play a role. Pets are now treated for arthritis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, allergies, dementia, and even obesity — sometimes with the same drugs as humans. The inflation-adjusted value of veterinary drugs rose by 8 percent, to $5.2 billion, over the past five years, according to an analysis of data from the Animal Health Institute.

Ask the pharmaceutical industry whether the contamination of water supplies is a problem, and officials will tell you no. "Based on what we now know, I would say we find there's little or no risk from pharmaceuticals in the environment to human health," said microbiologist Thomas White, a consultant for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

But at a conference last summer, Mary Buzby — director of environmental technology for drug maker Merck & Co. Inc. — said: "There's no doubt about it, pharmaceuticals are being detected in the environment and there is genuine concern that these compounds, in the small concentrations that they're at, could be causing impacts to human health or to aquatic organisms."

Recent laboratory research has found that small amounts of medication have affected human embryonic kidney cells, human blood cells and human breast cancer cells. The cancer cells proliferated too quickly; the kidney cells grew too slowly; and the blood cells showed biological activity associated with inflammation.

Also, pharmaceuticals in waterways are damaging wildlife across the nation and around the globe, research shows. Notably, male fish are being feminized, creating egg yolk proteins, a process usually restricted to females. Pharmaceuticals also are affecting sentinel species at the foundation of the pyramid of life — such as earth worms in the wild and zooplankton in the laboratory, studies show.

Some scientists stress that the research is extremely limited, and there are too many unknowns. They say, though, that the documented health problems in wildlife are disconcerting.

"It brings a question to people's minds that if the fish were affected ... might there be a potential problem for humans?" EPA research biologist Vickie Wilson told the AP. "It could be that the fish are just exquisitely sensitive because of their physiology or something. We haven't gotten far enough along."

With limited research funds, said Shane Snyder, research and development project manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority, a greater emphasis should be put on studying the effects of drugs in water.

"I think it's a shame that so much money is going into monitoring to figure out if these things are out there, and so little is being spent on human health," said Snyder. "They need to just accept that these things are everywhere — every chemical and pharmaceutical could be there. It's time for the EPA to step up to the plate and make a statement about the need to study effects, both human and environmental."

To the degree that the EPA is focused on the issue, it appears to be looking at detection. Grumbles acknowledged that just late last year the agency developed three new methods to "detect and quantify pharmaceuticals" in wastewater. "We realize that we have a limited amount of data on the concentrations," he said. "We're going to be able to learn a lot more."

While Grumbles said the EPA had analyzed 287 pharmaceuticals for possible inclusion on a draft list of candidates for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, he said only one, nitroglycerin, was on the list. Nitroglycerin can be used as a drug for heart problems, but the key reason it's being considered is its widespread use in making explosives.

So much is unknown. Many independent scientists are skeptical that trace concentrations will ultimately prove to be harmful to humans. Confidence about human safety is based largely on studies that poison lab animals with much higher amounts.

There's growing concern in the scientific community, meanwhile, that certain drugs — or combinations of drugs — may harm humans over decades because water, unlike most specific foods, is consumed in sizable amounts every day.

Our bodies may shrug off a relatively big one-time dose, yet suffer from a smaller amount delivered continuously over a half century, perhaps subtly stirring allergies or nerve damage. Pregnant women, the elderly and the very ill might be more sensitive.

Many concerns about chronic low-level exposure focus on certain drug classes: chemotherapy that can act as a powerful poison; hormones that can hamper reproduction or development; medicines for depression and epilepsy that can damage the brain or change behavior; antibiotics that can allow human germs to mutate into more dangerous forms; pain relievers and blood-pressure diuretics.

For several decades, federal environmental officials and nonprofit watchdog environmental groups have focused on regulated contaminants — pesticides, lead, PCBs — which are present in higher concentrations and clearly pose a health risk.

However, some experts say medications may pose a unique danger because, unlike most pollutants, they were crafted to act on the human body.

"These are chemicals that are designed to have very specific effects at very low concentrations. That's what pharmaceuticals do. So when they get out to the environment, it should not be a shock to people that they have effects," says zoologist John Sumpter at Brunel University in London, who has studied trace hormones, heart medicine and other drugs.

And while drugs are tested to be safe for humans, the timeframe is usually over a matter of months, not a lifetime. Pharmaceuticals also can produce side effects and interact with other drugs at normal medical doses. That's why — aside from therapeutic doses of fluoride injected into potable water supplies — pharmaceuticals are prescribed to people who need them, not delivered to everyone in their drinking water.

"We know we are being exposed to other people's drugs through our drinking water, and that can't be good," says Dr. David Carpenter, who directs the Institute for Health and the Environment of the State University of New York at Albany.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080309/ap_on_re_us/pharmawater_i

Did anyone see Hillary Clinton on the news this morning (2/24)? Obama supposedly sent out fliers that bashed Clintons healthcare plan and said she called NAFTA a "boon" on society. He's claiming those are all things she said. She's fuming, claiming she never said such a thing, and he's acting more like a republican. She freaks out in this clip and is just down right scary. "Shame on you Obama, meet me in Ohio!" What the news didn't show you is they had to edit the clip right after she said that. What she actually said was "Shame on you Obama! Meet me in Ohio, I'll beat your ass" (Just kidding Hillary). Look at this clip.

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Washington — We're all pretty much the same except, of course, for the little things that make us different.

Those are the conclusions of three studies published this week that looked at human diversity through the keyhole of the genetic mutations we all carry.

The findings — the latest dividend from the world's investment in the Human Genome Project in the 1990s — confirms a broad narrative of human history known from previous biological, archaeological and linguistic studies. But the new research adds an astonishing level of detail, and a few new insights, that were not previously available.

All three studies support the idea that modern human beings left East Africa, walked into Central Asia and then fanned out east and west to people the entire planet. They also confirm earlier research showing that as a group, Africans have more diverse genes than people of other continents.

But the new research also shows that genetic diversity declines steadily the farther one's ancestors traveled from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which is roughly the site of the exit turnstile for the “out-of-Africa” migration.

The studies also show that many seemingly “purebred” ethnic groups have ancestry traceable to more than one continent.

For example, the Arabian Peninsula's Bedouin — a culturally distinct group — are descended not only from long-time Middle Eastern peoples, but also from Europeans and peoples originating from around modern Pakistan. The Yakut people of eastern Siberia share blood with East Asians, Europeans and American Indians, but very little with Central Asians, who are geographically closer to them than two of those populations.

•••••

The research may also shed light on the genetic underpinnings of human disease. One study found that Americans of European descent carry a larger number of damaging gene variants than African Americans do — a byproduct of Caucasians' arduous march eastward to the shores of the Atlantic.

The biggest message, though, is that these differences are the details, not the main message, of human diversity.

About 90 percent of the full catalogue of human genetic diversity exists in every human population. Individuals are likely to have almost as many differences with people we consider to be “like us” as with strangers on the other side of the world.

“What this says is that we are all extremely related to each other,” said Richard Myers, a geneticist at Stanford University School of Medicine, who helped lead one of the studies, being published Friday in the journal Science.

“Most genetic variation is shared worldwide. It is only a small part of human genetic variation that is private to particular continents,” said Noah Rosenberg, of the University of Michigan. His group's findings were published Thursday in the journal Nature.

All three studies examined single “letter” changes in the 3-billion letter transcript that makes up each person's genome. Every individual carries tens of thousands of these variations. Some don't change the “words” that are the genes; some change a word but not its meaning; and some change the meaning in a way that can be beneficial or harmful.

Each person's collection of these changes (called “single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs) contributes to his or her individuality. People with a common ancestry, however, tend to have somewhat similar collections of SNPs.

“There is no single gene, no single DNA marker, that would distinguish one population from another,” Myers said. Instead, he said, “it is a pattern, like a bar code with thousands of lines on it,” that allows researchers to tease apart the fine points of relatedness between populations.

He and his colleagues looked at 938 individuals from 51 different populations whose DNA is in a repository in France. The group lead by Rosenberg and Andrew Singleton, of the University of Virginia, studied 485 people from the same collection. Each person studied had a clear-cut ethnic identity, and in most cases came from a family that had lived in the group's homeland for generations.

With such diverse and abundant starting material, the researchers were able to sketch a picture of ethnicity far more detailed than previously known.

For example, Africa's surviving hunter-gatherers — two groups of pygmies and the San people of southern Africa who were formerly known as Bushmen — are closely related to each other, and quite distinct on a genetic basis from all other black Africans. The Hazara of Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Uighur of northwestern China are also close genetic relatives, despite living far apart. On the other hand, China's dominant ethnicity, the Han, is actually two genetically distinct groups, the northern and the southern Han.

•••••

The research shows that populations' genetic footprints on the planet are deep, sharp, and not easily covered over by time.

Both research teams using the French DNA collection found geographic distance from East Africa is a major determinant of genetic differences between groups.

“Each group (migrating across the planet) carried only a subset of the genetic variation from its ancestral population. So there is a loss of genetic diversity with the distance from Africa,” Rosenberg said.

One of the more interesting consequences of that pattern is the subject of the third study, also published in Nature.

Carlos Bustamante, of Cornell University, and his colleagues measured SNPs in 20 European Americans and 15 African Americans. They found that the average person carries at least 2,000 SNPs that change the meaning of a genetic “word.” However, in European Americans, a larger proportion of those changes were likely to be unhealthy or unfavorable.

The reasons for this curious finding aren't fully known, although there are theories.

The chief explanation is that the ancestors of Europeans (and most white Americans) suffered repeated population “bottlenecks” in which their numbers crashed as resu epidemics, environmental(icatastrophes, and genocide. Each time that happened, the population lost a lot of its genetic diversity simply because a lot of people died.

The survivors, like their ancestors, carried a certain random collection of deleterious SNPs — genes that caused disease or increased the risk of disease. When the population rebounded, those genes were spread widely as the small number of survivors gave rise to all living descendants.

Listening to the news, they found a peson connected to the murder or murderer. The therapist knew the killer through a guitar club. This so bizzare and horrible. I just don't understand therapists who hold sessions out of their own home. It seems so dangerous considering the types of disorders that people seek therapy for. Stalkers, rapists, people schizophrenia, violent offenders, etc.

This new article states that police can't look at patient records because of the privacy act. I full believe in the privacy act and recognize that it's a very important law. However, when this therapist has been murder, I think an acception should be made. At first, maybe just look at the details of the folders without looking at names. After gathering people of interest, than they should be allowed to view the patients names they're going to question.

Update (2/17) NEW YORK - A 39-year-old man with a history of mental problems was arrested Saturday in the vicious slaying of a psychologist attacked in her office with a meat cleaver, police said.

David Tarloff, 39, of Queens was taken into custody Saturday after investigators matched him with three palm prints found at the bloody crime scene, said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Tarloff made statements incriminating himself during a 25-minute interrogation, Kelly said. The questioning stopped when he asked for a lawyer, and it wasn't clear later Saturday whether he had an attorney. Murder and attempted murder charges are pending, Kelly said.

Therapist Kathryn Faughey was slashed 15 times with the cleaver and a 9-inch knife in her Manhattan office Tuesday evening. A psychiatrist who worked in the building, Dr. Kent Shinbach, went to Faughey's aid and was badly injured.

Two trips to psychologist's building
NBC affiliate WNBC reported the attacker had visited the East 79th Street offices about 90 minutes before he returned to kill. Sources said security cameras filmed the killer in the earlier visit. He was seen walking through the front door and exiting through the basement — as he did shortly before 9 p.m. after the attacks, WNBC reported.

During questioning, Tarloff said he had gone to the office because Shinbach had him institutionalized in 1991. He said he planned to rob the psychiatrist and leave the country with his mother, who lives in a nursing home, but until recently had lived with him in an apartment in Queens.

The breakthrough in the case came as friends, relatives and former patients attended a funeral for the slain therapist in Manhattan.

I hope this arrest provides some measure of solace at this terrible time for her husband and the rest of her family," Kelly said.

Neighbors described Tarloff as a troubled, erratic, sometimes combative man who would occasionally wander the halls half-clothed, muttering to himself. He attended Syracuse University but did not graduate and was unemployed, neighbors said.

Tarloff had been arrested about two weeks ago for punching a security guard in the face at St. John's Episcopal Hospital after he was asked to leave, Kelly said. It wasn't clear why he was at the hospital.

Attacker leaves clues
Police matched his prints from the Feb. 1 arrest with three found on a roller suitcase left at the crime scene. The suitcase was filled with adult diapers and women's clothing and was left near the basement door where the killer escaped. A smaller bag was also found with rope, duct tape and knives not used in the attack, police said.

Investigators established Tarloff's identity early Saturday and found his address on an application he had submitted in 2001 to the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission, which licenses cabdrivers.

Police then moved swiftly to locate him. Detectives discovered him at his apartment, and he went voluntarily to the 19th Precinct near where the attack occurred, Kelly said.

Kelly described his demeanor as "calm" but said Tarloff had cuts on his right hand.

During the interrogation, Tarloff claimed he had been institutionalized or incarcerated 20 times — a figure Kelly said didn't appear to be accurate.

There was a whirl of police activity at the Queens apartment Saturday afternoon. Police barred nonresidents as officers came and went. Police searched Tarloff's apartment and were collecting possible evidence, Kelly said.

‘Never violent,’ says a neighbor
One neighbor who has known the family for decades, Phyllis Zicherman, said that Tarloff had seemed down lately, but that she was stunned to hear he was a suspect. "He had problems, but he was never violent," she said.

Sisters Betty and Margaret Feeney, who live below Tarloff, said they have known him his entire life. They described him as unstable but were shocked that he was accused in the slaying.

"I know he's crazy and everything," said Betty, 72. "I don't think that he's capable of doing something like that — of killing somebody. I really don't."

She said that Tarloff would come around asking for money but that she would not give it to him.

"I would keep out of the elevator if I saw him. I was scared of him. I wouldn't go near where he would be," she said. "He used to make terrible noise above us. We had an awful time with him. He was tramping back and forth all hours of the night."

Sitting in the waiting room
Investigators said the pudgy, balding, middle-aged killer arrived at the psychologist's office around 8 p.m. Tuesday, telling the doorman he had an appointment with Shinbach, then sat in the waiting room with another of Shinbach's patients until she went into his office around 8:30 p.m.

Sometime after that, the killer entered Faughey's office and attacked her. Shinbach came to her aid but was assaulted, pinned behind a chair and robbed of $90. The killer then tried to attack Shinbach's patient, but she fended him off and he fled.

