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Brain radiotherapy affects mind
Radiotherapy used to treat brain tumours may lead to a decline in mental function many years down the line, say Dutch researchers.A study of 65 patients, 12 years after they were treated, found those who had radiotherapy were more likely to have problems with memory and attention. Writing in The Lancet Neurology, the researchers said doctors should hold off using radiotherapy where possible. One UK expert said doctors were cautious about using radiotherapy. The patients in the study all had a form of brain tumour called a low-grade glioma – one of the most common types of brain tumour. In these cases radiotherapy is commonly given after initial surgery to remove the tumour, but there is some debate about whether this should be done immediately or used only if the cancer returns.
It is known that radiation treatment in the brain causes some damage to normal tissue and the study’s researchers suspected it could lead to decline in mental function. A previous study in the same patients done six years after treatment found no difference in aspects like memory, attention and the speed at which people could process information, in those who had received radiotherapy. But the latest research, carried out more than a decade after original treatment, did find significant variation in the results of several mental tests between those who had had radiotherapy and those who had not. In all, 53% of patients who had radiotherapy showed decline in brain function compared with 27% of patients who only had surgery. The most profound differences were in tests to measure attention. Delaying treatmentWith an average survival of ten years for this type of tumour, the researchers said patients undergoing radiotherapy were at considerable risk of developing problem years down the road. One option for doctors would be to delay when patients received radiotherapy, reserving it in case the tumour returned, they advised. “It always depends on the patient, but if it is possible to defer radiotherapy, maybe people should,” said study leader Dr Linda Douw, from the Department of Neurology at VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam. But she added that more research was needed and there were trials under way to look at other treatments such as chemotherapy. In an accompanying article, experts from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, USA, said it was hard to draw conclusions because radiotherapy had improved since the patients in the study had been treated, but agreed more studies were needed. Dr Jeremy Rees, a Cancer Research UK scientist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery Honorary said they would usually try to avoid giving radiotherapy to patients with low-grade glioma, unless the tumour was progressing or the patient had epilepsy not controlled on standard medication. “Surgery is generally a preferred option with chemotherapy or radiotherapy coming into play at a later stage, if the glioma progresses. “Continued research and increased knowledge about the disease is enabling us to treat it increasingly effectively while reducing side effects.”

Source:BBC

MI6 ‘is not complicit’ in torture
By Gordon Corera
BBC Security Correspondent
The head of MI6 has told the BBC there is no torture and “no complicity in torture” by the British secret service.Sir John Scarlett said his officers were committed to human rights and liberal democracy, but also had to protect the UK against terrorism. There has been growing concern about the role of the intelligence services in the mistreatment of suspects abroad. The Joint Human Rights Committee of MPs and peers recently called for an independent inquiry into the matter. In a highly critical report, the committee said there was now a “disturbing number of credible allegations” of British complicity in torture. These allegations include the rendition and alleged abuse of British resident Binyam Mohamed from Pakistan to Morocco, prior to being taken to Guantanamo Bay. However, the committee said it was unable to draw conclusions about the involvement of British officers because ministers and the head of the domestic security service MI5 refused to testify at parliamentary hearings on the claims. The Metropolitan Police are investigating the role of MI5 in Mr Mohamed’s case. Meanwhile, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee has also said it has grave concerns that British officers were complicit in torture. IndependenceSpeaking on BBC Radio 4′s programme MI6: A Century in Shadows, Sir John Scarlett defended the actions of his organisation, the Secret Intelligence Service or MI6. “Our officers are as committed to the values and the human rights values of liberal democracy as anybody else,” he said.”They also have the responsibility of protecting the country against terrorism and these issues need to be debated and understood in that context,” he added. He denied that British intelligence services had been compromised by their close relationship with counterparts in the US. “Our American allies know that we are our own service, that we are here to work for the British interests and the United Kingdom. We’re an independent service working to our own laws – nobody else’s – and to our own values.” He insisted there has been “no torture and there is no complicity with torture”. ‘No regrets’Sir John also discussed the controversy over the reliability of intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. At the time, he was the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which had ownership of the 2002 dossier which contained the controversial claim that Saddam Hussein would be able to deploy weapons of mass destruction “within 45 minutes”. The newly launched Iraq Inquiry is expected to revisit the question of how the intelligence was presented in the dossier. Citing the earlier Butler inquiry’s findings on the matter, Sir John acknowledged that “a number of the reports and reporting lines proved to be unreliable and had to be withdrawn”. “This of course is a regular issue in any kind of intelligence work and if you have lines, reporting chains if you like, then of course there are issues about how you validate them,” he said. Sir John said he had no regrets over the issue, but conceded that the episode had been “a difficult time for the service”. He will step down as the head of MI6 in November.
is a three part series for Radio 4. The final episode,
will be broadcast on Monday 10 August at 0900 BST and 2130 BST or listen again via iPlayer.

