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Transocean tries to stop another Horizon probe
Amplify’d from www.scientificamerican.com
Transocean tries to stop another Horizon probe
Transocean Ltd, the world's biggest offshore rig contractor, aims to stop a seventh U.S. body from investigating the accident that sank one of its rigs while causing the largest U.S.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Transocean Ltd, the world's biggest offshore rig contractor, aims to stop a seventh U.S. body from investigating the accident that sank one of its rigs while causing the largest U.S. offshore oil spill.
In a letter to the Chemicals Safety Board (CSB) dated December 30, Transocean lawyer Rachel Clingman repeated a request for documents as the company tries to demonstrate that the CSB lacks jurisdiction over April's Deepwater Horizon disaster.
A ruptured well led to an explosion on the Horizon, which was drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for BP Plc, and that accident ultimately sank the deepwater rig, and caused more than 4 million barrels of oil to spew into the sea.
Clingman had argued in a December 2 letter, which was released to reporters along with the latest correspondence, that the rig was not subject to CSB scrutiny because it was not a fixed source.
Clingman went on to quote Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, as saying last month that CSB officials had acknowledged they "weren't sure that they had jurisdiction to do this investigation."
A CSB representative was unavailable for comment on Friday.
According to publications on its website, CSB investigations look into all aspects of chemical accidents, including physical causes such as equipment failure as well as inadequacies in regulations, industry standards, and safety management systems.
Probes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster have been opened by the Presidential Oil Spill Commission, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Interior's inspector general, as well as four Senate committees and five committees in the House of Representatives, Transocean said.
(Reporting by Braden Reddall, editing by Dave Zimmerman)
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Link between birth defects and weaponry possible?
Amplify’d from www.upi.com
Link between defects, weaponry possible?
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- A rise in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Falluja could have been caused by weaponry used in U.S. assaults that took place six years ago, a report says.
The report, to be published next week in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, highlights a major rise in cancers and chronic neurological, cardiac and skeletal defects in newborns at close to 11 times higher than normal rates, The Guardian newspaper in London reported Friday.
The report focused on metals as potential contaminating agents afflicting the city, especially among pregnant mothers.
"Metals are involved in regulating genome stability," it says. "As environmental effectors, metals are potentially good candidates to cause birth defects."
There is speculation the defects are caused by depleted uranium rounds, heavily used in two large battles in the city in April and November 2004. Many military and militia forces use the rounds, containing ionising radiation.
However, scientists are split on the possible danger posed by the rounds, with some claiming they leave behind a toxic residue, while others say depleted uranium has been proven not to be a contaminant.
Other battlefield residues may also be responsible for the jump in defects, the report acknowledges.
"Many known war contaminants have the potential to interfere with normal embryonic and fetal development," it says.
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Pakistanis Rally in Support of Blasphemy Law
Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
Pakistanis Rally in Support of Blasphemy Law
Thousands demonstrated in Karachi and elsewhere on Friday to demand that Pakistan’s blasphemy law remain intact.
By SALMAN MASOOD
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A crippling strike by Islamist parties brought Pakistan to a standstill on Friday as thousands of people took to the streets, and forced businesses to close, to head off any change in the country’s blasphemy law, which rights groups say has been used to persecute minorities, especially Christians.
The law was introduced in the 1980s under the military dictatorship of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq as part of a policy of promoting Islam to unite this deeply fractious society. Many attempts to revise the law have since been thwarted by the strong opposition of religious forces, which continue to gather strength.
In fiery speeches across all major cities and towns, religious leaders warned the government on Friday against altering the law, which carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone convicted of insulting Islam.
“The president and prime minister should take the nation into confidence and assure in unequivocal terms that there will be no change in the blasphemy law under any international pressure,” Sahibzada Fazal Kareem, a religious leader and member of Parliament, said at a rally in the southern port city of Karachi, where the police fired tear gas to stop protesters from marching toward Bilawal House, one of the residences of President Asif Ali Zardari.
The governing Pakistan Peoples Party, which is struggling to keep its government coalition intact, has been conciliatory on the issue.
Syed Sumsam Ali Bokhari, the minister for information, tried to placate religious forces by assuring them that the government did not intend to amend or repeal the law. “Neither the Pakistan Peoples Party nor the government has discussed the issue to bring any amendment in the blasphemy law,” Mr. Bokhari said Thursday at a news briefing.
But such assurances failed to calm the religious parties, who issued their call on Dec. 15 for a countrywide strike.
