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Monday, January 16, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Tensions high, US warns Iran not to block shipping (AP)
WASHINGTON ? Tensions rising by the day, the Obama administration said Friday it is warning Iran through public and private channels against any action that threatens the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. The Navy revealed that two U.S. ships in and near the Gulf were harassed by Iranian speedboats last week.
Spokesmen were vague on what the United States would do about Iran's threat to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz, but military officials have been clear that the U.S. is readying for a possible naval clash.
That prospect is the latest flashpoint with Iran, and one of the most serious. Although it currently overshadows the threat of war over Iran's disputed nuclear program, perhaps beginning with an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear structure, both simmering crises raise the possibility of a shooting war this year.
"We have to make sure we are ready for any situation and have all options on the table," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said, addressing a soldier's question Thursday about the overall risk of war with Iran.
Navy officials said that in separate incidents Jan. 6, three Iranian speedboats ? each armed with a mounted gun ? briefly chased after a U.S. Navy ship just outside the Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter in the northern Gulf. No shots were fired and the speedboats backed off.
For several reasons, the risk of open conflict with Tehran appears higher in this election year than at any point since President Barack Obama took office with a pledge to try to bridge 30 years of enmity. A clash would represent a failure of U.S. policy on several fronts and vault now-dormant national security concerns into the presidential election contest.
The U.S. still hopes that international pressure will persuade Iran to back down on its disputed nuclear program, but the Islamic regime shows no sign it would willingly give up a project has become a point of national pride. A nuclear bomb, or the ability to quickly make one, could also be worth much more to Iran as a bargaining chip down the road.
Time is short, with Iran making several leaps toward the ability to manufacture a nuclear weapon if it chooses to do so. Iran claims its nuclear development is intended for the peaceful production of energy. Meanwhile, several longstanding assumptions about U.S. influence and the value of a targeted strike to stymie Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon have changed. For one, the White House is no longer confident it could prevail on Israel not to launch such a strike.
An escalating covert campaign of sabotage and targeted assassinations highlighted by this week's killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist may not be enough to head off a larger shooting war and could prod Iran to strike first.
The brazen killing of a young scientist by motorcycle-riding bombers is seen as almost surely the work of Israel, according to U.S. and other officials speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. The killing on a Tehran street followed the deaths of several other Iranians involved in the nuclear program, a mysterious explosion at an Iranian nuclear site that may have been sabotage and the apparent targeting of the program with an efficient computer virus.
Iranian officials accuse both Israel and the U.S. of carrying out the assassination as part of a secret operation to stop Iran's nuclear program. The killing came a day after Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was quoted as telling a parliamentary panel that 2012 would be a "critical year" for Iran ? in part because of "things that happen to it unnaturally."
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Panetta made a point of publicly denying any U.S. involvement, but the administration tied itself in knots this week over how far to go in condemning an action that could further the U.S. goal of stalling Iranian nuclear progress.
The U.S. position remains that a military strike on Iran's known nuclear facilities is undesirable because it would have unintended consequences and would probably only stall, not end, the Iranian nuclear drive. That has been the consensus view among military leaders and policy makers for roughly five years, spanning a Republican and Democratic administration.
But during that time Iran has gotten ever closer to a potential bomb, Israel has gotten more brazen in its threats to stop an Iranian bomb by nearly any means, and the U.S. administration's influence over Israel has declined.
Israel considers Iran its mortal enemy and takes seriously the Iranian threat to wipe the Jewish state from the map. The United States is Israel's strongest ally and international defender, but the allies differ over how imminent the Iranian threat has become and how to stop it.
The strained relationship between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plays a role, as does the rise in influence of conservative political parties in Israel. U.S. officials have concluded that Israel will go its own way on Iran, despite U.S. objections, and may not give the U.S. much notice if it decides to launch a strike, U.S. and other officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
The Obama administration is concerned that Iran's claim this week that it is expanding nuclear operations with more advanced equipment may push Israel closer to a strike.
Obama last month approved new sanctions against Iran that would target its central bank and its ability to sell petroleum abroad. The U.S. has delayed implementing the sanctions for at least six months, worried about sending the price of oil higher at a time when the global economy is struggling.
A senior commander of the Revolutionary Guard force was recently quoted as saying Tehran's leadership has decided to order the closure of the Strait of Hormuz if the country's petroleum exports are blocked due to sanctions.
Panetta linked the two crises Thursday, saying an Iranian nuclear weapon is one "red line" the U.S. will not allow Iran to cross and a closure of the strait is another.
"We must keep all capabilities ready in the event those lines are crossed," Panetta told soldiers at Fort Bliss, Texas.
He did not elaborate, but the nation's top military officer, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey, has said the U.S. would take action to reopen the strategic waterway. That could only mean military action, and there are U.S. warships stationed nearby.