Source:BBC

WASHINGTON — With the economy strengthening but still fragile, Federal Reserve policymakers are expected to hold a key lending rate at a record low this week and will weigh whether to extend some programs that were created to ease the financial crisis.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues also are likely to signal that while the recession is winding down, the pain isn’t over.
Though the unemployment rate dipped to 9.4 percent in July — its first drop in 15 months — economists predict it will start climbing again. Many, including people in the Obama administration and at the Fed, say it could still top 10 percent this year.
For months, consumers have pulled back on spending and borrowing. To try to stimulate economic activity, Fed policymakers are all but certain to keep the target range for its bank lending rate between zero and 0.25 percent at the end of their two-day meeting Wednesday.
That means commercial banks’ prime lending rate, used to peg rates on home equity loans, certain credit cards and other consumer loans, will stay around 3.25 percent, the lowest rate in decades.
Fed policymakers also will probably pledge anew to keep rates there for “an extended period,” which economists interpret to mean through the rest of the year and into part of 2010.
“We’re doing everything we can to support the economy,” Bernanke said recently. “We will try to get through this process. It’s going to take some patience.”
By holding rates so low, the Fed hopes to induce consumers and businesses to boost spending, even though banks are still being stingy about extending credit.
“The Fed will be guardedly optimistic,” said Brian Bethune, economist at IHS Global Insight. “We’re seeing initial signs of the economy moving toward recovery … (but) the underlying fundamentals are still weak.”
With numerous signs that the recession is finally ending and financial stresses easing, the Fed will consider whether some rescue programs should continue. Any such decisions, though, might not come at this week’s meeting.
One such program, aimed at driving down interest rates on mortgages and other consumer debt, involves buying U.S. Treasurys. The central bank is on track to buy 300 billion worth of Treasury bonds by the fall; it has bought 236 billion so far.
Another program, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, is intended to spark lending to consumers and small businesses. It got off to a slow start in March and is slated to shut down at the end of December. Despite this program, many people are still having trouble getting loans, analysts say.
The Fed isn’t expected to launch any new revival efforts or change another existing program that aims to push down mortgage rates. In that venture, the Fed is on track to buy 1.25 trillion worth of securities issued by mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the end of the year. The central bank’s recent purchases have averaged 542.8 billion.
In the meantime, the economy has shown clear signs of improvement. Employers cut only 247,000 jobs in July, the fewest in a year, the government said Friday. Wages and workers’ hours also nudged up — encouraging signs that companies no longer see the need for drastic cost-cutting. Those developments could deliver a psychological boost to both companies and consumers.
The economy in the second quarter contracted at a pace of just 1 percent, suggesting that the recession, which started in December 2007, is ending.
That dip came after a dizzying free-fall in the first three months of this year. The economy had plunged at an annual rate of 6.4 percent in the first quarter, the worst showing in nearly three decades.
With the economy improving but still weak, inflation should stay low, the Fed says. Given consumers’ caution, companies won’t have much power to raise prices.
And the weak job market will limit wage growth. Companies aren’t going to feel generous about wages and benefits until they are confident a recovery will last.

NEW YORK – Elisabeth Hasselbeck of “The View” is the mother of a third child. Hasselbeck gave birth Sunday afternoon in a New York hospital to a boy, named Isaiah Timothy. She’s married to former NFL player Tim Hasselbeck.
It’s the couple’s second son. Grace Elisabeth is 4, and Taylor Thomas is 20 months old.
Isaiah weighed in at 7 pounds, 7 ounces.
The new dad reports: “Elisabeth and Isaiah are doing great.”
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Editor’s note: Fareed Zakaria is an author and foreign affairs analyst who hosts “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN on Sundays at 1 and 5 p.m. ET
Fareed Zakaria says the administration has been working hard to stop North Korea’s nuclear program.
