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(02/07/08 7:25am)
WASHINGTON –The Senate moved toward a partisan clash Wednesday over Democrats’ efforts to add more than $40 billion in checks for the elderly, disabled veterans and the unemployed, and heating aid for the poor, to a House-passed economic aid plan.\nDemocrats were struggling to find enough GOP support to advance the package over the objections of Republican leaders, who have called for a much narrower package. The White House urged the Senate this week to approve a more limited, $161 billion House-passed measure “without delay.”\n“We started out united behind a proposal to help struggling taxpayers and stimulate the economy. Now some are insisting on a plan that might not even be signed into law,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Republican leader.\nThe House plan would send rebates of $600-$1,200 to about 111 million Americans who receive paychecks of $3,000 or more, plus an additional $300 per child, with less available to individuals with income in excess of $75,000 and couples making more than $150,000. The Senate version has checks of $500-$1,000 for a broader group that includes 20 million seniors and 250,000 disabled veterans, and taxpayers making up to $150,000 for singles — or $300,000 for couples.\nThe Senate package also includes a $14.5 billion unemployment extension for those whose benefits have run out, $1 billion in heating aid for the poor – a program that enjoys broad bipartisan support – and a tax break that allows businesses suffering losses to reclaim previously paid taxes. It includes $10 billion in mortgage bonds to help homeowners refinance their loans and several tax breaks for renewable energy.\n“The House plan was a start, but it was only a start,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.\nMcConnell said Republicans favor simply adding rebates for seniors and disabled veterans to the House-passed bill, as well as including language — also part of Senate Democrats’ measure – designed to ensure that illegal immigrants can’t get rebates.\nThat GOP proposal has support from the White House, McConnell said, “so we can expect that it would be signed into law.”\nDemocrats need 60 votes to advance their more costly package, and they were lobbying intensely to convert wavering Republicans, including several facing tough re-election fights. Their efforts were getting a boost from outside groups leaning on senators to back the package, including home builders, manufacturers and the powerful seniors’ lobby.
(02/07/08 4:51am)
The U.S. military faced complaints Tuesday from its Sunni allies over claims that more civilians had been killed by American forces – amplifying tensions as the Pentagon tries to calm anger over an airstrike last week that claimed innocent lives. The disputes have further strained ties with anti-al-Qaida fighters considered crucial in turning the tide against extremist violence.
(01/28/08 3:02am)
President Bush’s chief negotiator on an economic aid deal said Sunday the Senate should quickly get behind a plan or risk drawing the resentment of a frustrated public. The president and House leaders have agreed on a proposal to provide tax rebate checks to 117 million families and give businesses $50 billion in incentives to invest in new plants and equipment. The goal is to help head off a recession and boost consumer confidence. “I don’t think the Senate is going to want to derail that deal,” Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said. “And I don’t think the American people are going to have much patience for anything that would slow down the process.”
(01/28/08 3:01am)
COLUMBIA, S.C. – Barack Obama routed Hillary Rodham Clinton in the racially charged South Carolina primary Saturday night, regaining campaign momentum in the prelude to a Feb. 5 coast-to-coast competition for more than 1,600 Democratic National Convention delegates.\n“The choice in this election is not about regions or religions or genders,” Obama said at a boisterous victory rally. “It’s not about rich versus poor, young versus old and it’s not about black versus white. It’s about the past versus the future.”\nThe audience chanted “race doesn’t matter” as it awaited Obama to make his appearance after rolling up 55 percent of the vote in a three-way race.\nBut it did, in a primary that shattered turnout records.\nAbout half the voters were black, according to polling place interviews, and four out of five of them supported Obama. Black women turned out in particularly large numbers. Obama, the first-term Illinois senator, got about a quarter of the white vote while Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina split the rest.\nClinton flew to Nashville as the polls closed, and looked ahead. “Now the eyes of the country turn to Tennessee and the other states voting on Feb. 5,” she said, adding “millions and millions of Americans are going to have their voices heard.”