"The United States and the international community have a strong interest in the free flow of commerce and freedom of navigation in all national waterways," White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday, adding that Iran is well aware of that position. "Our views are clear, we're expressing them publicly and privately, and I'll leave it at that."
International talks to barter Iran out of building a nuclear weapon are nearly collapsed, the United States and several partners are on the verge of applying the toughest sanctions yet on Iran's lifeblood oil sector, an increasingly cornered Iranian leadership is lashing out in unpredictable ways and faces additional internal pressures with a parliamentary election approaching.
All that adds up to a new equation, U.S. and Western diplomats said. A unilateral U.S. military strike on Iran's nuclear infrastructure remains unlikely but no longer unthinkable, while the likelihood of an Israeli military strike has increased.
Immediate consequences would probably include an unpredictable spike in oil prices, ripple effects in troubled European economies and a setback for the fragile U.S. economic recovery. Longer term, a strike or a full-on war would almost surely ignite anti-American sentiment in the Middle East and beyond and empower hardline political movements in newly democratic Egypt and elsewhere.
Although the Obama administration wants to avoid conflict, it is locked in a cycle of provocation and reaction that feeds Iranian fears and may make war more likely, said Suzanne Maloney, a former State Department Iran expert now at the Brookings Institution.
"The tactics the administration has been taking means conflict becomes more likely because of the potential for miscalculation and the level of tensions and frustrations on both sides," she said.
___
AP National Security Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.
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Saturday, January 14, 2012
S&P downgrades France, eight other euro zone nations (Reuters)
NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Standard & Poor's carried out a mass downgrade of euro zone countries on Friday, stripping France and Austria of their top-grade AAA ratings in a move that may complicate efforts to solve a two-year old European debt crisis.
Germany, the bloc's largest economy, was spared.
Nine of the 17 members of the euro area had their credit ratings cut by S&P. France and four other countries suffered a one-notch downgrade while Portugal, Italy, Spain and Cyprus were cut by two notches.
S&P reaffirmed the ratings on seven other euro zone countries. The agency said that of the 16 countries reviewed, all save Germany and Slovakia have negative outlooks, meaning more downgrades are possible in the next couple of years.
(Reporting By Walter Brandimarte; Editing by James Dalgleish)
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Confirmed: Apple ?Education Announcement? in NYC Next Week
Apple has confirmed the rumored book-related event in New York later this month. The company has sent out an invitation to a “education announcement” at the Guggenheim Museum, NYC at 10AM (Eastern) on January 19th.
I took a guess that this would be something to do with text books, and it looks like I might have [...]
I took a guess that this would be something to do with text books, and it looks like I might have [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/YkKL1g7pLzY/
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Friday, January 13, 2012
Deadly rains, scant preparation in Brazil
Rescue personnel carry the body of a mudslide victim in Jamapara, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012. Heavy rains caused mudslides that killed at least eight people in Rio de Janeiro state Monday, raising the number of dead in Rio and neighboring Minas Gerais state to 23 so far this year, civil defense officials said. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)
Rescue personnel carry the body of a mudslide victim in Jamapara, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012. Heavy rains caused mudslides that killed at least eight people in Rio de Janeiro state Monday, raising the number of dead in Rio and neighboring Minas Gerais state to 23 so far this year, civil defense officials said. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)
Rescue personnel work at the site of a mudslide that killed at least eight people in Jamapara, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 9, 2012. Heavy rains caused mudslides along Rio de Janeiro state, raising the number of dead there and in neighboring Minas Gerais state to 23 so far this year, civil defense officials said. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)
Relatives mourn as people carry the coffins of their family members out of a church after a deadly mudslide in Jamapara, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Tuesday Jan. 10, 2012. Sergio Carvalho, his wife Solange and their son Tiago were buried by the mudslide. Civil defense officials say the mudslide caused by two days of downpours has killed at least 13 people in Rio de Janeiro state, while in neighboring Minas Gerais state at least 15 have died. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)
Photographs lay scattered in the rubble of a home destroyed by a mudslide in Jamapara, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Wednesday Jan. 11, 2012. A mudslide caused by two days of downpours has killed at least 13 people in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and another 11 are listed as missing, according to authorities. In neighboring Minas Gerais state, officials say 15 have died in floodwaters or mudslides. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)
Survivors of a mudslide that killed at least eight people look at rescue efforts in Jamapara, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 9, 2012. Heavy rains caused mudslides along Rio de Janeiro state, raising the number of dead there and in neighboring Minas Gerais state to 23 so far this year, civil defense officials said. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) ? Brazil's tropical storms bring death every summer as torrential rains unleash floods and mudslides that can bury whole communities in minutes. A single storm killed nearly 1,000 people last year.