NEW YORKLaura Ling and Euna Lee are back in the United States after President Bill Clinton flew to North Korea to negotiate the journalists’ release. Bill Clinton agreed to go on the mission but made it very clear that this was purely a humanitarian effort. Clinton also wanted to make sure there was a high likelihood of success if he went. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Wednesday that “we did our homework … to make sure that if President Clinton did take this trip, that we would be able to … win the freedom for these two.” Kelly said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also had a role in the mission, adding that “The State Department was very involved.” Administration officials also said it was always made clear that this would be a humanitarian mission. “It wasn’t in any way about our disagreements with the DPRK with respect to its conduct, or with respect to our intention to vigorously enforce resolutions and to vigorously seek the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” one official said. CNN spoke to author and foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria about Bill Clinton’s trip and Hillary Clinton’s diplomacy. WatchClinton talk to Zakaria about her husband’s trip to North Korea » CNN: What do you think of President Clinton’s trip to North Korea?
Secretary Hillary Clinton on Fareed Zakaria GPS
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talks about the global dangers that keep her up at night.Fareed Zakaria GPS
1 p.m. ET Sunday
see full schedule »
Fareed Zakaria: It was unorthodox, but successful. I was in Kenya this past week and asked Secretary Clinton about her husband’s trip and any concerns she had with working with the North Korean regime. She stressed the humanitarian angle as the motivating factor. “These two young women…were really a humanitarian plea that I felt strongly we needed to answer. They needed to be brought home and reunited with their families.” However, it was interesting to note that her secretary of state role was not far removed from the compassion she felt as a mother. She continued that it was also important that the U.S. government “resolve [the issue] so it wasn’t hanging over our head as we worked to try to move back into a process to lead to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” CNN: Former ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton has been a vociferous critic of the action. What do you think? Zakaria: You are right. Ambassador Bolton wrote “Despite decades of bipartisan U.S. rhetoric about not negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages, it seems that the Obama administration not only chose to negotiate, but to send a former president to do so.” However, Secretary Clinton said this was nothing new, there were precedents. Former presidents as well as sitting members of Congress had worked with countries she describes as “beyond the pale of the rule of law [that] hold people and subject them to long prison terms that are absolutely unfair and unwarranted.”
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There is also some feeling that Ambassador Bolton is attempting to politicize a positive outcome. That attitude, she jokingly quipped, finds the negative in every situation, “If President Obama walked on water, you’d say he couldn’t swim.” CNN: But doesn’t John Bolton have a valid point? There are prisoners in other places. What about in Iran where there are still political prisoners being held? Zakaria: As you may know, this is an issue of importance to me. A colleague of mine, Maziar Bahari, is being held in Iran. He currently is being put through a kind of Stalinist show trial. (We highlight the issue on our show this week.) I asked Secretary Clinton about these trials in Iran. “It is a sign of weakness. It demonstrates, I think, better than any of us could ever say, that this Iranian leadership is afraid of their own people, and afraid of the truth and the facts coming out.” She continued that they have been following Maziar’s situation and since he is a Canadian citizen offered any assistance the Canadian government feels is appropriate. CNN: How do things stand in Iran? Zakaria: Well, President Ahmadinejad was sworn into office this week. There are cracks among the political elite, but it appears that the ruling powers are using all the tools at their disposal to stay in power. I have stated before in this forum that repressive regimes can last a long time if they are willing to use force, impose a strict crackdown on protests and arrest the leaders of the opposition. It seems this regime is willing to do that. CNN: Will the United States negotiate with the regime and President Ahmadinejad? Zakaria: I asked Secretary Clinton her thoughts on this issue. She said they were aware they needed to wait until after the elections before they could effectively move forward on negotiations. It seems they are formulating their policy on dealing with Iran directly, but at the same time working other angles to make sure Iran does not become a nuclear power. She said, “The president has also said, look, we need to take stock of this in September. If there is a response, it needs to be on a fast track. We’re not going to keep the window open forever. “But we’re not just sitting here waiting for somebody in Iran to say, well, let’s talk. We’re working with our allies to make the case that we need to have prepared a very robust set of sanctions that we can get the international community to sign off on, the way we did with North Korea.” CNN: Well that brings us back to North Korea. Will President Clinton’s help soften our dealings on the nuclear issue? Zakaria: Only time will tell. As Secretary Clinton noted, at least we won’t have the additional concern of Laura Ling and Euna Lee in the discussions. The administration has been working diligently on the nuclear issue. The secretary explained, “We reached out to the North Koreans and made it very clear that we wanted to create that kind of engagement. And they not only rejected it, but they began to take these provocative actions, which resulted in the entire international community, most importantly China, saying, wait, you can’t do this. I think they were surprised by that.