Blood was splattered on the walls and pooled on the floor of Faughey's office and was found on the basement door, police said. Three witnesses, including Shinbach, picked Tarloff out of a lineup, Kelly said.

Earlier in the week, detectives traveled to Pennsylvania to interview a friend of Faughey who spoke to the psychologist that day. He was not considered a suspect, police said.

Shinbach was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center with slash wounds on his head, face and hands. Kelly said the psychiatrist was released Saturday.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23199458/

Update (2/16) New York — Psychologist Kathryn Faughey didn't sound worried about her safety in the hours before she was butchered in her office, said a friend who exchanged e-mails with her that evening.

On her mind, though, was another member of their circle of guitar enthusiasts, a man she had offered to help with personal problems. Faughey mentioned him in her last message, sent only about a half-hour before she was killed, said the friend, Don Hurley.

Detectives interviewed the man, William Kunsman, in Pennsylvania on Thursday. He was not considered a suspect, but the development showed how determined investigators were to track down any clues into the killer.

An attacker slashed Faughey 15 times with a meat cleaver and a 9-inch knife in her Manhattan office Tuesday evening. A psychiatrist who worked in the building, Dr. Kent Shinbach, came to Faughey's rescue and was badly injured.

Kunsman met Faughey, 56, at a guitar camp several years ago, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Kunsman was found through Faughey's recent e-mail records, which contained messages about his personal problems, the law enforcement official said. Pennsylvania state troopers picked him up at his home around 4:30 a.m., and he was let go 81/2 hours later, after he asked for a lawyer, the official said.

“The reasons they had for questioning me were valid,” said Kunsman, of Coplay, Pa., adding that he was “extremely saddened” to hear of Faughey's death. “I've been in more contact with Kathryn lately. I've been speaking to her a lot lately on the phone and by e-mail. I guess that's what led them here.”

Kunsman, who is married with six children, last spoke to Faughey on Tuesday afternoon but declined to detail the conversation. “That's personal. She was just being a friend,” he said.

Hurley, who knew Faughey through an online club for people interested in C.F. Martin & Co. guitars, said he and Faughey traded e-mails on the evening of her death about a variety of topics, including Kunsman. Hurley, a recently retired Sunday Times of London reporter, said Faughey had reached out to Kunsman after he “lost his way a little bit.”

In her last message, Faughey mentioned Kunsman but gave no indication that she was concerned about her safety or that she was expecting any visitors.

Hurley said he found it hard to believe Kunsman had anything to do with the attack, a view echoed by Faughey's husband, Walter Adam. He told reporters Kunsman was a friend of the couple.

Kunsman said that when detectives arrived he hadn't even heard about Faughey's death. “It didn't become clear to me until during the questioning what had happened,” he said.

The killer left behind several clues, dropping two bags near the basement door through which he escaped. The bags were filled with adult diapers, women's clothing, rope, duct tape and eight knives apparently not used in the attack, police said.

Police also recovered three knives at the scene, including a 9-inch knife and a meat cleaver that were apparently bent from the force of the attack.

Investigators initially believed the killer may be a patient of Faughey, but were also questioning other acquaintances.

Detectives were trying to determine whether the killer was a patient of Faughey's or Shinbach's but have been unable to access medical records because of federal privacy laws.

Police were working with the Manhattan district attorney's office to obtain subpoenas for the information in patient records, which are protected under the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly wasn't sure how long the effort would take.

Faughey, a licensed psychologist, described herself as a specialist in cognitive behavioral therapy. On her Web site, Faughey said she treated patients for relationship issues, coping with breakups, anxiety, panic attacks, stress over job changes and online intimacy, such as relationship issues arising from computer and text messaging.

Colleagues said she was unlikely to have knowingly seen a patient who had a problem with aggression or violence.

Faughey was an avid guitar player. In the past few years, she had attended several get-togethers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere with fellow Martin guitar enthusiasts and had become fast friends with some of them.

She named her six-string guitar Little Anna, which she adoringly described in one posting on the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum as the “archetype of the trusted friend, sister, confidante.”

http://theday.com/re.aspx?re=349ce8ff-a2de-4154-bb3a-c2beea59e8d4

(First Story) New York — Police hunted Wednesday for a man who entered a Manhattan therapist's office with a bag of knives and a meat cleaver and went on a bloody rampage, hacking a psychologist to death and seriously injuring a colleague who responded to the victim's screams.

Three knives were recovered at the scene, including a 9-inch knife and a meat cleaver apparently bent from use in the attack, police said. The therapist's office was in shambles: Furniture was overturned, shades torn and blood was sprayed on the walls and pooled on the floor. The victim suffered 15 stab wounds, including a gash to her head believed to be from the meat cleaver, police said.

“The condition of the room was that of a fierce struggle,” said chief police spokesman Paul Browne.

Investigators have not identified the suspect in the deadly attack on Kathryn Faughey, and were still trying to determine if he was a patient at the clinic. Authorities released a sketch of a balding, middle-aged man believed to be the killer along with surveillance videotapes of the attacker entering and leaving the building, and said he left behind two bags that contained tantalizing and bizarre clues.

A roller suitcase was filled with adult diapers and women's clothing, including blouses and slippers, and a smaller second bag was filled with eight knives, rope and duct tape that were not apparently used in the attack, police said.

Believing the killer may have been injured in the attack, authorities issued alerts to area hospitals and were looking through Faughey's computer files for any clues. They were also analyzing surveillance footage to see if the he had been to the office prior to the attack.

The attack rattled residents of the affluent Manhattan neighborhood, who feared a violent slasher was in their midst. It also shocked the mental health care community and raised questions about safety protections at therapist's offices.

“Everyone in the building is very nervous, because we know that this person is loose. It's very frightening,” said Linda Elliott, who lives in the building where the attack occured.

The stabbing happened Tuesday night at Faughey's office in a 13-story apartment building on East 79th Street, in a bustling neighborhood just blocks from a major hospital complex, police said.

The suspect, carrying the two bags and dressed in a three-quarter-length green coat, knit cap and gloves, breezed past the building's doorman, saying he had an appointment with Dr. Kent Shinbach, a 70-year-old geriatric psychiatrist who worked in the same office suite as the victim, according to police. Shinbach had office hours into the evening, police said, but it wasn't clear whether Shinbach or Faughey was the intended target.

The suspect walked into the suite waiting room, where a female patient was waiting to see Shinbach, and at some point went into Faughey's office and started to attack her, police said. It wasn't clear how long the struggle continued before Shinbach heard Faughey's screams and ran to help. The traumatized female patient, who was in Shinbach's office during the attack, was being questioned by authorities.

The suspect apparently didn't recognize Shinbach when he opened the door, and said “She's dead,” referring to Faughey who was laying behind her desk, police said. He then attacked the psychiatrist, stabbing at Shinbach and pinning him to the wall with a chair before stealing $90 and escaping through a basement door.

Shinbach was in serious condition at New York Hospital with slash wounds on his head, face and hands.

Blood was found on the basement doorknob, and police said the route outside from the first-floor office wasn't very obvious; it was possible the suspect knew where he was going. Surveillance tapes show the suspect deliberately leaving the luggage by the basement door before walking out.

Shinbach screamed out to the street from Faughey's office for help, and the building doorman called 911 around 9 p.m., but by then the suspect had escaped.

The incident sent shockwaves through the city's large community of mental health professionals.

“This is, I think, an extraordinary occurrence,” said Sharon Brennan, a psychologist in Manhattan and a spokeswoman for the New York State Psychological Association. “It has had a shocking impact on the whole New York community.”

Faughey, a licensed psychologist and graduate of Yeshiva University in the Bronx, described herself as a specialist in cognitive behavioral therapy, which focuses on changing thoughts that cause feelings or behaviors. Neighbors described her as a tall, well-dressed woman who was reserved and private but friendly.

On her Web site, Faughey said she treated patients for relationship issues, coping with breakups, anxiety, panic attacks, stress over job changes and online intimacy, such as relationship issues arising from computer and text messaging.

In an interview with The New York Times in 2004, Faughey offered some advice on breaking up in a digital age: “In the old days it was burn the letters,” she said. “Today, clear the hard drive.”

Serious attacks by patients on their mental health providers are rare, but they do happen — usually in institutions that see more seriously ill patients.

A psychiatrist in Omaha died from head injuries in August, several days after a patient with a grudge and a history of violence attacked him as he arrived at a medical center.

It is common for therapists who see patients in their homes or private offices to install alarm systems, or even help buzzers, in the event that a patient starts to lose control.

In Manhattan, these safety systems are often complemented by the usual security systems for office buildings, which include doormen and video cameras.

“Safety is always a concern,” Brennan said. She added that therapists are thoroughly trained in how to assess a patient's potential for violence, and would normally see patients in a private setting only if they had determined that the safety risk was low.

This is survellience video of the killer entering the building with 2 suitcases, one in his hand and one rolling behind him. These suitcases were filled with odd things such as womens clothing, depends diapers, and meat cleavers.

 A sketch of the killer.

http://theday.com/re.aspx?re=7026ae77-dc08-42d0-9f11-5a4a62ef3890

DEKALB, Ill. - If there is such a thing as a profile of a mass murderer, Steven Phillip Kazmierczak didn't fit it: outstanding student, polite and industrious, with what looked like a bright future in the criminal justice field.

And yet on Thursday, Kazmierczak, armed with three handguns and a brand-new pump-action shotgun he had carried onto campus in a guitar case, stepped from behind a screen on the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University and opened fire on a geology class.

He killed five students and then himself in a lecture hall where he himself had once helped teach a class.

University Police Chief Donald Grady said, without giving details, that Kazmierczak, 27, had become erratic in the past two weeks after he had stopped taking his medication. But that seemed to come as news to many of those who knew him, and the attack itself was positively baffling.

"We had no indications at all this would be the type of person that would engage in such activity," Grady said. He described the gunman as a good student during his time at NIU, and by all accounts a "fairly normal" person.

Exactly what set Kazmierczak off — and why he picked his former university and that particular lecture hall — remained a mystery. Police said they found no suicide note.

Authorities were searching for a woman who police believe may have been Kazmierczak's girlfriend. According to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is still under investigation, investigators were looking into whether Kazmierczak and the woman recently broke up.

Investigators learned that a week ago, on Feb. 9, Kazmierczak walked into a Champaign, gun store and picked up two guns — the Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun. He bought the two other handguns at the same shop — a Hi-Point .380 on Dec. 30 and a Sig Sauer on Aug. 6.

All four guns were bought legally from a federally licensed firearms dealer, said Thomas Ahern, an agency spokesman. At least one criminal background check was performed. Kazmierczak had no criminal record.

Kazmierczak had a State Police-issued firearms owners identification card, which is required in Illinois to own a gun, authorities said. Such cards are rarely issued to those with recent mental health problems. The application asks: "In the past five years have you been a patient in any medical facility or part of any medical facility used primarily for the care or treatment of persons for mental illness?"

Kazmierczak, who went by Steve, graduated from NIU in 2007 and was a graduate student in sociology there before leaving last year and moving on to the graduate school of social work at the University of Illinois in Champaign, 130 miles away.

A U.S. Army official said Kazmierczak had enlisted in the Army soon after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. He delayed entry and did not begin basic training for several months.

Very early in his basic training, in February 2002, Kazmierczak was discharged from the Army for unknown reasons. He did not complete basic training.

'Saw nothing to suspect'
Unlike Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho — a sullen misfit who could barely look anyone in the eye, much less carry on a conversation — Kazmierczak appeared to fit in just fine.

His work on prison issues had drawn notice in academic circles, according to published reports. And he had once helped teach a class in Cole Hall, the scene of Thursday’s tragedy, according to old documents on the Northern Illinois University Web site.

At the time of Thursday’s shooting spree, Kazmierczak (pronounced kaz-MEER-check), a native of Elk Grove Village in suburban Chicago, was a graduate student in the School of Social Work on the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois, authorities said.

In a post that remains on a Northern Web site, apparently a brief autobiography that he wrote in seeking the treasurer’s post of the Northern chapter of the Academic Criminal Justice Association, Kazmierczak said, “I've worked very hard as a student. … I feel that I'm committed to social justice.”

Academic honor, a teaching position
Kazmierczak had been honored two years ago by Northern Illinois University with a dean's award for his work in sociology, the Chicago Tribune reported. According to the newspaper, Kazmierczak “had established himself as an authority on prison systems, having coauthored a manuscript on self-injury in prison and the role of religion in the formation of early prisons in the United States.”

The Tribune said Kazmierczak wrote both papers under the guidance of nationally renowned criminal-justice expert Jim Thomas, a professor emeritus at Northern.

Thomas could not be reached by telephone on Friday. He responded to e-mail with an automated reply: “We are all stunned by Steve's involvement. He is the last person in the world that we would have expected to engage in any violent act.”

According to the Tribune’s report, Kazmierczak attended Northern as recently as last spring before enrolling at the University of Illinois campus. While at Northern, the newspaper said, he served as vice president of NIU’s criminal justice association chapter. Web pages maintained by Thomas show a photograph of Kazmierczak, Thomas and two other men identified as instructors for Sociology 170, an introductory course in Room 100 of Cole Hall in the fall of 2005. Thursday’s attack occurred in Room 101 of Cole Hall.

Chris Larrison, an assistant professor of social work, said Kazmierczak did data entry for Larrison's research grant on mental health clinics. Larrison was stunned by the shooting rampage, as was the gunman's faculty adviser, professor Jan Carter-Black.

"He was engaging, motivated, responsible. I saw nothing to suggest that there was anything troubling about his behavior," she said.

Carter-Black said Kazmierczak wanted to focus on mental health issues and enrolled in August in a course she taught about human behavior and the social environment, but withdrew in September because he had gotten a job with the prison system.

He worked briefly as a full-time correction officer at the Rockville Correctional Facility, an adult medium-security prison in Rockville, Ind., about 80 miles from Champaign. His tenure there lasted only from Sept. 24 to Oct. 9, after which Indiana prisons spokesman Doug Garrison said "he just didn't show up one day."

Kazmierczak had left the job and resumed classes full-time at the Urbana-Champaign campus in January, Carter-Black said.

His University of Illinois student ID depicts a smiling, clean-cut Kazmierczak, unlike the scowling, menacing-looking images of Cho that surfaced after his rampage.

A stand-out student
NIU President John Peters said Kazmierczak compiled "a very good academic record, no record of trouble" at the 25,000-student campus in DeKalb. He won at least two awards and served as an officer in two student groups dedicated to promoting understanding of the criminal justice system.