This season was going to be different. Government officials promised money would flow to prevent these catastrophes. But with the rains and deaths already starting, the government's own figures show funds are not going where officials say they are needed.
Brazil's Congress set aside $282 million last year for the federal disaster-prevention program, a jump from the $236 million allotted in 2010. On orders of President Dilma Rousseff, government geologists drew up a list of cities at greatest risk for a natural disaster.
That came in response to torrential rains at this time last year that dissolved hillsides and turned creeks into rampaging rivers in the mountains near Rio de Janeiro, tearing through and burying entire neighborhoods. A total of 918 people died, and the bodies of 215 are still missing.
Yet only 30 percent of the new disaster money has been spent, and little of it has gone to the highest-risk areas, according to the independent group Contas Abertas ? "Open Accounts" ? which campaigns for transparency in government.
It found that so far, disaster-prevention funds have gone to only two of the 56 cities that the new survey listed as high risk. Sao Paulo obtained $86,000 and $171,000 went to Florianopolis, the capital of Santa Catarina state, where 135 people died in floods in 2008.
The Brazilian Geological Service survey found nearly 180,000 people living in dangerously fragile areas, mostly in southeastern states such Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.
But the city awarded the most disaster prevention money from the 2011 budget is Recife, which got $14 million from the Ministry of National Integration. The northeastern city is not even on the new list of areas at risk, though it is the capital of Pernambuco, the home state of National Integration Minister Fernando Bezerra Coelho.
Pernambuco got more funding than any other state for disaster prevention this past year. Flood-devastated Rio de Janeiro was 10th.
Bezerra has denied improperly favoring his state, noting that the money will help build dams to control rivers that flooded and killed 20 people in 2010.
"You can't discriminate against Pernambuco because it's the state the minister comes from," he told a news conference last week. "Any Brazilian citizen sitting in this chair would have done the same."
While Rousseff has stood behind Bezerra, Congress grilled him Thursday about allegations of improper spending. He insisted the decision to allocate disaster funds to his state was a technical decision, not political, and said the president and the Planning minister also knew of the investment.
Meanwhile, dangerous hillsides are going without reinforcement and perilous rivers are undredged.
"The president doesn't want more people to die, but more people will die. There will be more deaths," said Eduardo Macedo, vice president of Brazil's association of geologists. "We're making advances, but we are not even close to having in place the structure we need."
According to Contas Abertas, officials have spent just about a quarter of the money the Congress has allocated to disaster relief each year from 2004 to 2011, following a pattern of under-spending that is common among federal ministries.
Small municipalities often don't have the resources to draw up acceptable proposals for federal money, and Brazilian bureaucracy snarls projects even when funding has been granted, said Gil Castello Branco, founder of Contas Abertas.
He said the money that is paid often flows to areas with political ties to those disbursing the funds.
"The saddest part of this is seeing history repeat itself over the years: the disasters, and the poor use of public resources meant to prevent them," Castello Branco said.
The small Rio de Janeiro town of Sapucaia, where 20 have died this week, has not gotten any federal help, although it suffered a flood two years ago, said Mayor Anderson Zanon. The municipal government doesn't have the resources to take on major projects to contain denuded slopes and build new homes for people living in risky areas without federal funding, he said.
"We can't continue having these tragedies," he said. "This could have been prevented. We need to build, do containment work, so this doesn't happen again next year."
Minister Bezerra Coelho visited some of the flooded parts of Rio state this week and announced $12 million would sent to help victims there as part of a $244 million emergency response package announced by the president for the southeastern states.
To Rita de Cassia Mendes Morais, who lost four family members and "every brick" of her home in Sapucaia, the promise rings hollow.
"It's not just about going on television and talking, and making promises," she said. "They come here now, then they disappear, and the money too. I want the government to have more heart, to look out for us who have survived the worst."
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Thursday, January 12, 2012
FAA says pilots can guide whooping cranes (AP)
WASHINGTON ? The pilots of the bird-like aircraft that has been leading nine young whooping cranes to their winter home in Florida have been granted a special exemption by federal regulators to continue their journey.
The Federal Aviation Administration has provided a one-time waiver to Operation Migration, a conservation organization trying to re-establish an Eastern flyway for whooping cranes by teaching young birds how to make the flight.
Operation Migration ran into trouble with the FAA because it pays salaries to pilots. FAA regulations say sport planes ? a category that sometimes includes aircraft of exotic design ? can only be flown for personal use.
"Because the operation is in `mid-migration,' the FAA is granting a one-time exemption so the migration can be completed," the agency said in a statement. "The FAA will work with Operation Migration to develop a more comprehensive, long-term solution."
FAA officials notified the conservation group's pilots in late November that the agency had opened an investigation. Just before Christmas, Operation Migration voluntarily grounded the plane and the birds in northwestern Alabama ? more than half way to their destination.