“I think the consequences of the Security Council resolution 1874 and the sanctions that have been imposed, the most onerous that we have ever had, were quite, you know, eye-opening for them. So, we’re hoping that we can get back to a process that they will participate in with the understanding that, yes, we demand that they denuclearize, but we also are not coming empty-handed. If it is full and verifiable, the international community will be responsive.” Secretary Clinton also discusses China, Israel and the role of the United States in the world on our show this week.
Source:CNN

TEHRAN, IranAuthorities have fired and arrested the chief of an Iranian jail that was closed amid allegations of mistreatment of detainees held for protesting June’s disputed election, Iranian media reported Sunday.
Some protesters were arrested for contesting the election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“One security official at the prison, who was responsible for reporting irregularities at the prison, as well as the prison warden have been sacked and are under arrest,” Gen. Esmaeel Ahmadi Moghadam, commander of Iran’s security forces, told the semi-official Iran Student’s News Agency. Iran’s Press TV said the move comes in the wake of the deaths of two inmates who had been arrested for protesting the results of June 12 presidential election. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, ordered the Kahrizak facility shut down amid reports it did not measure up to the required standards, Press TV reported. A Tehran member of Parliament, however, told ISNA that “a number of young people” died at the prison, and held Moghadam responsible. “[The] commander of the security forces is responsible in this matter and must be held answerable,” Hamidreza Katoozian said. “Saying he did not know is not acceptable because he received daily reports [regarding conditions in Kahrizak].”
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Moghadam said, according to ISNA, “I intend to take responsibility, but from the very beginning I had said that students should not be held at Kahrizak and should not be detained with criminals. Nevertheless they were sent to Kahrizak by the order of the judiciary. The reason was lack of detention space elsewhere, and I don’t think that was proper.” But he said no one died at Kahrizak from physical abuse. “The coroner is investigating the deaths in order to determine the source of their illness and the virus that caused their deaths.” He said three people who “on their own initiative inflicted severe physical punishment on prisoners have been arrested and the victims can file complaints against them.” Katoozian told ISNA that “the constitution is quite clear on how to deal with murderers. Therefore, just arresting two officers will neither bring the dead back to their families, nor will it make up for the insult to the Islamic Republic by these people.” The prison held a number of those arrested for protesting the election, in which incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected to a second term despite widespread claims of fraud by supporters of opposition candidates. In ordering the facility’s closure, Khamenei said officials must “precisely” investigate claims of mistreatment, obey the law and follow up on detainees’ fate, Saeed Jalili, head of Iran’s National Security Council, told Press TV last month.
Source:CNN

When Margie and Stephen Zumbrun were battling the urge to have premarital sex, a pastor counseled them to control themselves. The couple signed a purity covenant.
Then, when the two got engaged and Margie went wedding dress shopping, a salesperson called her “the bride who looks like she’s 12.” Nonchurch friends said that, at 22, she was rushing things.
The agonizing message to a young Christian couple in love: Sex can wait, but so can marriage.
“It’s unreasonable to say, ‘Don’t do anything … and wait until you have degrees and you’re in your 30s to get married,’” said Margie Zumbrun, who did wait for sex, and married Stephen fresh out of Purdue University. “I think that’s just inviting people to have sex and feel like they’re bad people for doing it.”
Against that backdrop, a number of evangelicals are promoting marrying earlier, nudging young adults toward the altar even as many of their peers and parents are holding them back.
Couples like the Zumbruns are caught between two powerful forces — evangelical Christianity’s abstinence culture, with its chastity balls and virginity pledges, and societal forces pushing average marriage ages deeper into the 20s.
The call for young marriage raises questions: How young is too young? What if marriage is viewed as a ticket to guilt-free sex? What about the fact that marrying young is the No. 1 predictor of divorce?
The conversation is spreading from what pastors say is a relatively small number of churches and ministries that promote early marriage to the broader evangelical community, with the latest development being a Christianity Today magazine cover story this month titled “The Case for Young Marriage.”