Speaking Friday in Lakeland, Fla., Kazmierczak's distraught father did not immediately provide any clues to what led to the bloodshed.

"Please leave me alone. ... This is a very hard time for me," Robert Kazmierczak told reporters, throwing his arms up and weeping after emerging briefly from his house. He declined further comment about his son and went back inside his house, saying he was diabetic. A sign on the front door said: "Illini fans live here."

In Illinois, the gunman's sister, Susan Kazmierczak, posted a statement on the door of her Urbana home that said "We are both shocked and saddened. In addition to the loss of innocent lives, Steven was a member of our family. We are grieving his loss as well as the loss of life resulting from his actions."

Shocking news hits home
Neighbors in the brick apartment building in Champaign where Kazmierczak last lived were shocked to hear he was the gunman."It's not possible," said Maurice Darling, 80, who lives in an adjacent second-floor apartment. "He seemed to be much too nice."

He said the tall, thin and bespectacled Kazmierczak shared the apartment with a woman and neither showed any sign of anger or aggression. "They were friendly, agreeable — just like any neighbor would be," she said.

Chelsea Thrash, a 25-year-old waitress who lives with her 3-year-old daughter in the apartment directly beneath Kazmierczak's, said he was always up late and there was frequently a lot of "trampling" noises coming from above the hardwood floors. She went up and knocked on the door once recently. It was 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. to request a little quiet. She recalled Kazmierczak had said through the closed door, "Oh, I'm sorry — I dropped my weight."

"It's kind of creepy," she said. "I never thought someone in this tiny corner of southwest Champaign would ever dream of that, let alone carry it out, and have that above me and my daughter."

Kazmierczak grew up in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, not far from O'Hare Airport. His family lived most recently in a middle-class neighborhood of mostly one-story tract homes before moving away early in this decade. His mother died in Florida in 2006 at age 58.

He was a B student at Elk Grove High School, where school district spokeswoman Venetia Miles said he was active in band and took Japanese before graduating in 1998. He was also in the chess club.

'Everyone hit the floor'
At NIU, six white crosses were placed on a snow-covered hill around the center of campus, which was closed Friday. They included the names of four victims — Daniel Parnmenter, Ryanne Mace, Julianna Gehant, Catalina Garcia. The two other crosses were blank, though officials have identified Kazmierczak's final victim as Gayle Dubowski.

Allyse Jerome, 19, a sophomore from Schaumburg, recalled how the gunman, dressed in black and a stocking cap, burst through a stage door in 200-seat Cole Hall just before class was about to let out. He squeezed off more than 50 shots as screaming students ran and crawled for cover.

"Honestly, at first everyone thought it was a joke," Jerome said. Everyone hit the floor, she said. Then she got up and ran, but tripped. She said she felt like "an open target."

"He could've decided to get me," Jerome said. "I thought for sure he was going to get me."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23171567/

Update:

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March, The Associated Press has learned.

U.S. officials said Thursday that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire missiles from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the options have not yet been discussed publicly. Deputy national security advisor James Jeffries, Gen. James Cartwright, Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman, and NASA administrator Michael Griffin will hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m. EST to discuss the satellite. The disabled satellite is expected to hit the Earth the first week of March. Officials said the Navy would likely shoot it down before then, using a special missile modified for the task.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23166344/

Washington — A large U.S. spy satellite has lost power and could hit the Earth in late February or early March, government officials said Saturday.

The satellite, which no longer can be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down, they said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is classified as secret. It was not clear how long ago the satellite lost power, or under what circumstances.

“Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation,” said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, when asked about the situation after it was disclosed by other officials. “Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause.”

He would not comment on whether it is possible for the satellite to perhaps be shot down by a missile. He said it would be inappropriate to discuss any specifics at this time.

A senior government official said that lawmakers and other nations are being kept apprised of the situation.

Such an uncontrolled re-entry could risk exposure of U.S. secrets, said John Pike, a defense and intelligence expert. Spy satellites typically are disposed of through a controlled re-entry into the ocean so that no one else can access the spacecraft, he said.

Pike also said it's not likely the threat from the satellite could be eliminated by shooting it down with a missile, because that would create debris that would then re-enter the atmosphere and burn up or hit the ground.

Pike, director of the defense research group GlobalSecurity.org, estimated that the spacecraft weighs about 20,000 pounds and is the size of a small bus. He said the satellite would create 10 times less debris than the Columbia space shuttle crash in 2003. Satellites have natural decay periods, and it's possible this one died as long as a year ago and is just now getting ready to re-enter the atmosphere, he said.

As for possible hazardous material in the spacecraft, Pike said it might contain beryllium, a light metal with a high melting point that is used in the defense and aerospace industries. Breathing beryllium can lead to chronic, incurable respiratory problems.

Jeffrey Richelson, a senior fellow with the National Security Archive, said the spacecraft likely is a photo reconnaissance satellite. Such eyes in the sky are used to gather visual information from space about adversarial governments and terror groups, including construction at suspected nuclear sites or militant training camps. The satellites also can be used to survey damage from hurricanes, fires and other natural disasters.

The largest uncontrolled re-entry by a NASA spacecraft was Skylab, the 78-ton abandoned space station that fell from orbit in 1979. Its debris dropped harmlessly into the Indian Ocean and across a remote section of western Australia.

In 2000, NASA engineers successfully directed a safe de-orbit of the 17-ton Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, using rockets aboard the satellite to bring it down in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.

In 2002, officials believe debris from a 7,000-pound science satellite smacked into the Earth's atmosphere and rained down over the Persian Gulf, a few thousand miles from where they first predicted it would plummet.

http://theday.com/re.aspx?re=8c5f6461-7583-47ab-8eda-e9e6aef57fdc

After decades of inattention to the possible psychiatric side effects of experimental medicines, the Food and Drug Administration is now requiring drug makers to study closely whether patients become suicidal during clinical trials.

The new rules represent one of the most profound changes of the past 16 years to regulations governing drug development. But since the FDA's oversight of experimental medicines is done in secret, the agency's shift has not been announced publicly.

The drug industry, however, is keenly aware of the change. Makers of drugs to treat obesity, urinary incontinence, epilepsy, smoking cessation, depression and many other conditions are being asked for the first time by the drug agency to put a comprehensive suicide assessment into their clinical trials.

In recent months, the agency has sent letters — it would not say how many — to drug makers requiring that they use such a scale. Merck, Sanofi-Aventis and Eli Lilly are all using a detailed suicide assessment in clinical trials being conducted now.

The seeds for the new federal effort were planted four years ago with the discovery that antidepressants may cause some children and teenagers to become suicidal. Top agency officials at first discounted the finding but commissioned researchers from Columbia University's department of psychiatry, led by Kelly L. Posner, to reanalyze the drugs' clinical trials. This work caused the drug agency and its experts to view the risk as real.

Then it received an application for rimonabant, a much-heralded obesity drug developed by a French drug giant, Sanofi-Aventis. As agency medical reviewers pored over the drug's clinical trial data, they discovered hints that it could cause psychiatric problems, too.

Unsettled by their experience with antidepressants, agency reviewers again mandated the use of Posner's system. The assessment found that the drug doubled the risks of suicidal symptoms. In June, an FDA advisory committee voted unanimously that the agency reject rimonabant because of its psychiatric effects, and Sanofi-Aventis withdrew the application although the drug is sold in Europe.

Just this month, the results of a trial of Merck's obesity drug, taranabant, were published showing similar psychiatric problems. Meanwhile, fears have grown that drugs used to treat epilepsy, seizures and mood disorders may have similar effects. An extensive examination of these medicines by the drug agency should be completed this year.

Suddenly, agency officials realized that multiple classes of medicines might cause dangerous psychiatric problems.

“Clearly we were somewhat surprised when this signal emerged in the pediatric antidepressant data,” said Dr. Thomas P. Laughren, director of the drug agency's division of psychiatry products. “So various groups within FDA are now looking at suicidality more broadly as a possible adverse event.”

The drug agency's concerns are consistent with a growing body of research confirming that behavior is heavily influenced not only by genes but also by seemingly innocuous changes in body chemistry. Drugs not reaching the brain were once thought to be largely free of mental effects.

“One lesson from pharmacology is that you can see effects on emotion and cognition without the drug entering the brain if a drug leads to peripheral changes in” other chemicals that enter the brain, said Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

Some critics say that the agency's new focus on psychiatric side effects is long overdue.

“The list of drugs that causes psychiatric problems is a very long one,” said Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's health research group.

Medicines to treat acne, hypertension, high cholesterol, swelling, heartburn, pain, bacterial infections and insomnia can all cause psychiatric problems, effects that were discovered in most cases after the drugs were approved and used in millions of patients. Some drugs cause depression so often that doctors prescribe antidepressants prophylactically with them.

Among medicines still for sale, the FDA has determined that the drugs' benefits outweigh their psychiatric risks. Still, the agency now wants to uncover such problems more reliably and before approval.

There are two reasons that the FDA for years was inattentive to the psychiatric effects of new medicines. First, distinguishing between mental problems that spring from a disease and those that result from its treatment is often difficult. For antidepressants, many researchers suggested that suicidal behaviors resulted because, as patients' depression lifted, they suddenly had the energy to carry out previous suicidal thoughts.

Second, drug side effects are often first identified in clinical trials when multiple doctors treating hundreds of patients record similar problems in trial notes. But in contrast to such problems as rashes or liver toxicity, terms to describe depression or suicidal thoughts can vary widely, making them hard to discern.

“The whole spectrum of suicidal thoughts, ideation and attempts is much more difficult to define and study than” other drug problems, said Dr. Eric Colman, deputy director of the drug agency's division of metabolic and endocrine products.

Indeed, the agency's initial review of the effects of antidepressants in children was plagued by inconsistent and erroneous observations by investigators. A 10-year-old boy who tried to hang himself was listed only as having a “personality disorder,” an overdose of 11 tablets was called a “medication error” and a girl who slapped herself in the face was labeled as having attempted suicide.

http://theday.com/re.aspx?re=1503631a-6617-49e5-ba49-d57b6e3468b2

New York — Under mounting pressure from law enforcement and parents, MySpace agreed Monday to take steps to protect youngsters from online sexual predators and bullies, including searching for ways to better verify users' ages.

The hugely popular online hangout will create a task force of industry professionals to improve the safety of users, and other social-networking sites will be invited to participate. “We must keep telling children that they're not just typing into a computer. They're sharing themselves with the world,” said North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper.

The deal comes as sites such as MySpace and Facebook have grown exponentially in recent years, with teenagers making up a large part of their membership. This has created a new potential venue for sexual predators who lie about their age to lure young victims and for cyber bullies who send threatening and anonymous messages.

The only state not joining the agreement was Texas, where the attorney general said he cannot support the effort unless MySpace takes action to verify users' ages.

“We do not believe that MySpace.com — or any other social-networking site — can adequately protect minors” without an age-verification system, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said. “We are concerned that our signing the joint statement would be misperceived as an endorsement of the inadequate safety measures.”

Monday's announcement was short on specifics about how improvements would be carried out. Skeptics doubt MySpace and similar sites can eliminate online predation because age-verification technology is difficult to implement and predators are good at circumventing restrictions.

Parry Aftab, executive director of Wiredsafety.org, a children's Internet safety group, said the agreement was a good first step but could have unforeseen consequences.

“There's no system that will work for age verification without putting kids at risk,” she said. “Age verification requires that you have a database of kids and if you do, that database is available to hackers and anyone who can get into it.”

Aftab estimates that 20 percent of teens have met someone online that they had never met in person, and there are numerous examples of sexual abuse arising from MySpace encounters.

On Monday, prosecutors in Queens announced that two girls younger than 15 were lured via MySpace to the home of a couple who allegedly plied them with alcohol, engaged them in group sex and took them to a strip club where the girls danced on stage.

A 15-year-old girl from Texas was allegedly lured to a meeting, drugged and assaulted in 2006 by an adult MySpace user. And a 13-year-old girl in Missouri hanged herself in 2006 after receiving mean messages on MySpace she thought came from another teen that actually were sent as a hoax.

MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has more than 110 million active users worldwide, and Facebook claims more than 61 million active users.

Investigators have grown increasingly interested in the sites in their search for sexual offenders. New York investigators said they set up Facebook profiles last year as 12- to 14-year olds and were quickly contacted by users looking for sex.

Over the last two years, MySpace said it has implemented more than 100 safety and security innovations, including identifying predators and kicking them off the site and pushing for tougher laws in this area. The company also said that it hopes other sites follow its lead in pushing for tougher standards.

“We thank the attorneys general for a thoughtful and constructive conversation on Internet safety,” MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said in a statement. “This is an industrywide challenge, and we must all work together to create a safer Internet.”

Facebook said it welcomed the increased vigilance.

“We are happy to work further with the states to develop and deploy strategies to protect kids online,” the company said in a statement.

Under the agreement, profiles for users under age 16 will be set to private so no strangers can get information from their profile; users can block anyone over 18 from contacting them; and people over 18 cannot add anyone under 16 as a friend in their network unless they have their last name or their e-mail address.

Anthony Apreda, a 12-year-old from Teaneck, N.J., said he lied about his age to create a MySpace account two years ago. He said he was 18, and noted that other kids frequently do the same thing.

“You just put an age and a date and you just put it on there,” the sixth-grader said.

MySpace said it is creating a database where parents can submit children's e-mail addresses to prevent their children from setting up profiles.

The multistate investigation of the sites — announced last year — was aimed at putting together measures to protect minors and remove pornographic material, but lawsuits were still possible, officials said.

http://theday.com/re.aspx?re=04596425-7959-49cf-a204-072f0c843656

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian rescuers on Friday saved 11 people stranded for nearly three months in a remote area of the Pacific coast after a fishing trip went wrong, local media reported.

The group had survived by eating flour they scavenged from a deserted military base, hunting for game and burning furniture for fuel and heating, the Vesti-24 television station reported.

Their two boats were damaged in a storm on October 10 during a fishing expedition off the Kamchatka Peninsula.

One vessel was lost and they were unable to repair the second, forcing the group, which included three women, to remain in their makeshift shelter with no way of calling for help.

When their food supplies started to run low, they sent five of their party to seek help. After walking for four days, the five found a military unit which then sent for help.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080104/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_russia_fishermen_1

The dreams ended abruptly Friday afternoon in a shabby, creaky elevator inside Building A of the Crystal Avenue high-rises when someone stabbed Umrani, 23, while he was on his way to pick up his two children.