“I call it a natural result of religious extremism that is on the rise in Pakistani society,” said Mehdi Hasan, the chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent rights group, while commenting on the strike.
“The liberal and democratic forces in the country have retreated so much that it has created an ideological vacuum that is now being filled by the religious extremists,” Dr. Hasan said.
The human rights commission has documented scores of cases in which men have been harassed for being Christian or for being members of the Ahmadi sect, a minority group within Islam, and then accused of blasphemy. The mere fact of being a Christian or an Ahmadi in Pakistan makes a person vulnerable to prosecution, the commission says. Often the mere accusation of blasphemy has led to murders, lynchings and false arrests.
The latest push to revise the law came after the case of Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old mother of five who was sentenced to death by a municipal court, gained prominence in November. Ms. Bibi, a Christian, was accused of blasphemy after her fellow agricultural workers grew angry when she touched their water bowl, her supporters say.
After indicating that a pardon was forthcoming, government spokespeople have recently taken a more ambiguous position and now say that Mr. Zardari can extend a pardon to someone only if the prime minister recommends it. Pope Benedict XVI has appealed for Ms. Bibi to be freed unconditionally.
Rights activists, critics and several government officials, including Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab Province, and Sherry Rehman, a lawmaker and former information minister, have urged the government to repeal or revise the laws.
“These laws institutionalize injustice,” Ms. Rehman said. “People have to feel secure as first-class citizens of this country.”
Ms. Rehman expressed disappointment that the government had distanced itself from her proposed amendments to the law.
The general strike and protests on Friday show the power Islamists hold on the streets of Pakistan. They also contrast sharply with the campaigns by rights activists and opponents of the blasphemy laws who have vented their opposition and discontent mostly on the Internet and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Protest rallies by rights activists have been ineffective and relatively small.
Since the 1980s, conservatism and religious extremism have been on the rise in the country, analysts say. The religious right has become extremely powerful by establishing its networks across major urban centers and small towns.
“Their agitation potential is immense,” said Rasul Baksh Rais, a political analyst who teaches at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore. “Their numerical strength is not enough for electoral wins but is enough to create trouble for any government in Pakistan.”
“The government is not in a position to take any drastic step against the sensitivities of the religious right, which does not want to concede any inch, even if that is meant to save innocent lives,” Mr. Rais said.
Ms. Rehman, the former information minister, said the secular, democratic forces need not be deterred by the show of force by Islamists. “Eventually, I think we have to keep at it with the help of the civil society and media; their street power is disproportional,” she said, referring to religious parties. “The mainstream political parties need to push back and resist the religious extremists who hijack issues through street power.”
However, analysts said the huge show of force by religious parties, and even the attention local news media outlets gave them on Friday, would only embolden the religious elements in the country. The dynamic is such that “the government may not be able to make any changes in the blasphemy laws in the coming years,” Mr. Rais predicted.
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Maine seeks exemption from provision of health-care law
Amplify’d from www.washingtonpost.com
Washington Post Staff Writer
Days before a key and controversial provision of the health-care law is set to take effect, Maine is the only state to have asked the Obama administration for an exemption, despite concerns expressed by at least a dozen states.
Beginning in 2011, insurers must devote at least 80 percent of the premiums they collect to medical claims or other activities that improve customers' health - leaving no more than 20 percent for the insurer's administrative costs or profits. Companies that do not spend enough on the right purposes will have to refund the difference to their customers in 2012.
Consumer advocates have hailed the new "medical loss ratio" standard as a ground-breaking protection against profiteering by insurers. But the law's drafters were concerned that it could prove too onerous for plans selling to individuals, whose customer base is less stable and healthy than those of plans serving small and large businesses. So the law permits states to request temporary adjustments of the standard from the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
According to rules issued by HHS, a state must provide data demonstrating that there is a reasonable risk that the new standard will force a critical mass of insurers to pull out of its individual market, leaving residents who cannot get insurance through their employer with little or no ability to buy it for themselves.
States can request adjustments for the next one to three years. Though technically the law allows for adjustments beyond then, it's unclear whether they would be necessary: In 2014, the law will begin requiring almost all Americans to buy insurance - providing insurers selling individual plans with a considerably healthier, more constant pool of customers.
Until then, Maine has requested that the medical loss ratio required of its individual market plans be lowered to 65 percent. State officials have also asked that the ratio be calculated using the state's own, potentially more expansive, definition of activities that can be counted as improving customers' health.
HHS officials have yet to determine that the state has provided the necessary information in its application. Once they do, it could take up to 40 days for HHS officials to decide whether the adjustment is called for.