The article’s author, University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus, argues that evangelicals “have made much ado about sex” but are damaging the institution of marriage by discouraging and delaying it.
Regnerus is not saying that premarital sex is OK. But he does suggest that abstinence has its limits, and that intensifying the message won’t work. When people wait until their mid- to late 20s to marry, he writes, it’s unrealistic and “battling our creator’s reproductive designs” to expect them to wait that long for sex.
Statistics show that few Americans wait. More than 93 percent of adults 18 to 23 who are in romantic relationships are having sex, according to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. For conservative Protestants in relationships and active in their faith, it’s almost 80 percent.
Regnerus, a conservative Presbyterian, knocks the “abstinence industry” for perpetuating “a blissful myth” that great sex awaits just beyond the wedding reception. He advises against teen marriage, but argues that early 20s marriages are not as risky as advertised.
“I’ll probably get framed as I want people to marry because I don’t want them to have premarital sex,” said Regnerus, author of “Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers.”
“I think marriage is just a fantastic institution for people who think rightly about it, have realistic ideas about it and put the requisite work into it.”
The median age for first marriages in the U.S. is about 26 for women and 28 for men, the highest figures since the Census Bureau began counting. Solid data on evangelicals is not readily available, but research suggests they marry only slightly younger, Regnerus said.
High-school sweethearts Megan and Jay Mkrtschjan planned to marry at 20. But the suburban Chicago couple waited an extra year to finish college under pressure from Megan’s parents.
There were few doubts in their minds about marrying young. They had found each other. Why wait?
“For me, it was really a trust issue,” Megan said. “Marrying right out of college was showing our friends, showing the people we were acquainted with, that we trusted our lives with God.”
For Jay, a songwriter and guitarist, “the sex issue” was the best argument for early marriage. “By getting married young and dating for a shorter period of time, it leaves less room to sin sexually,” he said.
Now four years married, the Mkrtschjans say their relative youth helped them through early trials, which at one point took them down to 26 in the checking account.
“We were going through these hardships together,” said Megan, a fifth-grade teacher who owns a cake-decorating business. “It made things easier because we weren’t stuck in our ways. We were open to what each other had to say.”
Many young adults today view their 20s as a time for fun, travel, career-building or finding themselves — not for settling down.
Among evangelicals, there’s a tendency to wait because many believe God “is going to deliver me a spouse right to my door,” so they don’t actively seek one, said Glenn Stanton, director of family formation studies for the evangelical ministry Focus on the Family, a young marriage promoter.
Then there’s what Stanton calls the “eHarmony philosophy” — the belief God will deliver someone perfect.
Stanton doesn’t blame the abstinence movement. “I don’t think that it’s so much to much focus on abstinence, but the silence on marriage makes the abstinence message sound so much louder,” he said.
At Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., associate pastor Michael Lawrence emphasizes that marriage is a covenant, not a convenient arrangement, and offers advice to young couples on overcoming arguments over money, sex and family.
“We probably haven’t served our young people well by on the one hand emphasizing abstinence, but on the other hand telling them to wait to get married,” Lawrence said. “It seems to be setting them up to fail.”
Like most proponents of young marriage, Lawrence does not set an arbitrary “right” age for marriage. Waiting until after college might be advisable if the alternative is crushing debt or dropping out, he said.
Supporters of abstinence programs promote them as both marriage-preparation tools and longer-term support systems for those who don’t marry.
Jimmy Hester, co-founder of True Love Waits, part of the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Christian Resources, disagreed with the argument that abstinence past a certain age is too much to ask.
“There are too many examples of people who have done it,” he said. “And not out of their own strength, even, but out of a relationship with God who gives them strength.”
Johns Hopkins University sociologist Andrew Cherlin, who studies families and public policy, said young marriage is a tough sell. A half-century ago, when people married earlier, fewer people attended college, high school graduates could get good-paying factory jobs, women became mothers right after school and families were larger, he said.
“Most evangelicals, as well as most Americans, realize how expensive it is to raise children these days,” Cherlin said. “The most important rationale for early marriage — having a larger family — has disappeared.”
Some single evangelical women want to marry young, but the numbers are against them: single women outnumber single men in churches 3 to 2, and the available men are postponing growing up, Regnerus and others say.
Skeptics, meanwhile, suspect early marriage backers want to turn back the clock on gender roles.