The weapon pierced Umrani's heart, his family said, and he was pronounced dead a short time later at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital.

Umrani's relatives, including his father and two of his brothers, said Umrani was picking up his two children from a babysitter who lives in an apartment on the fourth floor of Building A when he was stabbed in the chest.

Police on Saturday night had made no arrests but said they are searching for "persons of interest" in Umrani's death. They said they believe the victim and the assailant knew one another but declined to release any additional information.

Umrani's body will undergo an autopsy today at the Chief State Medical Examiner's office in Farmington, an official there said.

Members of Umrani's family gathered Saturday morning at the family's home at 32 Hempstead St., to grieve, make arrangements for his burial and share memories.

They said they believe Umrani's 4-year-old son, Najai, and 3-year-old daughter, Naliyah, may have been with him at the time of the stabbing.

Police were called to the Crystal Avenue public housing complex shortly before 3 p.m., after residents found Umrani bleeding and collapsed in an elevator. One witness reported hearing children crying for an ambulance.

He was taken to Lawrence & Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving.

Rashad Umrani, the victim's older brother, said it is difficult to believe that his brother is gone. He described going to the hospital on Friday after hearing the news.

"It's like something you see in a movie. A lady comes out and tells me he's dead. It's something you never think is going to happen to you. It's something I never thought would happen to me."

He said his brother had broken up with the mother of his two children but remained devoted to his son and daughter, visiting them frequently and taking them for overnight stays. He was planning to pick up his two children and keep them overnight, said his fiancée, Kaisha Reyes of Groton.

Reyes said she and Umrani are expecting a child in July and were planning to marry before then.

"He went to get the kids when this happened," she said. "He was supposed to come back home and watch movies with the kids. I just want him to come back. I love him so much, and I just want my baby back."

Though Umrani had an arrest record that included two counts of third-degree assault, his uncle said the arrests were the result of "youthful indiscretions."

"He wasn't a criminal," Muwakkil Aluqaah said. "He was such a kind man. He would take the shirt off his back and give it to you."

Court records indicate Umrani and the mother of his two children, Shermika Harris, of 48 Crystal Ave. in New London, had been embroiled in a legal battle over custody and support arrangements for their two children.

Umrani was the son of Naim Umrani and was one of six siblings who grew up in the Hempstead Street home the family shared.

His brothers, his uncle and his father on Saturday described him as an independent, smart and fun-loving man, one who was awarded a statewide writing prize in middle school and was accepted to Yale two years ago but didn't go because he wanted to work so he could support his children. He went to mosque weekly, his father said, and worked two jobs, one unloading container ships at City Pier, to pay child support.

"He liked to always be in charge," his father said.

He said he is less concerned now with finding out who killed his son than with getting his body back from the medical examiner's office so Muhannad can be buried, in the Muslim tradition, within two days of his death.

"I could care less if they get this guy or not because justice will always be served," he said.

Naim Umrani said he hasn't been told the whereabouts of his son's children.

Rashad Umrani said he is saddened that people use violence to settle disputes.

"If you really have a problem with somebody ... you should figure out a way to work it out," he said. "Because murder, you can't take that back."

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=cedb50f2-bf00-4e7f-a6dc-bc62326786b2

This is the man who stabbed Muhannad.

New London — Police today arrested a suspect today in the murder of Muhannad Umrani, 23, who was stabbed to death Dec. 28 at 48 Crystal Ave.

Kenya Snell, 27, of New London, was arrested at 4:15 today and charged with murder and two counts of risk of injury to a minor.

Police are holding Snell on $2 million bond. He is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow in New London Superior Court.

Snell is cousin to the mother of Umrani’s two children, according to a friend of the mother. Umrani was picking up his children at the high rise when the murder happened, according to family members. A neighbor said Snell was watching the children for Umrani and his ex-girlfiend.

http://theday.com/re.aspx?re=a9e7fa1c-06cf-4499-9cd0-ffb3e79232e7

This is so ridiculous, I can't even read the rest of the article! What in gods name was the PA Supreme Court thinking when they granted this women child support?? A sperm doner is just that, a DONER. After that, you're on your own, if you had no one to support you, well you should have thought about that before having a baby! Be more prepared next time! If I was that doner, I would say "Well give me my kids back than!". If you want to read the rest of this stupid ruling, click the link at the end.

HARRISBURG, Pa. - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that a woman who promised a sperm donor he would not have to pay child support cannot renege on the deal.

The 3-2 decision overturns lower court rulings under which Joel L. McKiernan had been paying up to $1,500 a month to support twin boys born in August 1994 to Ivonne V. Ferguson, his former girlfriend and co-worker.

“Where a would-be donor cannot trust that he is safe from a future support action, he will be considerably less likely to provide his sperm to a friend or acquaintance who asks, significantly limiting a would-be mother’s reproductive prerogatives,” Justice Max Baer wrote in the majority opinion issued last week.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22488113/

As a delivery driver at the Lowe’s in Grand Rapids, Mich., Steve Flaig knew that you could find a lot of things you need in the superstore, but he never dreamed that one of them would be his birth mother.

But that’s where Flaig’s four-year search for his mother ended, not in aisle seven, but in the office, where the co-worker he knew casually in passing as Chris turned out to be the woman who gave him up for adoption after his birth 22 years ago.

“Passing each other, it was just, ‘Hey,’ ” Christine Tallady, 45, told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira on Thursday. “I didn’t really have a lot of contact with him. As a delivery person, he’d get his deliveries, leave the store, do his deliveries, come back and then pretty much leave. I was based in the store, so I stayed in the office.”

When Flaig turned 18, and with the blessing and encouragement of his adoptive parents, he began searching for his birth mother. He started at D.A. Blodgett for Children, the Grand Rapids agency that had handled his adoption. Tallady had left her records open, listing her name in the hope that the child she gave birth to as a young single woman would contact her someday.

It wasn’t an intense search, but more of an off-and-on thing on the Internet. After more than three years without success, he went back to the agency and found that the reason he couldn’t find his mother was because he was misspelling her last name. He put the proper spelling in a search engine and up popped a Christine Tallady living in Grand Rapids at an address not far from his own home and near the Lowe’s where he worked.

“I thought, wow, that’s really close to here, where I work,” he told NBC News. “I bet I’ve seen her in the store.”

‘You’ve got to be kidding me’
Two months ago, he learned that she didn’t just come in the store, she worked there. But now that he was so close to the person he'd been seeking for so many years, he didn’t know how to approach her.

“It’s a bizarre situation, and I was not 100 percent sure as to what to do about it,  how to bring it to her attention and how to break the news to her,” he told Vieira. “There’s always that fear that it could potentially go wrong or something wouldn’t go right. So I had to be 100 percent sure before I went ahead with it.”

Finally, he went back to the adoption agency and asked for advice. An employee there offered to call Tallady and break the news to her for Flaig. She told Tallady only her son’s first name and that he worked in the store with her.

“I just sat down and just started crying,” she said. “I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ ”

She started running down the list of Steves who worked in the store, eliminating them by age until she settled on the nice young man who drove a delivery truck. Once she verified his birthday, she knew for certain who he was.

That was on Wednesday, Dec. 12. Flaig called her that afternoon and they agreed to meet for lunch at a nearby restaurant for a proper introduction.

“We met at a neutral place,” Tallady said. “I walked in; I saw him sitting there. He got out of his seat, and we just hugged and hugged and hugged and cried and cried. It was very emotional, very emotional.”

The best part for Tallady was seeing how well her son’s adoptive parents had done in raising him.

“He’s a good person, just a really good person,” she said. “It just makes you proud he turned out this way.”

For Flaig, the meeting filled what had been an empty space in his life. “It’s something that’s just kind of missing in your life,” he said. “It crosses your mind every day, thinking that this person’s out there somewhere, and I would love to meet them someday. It’s worked out wonderfully.”

‘They are just ecstatic ’
His roommate, Joel Brinks, told NBC that the meeting has changed Flaig profoundly.

“He’s infinitely happier,” Brinks said. “He constantly has a smile on his face and seems a lot more excited than he has been in a long time.”

That smile was still on his face as he sat next to his birth mother in the TODAY studio in New York, looking at her frequently and smiling fondly.

Tallady, too, was glowing. She’s married now, with two children, Alexandra, 12, and Brandon, 10. Her husband has known ever since they’ve been married that she had another son who’d been given up for adoption, and had supported her decision to meet with him. When she came home last Friday after having lunch with Flaig, he told her she was radiant.

She sat down with her two children and told them that she had just met their older half brother.

“Tears — tears of joy” is how she described Alex and Brandon’s reactions. “They’re so excited they have a brother. They are just ecstatic — they haven’t met him yet. They’ve seen him on TV, but they haven’t met him.”

Flaig is looking forward to that meeting — yet another incomparable gift at this holiday season. He also can’t wait to introduce Tallady to his adoptive parents.

He has reason to be confident that they’ll become good friends. Not long ago, Flaig’s brother, who is also adopted, reunited with his birth mother and introduced her and her family to the Flaigs, whose family circle is getting bigger by the day.

“They’ve become pretty close with our family,” he told Vieira. “They were just over for dinner last week.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22340497/

GLENDALE, Calif. - The family of a 17-year-old girl who died hours after her health insurer reversed a decision and said it would pay for a liver transplant plans to sue the company, their attorney said Friday.

Nataline Sarkisyan died Thursday at about 6 p.m. at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center. She had been in a vegetative state for weeks, said her mother, Hilda.

Attorney Mark Geragos said he plans to ask the district attorney to press murder or manslaughter charges against Cigna HealthCare in the case. The insurer “maliciously killed her” because it did not want to bear the expense of her transplant and aftercare, Geragos said.

District Attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons declined to comment on the request for murder or manslaughter charges, saying it would be inappropriate to do so until Geragos submits evidence supporting his request.

The family’s “loss is immeasurable, and our thoughts and prayers are with them,” Cigna said in a news release Friday.

“We deeply hope that the outpouring of concern, care and love that are being expressed for Nataline’s family help them at this time,” the company said.

Nataline had been battling leukemia and received a bone marrow transplant from her brother. She developed a complication that caused her liver to fail.

Doctors at UCLA determined she needed a transplant and sent a letter to Cigna Corp.’s Cigna HealthCare on Dec. 11. The Philadelphia-based health insurance company denied payment for the transplant, saying the procedure was experimental and outside the scope of coverage.

The insurer reversed the decision Thursday as about 150 teenagers and nurses rallied outside of its office. But Nataline died hours later.

“They took my daughter away from me,” said Nataline’s father, Krikor, who appeared at the news conference with his 21-year-old son, Bedros.

Despite the reversal, Cigna said in an e-mail statement before she died that there was a lack of medical evidence showing the procedure would work in Nataline’s case.

“Cigna HealthCare has decided to make an exception in this rare and unusual case and we will provide coverage should she proceed with the requested liver transplant,” that statement read.

In their letter, the UCLA doctors said patients in situations similar to Nataline’s who undergo transplants have a six-month survival rate of about 65 percent.

One of the doctors, Robert Venick, declined to comment on the case Friday.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22357873/

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS JASON SCHEUERMAN nailed a suicide note to his barracks closet in Iraq, stepped inside and shot himself.

“Maybe finaly I can get some peace,” wrote the 20-year-old, misspelling “finally” but writing in a neat hand.

His parents didn't find out about the note for well over a year, and only then when it showed up in a government envelope in his father's rural North Carolina mailbox.

The one-page missive was among hundreds of pages of documents the soldier's family obtained and shared with The Associated Press after battling a military bureaucracy they feel didn't want to answer their questions, especially this: Why did Jason Scheuerman have to die?

What the soldier's father, Chris, would learn about his son's final days would lead the retired Special Forces commando, who teaches at Fort Bragg, to take on the very institution he's spent his life serving — and ultimately prompt an investigation by the Army Inspector General's office.

The documents, obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests filed by Chris Scheuerman, reveal a troubled soldier kept in Iraq despite repeated signs he was going to kill himself, including placing the muzzle of his weapon in his mouth multiple times.

Jason Scheuerman's story — pieced together with interviews and information in the documents — demonstrates how he was failed by the very support system that was supposed to protect him. In his case, a psychologist told his commanders to send him back to his unit because he was capable of feigning mental illness to get out of the Army.

He is not alone. At least 152 U.S. troops have taken their own lives in Iraq and Afghanistan since the two wars started, contributing to the Army's highest suicide rate in 26 years of keeping track. For the grieving parents, the answers don't come easily or quickly.

For Jason Scheuerman, death came on July 30, 2005, around 5:30 p.m., about 45 minutes after his first sergeant told the teary-eyed private that if he was intentionally misbehaving so he could leave the Army, he would go to jail, where he would be abused.

When the call came out over the unit's radios that there had been a death, one soldier would later tell investigators he suspected it was Scheuerman.

•••••

Scheuerman spent his early years on military posts playing GI Joe. The middle child, he divided his time after his parents' divorce between his mother's house in Lynchburg, Va., and his father's in North Carolina, where he went to high school.

He was nearly 6 feet tall and loved to eat. His mother, Anne, said sometimes at 10 p.m. she'd find him defrosting chicken to grill.

Likable and witty, he often joked around — even dressing up like a clown one night at church camp, said his pastor, Mike Cox of West Lynchburg Baptist Church. But he had a quiet, reflective side, too, and sometimes withdrew, Cox said.

“You always knew how he felt. He wore his emotions on his sleeve,” his mother said. “If he was angry, you knew it. If he was upset, you knew it.”

Scheuerman liked military history and writing, but decided college wasn't for him. After a short stint in landscaping, he followed what seemed an almost natural path into the military. His mother had spent a year in the Army, and his father, a physician's assistant, retired as an Army master sergeant. One of his two brothers also joined and is now in Afghanistan.

He enlisted in 2004 and was sent to Iraq from Fort Benning, Ga., in January 2005 with the 3rd Infantry Division. On leave a few months later, Scheuerman told his father he was having a hard time with combat and killing people.

“I've seen war,” his father said. “I told him that a lot of what he was seeing was normal. That we all feel it. That we're all afraid.”

Back in Iraq, things didn't improve. One soldier — whose name was blacked out on the documents like most others — said he saw Jason put the muzzle of his rifle in his mouth, and told investigators other soldiers had seen him do something similar.

“He said it was a joke,” the soldier said. “He said he had thought about it before but didn't have a plan to do it.”