\nEdwards finished a distant third, a sharp setback in the state where he was born and where he scored a primary victory in his first presidential campaign four years ago. Even so, he vowed to remain in the race. His goal, he said, is to “give voice to all those whose voices aren’t being heard.”\nThe victory was Obama’s first since he won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3. Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, scored an upset in the New Hampshire primary a few days later. They split the Nevada caucuses, she winning the turnout race, he gaining a one-delegate margin. In a historic race, she hopes to become the first woman to occupy the White House, and Obama is the strongest black contender in history.\nThe South Carolina primary marked the end of the first phase of the campaign for the Democratic nomination, a series of single-state contests that winnowed the field, conferred co-front-runner status on Clinton and Obama but had relatively few delegates at stake.\nThat all changes in 10 days’ time, when New York, Illinois and California are among the 15 states holding primaries in a virtual nationwide primary. Another seven states and American Samoa will hold Democratic caucuses on the same day.\nObama took a thinly veiled swipe at Clinton in his remarks.\n“We are up against conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House,” Obama said. “But we know that real leadership is about candor, and judgment, and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose - a higher purpose.”\nLooking ahead to Feb. 5, he added that “nearly half the nation will have the chance to join us in saying that we are tired of business-as-usual in Washington, we are hungry for change and we are ready to believe again.”\nNearly complete returns showed Obama winning 55 percent of the vote, Clinton gaining 27 percent. Edwards had 18 percent and won only his home county of Oconee.\nObama also gained 25 convention delegates, Clinton won 12 and Edwards eight.\nOverall, Clinton has 249 delegates, followed by Obama with 167 and Edwards with 58.\nObama also gained an endorsement from Caroline Kennedy, who likened the Illinois senator to her late father, President John F. Kennedy.\n“I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them,” she wrote on The New York Times op-ed page. “But for the first time, I believe I have found a man who could be that president - and not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”
(01/10/08 4:37am)
President Bush, in the Mideast to push along a peace deal by the end of his presidency, gave orders to both sides on Wednesday. He told Israelis that “illegal” outposts in disputed land must go and told Palestinians that no part of their territories can be “a safe haven for terrorists.” On that, Bush was echoing his ally and host, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who said in their joint news conference that “there will be no peace” unless attacks are halted from all parts of the Palestinian territories. He added, however, that both sides “are very seriously trying to move forward” on a peace agreement.
(01/10/08 4:19am)
PRISTINA, Serbia – Kosovo’s parliament elected a former rebel leader as prime minister Wednesday, a vote foreshadowing a declaration of independence from Serbia.\nLawmakers voted 85-22 to make Hashim Thaci head of the coalition government. U.S. and key European governments support independence for Kosovo, but it is fiercely opposed by Serbia and Russia.\n“Our aim is to make Kosovo independent in the first part of this year,” Thaci told lawmakers. “We will make our dream and our right come true soon ... Kosovo will be independent.”\nKosovo, though legally part of Serbia, has been under U.N. and NATO control since NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign in 1999 ended a Serb crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians.\nInternational envoys last year failed to resolve the issue of whether Kosovo should become independent or remain part of Serbia. Russia has previously threatened to veto any U.N. Security Council measure that allows Kosovo to become a state.\nThaci’s Democratic Party of Kosovo, which won the most votes in November elections, will govern alongside its main opponent, President Fatmir Sejdiu’s Democratic League of Kosovo.\nOn Wednesday, Sejdiu was re-elected to his post as president, winning over an opposition candidate in the third round of the secret vote requiring a simple majority.\nBoth parties support statehood for the province, whose population is more than 90 percent ethnic Albanian. Jointly, the parties will hold 62 seats in the province’s 120-seat assembly.\nThaci’s party will control seven out of 15 ministries, including finance, economy, energy and education.\nSejdiu – who took over the Democratic League of Kosovo after the death two years ago of Kosovo’s first president, Ibrahim Rugova – will keep his post as the province’s president. His party colleagues will run five ministries, including justice and health.\nMinority ethnic Serbian parties would run the social welfare ministry and the department dealing with the return of ethnic Serbian refugees who fled Kosovo after the 1998-1999 war.