HHS has not set a deadline by which states must request an adjustment for 2011. But according to administration officials, because the standard applies starting Jan. 1, as a practical matter, they would expect any additional states to apply as early in the new year as possible.
Jack McDermott, a spokesman for the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, blamed his state's delay on the Obama administration.
Florida anticipates requesting an adjustment, he said. But "HHS did not issue the rules on what would be required [for the application] until Nov. 22."
McDermott added that the data state officials are now being required to gather is "voluminous" and said there was reason to worry that even if Florida is ultimately granted an adjustment, the news might not come soon enough to prevent insurers from pulling out of its individual market.
However, insurance regulators in several other states that had previously indicated they would seek waivers said HHS's timing was not a concern. Rather, they are unsure whether an adjustment is wise.
"I'm between a rock and a hard place," said Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney.
Chaney said he worries that if the 80 percent standard is applied, insurers will no longer pay fees to brokers who sell their plans. The broker fees are counted as an administrative expense and currently eat up a large chunk of premiums for many individual market plans.
Yet, without brokers to help consumers navigate the system, Chaney said, "you have consumers trying to buy a health-insurance policy that they might not truly understand, and they may not get the coverage that they actually need."
However, Chaney said, the individual market in Mississippi is dominated by three large players that might be able to meet the 80 percent standard.
"I've got to be certain that they don't take advantage if I get a waiver," he said.
Iowa Assistant Insurance Commissioner Angela Boston was also noncommittal. Her state was one of four that went so far as to write a letter to HHS earlier this year officially requesting a waiver from the medical loss ratio standard. However, Boston noted that the letter was sent as HHS regulators were still crafting the fine print of the provision.
"Our main concern at the time was to make sure that HHS was aware that states had concerns about the impact and that HHS should be sensitive to that," she said. "That was the purpose of sending the letter."
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Swede told he had cancer and forced to have penis amputated following a YEAR of misdiagnosis
Amplify’d from www.dailymail.co.uk
Swede told he had cancer and forced to have penis amputated following a YEAR of misdiagnosis
An elderly Swedish man has had to have his penis amputated after doctors misdiagnosed his condition.
Rather than being the urinary tract infection doctors had thought, he had contracted cancer, and medics had missed the signs for over a YEAR.
As the disease had been undetected for so long, the cancer had taken hold and doctors were left with no option other than to lop off his manhood.
Taking the snip: The elderly Swede, who thought he had urinary infection, in fact had contracted cancer, and doctors were forced to amputate his penis
The sexagenarian originally visited his local clinic in Blekinge, southern Sweden, in September 2009 for treatment on what he was told was an infection.
When he returned in March 2010 complaining of foreskin irritation, the doctor on duty at the time diagnosed the problem as a simple case of inflammation, the local paper, Blekinge Läns Tidning (BLT), reported.
After three weeks passed without the prescribed treatment alleviating the man’s condition, he was instructed to seek further treatment at Blekinge Hospital.
Misdiagnosed: The man, in his 60s, went to a clinic in local Blekinge, southern Sweden
But it took five MONTHS before he was able to schedule an appointment at the hospital.
When he finally met with doctors at the hospital, the man was informed he had cancer and his penis would have to be removed.
It remains unclear if the man would have been able to keep his penis had the cancer been detected sooner.
But the matter has been reported to the National Board of Health and Welfare in Sweden.
Two years ago Philip Seaton also suffered a similar fate when went to be circumcised at a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, but awoke to find his penis had been amputated.
Mr Seaton filed a lawsuit against the doctor who performed the procedure and the anesthetist, claiming mental anguish and pain.
He also said he has lost the enjoyment of life, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says doctors only received consent to perform a circumcision and that Mr Seaton did not consent to his penis being removed.
His lawyer, Kevin George, said the organ was cut off after cancer was found, but that doctors only had consent to remove the foreskin.
Mr George said: 'Sometimes you have an emergency and you have to do this, but he could very easily closed him up and said, "Here are your options. You have cancer," and the family would have said, "We want a second opinion. This is a big deal."'
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Government by regulation. Shhh.
Amplify’d from www.washingtonpost.com
Government by regulation. Shhh.
Most people don't remember Obamacare's notorious Section 1233, mandating government payments for end-of-life counseling. It aroused so much anxiety as a possible first slippery step on the road to state-mandated late-life rationing that the Senate never included it in the final health-care law.