Scheuerman was reprimanded for not bathing or shaving and spending too much time playing videogames. He misplaced a radio and didn't wear parts of his uniform. Sometimes, Scheuerman was singled out for punishment, one soldier told an investigator. “I don't know why,” the soldier said. Another said his noncommissioned officers were yelling at him “more days than not.”

His platoon sergeant said in a disciplinary note that Scheuerman's actions put everyone in danger. “If you continue on your present course of action, you may end up in a body bag,” he wrote.

In another, his squad leader said, “You have put me into a position where I have to treat you like a troublesome child. I hate being in this position. It makes me be someone I don't like.”

Scheuerman was made to do push-ups in front of Iraqi soldiers, which humiliated him.

As he was punished, “it appeared as though he was out of touch with reality; in a world all his own,” his platoon sergeant said in a report.

After the punishment, Scheuerman slept on the floor of his unit's operation's center in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

An Army chaplain who met with him about a month before he died said his mood had “drastically changed.” He said Scheuerman demonstrated disturbing behavior by “sitting with his weapon between his legs and bobbing his head on the muzzle.” He told Scheuerman's leaders to have his rifle and ammunition magazine “taken from him immediately” and for him to undergo a mental health evaluation.

Scheuerman checked on a mental health questionnaire that he had thoughts about killing himself, was uptight, anxious and depressed, had feelings of hopelessness and despair, felt guilty and was having work problems. But in person, the psychologist said, he denied having thoughts of suicide.

Less than a week later, Scheuerman's mother got an e-mail from her son telling her goodbye. She contacted a family support official at Fort Benning and later received a call saying her son had been checked and was fine. Later, her son sent her an instant message and said her phone call had made things worse.

The same day as her call, Scheuerman's company commander requested a mental evaluation, noting that the private was a “good soldier” but displays “distant, depression like symptoms.”

Visiting with the psychologist for the second time, Scheuerman said he sometimes saw other people on guard duty that other soldiers do not see, suggesting he was hallucinating. And he said that if he wasn't diagnosed as having a mental problem, he was going to be in trouble with his leader. Yet he again denied being suicidal, the psychologist reported.

The psychologist determined Scheuerman did not meet the criteria for a mental health disorder, and that a screening test he had taken indicated he was exaggerating. He told Scheuerman's leaders he was “capable of claiming mental illness in order to manipulate his command.”

Still, when he sent Scheuerman back to his barracks, he told the private's leaders that if Scheuerman claimed to be depressed, to take it seriously. He recommended Scheuerman sleep in an area where he could be watched, that most of his personal belongings and privileges be taken away for his safety.

The evaluation “created in the leaders' minds the idea that the soldier was a malingerer all along,” an officer from his unit evaluating the case as part of a post-suicide investigation would later determine.

Shortly after the psychologist's determination and a few weeks before he died, Scheuerman's Internet and phone communication were shut off. His parents did not hear from him again.

The night before he shot himself, his rifle — which had since been returned to him — was found in a Humvee. The next morning, one soldier said Scheuerman “was quiet and seemed depressed. He said he had a rough night and didn't sleep well.”

Later that day, he was punished again and given 14 days of extra duty.

Scheuerman had tears in his eyes, but one of his noncommissioned officers said he was surprisingly calm before he went to his room, weapon in hand.

“I told him to go upstairs and clean his gear and change his uniform,” his squad leader told investigators. “I was so angry with him, I went outside to smoke and talk to someone so I didn't blow up.”

Less than an hour later, he said he heard someone yelling that Scheuerman had done something.

“At that point, I knew I was already too late,” he said.

Scheuerman's body was discovered in a closet, blood streaming from his mouth.

•••••

Initially, Scheuerman's father said he trusted the Army would investigate his son's death and take action.

“I did not want to believe that it was as bad as I thought it was, so I chose not to make hasty judgments,” Scheuerman said from his kitchen table, sitting beside his ex-wife, whom he plans to remarry. “I chose to systematically try to get all the information that I could, and once I received all the information I could, my worst fears were realized.”

Each document that arrived brought more pain.

When a copy of his son's suicide note appeared, Scheuerman broke down crying. In the note, his son said he wanted to say goodbye, but his ability to contact the family was taken away “like everything else.” He said he'd brought dishonor on his family and his Army unit.

“I know you think I'm a coward for this but in the face of existing as I am now, I have no other choice,” Scheuerman wrote. “As the 1st Sgt said all I have to look forward to is a butt-buddy in jail, not much of a future.”

Chris Scheuerman wants to see a more thorough investigation, and some of his son's leaders punished — perhaps even criminally charged — and the psychologist brought before a medical peer review committee. “We will not see a statistical decrease in Army suicides until the Army gets serious about holding people accountable when they do not do what they are trained to do,” he said.

Citing privacy, Maj. Nathan Banks, an Army public affairs officer, declined to discuss the case.

Eventually, Jason Scheuerman's father sought the assistance of Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., who spoke with Army Secretary Pete Geren on Oct. 1 and asked him to initiate an investigation by the Inspector General's Office. Geren agreed.

The Scheuermans say they hope the investigation will bring about changes that will prevent other suicides.

“The people that I trusted with the safety of my son killed him,” Scheuerman said, “and that hurts beyond words, because we are a family of soldiers.”

http://theday.com/re.aspx?re=09fbaf83-84c5-4ae0-883e-3e56b8d5594a

TRENTON, N.J. - Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed into law Monday a measure that abolishes the death penalty, making New Jersey the first state in more than four decades to reject capital punishment.

The bill, approved last week by the state's Assembly and Senate, replaces the death sentence with life in prison without parole.

"This is a day of progress for us and for the millions of people across our nation and around the globe who reject the death penalty as a moral or practical response to the grievous, even heinous, crime of murder," Corzine said.

The measure spares eight men on the state's death row. On Sunday, Corzine signed orders commuting the sentences of those eight to life in prison without parole.

Among the eight spared is Jesse Timmendequas, a sex offender who murdered 7-year-old Megan Kanka in 1994. The case inspired Megan's Law, which requires law enforcement agencies to notify the public about convicted sex offenders living in their communities.

New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982 — six years after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions — but it hasn't executed anyone since 1963.

The state's move is being hailed across the world as a historic victory against capital punishment. Rome plans to shine golden light on the Colosseum in support. Once the arena for deadly gladiator combat and executions, the Colosseum is now a symbol of the fight against the death penalty.

"The rest of America, and for that matter the entire world, is watching what we are doing here today," said Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, a Democrat. "New Jersey is setting a precedent that I'm confident other states will follow."

The bill passed the Legislature largely along party lines, with controlling Democrats supporting the abolition and minority Republicans opposed. Republicans had sought to retain the death penalty for those who murder law enforcement officials, rape and murder children, and terrorists, but Democrats rejected that.

"It's simply a specious argument to say that, somehow, after six millennia of recorded history, the punishment no longer fits the crime," said Assemblyman Joseph Malone, a Republican.

Members of victims' families fought against the law.

"I will never forget how I've been abused by a state and a governor that was supposed to protect the innocent and enforce the laws," said Marilyn Flax, whose husband Irving was abducted and murdered in 1989 by death row inmate John Martini Sr.

Richard Kanka, Megan's father, noted Corzine signed the bill exactly 15 years to day that death row inmate Ambrose Harris kidnapped, raped and murdered 22-year-old artist Kristin Huggins of Lower Makefield, Pa..

"Just another slap in the face to the victims," Kanka said.

The last states to eliminate the death penalty were Iowa and West Virginia in 1965, according to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The nation has executed 1,099 people since the U.S. Supreme Court reauthorized the death penalty in 1976. In 1999, 98 people were executed, the most since 1976; last year 53 people were executed, the lowest since 1996.

Other states have considered abolishing the death penalty recently, but none has advanced as far as New Jersey.

The nation's last execution was Sept. 25 in Texas. Since then, executions have been delayed pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision on whether execution through lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071217/ap_on_re_us/death_penalty_new_jersey

WASHINGTON - Unable to override a promised veto, Democrats have backed down on their insistence that the 2008 foreign aid budget reverse President Bush's ban on providing aid to family planning groups abroad that offer abortions.

A measure to ease restrictions on international aid was stripped this weekend from a $500 billion-plus government-wide spending bill, which includes some $35 billion for the State Department and foreign aid programs.

Congress is expected to pass the bill this week. Eliminating the provision allows Democrats to wrap up their long-unfinished budget work and go on vacation before Christmas.

Democrats blamed the White House for threatening to block the bill if it included the measure, and Republicans who agreed to back the president.

"This dogmatic adherence to an illogical position diminishes our influence around the world and prevents us from working effectively to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancies and reduce abortions," said Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the House State and Foreign Operations Appropriations subcommittee.

Since taking office in 2001, Bush has prohibited any assistance to organizations overseas that perform or promote abortion. The policy was first initiated by President Reagan in 1984 at a population conference in Mexico City.

Democrats say an unintended consequence is an alarming shortage of contraceptives, particularly in poor rural areas. After taking control of Congress this year, the Democrats pushed through legislation to ease restrictions.

In June, the House voted 223-201 to allow any overseas organization to obtain U.S.-donated contraceptives.

The Senate followed suit in September with a stronger measure that would have reversed Bush's ban entirely and allowed financial assistance be given to any group, regardless of whether it performs abortions. That measure, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., was narrowly approved, 53-41.

The provisions were included as part of the House and Senate's foreign aid spending bills for the 2008 budget year, despite GOP objections.

"If we provide either cash or in-kind contributions or anything of value to pro-abortion organizations in other countries, we empower, enrich and enable them to expand abortion," said Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J.

Activists said this week they applaud Democrats for trying.

"It is unconscionable for a president to ignore the majority of the members of Congress, the majority of Americans and the best interests of millions of human beings because he is blinded by his own narrow beliefs," said Amy Coen, president of Population Action International. "Today, the shadow of one man darkens the lives of so many."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22299150/

I certainly do not condone or approve of drug use, especially cocaine, but Clinton's aide should look back a few years to when Bill Clinton was running and the opposing parties brought up his marijuana use. If anything, drug usage (MINOR use of drugs or alcohol) and realizing their mistakes (as Obama did ‘Man, I wasted a lot of time.’) would allow the canidite to have more of an open mind and have more experience with different cultures under his or her belt. Not to say it's a plus, but it's hardly a set back, and voters who get upset at this detail should take a good hard look in the mirror, or the current president. And I find it extremely hard to believe that Clinton or her advisor have not experimented with drugs or alcohol at one time or another. I cannot stand politicans who nit pick and try to put the opposing party down, pointing out their flaws, just to make themselves look better. I don't think it makes them look better at all, I think it makes them look desperate! I loved Bill Clinton. I remember my mother letting me stay home, and convincing my best friend Sojourner's grandmother to let her stay home, so we could watch his inauguration. But I don't think I like Hillary as much, she seems too stubborn and business like. I think people liked Bill Clinton because he was passionate. Hillary wouldn't admit she was wrong and apoligize for voting for the war, she is attacking Obama's slightest flaw. That's been almost her whole campaign, attacking Obama, his age, lack of experience, now his "drug usage". I don't know about you, but I want to know how a canidite can help me and my country and my community, not how well they were at gossiping in middle school.

CONCORD, N.H. - A top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign said Wednesday that Democrats should give more thought to Sen. Barack Obama’s admissions of illegal drug use before they pick a presidential candidate.

Obama’s campaign said the Clinton people were getting desperate. Clinton’s campaign tried to distance itself from the remarks, and the adviser said later he regretted making them.

Bill Shaheen, a national co-chairman of Clinton’s front-runner campaign, raised the issue during an interview with The Washington Post, posted on washingtonpost.com.

‘Openings for Republican dirty tricks’
Shaheen, an attorney and veteran organizer, said much of Obama’s background is unknown and could be a problem in November 2008 if he is the Democratic nominee. He said Republicans would work hard to discover new aspects of Obama’s admittedly spotty youth.

“It’ll be, ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?”’ said Shaheen, whose wife, Jeanne, is the state’s former governor and is running for the U.S. Senate next year.

“There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It’s hard to overcome,” Shaheen said.

Clinton’s campaign said it had nothing to do with his comments, and Shaheen said later he regretted them.

“I deeply regret the comments I made today and they were not authorized by the campaign in any way,” Bill Shaheen said in an e-mail released by the campaign.

Obama camp strikes back
A campaign spokeswoman, Kathleen Strand, earlier had said “Senator Clinton is out every day talking about the issues that matter to the American people. These comments were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way.”

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in response to Shaheen’s remarks:

“Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the fun part of this campaign, and now she’s moved from Barack Obama’s kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls. Senator Clinton’s campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he’s talked about the lessons he’s learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country. He plans on winning this campaign by focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people.”

Obama wrote about his teenage drug use in his memoir, “Dreams from My Father.” His rivals have largely remained silent on the subject.

“Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final fatal role of the young would-be black man,” Obama wrote. Mostly he smoked marijuana and drank alcohol, he wrote, but occasionally he would snort cocaine when he could afford it.

Speaking to Manchester high school students earlier this month, Obama said he was hardly a model student and had experimented with drugs and alcohol.

“You know, I made some bad decisions that I’ve actually written about. You know, got into drinking. I experimented with drugs,” he said. “There was a whole stretch of time that I didn’t really apply myself a lot. It wasn’t until I got out of high school and went to college that I started realizing, ‘Man, I wasted a lot of time.”’

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22226198/

At more than $3 for every gallon, heating oil costs are higher than ever. The poor, particularly elderly people on limited, fixed incomes are hard pressed to heat their homes. So what does our president propose? Cutting federal heat assistance funding.

President George W. Bush does not talk about compassionate conservatism anymore. No wonder. This policy is more like Ebenezer Scrooge conservatism. At least Mr. Scrooge mended his ways after the three ghosts visited him. Not so President Bush. He unashamedly defends continuing big tax breaks for the rich, but proposes cutting aid to the poor who can't heat their homes.

In the 1843 novelette “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, a kind gentleman seeking charitable donations asks Mr. Scrooge whether it would be “desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.”

The pre-repentant Mr. Scrooge replies that he has no interest in helping. So too was President Bush's answer when Congress came asking for increased assistance to help those who are forced to keep the thermostat at bone-chilling levels and wear layers of clothing to survive in their own homes.

The health and education-spending bill vetoed by the president included roughly $2.4 billion for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. That would have increased spending by $250 million from last year. President Bush wanted a $230 million cut, inexplicable given the increased cost of heating oil.