(01/10/08 4:17am)
BEIJING – A cloned pig whose genes were altered to make it glow fluorescent green has passed on the trait to its young, a development that could lead to the future breeding of pigs for human transplant organs, a Chinese university reported.\nThe glowing piglets’ birth proves transgenic pigs are fertile and able to pass on their engineered traits to their offspring, according to Liu Zhonghua, a professor overseeing the breeding program at Northeast Agricultural University.\n“Continued development of this technology can be applied to ... the production of special pigs for the production of human organs for transplant,” Liu said in a news release posted Tuesday on the university’s Web site.\nCalls to the university seeking comment Wednesday were not answered.\nThe piglets’ mother was one of three pigs born with the trait in December 2006 after pig embryos were injected with fluorescent green protein. Two of the 11 piglets glow fluorescent green from their snout, trotters and tongue under ultraviolet light, the university said.\nRobin Lovell-Badge, a genetics expert at Britain’s National Institute for Medical Research, said the technology “to genetically manipulate pigs in this way would be very valuable.”\nLovell-Badge had not seen the research from China’s cloned pigs and could not comment on its credibility. He said, however, that organs from genetically altered pigs would potentially solve some of the problems of rejected organs in transplant operations.\nHe said the presence of the green protein would allow genetically modified cells to be tracked if they were transplanted into a human. The fact that the pig’s offspring also appeared to have the green genes would indicate that the genetic modification had successfully penetrated every cell, Lovell-Badge added.\nBut he said much more research and further trials – both in animals and in humans – would be necessary before the benefits of the technology could be seen.\nOther genetically modified pigs have been created before, including by Scotland’s Roslin Institute, but few results have been published.\nTokyo’s Meiji University last year successfully cloned a transgenic pig that carries the genes for human diabetes, while South Korean scientists cloned cats that glow red when exposed to ultraviolet rays.\nAssociated Press Writer Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.
(01/10/08 4:15am)
WASHINGTON – Barack Obama talked of introducing some Chicago smackdown to his politics of hope Wednesday, seeking a rebound after Hillary Rodham Clinton grasped victory in the New Hampshire primary. In the wide-open Republican contest, John McCain pressed to build on his New Hampshire win and named experience, knowledge and judgment as his calling cards in the races ahead.\nClinton pored over election strategy in the first blush of her surprising success and indicated she’d compete in every big Democratic contest coming up this month rather than try to cherry pick her way to the nomination.\n“I’m going to keep going as we take on all the rest of the contests between now and February 5th,” she said, back home in New York to “get grounded and take a deep breath” after a victory that surprised her own campaign, confounded the pollsters and shocked nearly everyone else. Two dozen states vote Feb. 5.\nObama responded not just to his Democratic rival’s New Hampshire primary win but to attacks on him by her husband, former President Clinton\n“I think that Senator Clinton, obviously, is a formidable and tough candidate, and we have to make sure that we take it to them just like they take it to us,” the Illinois senator said. “I come from Chicago politics. We’re accustomed to rough and tumble.”\nObama is bidding for resurgence in South Carolina and Nevada, which vote this month. On Wednesday, he received the endorsement of the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union local in Nevada in addition to the backing of the state’s chapter of the Service Employees International Union.\nBill Clinton complained in New Hampshire that Obama was getting a free pass from the scrutiny turned on Hillary Clinton and likened the Illinois senator’s campaign to a “fairy tale.” Obama shot back Wednesday that “the real fairy tale is, I think, Bill Clinton suggesting somehow that we’ve been just taking a cakewalk here.”\nNew Hampshire placed Clinton squarely back in the contest for the Democratic nomination after her third-place finish in Iowa and revived John McCain’s hopes seven months after his campaign had seemed to be down for the count.\nMcCain campaigned in Michigan, hoping to reprise his win there in 2000 just as he did in New Hampshire, staggering one-time poll leader Mitt Romney.\n“I can throw a dart at a map of the world and show you a place where there’s national security challenges,” McCain said before a Grand Rapids rally. “I’m the only one that’s been involved in these issues for the last 20 years.”\nIn 2000, McCain was knocked out of the race after a brutal South Carolina campaign during which he was the subject of a whisper campaign and so-called push polling. Voters were called and asked about McCain’s daughter, insinuating she was illegitimate. She was adopted from a Bangladeshi orphanage.\nNow, his South Carolina supporters have set up a “truth squad” to counter any negative campaigning against him.\n“Our goal is to set the record straight,” said state Attorney General Henry McMaster, a campaign co-chairman. “As soon as one of these negative attack ads goes up on the air or hits the mailboxes, we’ll let the voters know the truth.”\nThe victories for McCain and Clinton were evidence of New Hampshire’s prickly habit of rejecting those chosen by Iowa voters a few days earlier and raised the prospect of a drawn-out nomination battle between two history-making candidates: Clinton, who would be the first woman to hold the presidency, and Obama, who would be the first president of African-American descent.\nThird place on the Democratic side went to former Sen. John Edwards, who said he would not drop out. Instead, he hoped to keep the race a three-way contest. “Two races down, 48 states left to go,” he declared.\nWith 99 percent of the New Hampshire vote tabulated before counters shut down for the night, Clinton had 39 percent, Obama 36 percent and Edwards 17 percent. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson trailed with 5 percent.\nOn the Republican side, McCain had 37 percent, Romney 31 percent, Huckabee 11 percent, Giuliani 9 percent and Rep. Ron Paul 8 percent. Thompson received 1 percent.