Joe Duff, an Operation Migration co-founder and one of the organization's pilots, said more than 1,400 people have signed an online petition asking that the flight be allowed to continue.
"We're very pleased. This is probably a record for turning around a waiver," Duff said.
He said he has sympathy for FAA officials, who don't want to "open the floodgates" to potentially risky uses of ultralight aircraft.
"There are all kinds of things people would like to do in sports aircraft that they aren't designed to do," Duff said.
Operation Migration is part of a U.S.-Canadian partnership of government and private organizations trying to re-establish migrating flocks of whooping cranes. The cranes nearly became extinct, dwindling to only 15 birds in 1941. One flyway has already been re-established, but that flock of more than 100 birds is vulnerable to extinction should a disaster strike, Duff said.
Another Eastern flyway disappeared in the late 1800s when the last whooping cranes flying that route died off, he said. Since there were no birds still flying the route, conservationists have been showing young cranes how to make the journey.
There were 10 cranes when the flock left Wisconsin this fall. But one young bird took a detour and was later found hanging out with a flock of migrating sandhill cranes. That youngster has already arrived in Florida.
___
Online:
Operation Migration http://www.operationmigration.org/index.html
___
Follow Joan Lowy at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy
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Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Study: Statins linked with small diabetes risk
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A new side effect seems to be emerging for those cholesterol-lowering wonder drugs called statins: They may increase some people's chances of developing Type 2 diabetes.
A study published Monday adds to the evidence, finding a modest risk among older women who used a variety of statins.
It's a puzzling link, and specialists say people who most need statins because of a high risk for a heart attack should stick with the drugs.
"What I fear here is that people who need and will benefit from statins will be scared off of using the drugs because of reports like this," says Dr. Steven Nissen, cardiology chairman at the Cleveland Clinic, who wasn't involved with the research. "We don't want these drugs in the water supply, but we want the right people treated. When they are, this effect is not a significant limitation."
But more and more doctors are urging otherwise healthy people to use the pills as a way to prevent heart disease. For them, the findings add another potential complication as they consider whether to tackle their cholesterol with diet and exercise alone or add a medication.
"The statin should not be seen as the magic pill," says Dr. Yunsheng Ma of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, who led the study of postmenopausal women.
Statins are one of the most widely prescribed drugs, and among the most touted with good reason. They can dramatically lower so-called "bad" LDL cholesterol. Studies make clear that they save lives when used by people who already have heart disease.
What's debated is how much the drugs help people who don't yet have cardiovascular disease but whose chances are higher because of other factors such as smoking or high blood pressure ? or diabetes. In fact, long-term diabetes is so heart-risky that the American Diabetes Association urges fairly aggressive statin use by many diabetics. For everyone else, Nissen says the general rule is statins help people who have at least a 10 percent chance of a heart attack in the next 10 years, something a doctor can calculate.
All drugs have side effects that are important to consider while deciding whether they're a good bet for an individual. Statins have long been known to cause muscle pain that on rare occasions becomes a serious breakdown of muscle that can lead to kidney failure, even death.
But whether statins can make blood sugar rise enough that someone crosses the threshold to diabetes has been confusing.
After all, some of the same risks for heart disease ? such as being overweight and sedentary ? also increase the odds of developing Type 2 diabetes. And Ma says too many statin users wrongly assume the pills will let them eat whatever they want.
Ma's team examined a huge government study that tracked the health of postmenopausal women for many years. They culled the records of more than 153,000 women who didn't have diabetes when they enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative in the 1990s. Just 7 percent were taking statins at the time.
Fast forward to 2005: Nearly 10 percent of the statin users had developed diabetes, compared with 6.4 percent of the older women who hadn't used the drugs at the study's start, Ma concluded. The findings were reported online Monday by the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.
This is what scientists call an observational study, which can hint at a risk but can't prove it.
But it comes after a number of smaller but more precise studies ? where patients were randomly assigned to take a statin or some other treatment ? that also have found a link. The first to prompt doctor head-scratching was in 2008, a study of the drug Crestor. Last June, a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association analyzed five additional randomized trials and concluded the increased risk was small but real for people taking higher doses of any statin.
That report calculated that one fewer patient would experience a heart attack or other cardiovascular problem for every 155 patients treated for a year ? and there would be one additional case of diabetes for every 498 patients treated.
At the National Institutes of Health, diabetes specialist Dr. Judith Fradkin says statins' benefits outweigh the potential side effect, and that newly developed diabetes won't harm right away.
"The danger here is alarming people and having them go off a medication that's of proven benefit," she says.
But Dr. Beatrice Golomb of the University of California, San Diego, welcomed the new study as a needed note of caution for women, saying there's less certainty about the drugs' overall effects in them. Stay tuned: Her own research aims to narrow down which statin users are more likely to experience a blood-sugar jump.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE ? Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.
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