The Energy Department estimates heating oil costs will jump about 26 percent this winter, an average increase per home of $375. The National Energy Assistance Directors' Association, representing low-income energy assistance programs, contends the department is low-balling the increase. The average home will see a $700 increase this winter, according to association Executive Director Mark Wolfe.

With Congress and the White House at an impasse over how much money to expend, state fuel assistance programs don't know what to tell clients about what level of help will be available. Whichever figure is ultimately approved, it will probably not be enough for many, but at least the spending boost proposed by Congress would help reduce the suffering.

What was that fellow who came to Mr. Scrooge planning to do with the donation? “Endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the poor ... some means of warmth.”

It is shameful that 164 years later the richest nation in Earth's history cannot come up with enough money to assure its poor have “some means of warmth.”

Before it adjourns for the year Congress should again request increased funding for heat assistance, in a separate emergency bill if necessary.

Come on, Mr. President, don't be an old Scrooge, help those who are shivering by approving the funding increase.

http://theday.com/re.aspx?re=cc3ec7c4-c36a-4a02-a81a-6358bdbe3908

NEW YORK - It was one of the worst killing rampages in U.S. history. In August 1966, Charles Whitman murdered his wife and his mother, then climbed a tower at the University of Texas and used a high-powered rifle to fatally shoot 14 more people before being killed by police.

He left a note that said, "I cannot rationally pinpoint any specific reason for doing this." An autopsy later revealed he had a brain tumor, which some experts said may have affected his actions.

At the time, there was no way to detect such a tumor without surgery. But today, scientists have developed noninvasive brain scans that may reveal whether a person has a brain abnormality that could affect decision-making or trigger violence, with huge implications for the law.

Neuroscientists use functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques — in which a person's head is put in a machine like a giant magnet — to gaze deep within the brain to view neural regions that monitor behavior and regulate emotions.

What lies behind behavior
It is a young field, but one that ultimately could have as dramatic an impact on the legal system as DNA testing, said Michael Gazzaniga, the director of a new project to study the implications of neuroscience for the U.S. judicial system.

Neuroscience "is all about understanding brain mechanisms that underlie behavior," said Gazzaniga, who heads the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

In the Whitman case, it's impossible to know for sure if the tumor led to his actions, but there is now strong scientific evidence that the presence of brain abnormalities "does increase the probability of doing something violent," said Gazzaniga, who is a psychology professor.

The science, however, poses deep challenges for the legal system, which may confront a flood of criminal defendants armed with brain scanning results who try to argue that they shouldn't be held responsible for crimes.

It also raises complex issues of free will and privacy, such as whether society should try to institutionalize people whose brain scans indicate defects that may predispose them to violence.

"We have to examine very carefully how to use that information in a meaningful way," Gazzaniga said. "Someone who has an abnormal brain function may commit a crime, but there are a lot of people with that same brain lesion that don't engage in criminal activity."

The Law and Neuroscience Project, supported through a three-year, $10 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation, has gathered together scientists, legal scholars and philosophers from more than a dozen universities nationwide, as well as several judges.

Organizers of the project, whose honorary chair is former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, say they will address issues such as when brain-scanning images can be introduced in court and how the prison system should deal with convicted criminals who have brain abnormalities.

Challenges of neuroscience
Already, courts are seeing more cases in which defendants want to use brain scans as mitigating evidence. In early October, a Florida appeals court rejected arguments by a man convicted of murder and robbery who contended that his lawyer hurt his case by not trying to introduce brain imaging results that the defendant believed would have shown that Ecstasy and other drugs he took hindered his rational thinking.

The technology could also transform civil suits, such as when trying to determine whether a car accident victim in a personal injury case is truly still in pain.

"Is there real pain there or is it put on?" Gazzaniga said. It may be possible "to put them in a scanner and see if we can detect pain centers lighting up."

Neuroscience, though, clearly poses challenges for the law, which has traditionally taken a rather clear-cut view of responsibility: people either commit acts intentionally or they do not.

But as neuroscientists discover more about how our brains affect behavior, the line between guilt and innocence gets fuzzier, said Jed Rakoff, a U.S. District Judge in New York who sits on the project's board.

"I don't want to overstate the situation, but the long-term implications are that the legal system becomes much more nuanced in the way it evaluates responsibility," he said. "It's not so easy to say an act is either intentional or wasn't intentional. What do you do with an in-between possibility?"

Rakoff, though, said that ushering neuroscience into the courtroom does not mean defendants with brain abnormalities should get a free ride.

He said neuroscience is leading to findings about substance abusers, for example, that suggest the roots of addiction lie within the brain. Treating the problem can require a drug addict to undergo a much longer program than the inpatient drug programs that courts now require.

Rakoff said that there is also sure to be "a lot of junk science" that lawyers will attempt to introduce based on neuroscientific findings. A goal of the project, he and others say, will be to give judges guidelines about using the new science.

"We hope that by the end of the three-year period it will be clear that neuroscience can be useful for the law when it is appropriately applied," said MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton. "This is a science that has come along dramatically in recent years and we think if properly used it can make our justice system more fair, compassionate, but also more rational."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21552376/

This horrific accident was around 10 AM this morning, which scares the HELL out of me because this exit is the one to get to my house. Literally, it would take me 5 minutes to walk to this scene, and 2 seconds to drive to. I use it EVERYDAY. On top of that, I was half an hour away from being at that exit at the same time the accident happened- I was on my way home to drop Ryan off and than going to work. We heard about the accident on the radio, it took us about 2 hours to go 5 miles. What a senseless accident.

East Lyme — The breakdown lane of Interstate 95 northbound has been opened to traffic and a lane on the southbound side will be opened tonight, after a triple-fatal accident this morning between exits 74 and 75.

A tanker truck heading north on I-95 lost control and crashed through a median into the southbound lanes of the highway shortly after 10 a.m., killing least three people and shutting down the highway in both directions. Four cars and two trucks were involved in the accident.

“We know it's going to be a traffic nightmare, and the strong suggestion here is not to even go in this direction,” said Lt. J Paul Vance, spokesman for the Connecticut State Police.

Vance said police would not be able identify those who were killed in the car crash until Saturday, after their families could be informed.

The Connecticut State Police Truck Squad, Accident Reconstruction Squad and Major Crime Squad were investigating the crash. Fire departments and Hazmat teams from as far away as Willington, Norwich and the Naval Submarine Base were on the scene, and portable toilets were trucked in to the scene from Lyme. Public works departments from several towns arrived with the sand necessary to contain the spill.

Vance said the tanker, which was driving northbound, lost control, crossed the center median and entered ongoing traffic in the southbound lane. Three people have been pronounced dead and two others are at the William W. Backus Hospital, Vance said.

The Connecticut State Police are asking anyone who observed the crash to call Troop E at (860) 848-6500.

Fire crews with pumper trucks took turns traveling back and forth to Flanders Road to collect water from the nearest fire hydrant, pouring hundreds of gallons of water into portable pools and filling their tanks with water in case of a fire.

“This is one of the worst accidents I've ever seen,” said East Lyme First Selectman Beth Hogan, who appeared on the scene via police cruiser.

Phyllis Martino of Wallingford was on her way to a job interview at Foxwoods Resort Casino when she witnessed the accident.

Martino said the tanker truck was driving on the northbound lanes of I- 95, tailgating a minivan. She said she saw the truck swerving in and out of traffic until the truck hit the guardrail. The truck starting bouncing back and fourth, until it lost control and ended in the southbound lanes perpendicular to oncoming traffic on the southbound lanes.

The tanker truck's cab separated from the truck and was damaged to the point of being unrecognizable.

In the southbound lanes, the trailer of a box truck is resting on an embankment underneath the exit 74 sign. Below the wheels of the truck a vehicle is pinned. The side of the truck is peeled off. Witnesses said the drivers of each survived.

Several feet away the red cab of the box truck has been ripped away.

State police also have closed Route 1 at Oil Mill Road to Flanders Four corners. Traffic on Route 161 is backed up for two miles. The Department of Transportation is reporting that it will take seven to eight hours to clear the accident.

Three injured people have been taken to Lawrence & Memorial Hospital. The driver of the tractor trailer, James Clock, was taken to the William W. Backus Hospital, where he was listed if fair condition. The driver of the tanker, who has not been identified, died in the crash.

Northeast Carriers LLC, which is based in Danielson, was incorporated in 2004, according to filings with the Secretary of the State.

The company currently has a rating of “satisfactory” from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, according to online filings. That is the highest rating awarded by the agency.

Federal and state records for the last three years show the company's vehicles were involved in three accidents, with no fatalities, said William Seymour, a spokesman for the state Department of Motor Vehicles. One of those accidents, a four-car incident in Rhode Island in 2005, did cause injuries, Seymour said, though the extent of the injuries and the parties at fault could not be determined Friday.

“The company has a very good safety rating,” Seymour said, adding that the state had inspected Northeast Carriers vehicles 16 times since 2004 and found “nothing that makes them stand out as a bad carrier.”

Federal filings show the company's vehicles were inspected 22 times over the past 24 months, while receiving citations only 5 times. That is a violation average of 22.7 percent, the federal agency records show, slightly below the national average of 23.1 percent.

None of its drivers were cited for violations over the past two years, the records show.

The company currently owns nine tractors, 11 trailers and eight tanker trucks, according to Seymour and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Northeast Carriers employs 14 drivers, according to the federal filings, and has logged more than 500,000 miles so far this year. The company has transported liquids, gases and pool water, the agency records show.

A message was left seeking comment from the company's president, David A. Scott.

Photo Gallery of Accident

http://theday.com/re.aspx?re=6277a74c-fa56-4896-8c82-91ecfed9956d

PHILADELPHIA - The city has decided that the Boy Scouts chapter here must pay fair-market rent of $200,000 a year for its city-owned headquarters because it refuses to permit gay Scouts.

The organization’s Cradle of Liberty Council, which currently pays $1 a year in rent, must pay the increased amount to remain in its downtown building past May 31, Fairmount Park Commission president Robert N.C. Nix said Wednesday.

City officials say they cannot legally rent taxpayer-owned property for a nominal sum to a private organization that discriminates. The city owns the land and the Beaux Arts building constructed by the Scouts in 1928.

Scouting officials will ask the city solicitor for details on the appraisals that yielded the $200,000 figure, said Jeff Jubelirer, spokesman for the Cradle of Liberty Council.

The higher rent money “would have to come from programs. That’s 30 new Cub Scout packs, or 800 needy kids going to our summer camp,” Jubelirer said. “It’s disappointing, and it’s certainly a threat.”

The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that Scouts, as a private group, have a First Amendment right to bar gays from membership.

The council adopted a nondiscrimination policy in 2003 but was ordered to revoke it by the National Council, which said local chapters cannot deviate from national rules barring participation by anyone who is openly gay.

The Cradle of Liberty Council serves about 64,000 scouts in Philadelphia and its suburbs.

"That’s 30 new Cub Scout packs, or 800 needy kids going to our summer camp" - Yea, And how many openly gay people go without new Cub Scout packs or summer camp? Pig.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21367636/

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. - An autistic 18-year-old lost in the wilderness for four days was found alive Thursday, weak but apparently fine, and reunited with his family, searchers said.

"To the best of our knowledge, he was just hungry and thirsty and fatigued," Jim Reneau, one of the nine searchers who found Jacob Allen, said at a news conference at the command post near Davis, about 90 miles south of Pittsburgh.

Allen, who wandered away from his parents while hiking Sunday, was found lying in a clearing about a mile from where his hat was found Monday.

Allen, who has the mental capacity of a 3- or 4-year-old, opened his eyes and rolled over to meet his rescuers when Reneau's son, Jeremy Reneau, called out his name.

"He was very quiet, he was nonverbal," said Jeremy Reneau, 25, the first to spot Allen. "But you could tell by his body language he was hungry."

Rescuers fed him candy bars and peanut butter sandwiches and tried to walk him out of the wooded Dolly Sods Wilderness Area, part of the Monongahela National Forest. When he became too tired, they carried him out on a litter, Reneau said.

"The family is all together," search group spokesman Chris Stadelman said. "As soon as they heard the report he was alive and doing fairly well, they gathered in a prayer circle."

The Inter-Mountain newspaper reported that Allen was taken to Davis Memorial Hospital, but a spokeswoman for the hospital declined to comment.

"I think the whole state's relieved," said Lara Ramsburg, spokeswoman for Gov. Joe Manchin, who visited the Allen family Wednesday night. "We're all relieved for him and his family."

Allen wandered away from his parents Sunday afternoon. Hundreds of volunteers and trained professionals had been combing the woods, calling for him to come to them for candy bars, ice cream and other food.

Allen had no food or water with him, but Stadelman had said there were natural water sources in the search area, which consists of about 10 square miles of often steep and brush-covered terrain.

Overnight temperatures dropped to as low as 38 degrees on the nights Allen was missing. He was wearing hiking boots, a long-sleeved T-shirt, a wind jacket and wind pants.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071018/ap_on_re_us/hiker_found

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CHICAGO - Julio and Mauricio Cabrera are gay brothers who are convinced their sexual orientation is as deeply rooted as their Mexican ancestry. They are among 1,000 pairs of gay brothers taking part in the largest study to date seeking genes that may influence whether people are gay.

The Cabreras hope the findings will help silence critics who say homosexuality is an immoral choice.

If fresh evidence is found suggesting genes are involved, perhaps homosexuality will be viewed as no different than other genetic traits like height and hair color, said Julio, a student at DePaul University in Chicago.

Adds his brother, "I think it would help a lot of folks understand us better."

The federally funded study, led by Chicago-area researchers, will rely on blood or saliva samples to help scientists search for genetic clues to the origins of homosexuality. Parents and straight brothers also are being recruited.

While initial results aren't expected until next year — and won't provide a final answer — skeptics are already attacking the methods and disputing the presumed results.

Previous studies have shown that sexual orientation tends to cluster in families, though that doesn't prove genetics is involved. Extended families may share similar child-rearing practices, religion and other beliefs that could also influence sexual orientation.

Research involving identical twins, often used to study genetics since they share the same DNA, has had mixed results.

One widely cited study in the 1990s found that if one member of a pair of identical twins was gay, the other had a 52 percent chance of being gay. In contrast, the result for pairs of non-twin brothers, was 9 percent. A 2000 study of Australian identical twins found a much lower chance.

Dr. Alan Sanders of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute, the lead researcher of the new study, said he suspects there isn't one so-called "gay gene."