(01/10/08 3:54am)
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court appeared ready Wednesday to uphold the nation’s strictest requirement that voters show photo identification before casting a ballot.\nThe justices are faced with a partisan dispute that echoes the bitterly divided decision that sealed the 2000 presidential election for George W. Bush. Now, as then, the court seemed divided along ideological lines.\nWednesday’s arguments were over a challenge to an Indiana law, passed in 2005, that is backed by Republicans as a prudent way to deter voter fraud. Democrats and civil rights groups oppose the law as unconstitutional and call it a thinly veiled effort to discourage elderly, poor and minority voters – those most likely to lack proper ID and who tend to vote for Democrats – from voting.\nBut Justice Anthony Kennedy, often a key vote on the court, did not sound persuaded that the challengers had made their case.\n“You want us to invalidate a statute on the ground that it’s a minor inconvenience to a small percentage of voters?” Kennedy said near the end of the lively session. Kennedy did, however, voice concern over some aspects of obtaining an ID, including the difficulty the poor have in getting the birth certificates that are needed to get photo IDs.\nMore than 20 states require some form of identification at the polls. Courts have upheld voter ID laws in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, but struck down Missouri’s. The Indiana case should be decided by late June, in time for the November elections.\nPaul Smith, representing the challengers, told the justices that there is no evidence of in-person voter fraud in Indiana. He said the law is a subtle way “to skew the outcome on election days.”\nIndiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher said the vast majority of Indiana voters easily comply with the law. \n“You’re talking about an infinitesimal portion of the electorate that could be burdened,” Fisher said under sharp questioning from Justice David Souter.\nThe justices could use the case to instruct courts on how to weigh claims of voter fraud versus those of disenfranchisement.
(01/07/08 3:59am)
President Mikhail Saakashvili headed for victory in Saturday’s Georgian election, according to an exit poll in the former Soviet republic, where he is fighting accusations of authoritarian tendencies four years after coming to power as a champion of democracy. Saakashvili’s supporters waved flags and tooted car horns in the capital after the exit poll showed him winning 53.8 percent of the vote. But the poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points — casting doubt on whether the president would hang onto the absolute majority needed to avoid a runoff.