Well, it's back - by administrative fiat. A month ago, Medicare issued a regulation providing for end-of-life counseling during annual "wellness" visits. It was all nicely buried amid the simultaneous release of hundreds of new Medicare rules.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), author of Section 1233, was delighted. "Mr. Blumenauer's office celebrated 'a quiet victory,' but urged supporters not to crow about it," reports the New York Times. Deathly quiet. In early November, his office sent an e-mail plea to supporters: "We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists . . . e-mails can too easily be forwarded." They had been lucky that "thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it. . . . The longer this [regulation] goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it."
So much for the Democrats' transparency - and for their repeated claim that the more people learn what is in the health-care law, the more they will like it. Turns out ignorance is the Democrats' best hope.
And regulation is their perfect vehicle - so much quieter than legislation. Consider two other regulatory usurpations in just the past few days:
On Dec. 23, the Interior Department issued Secretarial Order 3310, reversing a 2003 decision and giving itself the authority to designate public lands as "Wild Lands." A clever twofer: (1) a bureaucratic power grab - for seven years up through Dec. 22, wilderness designation had been the exclusive province of Congress, and (2) a leftward lurch - more land to be "protected" from such nefarious uses as domestic oil exploration in a country disastrously dependent on foreign sources.
The very same day, the Environmental Protection Agency declared that in 2011 it would begin drawing up anti-carbon regulations on oil refineries and power plants, another power grab effectively enacting what Congress had firmly rejected when presented as cap-and-trade legislation.
For an Obama bureaucrat, however, the will of Congress is a mere speed bump. Hence this regulatory trifecta, each one moving smartly left - and nicely clarifying what the spirit of bipartisan compromise that President Obama heralded in his post-lame-duck Dec. 22 news conference was really about: a shift to the center for public consumption and political appearance only.
On that day, Obama finally embraced the tax-cut compromise he had initially excoriated, but only to avoid forfeiting its obvious political benefit - its appeal to independent voters who demand bipartisanship and are the key to Obama's reelection. But make no mistake: Obama's initial excoriation in his angry Dec. 7 news conference was the authentic Obama. He hated the deal.
Now as always, Obama's heart lies left. For those fooled into thinking otherwise by the new Obama of Dec. 22, his administration's defiantly liberal regulatory moves - on the environment, energy and health care - should disabuse even the most beguiled.
These regulatory power plays make political sense. Because Obama needs to appear to reclaim the center, he will stage his more ideological fights in yawn-inducing regulatory hearings rather than in the dramatic spotlight of congressional debate. How better to impose a liberal agenda on a center-right nation than regulatory stealth?
It's Obama's only way forward during the next two years. He will never get past the half-Republican 112th Congress what he could not get past the overwhelmingly Democratic 111th. He doesn't have the votes and he surely doesn't want the publicity. Hence the quiet resurrection, as it were, of end-of-life counseling.
Obama knows he has only so many years to change the country. In his first two, he achieved much: the first stimulus, Obamacare and financial regulation. For the next two, however, the Republican House will prevent any repetition of that. Obama's agenda will therefore have to be advanced by the more subterranean means of rule-by-regulation.
But this must simultaneously be mixed with ostentatious displays of legislative bipartisanship (e.g., the lame-duck tax-cut deal) in order to pull off the (apparent) centrist repositioning required for reelection. This, in turn, would grant Obama four more years when, freed from the need for pretense, he can reassert himself ideologically and complete the social-democratic transformation - begun Jan. 20, 2009; derailed Nov. 2, 2010 - that is the mission of his presidency.
Read more at www.washingtonpost.com
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4 Police Officers and a Doctor Killed By Gunmen Linked to Drug Cartels in Monterrey
Amplify’d from www.hapblog.com
4 Police Officers and a Doctor Killed By Gunmen Linked to Drug Cartels in Monterrey
Three officers were wounded in Wednesday's attacks, said Jorge Domene, a spokesman for the security council in northern Nuevo Leon state, where Monterrey is located.
In one of the attacks, gunmen opened fire on a Monterrey police station, killing a medical doctor who was administering tests to employees at the station and wounding three officers, Domene said.
In two additional, separate attacks carried out within minutes of each other in the Monterrey suburb of Guadalupe, gunmen killed two police officers, a man and a woman.
"Yesterday's events clearly represent acts by organized crime trying to intimidate or reverse the actions that authorities have taken ... to counter the violence that has been unleashed in our state," Domene told a news conference.
Monterrey, Mexico's third-largest city, has been rocked by drug-cartel turf battl
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