It is more likely there are several genes that interact with nongenetic factors, including psychological and social influences, to determine sexual orientation, said Sanders, a psychiatrist.

Still, he said, "If there's one gene that makes a sizable contribution, we have a pretty good chance" of finding it.

Many gays fear that if gay genes are identified, it could result in discrimination, prenatal testing and even abortions to eliminate homosexuals, said Joel Ginsberg of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association.

However, he added, "If we confirm that sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic, we are much more likely to get the courts to rule against discrimination."

There is less research on lesbians, Sanders said, although some studies suggest that male and female sexual orientation may have different genetic influences.

His new research is an attempt to duplicate and expand on a study published in 1993 involving 40 pairs of gay brothers. That hotly debated study, wrongly touted as locating "the gay gene," found that gay brothers shared genetic markers in a region on the X chromosome, which men inherit from their mothers.

That implies that any genes influencing sexual orientation lie somewhere in that region.

Previous attempts to duplicate those results failed. But Sanders said that with so many participants, his study has a better chance of finding the same markers and perhaps others on different chromosomes.

If these markers appear in gay brothers but not their straight brothers or parents, that would suggest a link to sexual orientation. The study is designed to find genetic markers, not to explain any genetic role in behavior.

And Sanders said even if he finds no evidence, that won't mean genetics play no role; it may simply mean that individual genes have a smaller effect.

Skeptics include Stanton Jones, a psychology professor and provost at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. An evangelical Christian, Jones last month announced results of a study he co-authored that says it's possible for gays to "convert" — changing their sexual orientation without harm.

Jones said his results suggest biology plays only a minor role in sexual orientation, and that researchers seeking genetic clues generally have a pro-gay agenda that will produce biased results.

Sanders disputed that criticism.

"We do not have a predetermined point we are trying to prove," he said. "We are trying to pry some of nature's secrets loose with respect to a fundamental human trait."

Jones acknowledged that he's not a neutral observer. His study involved 98 gays "seeking help" from Exodus International, a Christian group that believes homosexuals can become straight through prayer and counseling. Exodus International funded Jones' study.

The group's president, Alan Chambers, said he is a former homosexual who went straight and believes homosexuality is morally wrong.

Even if research ultimately shows that genetics play a bigger role, it "will never be something that forces people to behave in a certain way," Chambers said. "We all have the freedom to choose."

The Cabrera brothers grew up in Mexico in a culture where "being gay was an embarrassment," especially for their father, said Mauricio, 41, a car dealership employee from Olathe, Kan.

They had cousins who were gay, but Mauricio said he still felt he had to hide his sexual orientation and he struggled with his "double life." Julio said having an older brother who was gay made it easier for him to accept his sexuality.

Jim Larkin, 54, a gay journalist in Flint, Mich., said the genetics study is a move in the right direction.

Given the difficulties of being gay in a predominantly straight society, homosexuality "is not a choice someone would make in life," said Larkin, who is not a study participant.

He had two brothers who were gay. One died from AIDS; the other committed suicide. Larkin said he didn't come out until he was 26.

"I fought and I prayed and I went to Mass and I said the rosary," Larkin said. "I moved away from everybody I knew ... thinking maybe this will cause the feelings to subside. It doesn't."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071015/ap_on_sc/gay_genetics_5;_ylt=AttZZf7jiJuzeXKy_.7R8tAE1vAI

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen launched simultaneous mortar and machinegun attacks on two mainly Polish military bases in southern Iraq on Monday, after Shi'ite militants vowed to step up pressure on Polish soldiers to force them out.

An official at a hospital in Diwaniya, 180 km (110 miles) south of Baghdad, said two children under the age of 10 had been killed in the mortar attack and three -- a 15-year-old and two 17-year-olds -- had been shot dead.

A Polish helicopter was hit by machinegun fire during the attacks but managed to land safely, said Lieutenant-Colonel Wlodek Glogowski, spokesman for Polish forces in Iraq. Two Polish soldiers were slightly wounded in the clashes.

On Sunday Reuters obtained a copy of a video in which two previously unknown Shi'ite groups claimed responsibility for attacks on Poland's ambassador and its embassy and warned Polish troops to leave Iraq "before you drown in its swamp."

About 900 Polish troops, part of the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq, are based in Qadisiya province to support the 8th Iraqi Army division and train Iraqi soldiers and police.

In Monday's attack, gunmen fired mortars and machineguns at a base manned by Polish and Iraqi soldiers in Iskan, a southwestern neighborhood of Diwaniya, the provincial capital, Glogowski said

He said four civilians were killed and 17 wounded. They were hit by the attacking militants, not when troops returned fire, he said. Three gunmen had also been killed.

It was not clear how the children became victims of the attack, but there are many homes near the base. A curfew was later imposed in the surrounding districts.

A column of smoke rose from Iskan, where the base sits amid one-storey houses, while the rattle of sustained machinegun fire could be heard nearby.

SHI'ITE MILITANTS WARN POLISH TROOPS

Glogowski said militants also fired mortar rounds at Camp Echo, which is just south of Diwaniya and houses U.S. and other multinational forces and is under Polish command. There were no casualties in that attack.

In the video obtained by Reuters Television, the Imam Hussein Brigades and Imam Moussa al-Kadhim Brigades said Poland had allied with the "devil" America to kill Iraqis and accused Polish troops of torturing detainees.

Videos by Shi'ite militant groups claiming responsibility for attacks are rare and are more commonly issued by al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab groups.

"We want to tell Poland that all its interests in Iraq will be targeted by our resistance, including the diplomats, companies and troops. We only exclude journalists," said one of four masked gunmen who appeared in the video.

Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski has vowed to keep Polish troops in southern Iraq despite the attack on the ambassador earlier this month.

The ambassador was wounded in a triple bomb attack on his diplomatic convoy in Baghdad in which one Polish secret service officer and a passerby were killed. Five days later a car bomb killed two people near Poland's Baghdad embassy.

Monday's attacks come days ahead of an October 21 parliamentary election in Poland in which Kaczynski, a strong U.S. ally, faces a challenge from opposition parties who want to pull Polish troops out of Iraq.

In a televised debate with his main rival on Friday, Kaczynski compared withdrawing the troops from Iraq to desertion.

Diwaniya is in the Shi'ite, oil-rich south and has largely escaped the violence between Shi'ite and Sunni Arabs that has ravaged the rest of the country, but it has been a battleground in the past for rival Shi'ite groups.

The Mehdi Army militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has a strong presence in Diwaniya, and in April it clashed with Iraqi and U.S. forces when it tried to take control of the city.

Mehdi Army fighters have been lying low since Sadr announced in August that he was freezing the activities of the militia, increasingly seen as fragmented and outside his control, in order to reorganize it.

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin in Baghdad)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071015/wl_nm/iraq_dc_3;_ylt=AqaS0cV_foyONpgMjsbff0oE1vAI

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BEIJING - A South China tiger has been caught on camera by a hunter-turned-farmer, the first confirmed sighting for 30 years of a sub-species experts had feared was extinct in the wild, the Xinhua news agency said on Friday.

Zhou Zhenglong took over 70 snaps of the young tiger lying in the grass near a cliff in a mountainous part of central China.

Experts confirmed the images showed one of the elusive cats.

Villagers from his home area had reported several sightings of the tigers, paw-prints and droppings, but none had been confirmed for decades, the official news agency said.

"There has been no record of the survival of wild south China tigers in more than 30 years, and it was only an estimate that China still had 20 to 30 such wild tigers," Xinhua quoted Lu Xirong, head of a South China tiger research team saying.

In the early 1950s an estimated 4,000 of the tiger subspecies, one of the world's smallest and the only one native to central and southern China, roamed the country, but its habitat has been squeezed by the country's rapid economic growth.

The Forestry Department of Shaanxi province, where the tiger was sighted, plans to set up a special protection area for them, Xinhua said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21266427/

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Noose Hung on Door of Black Columbia University Professor

By Alex Jung
Posted on October 10, 2007, Printed on October 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers//64865/

On October 1, students across the country participated in a "We Are All Jena" walkout to protest the charges against the Jena Six and also to demonstrate solidarity against racial inequalities that are far from eradicated, and further more, whose influence extends far beyond the Deep South. The noose, a chilling representation of an overt form of white supremacy, has returned as a specter of something that never actually went away. "We Are All Jena" has an especially eerie significance for the community at Columbia University where yesterday someone hung a noose from the door of Madonna Constantine, a black professor of psychology and education at Teachers College who focused her scholarly work on racial dynamics and cultural competence in counseling psychology.

This hate crime quickly prompted town halls and protests: of the former, two (one of undergraduates and the other of Teachers College students and faculty) occurred the day the news broke, and of the latter, a rally and press conference occurred last night and a protest is planned for today at 2 pm at 120th street.

This hate incident comes on the heels of another where an unknown person vandalized a bathroom stall in the International Affairs Building with the message, "Attention You pinko Commie Motherfuckers and Arab Towelheads: America will wake up one day and Nuke Mecca, Medina, Tehran, Baghdad, Jakarta, and all the savages in Africa. You will all be fucked! America is for White Europeans."

The concern is not just that a hate crime happened, but rather the institutional sluggishness afterwards. While President Bollinger released a statement to the Columbia Spectator he made no such announcement to the university community at large (nor did he respond to the vandalism). Administrators too, were conspicuously absent for the Teachers College meeting yesterday, prompting an student to ask anonymously, "Do we have to wait for a murder ... for us to get the support we need from the faculty?"

Many students also view this hate crime as part of a greater issue. Columbia College junior and member of Students Promoting Empowerment and Knowledge (SPEaK) Desiree Carver-Thomas told the Spectator,"I've been here two years and this [hate] just seems part of the culture and it's an ugly manifestation of the culture here at Columbia. I'm wanting to get at the root of the culture and the problem rather than chasing after every event that happens on campus because that just runs us ragged."

Marginalized students and their allies have long demanded institutional reform. Last spring, students rallied around hate graffiti that targeted student dorms and formed an ad hoc coalition called Stop Hate On Columbia's Campus (SHOCC) that proposed a list of demands, such as mandatory anti-oppression training for all incoming first-years, changes in the core curriculum to reflect the diversity of its students, diversity training for public safety officers, more funding for Ethnic Studies, and other structural changes. The group, Concerned Students of Color had demanded similar things just two years prior. In fact, the 2004 protest prompted the creation of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, creating an institutional space to address the needs of students of color and queer students on campus.

The noose which represents a rural, Jim Crow era violence, has an almost anachronistic feeling in the halls of contemporary liberalism. And yet this image -- the noose as a metaphor for institutional oppression that is not bound by time or space -- is what activists struggle against. In contemporary times, black people enter jails at alarming rates, the government ignores the rapes of Native American women, home loaners target black and Latino communities for subprime mortgage loans, all of which represent systemic nooses that quash communities and break down individuals. Indeed, we are all Jena. Hopefully Columbia will begin to realize that.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers//64865/

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">Sept. 30, 2007 - Since the fatal Sept. 16 Blackwater USA shooting in Baghdad’s Nasoor Square, officials from the private security company have insisted that their guards were responding to fire from “armed enemies.” Yet an extensive evidence file put together by the Iraqi National Police and obtained by NEWSWEEK—including documents, maps, sworn witness statements and police video footage—appears to contradict the contractors’ version of events. A confidential incident report, which has been provided by Iraqi National Police investigators to American military and civilian officials, concludes that the Blackwater vehicles “opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason.”

A nine-minute police video made in the moments after the shooting shows helicopters similar to those used by Blackwater still hovering over the wreckage of charred, smoking and bullet-pocked cars. The graphic images include footage of burned human remains and show the street littered with brass bullet casings. They also show what appears to be a police officer waving a pistol at the scene; the footage was captured by a different police officer, who had run over from the nearby Iraqi National Police headquarters. (Portions of the video have been previously broadcast; it was recorded without sound.)

Iraqi National Police investigators also believe that Blackwater's helicopters fired on the cars from above, according to confidential police documents and interviews with senior police officials. A memo written on Sept. 17 by the lead Iraqi police investigator states that shortly after the shooting began, “helicopters opened fire from the air toward the cars and civilians.” Gen. Hussein al-Awadi, the commander of the Iraqi National Police, told NEWSWEEK that the trajectory of some of the bullet wounds could only have been caused by fire from the air. “If anyone moved—whenever they saw someone leaving—either the convoy or the chopper shot him,” says Ali Kalaf Salman, an undercover Iraqi National Police officer who was working as a traffic cop at the scene. (One of the police documents lists 17 fatalities and many more wounded from the shooting. Other accounts have put the death toll at 11.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21064094/site/newsweek/

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NEW ORLEANS - When a 17-year-old at the center of a civil rights controversy in a small Louisiana town left jail, he had a stranger to thank.

Dr. Stephen Ayers, who lives about 135 miles away, said he felt compelled to help the family of Mychal Bell by posting the teen's bond and allowing him to go home for the first time in 10 months.

Bell is one of six black teenagers accused of beating a white classmate in the central Louisiana town of Jena, where more than 20,000 demonstrators gathered last week to protest what they perceive as differences in how black and white suspects are treated.

Ayers, 42, of Lake Charles in southwestern Louisiana, said Friday that he isn't politically active and isn't usually one to "get into things like this." But then a patient whose feet hurt after the march gave him a report on the event, in which Ayers did not participate.

"I was concerned about what was going on up there and thought the district attorney was a bit harsh in his treatment of Mr. Bell," said Ayers, who is black but added that his race was not his motivation. "I really thought it was overkill."

Bell was released from custody Thursday on $45,000 bail after District Attorney Reed Walters announced that he would abandon adult charges against him. Ayers posted $5,400, the required 12 percent bond set by a judge Thursday.

Bell was 16 when he and five other black Jena High School students were arrested in December and charged with kicking Justin Barker, a white student, after knocking him unconscious.

Five of the six students, including Bell, initially were charged with attempted murder, but the charges against Bell and three others later were reduced to aggravated second-degree battery. The case against the sixth youth is sealed in juvenile court.

Bell had faced as many as 15 years in prison on his battery conviction last month, but a state appeals court tossed the conviction out, ruling that juveniles can't be tried as adults on battery charges.

The teen is due back in court Tuesday for the first hearing in his juvenile case. Meanwhile, one of Bell's lawyers said she him to start looking for a new school and possibly a new place to live.

The attorney, Carol Powell Lexing, said that leaving Jena, where his parents live, is for Bell's "safety and welfare."