(01/07/08 3:07am)
BEIJING – Last August, the Chinese government unleashed its most extensive campaign since the 2002-03 outbreak of SARS, the mysterious killer disease. The goal: to shore up China’s battered reputation as a manufacturer of quality goods.\nAs the four-month initiative – part crackdown, part public relations drive – ended in December, experts say China has taken significant steps toward addressing product quality and safety problems. But they also note the risk of backsliding in a country with a convoluted bureaucracy and a well-documented history of local leaders ignoring edicts from the top.\n“The events of the past six or so months do represent a watershed,” said Robert Kapp, a business consultant who headed the U.S. China Business Council from 1994 to 2004. “But watersheds are not always forever.”\n“The problem may be very systematic by now, and I don’t know if the Chinese will overcome it,” he added.\nWhile the high-profile campaign is over, the government is continuing work on several fronts, including developing China’s first-ever food safety law.\nThe country’s reputation as an export power took a beating last year. In March, dog and cat deaths in North America were linked to a Chinese-made pet food ingredient. Then came reports of potentially dangerous frozen fish, juice, tires and toothpaste. Millions of toys were recalled in several countries because of lead paint and other fears.\nThe crisis put China’s position as the world’s factory at risk, threatening the underpinning of its economic success and the jobs that are lifting millions of Chinese out of poverty.\nThe furor also brought China’s long-running domestic food safety problems to light, just as Beijing prepares to host hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors at the Summer Olympics in August.\nThe seriousness with which the government took the issue was underscored by the appointment of its top problem solver, Vice Premier Wu Yi, to head a Cabinet-level panel overseeing \nthe campaign.\nWu, a stern-looking 69-year-old known as the “Iron Lady,” shepherded China’s difficult entry into the World Trade Organization, took over as health minister during the SARS epidemic and has been tasked with handling the vociferous U.S. complaints about China’s exchange rate policy.\nOne month into the product safety campaign, Wu herself set out to randomly inspect shops and restaurants in the eastern province of Zhejiang.\nA senior official who accompanied Wu described the trip to foreign reporters in October as part of the public relations effort.\n“If China’s leaders pay this much attention to the quality of products ... we can achieve the goals we are trying to reach by the end of the year,” told the journalists.\nWu declared the campaign a “special war to uphold the health, life and interests of the people and uphold the reputation of Chinese products and its national image.”\nThousands of unlicensed manufacturers were shut down. Teams of inspectors were dispatched, and labels showing that the quality of export food products had been checked became mandatory.
(01/07/08 2:34am)
CAIRO, Egypt – Al-Qaida video messages of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri can now be downloaded to cell phones, the terror network announced as part of its attempts to extend its influence.\nThe announcement was posted late Friday by al-Qaida’s media wing, al-Sahab, on Web sites commonly used by Islamic militants. As of Saturday, eight previously recorded videos were made available, including a recent tribute to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former al-Qaida in Iraq leader killed by U.S. forces in Iraq in June 2006.\n“The elite jihadi media group presents the first batch of al-Sahab videos to be downloaded to cell phones,” the announcement said.\nBen Venzke, the head of IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors and analyzes militant messages, said it was not the first time al-Sahab has released videos designed for cell phones. He said the group has been releasing them for years, but that between September and December, a few video messages did not come with versions for cell phones.\n“They might just be filling in some of the gaps, or just trying to release some that had come out before,” Venzke said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.\nIn a written message introducing the new cell phone videos, al-Zawahri, al-Qaida’s No. 2 figure, asked followers to spread the terror group’s messages.\n“I asked God for the men of jihadi media to spread the message of Islam and monotheism to the world and spread real awareness to the people of the nations,” al-Zawahri said.\nVideos playable on cell phones are increasingly popular in the Middle East. The files are transferred from phone to phone using Bluetooth or infrared wireless technology. Clips showing former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s execution in December 2006 showed up on cell phones soon after his death. In Egypt, images showing police brutality have been passed around via cell phones including one video that showed an arrested bus driver being sodomized with a stick by police in the fall 2006.\nVideo and audio tapes from various Islamist groups including al-Qaida are available on militant Web sites but require a computer and a fast Internet connection – often rare in the region – to download.\nBut the eight videos currently available to download to cell phones by al-Sahab range in size from 17 megabytes to 120 megabytes, requiring phones to have large amounts of free data capacity. Al-Sahab has promised to release more of its previous video messages in cell-phone quality formats.
(01/07/08 2:30am)
CAIRO, Egypt – Al-Qaida’s American spokesman called on the terror network’s fighters to greet President Bush with “bombs and booby-trapped vehicles” when he visits the Middle East later this week, according to a video posted Sunday.\nThe rhetoric-packed video also featured the California-born Adam Gadahn tearing up his U.S. passport as part of a “symbolic” protest against Washington and marked the terror network’s first message of 2008.\n“Now we direct an urgent call to our militant brothers in Muslim Palestine and the Arab peninsula ... to be ready to receive the Crusader slayer Bush in his visit to Muslim Palestine and the Arab peninsula in the beginning of January and to receive him not with flowers or clapping but with bombs and booby-trapped vehicles,” Gadahn said in Arabic.\nGadahn, also known as Azzam al-Amriki, was charged with treason in the U.S. in 2006 and has been wanted since 2004 by the FBI, which is offering a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.\nHe last appeared on a video in August threatening new attacks on foreign embassies.
(12/07/07 2:21am)
Hundreds of thousands of strapped homeowners could get some relief from a plan negotiated by the Bush administration to freeze interest rates on subprime mortgages that are scheduled to rise in the coming months. Bush said 1.2 million people could be eligible for help, but only a fraction will be subject to the rate freeze. Others would get assistance in refinancing with their lenders and moving into loans secured by the Federal Housing Administration.
(12/07/07 2:12am)
President Bush directly told North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in a letter that the United States expects the secretive regime to keep its promise to fully disclose all nuclear programs, the White House said Thursday.\nIt was Bush’s most personal intervention with Pyongyang, the North Korean capitol, since he called the country part of an “axis of evil.”\nThe letter to North Korea underscored Bush’s desire to resolve the nuclear standoff with the communist regime, and made plain that the North cannot skirt requirements to fully explain the extent, use and possible spread of nuclear material and technology, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.\nThat is the message the North has already heard from Bush’s nuclear envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, but the Bush letter is a diplomatic exclamation point. It also serves a domestic political purpose — signaling to conservative critics of the North Korea deal that the United States will not roll back its requirements or accept less than a full declaration of the North’s nuclear program.\nThe North agreed to fully account for its nuclear activities by year’s end, but U.S. officials acknowledged Thursday that the deadline is likely to slip.\nThe North conducted a clandestine nuclear program for years and proved its entry into the world nuclear club with an underground test explosion last year.\nAn official said Hill discussed the likelihood of a late declaration during meetings over the past week with the North and the other four nations bargaining alongside the United States to eventually rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons.\nThe official spoke on condition of anonymity in describing the closed-door diplomatic meetings.\nSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed optimism, but also suggested the schedule is sliding.\n“It is going to take a monumental effort to get all of this done by the end of the year,” she said, speaking to reporters on Thursday as she flew to Brussels for NATO meetings. “And I am not too concerned about whether it’s Dec. 31 or not. They seem to be on track. Everybody believes the cooperation is very good.”\nHill delivered Bush’s letter, dated Dec. 1, to North Korea’s foreign minister during Hill’s visit to Pyongyang earlier this week. Hill also gave similar letters from Bush to China, South Korea and Japan, and another letter went to the fifth partner, Russia.\nNeither the White House nor the State Department would release the letters or describe their content in detail.\nThe question of proliferation has taken on great significance and become a political hurdle for the Bush administration, since Israel’s air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear site Sept. 6. Intelligence reports suggested that Syria was cooperating in some fashion with North Korea in building the site.
(12/06/07 7:52pm)
A car bomb exploded in a largely Shiite neighborhood Wednesday, killing at least 16 people, just as Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited the capital and said a secure and stable Iraq was within reach. It was the deadliest of four bombs in Iraq on Wednesday that killed a total of 25 people. Earlier, a blast went off in the northern city of Mosul, where Gates had landed on his sixth trip to Iraq. Gunfire and sirens followed the bombing in Baghdad’s Karradah neighborhood, and a plume of smoke rose in the sky.
(12/06/07 7:50pm)
BALI, Indonesia – More than 3,000 flying foxes have dropped dead, falling from trees in Australia. Giant squid have migrated north to commercial fishing grounds off California, gobbling anchovy and hake. Butterflies have gone extinct in the Alps.\nWhile humans debate at U.N. climate change talks in Bali, global warming is already wreaking havoc with nature. Plants and animals are affected, and the change is occurring too quickly for them to evolve.\n“A hell of a lot of species are in big trouble,” said Stephen E. Williams, the director of the Centre for Tropical Biodiversity & Climate Change at James Cook University in Australia.\n“I don’t think there is any doubt we will see a lot of (extinctions),” he said. “But even before a species goes extinct, there are a lot of impacts. Most of the species here in the wet tropics would be reduced to ... 15 percent of their current habitat.”\nGlobally, 30 percent of the Earth’s species could disappear if temperatures rise 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit – and up to 70 percent if they rise 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit, a U.N. network of scientists reported last month.\nIt wouldn’t be the first time. There have been five major extinctions in the last 520 million years, and four of them have been linked to warmer tropical seas, according to a study published last month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British scientific journal.\nThe hardest hit will include plants and animals in colder climates or at higher elevations and those with limited ranges or little tolerance for temperature change, said Wendy Foden, a conservation biologist with the World Conservation Union, which catalogs threatened species.\nButterflies that lived at high altitudes in North America and southern France have vanished, and polar bears and penguins are watching their habitat melt away.\nThe carbon dioxide emissions that are a leading cause of global warming also turn oceans more acidic, killing coral reefs and the microscopic plankton that blue whales and other marine mammals depend on for food.\n“In the long run, every species will be affected,” Foden said.