"Right now, it's not a good environment for him to be in," she said, adding that Bell's family members have received threatening letters.

Lexing, who called Ayers a "good Samaritan," said she thanked the doctor over the phone. Many people offered to donate money for Bell's bail, but Lexing said they accepted Ayers' help because he and a friend, Lawrence Morrow, were willing to handle the logistics.

Morrow, a magazine publisher and host of local radio and television shows, met Lexing when he went to Jena for Thursday's march. Morrow went home to Lake Charles with swollen feet, so he called his friend and family doctor for a prescription.

Ayers asked him about the march and offered to help Bell and his legal team. "He said, 'Whatever the cost is, go get him out,'" Morrow recalled.

Ayers said he isn't helping Bell because he thinks he is innocent.

"What he did was in no way right, and he should be punished for this," he said. "We're not condoning his behavior. We're just saying he needs to be punished appropriately."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070928/ap_on_re_us/jena_six

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WASHINGTON - President Bush again called Democrats "irresponsible" on Saturday for pushing an expansion he opposes to a children's health insurance program.

"Democrats in Congress have decided to pass a bill they know will be vetoed," Bush said of the measure that draws significant bipartisan support, repeating in his weekly radio address an accusation he made earlier in the week. "Members of Congress are risking health coverage for poor children purely to make a political point."

In the Democrat's response, also broadcast Saturday, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell turned the tables on the president, saying that if Bush doesn't sign the bill, 15 states will have no funding left for the program by the end of the month.

At issue is the Children's Health Insurance Program, a state-federal program that subsidizes health coverage for low-income people, mostly children, in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private coverage. It expires Sept. 30.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced a proposal Friday that would add $35 billion over five years to the program, adding 4 million people to the 6.6 million already participating. It would be financed by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents to $1 per pack.

The idea is overwhelmingly supported by Congress' majority Democrats, who scheduled it for a vote Tuesday in the House. It has substantial Republican support as well.

But Bush has promised a veto, saying the measure is too costly, unacceptably raises taxes, extends government-covered insurance to children in families who can afford private coverage, and smacks of a move toward completely federalized health care. He has asked Congress to pass a simple extension of the current program while debate continues, saying it's children who will suffer if they do not.

"Our goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage — not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage," Bush said.

The bill's backers have vigorously rejected Bush's claim it would steer public money to families that can readily afford health insurance, saying their goal is to cover more of the millions of uninsured children. The bill would provide financial incentives for states to cover their lowest-income children first, they said.

Many governors want the flexibility to expand eligibility for the program. So the proposal would overturn recent guidelines from the administration making it difficult for states to steer CHIP funds to families with incomes exceeding 250 percent of the official poverty level.

Rendell said thousands of children will lose health care coverage if Bush doesn't sign the bill.

"The administration has tried to turn this into a partisan issue and has threatened to veto. The health of our children is far too important for partisan politics as usual," he said. "If the administration is serious about solving our health care crisis, it should be expanding, not cutting back, this program which has made private health insurance affordable for millions of children."

Yahoo News

UPDATE

WASHINGTON - Congress approved legislation Thursday adding 4 million children to a popular health care program, setting up a veto fight that President Bush probably will win but handing Democrats a campaign issue for next year's elections.

Dozens of Republicans in the Senate lined up with Democrats in voting 67-29 to increase spending on the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, from about $5 billion to $12 billion annually for the next five years.

The vote was enough to override a promised Bush veto. But supporters in the House, which passed the bill Tuesday, are about two dozen votes shy of an override. Both chambers would have to muster two-thirds majorities to win a veto showdown.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21020771/

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Vilified as a Holocaust denier, a supporter of terrorism and a backer of Iraqi insurgents, the president of Iran was actually able to make New Yorkers burst into laughter -- but not at a joke.

"In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at Columbia University on Monday in response to a question about the recent execution of two gay men there.

"In Iran we do not have this phenomenon," he continued. "I do not know who has told you we have it."

Loud laughs and boos broke from the audience of about 700 people, mostly students at the Ivy League school whose garb included "Stop Ahmadinejad's Evil" T-shirts.

Everyone from presidential candidates to September 11 families had expressed outrage that Ahmadinejad would speak there.

After his assertions that Israel persecutes Palestinians and that Iran's nuclear program is for energy not weapons, the Iranian leader's comment on gays broke the tension.

But it spurred strong reaction too.

"This is a sick joke," said Scott Long of Human Rights Watch, saying Iran tortures gays under a penal code that punishes homosexuality between men with the death penalty.

When Ahmadinejad, speaking in Farsi, actually tried to crack a joke, it drew no laughter, although maybe the nuance was lost in translation.

"Let me tell a joke here," Ahmadinejad said. "I think the politicians who are after atomic bombs, or testing them, making them, politically they are backward, retarded."

The crowd seemed uncertain how to react. Some applauded that pacifist sentiment, others seemed befuddled by the insensitive use of the word retarded.

DELUGE OF OBJECTIONS

Ahmadinejad's visit here was preceded by a deluge of objections when it became apparent he wanted to lay a wreath at Ground Zero and that he would speak at Columbia.

Presidential candidates from both major U.S political parties took swipes at the president of a country President George W. Bush calls part of "the axis of evil." They said he denied the Holocaust, supported terrorism and armed Iraqi insurgents.

U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York had a different way of capturing all that.

"Sometimes we have snakes slithering through the streets of New York," Weiner told protesters outside the United Nations, where Ahmadinejad will speak on Tuesday.

And in a city known for its blunt manners, the Iranian president's reception was bound to be frosty. The New York Daily News had the front page headline, "The Evil Has Landed."

At Columbia, university President Lee Bollinger pulled no punches. He called him a "petty and cruel dictator" and said his Holocaust denials suggested he was either "brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."

"I feel the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for," Bollinger said to loud applause.

In retort, Ahmadinejad berated Bollinger as a rude host.

"Many parts of his speech were insults," he said. "We actually respect our students and the professors by allowing them to make their own judgments."

Not everybody objected to his speaking appearance.

"If the (Columbia) president thinks it's a good idea to have the leader from Iran come and talk to the students as an educational experience, I guess it's OK with me," Bush told Fox News.

(Additional reporting by Claudia Parsons, Michael Erman, Michelle Nichols and Megan Davies)

"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a bitter foe of the United States, sat in the chamber and checked his watch during Bush’s remarks. First lady Laura Bush, also present for the president’s speech, walked right by the seated Iranian president. The two had no contact."

As I understand it, the department in Columbia University that wanted the president of Iran to come speak is EXTREMELY anti-jew, anti-American, and has the balls to fail students that defend America in their classes. If they have the nerve to invite this man here, I think it's pretty stupid if they get offended at ANYTHING this man says, especially something anti-gay. It is only common sense to ME that if he's reversing womens rights in his country, denies the holocaust and is a supporter of terrorism, he would only have some sort of negative feelings towards the gay community! But hey, thats just me. Also, doesn't it make you nervous that this CRAZY leader came here in the first place, than wanted to go to the 9/11 site, which I hope that he wasn't allowed to do. But on top of all that, this guy said that Bollinger was a bad host. What if he goes home mad that he was insulted and embarrassed by our country? Thats just asking for trouble. My favorite part of this article was "and said his Holocaust denials suggested he was either "brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."

Well what the hell did you think he would be like? HE SUPPORTS TERRORISM AND KILLS GAYS!?

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So here’s the Webster Smith story, as it seems to be shaping up for the inevitable major motion picture.

Webster’s the handsome, smart, young black cadet at the Coast Guard Academy, son of an academy graduate, excellent student, star of the football team.

He’s also a ladies’ man, and in time he’s dating one of the ranking female students of the cadet corps, also smart, beautiful, a darling of the academy brass. She’s white.

She gets pregnant, has an abortion, and, eventually, news of the unfortunate development in their affair works its way up the ranks. Leaders in the cadet corps are not supposed to get pregnant.

It doesn’t take long for an academy investigation to come down hard on Smith, bringing a wide assortment of charges, including rape. He’s taken out of the cadet population, made to do hard labor while not in class and ordered not to have any contact with his fellow students. Presumed innocent?

Smith is eventually brought to court-martial, a public spectacle, the first of its kind in the school’s 130-year history. No other cadet has ever faced this kind of response to a sexual-assault complaint. And there are lots of them every year, by the Coast Guard’s own accounting.

Of the numerous charges finally whittled down to 10 for his trial, Smith is found guilty of four of the original. The others melt away with the preposterousness of much of the testimony: a witness, his girlfriend at the time, so intoxicated she couldn’t remember what happened in an encounter with Smith; another who was kissed at a party but continued a friendly, budding relationship with him.

In a fade-away scene from the trial, a tearful Smith, in dress uniform, his wrists cinched in tight cuffs behind his back, is led past his accusers and paraded before a pack of press photographers.

As the story turns, though, the convictions come under attack in an appeal brought by one of the country’s most prestigious law firms, which appears to have taken up the case as a pro bono civil rights cause.

It turns out the only sexual assault charges against Smith that stuck came from a woman who had lied in the past about the consensual nature of another sexual encounter with a service person. But the judge at Smith’s court-martial did not let the jury hear testimony about the witness’s previous lie about being sexually assaulted.

It doesn’t take a Hollywood story line or smart Washington lawyers to conclude that Webster Smith was railroaded, a 21st-century lynching.

The Coast Guard surely knows this.

Rear Adm. James C. Van Sice was transferred from his post as superintendent of the academy soon after the Smith trial and allowed to retire early. An internal Coast Guard investigation later revealed that Van Sice had made “questionable” comments to one of Smith’s accusers, prior to the court martial, suggesting the detrimental effect the trial was going to have on his own career.

A task force formed by the Coast Guard in the wake of the trial concluded that the academy has lost its mission, that there is a strong link at the school between sexual assault and alcohol abuse, and that minority cadets feel marginalized and mistrusting of the administration.

Sadly, this post-mortem reckoning and disciplining of academy leaders has not yet helped clear Webster Smith’s name.

Just this week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security dismissed a racial discrimination suit brought by Smith on what amounted to a technicality. The department, which oversees the Coast Guard, said he couldn’t challenge the findings of the military court martial through the civilian complaint forum.

Actually, the racial discrimination complaint was not directed at the outcome of the court-martial, but at the fact that he was court-martialed at all, unlike all the white cadets before him accused of sexual assault.

An academy spokesman, Chief Warrant Officer David M. French, made matters worse by saying that the Homeland Security decision “validates” the school’s actions in the Webster Smith case. In fact, it does no such thing.

By the time the final movie script is finished, though, maybe the academy stonewalling will have stopped and Smith, as the music swells, will finally step up, in full dress uniform, to receive his academy degree, a commission, and maybe even an apology.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

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ONE NIGHT IN JULY, A SECOND-YEAR COAST Guard cadet found a noose among his personal belongings when he returned to his berth after a stint on watch aboard the barque Eagle.

A noose. The 19-year-old engineering student put it in his pocket and went about his business, taking solace in the knowledge that he was on the fifth week of a six-week cruise.

The next morning, though, found him hurt and angry. The cadet, who is black, reported the finding to his commander, Capt. J. Christopher Sinnett. It is important to note that the cadet was at first willing to have his name attached to this story. But again, after overnight consideration, requested to have his privacy. Ultimately, that it happened at all is far more import than to whom it happened.

Sinnett investigated the incident, but found no culprit. Of course, no one admitted to it. And, for that matter, exactly what was it? Was it a poorly thought-out prank, intended to amuse? Or was it a racist act intended to intimidate and humiliate?

Sinnett said that he was, in polite terms, very upset, as were many of the cadet's friends, classmates and shipmates of varied backgrounds and cultures. They were disturbed that one of their own would be subjected to such a gesture, and that one of their own would so egregiously violate the oft-repeated code of “honor, respect and devotion to duty.”

Sinnett said he made it quite clear in an address to everyone on board that the incident was unacceptable behavior.

So what to do next? There's no one to punish. Well, you educate. Ken Hunter, the academy's civil rights officer, was notified immediately. He put together an impromptu race relations training for all of the cadets on campus and anyone who interacts with them. Unlike the academy's standard annual sensitivity training, these sessions included discussion, photographs and anecdotes on the historical derogatory symbolism of the noose.

“When you first hear about things like this, you wonder, 'Do people get it?'” Hunter said. “Then you wonder, 'Was it was a joke, or was it race motivated?' And, 'Aren't we past this?'”

Aboard ship, Sinnett promptly convened focus groups, comprised of 10 to 15 cadets each, to talk about what was done and all of its ramifications.

“It is a problem. We looked at it as a problem and we talked about it like a problem,” he said. “The feedback was astounding. Unfortunately, there were no indications as to who did it or why, but there was a lot of positive feedback from the crew and the cadets. Many of them had a lot to say, and I think it sent a strong message to whomever did it.”

“Honestly, I think it was an inappropriate joke,” the cadet said. He said only the perpetrator knows if the act was one of bigotry.

Frankly, I find it difficult to perceive the cowardly act as having anything other than purposeful racist motivations. That perception was fortified Friday evening when academy spokesman David French told me that during the course of the training, a noose was also surreptitiously delivered to a white female who was conducting part of the training.

Generally speaking, friends of differing cultural persuasions care enough and know enough to never assume they have the privilege of making off-color jokes or comments. I can't believe that was the case here.

Incidents like this beg intense public reaction, especially on a campus where, among the minority staff and personnel, there is a feeling that the leadership on campus is insensitive to racial matters. They believe the academy would prefer such incidents remain out of the pubic eye.

Their perception is bolstered by the fact that this incident only came to light more than two months after it happened, and certainly through no effort of the academy, but rather from people who felt it was intentionally being kept quiet.

Does it beg a protest led by Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the NAACP, such as is ongoing in the noose-related incident in Jena, La.? I think not. But should the public that the Coast Guard is bound to serve and protect, especially the local public, know that such things go on in our local Homeland Security college? Absolutely.

Much to its credit, the academy was quite forthcoming in response to my inquiries. Most important, the offended cadet is satisfied with the academy's response, and the opportunity he had to address his classmates and crewmates aboard the Eagle.

“I confronted everyone the next day at quarters,” he said. “I said what I needed to say. I think what I said will have the most impact on the person who might have felt that way. Or the person who played an inappropriate joke knows it and won't do it again, whichever it was.

“But, whatever it was, now I've put it behind me and moved on.”

The young man is a credit to the academy. He is even more so to his family and his culture.

This is the opinion of Chuck Potter (The Day Paper)

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