(12/06/07 7:47pm)
OMAHA, Neb. – A man opened fire with a rifle at a busy department store Wednesday, killing eight people before taking his own life, in an attack that made holiday shoppers run screaming through a mall and barricade themselves in dressing rooms. Five more people were wounded, two critically.\nThe gunman left a suicide note that was found at his home by relatives, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the shooting. Omaha television station KETV reported that the note said he wanted to “go out in style.”\nWitnesses said the gunman fired down on shoppers from a third-floor balcony of the Von Maur department store.\nThe gunman was found dead on the third floor with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and his victims were discovered on the second and third floors, police said.\n“My knees rocked. I didn’t know what to do, so I just ran with everybody else,” said Kevin Kleine, 29, who was shopping with her 4-year-old daughter at the Westroads Mall, in a prosperous neighborhood on the city’s west side. She said she hid in a dressing room with four other shoppers and an employee.\n“Everybody was scared, and we didn’t know what was going on,” said Belene Esaw-Kagbara, 31, a Von Maur employee. “We didn’t know what to do. I was praying that God protect us.”\nMickey Vickory, who was working in Von Maur’s third-floor service department, said she heard shots at about 1:50 p.m.\nShe and her co-workers and customers went into a back closet behind the wrapping room to hide, then emerged about a half-hour later when police shouted to come out with their hands up. As police took them to another part of the mall for safety, they saw the victims.\n“We saw the bodies and we saw the blood,” she said.\nSgt. Teresa Negron said the gunman killed eight people, then apparently killed himself. His name was not immediately released, and authorities gave no motive for the attack and did not know whether he said anything during the rampage.\nPolice received a 911 call from someone inside the mall, and shots could be heard in the background, Negron said. By the time officers arrived six minutes later, the shooting was over, she said.\nKeith Fidler, another Von Maur employee, said he heard a burst of five to six shots followed by 15 to 20 more rounds. Fidler said he huddled in the corner of the men’s clothing department with about a dozen other employees until police yelled to get out of the store.\nA witness, Shawn Vidlak, said the shots sounded like a nail gun. At first he thought it was noise from construction work at the mall.\n“People started screaming about gunshots,” Vidlak said. “I grabbed my wife and kids we got out of there as fast as we could.”\nShortly after the shooting, which comes three weeks before Christmas, a group of shoppers came out of the building with their hands raised. Some were still holding shopping bags.\nPolice told people to park their cars at businesses across from the mall and to wait for their loved ones, then directed them to an Omaha hotel to await information.\nPresident Bush was in Omaha on Wednesday for a fundraiser, but left about an hour before the shooting.\nThe sprawling, three-level mall has more than 135 stores and restaurants. It receives 14.5 million visitors every year, according to its Web site.\nIt was the second mass shooting at a mall this year. In February, nine people were shot, five of them fatally, at Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City. The gunman, 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic, was shot and killed by police.
(12/06/07 2:00am)
A new U.S. intelligence review that concludes Iran stopped developing a nuclear weapons program in 2003 is consistent with the U.N. atomic watchdog agency’s own findings and “should help to defuse the current crisis,” the organization’s chief said Tuesday. “Although Iran still needs to clarify some important aspects of its past and present nuclear activities, the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran,” International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohamed ElBaradei said in a statement.
(12/04/07 2:49am)
A mass grave with the remains of 12 people was unearthed in an area long controlled by al-Qaida in Iraq, officials said Monday. Two of the decomposed bodies were beheaded, according to an official at Fallujah General Hospital, where the bodies were taken after their discovery on Sunday. Hospital officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to release details of the discovery, said some appeared to have been killed as recently as four months ago, and some of the deaths dated to 18 months ago.