“There is some rolling of the eyes, especially among women … ‘Why are you giving up your 20s and going back to the 1950s and June Cleaver?’” said Jay Thomas, college pastor at College Church in Wheaton, Ill.
Other evangelicals simply want to wait and cite their faith as motivation. Valerie Strattan, 24, of Chicago, has a serious boyfriend of 2 1/2 years. She believes that for now, God has called them to focus on separate pursuits: he’s a musician, she works in refugee resettlement.
“We don’t feel the rush to marry,” Strattan said. “If I am listening to God, and he is listening to God, then God isn’t going to lead us in separate places if he does truly want us to get married.”

JERUSALEM – Hebrew University has received a surprise donation of more than 100,000 from an unexpected benefactor — a woman who survived the Nazi Holocaust and appeared to be destitute, a university official said Sunday.
Upon her death two years ago, a homeless Holocaust survivor living on the streets of New York City willed the gift to the university. The Jewish woman lived out of a shopping cart in Manhattan and had no known relatives, said Yefet Ozery, Hebrew University’s director of development and public relations.
“She lived as a very poor woman. And when she died at the age of 92, it was discovered she had accumulated close to 300,000,” Ozery said.
The university first learned about the gift three months ago but did not receive the money until this week. It will be used to fund scholarships for medical research students, according to the woman’s wishes, Ozery said, refusing to disclose her name. The story was first reported by The Jerusalem Post daily.
Not much is known about the woman, who had no known connection to the university. She left the other half of her savings to various causes and beneficiaries, though Ozery said it is unknown how she amassed the small fortune.
“No one knows where she got it from. But she probably lived penny to penny. She probably saved it to do good for the world and for the Jewish people,” Ozery said.
The woman’s last known employer was a Jewish man in New York, who hired her to move his car to avoid parking tickets in exchange for a hot meal and a room, Ozery said. The woman also left that employer a portion of her savings.

Freak wave ‘hot spots’ identified
By Griet Scheldeman
Science reporter, BBC News
Scientists in the US have made a major advance in their understanding of so-called freak waves.These monster waves present a major risk to ships and offshore platforms. A computer simulation developed by oceanographers in the US could help locate where and when these “rogue” phenomena are most likely to occur. The theoretical study shows that coastal areas with variations in water depth and strong currents are hot spots for freak waves. The history of seafaring is littered with tales of rogue waves capable of rendering ships asunder. A freak wave is one that measures roughly three times higher than other swells on the sea at any one time. These phenomena can measure up to 18m (60ft) – the height of a six-storey building. The new computer simulation was developed by Tim Janssen of San Francisco State University (SFSU) and Thomas HC Herbers of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Their findings are published in the Journal of Physical Oceanography. Focal zoneSandbanks and strong currents may cause waves to change direction and speed. This concentrates wave energy into a single point, which oceanographers call a “wave focal zone”. This zone is like a burning glass, Dr Janssen explained, where the light comes in and focuses all the energy on a single point, forming a hot spot. The same happens when a wave travels over, for example, a sandbank, or over a current. The energy is being focused on to a single point.
The researchers found these hot spots were much more likely to drive the formation of extreme waves. “In a normal wave field, on average, roughly three waves in every 10,000 are extreme waves,” Dr Janssen explained. “In a focal zone, this number could increase to about three in every 1,000 waves.” The scientists fed data on real waves into their computer model. Then, they repeated a single experiment over and over, each time using different data. The SFSU oceanographer said he next hoped to go to known freak wave hotspots such as the Cortez Banks on the coast of California to test whether his simulations held true. “What’s really important about this research, is that it is easy to validate. We have a theory now, a prediction, and we can go to areas and actually measure whether this happens or not,” he told BBC News. Vital knowledgeUnderstanding where and when freak waves are most likely to occur could assist shipping and navigation in coastal areas. The knowledge could be used for marine weather forecasts and could also inform the design of offshore platforms. “If you know that a certain area is very prone to freak waves, then you might wish to stay away from it,” Dr Janssen said. “Anybody out in the ocean would like to [have this information].” However, Dr Janssen was keen to stress that the study is theoretical. “We have tried to be as realistic as we could, but we are a long way away from making a prediction solid enough for people to actually use. However, it might be something to work towards,” he said. Dr Janssen added that the word “freak wave” was unfortunate, as it suggests these types of wave are unexpected. But, he explained, the random nature of ocean waves means that any size of wave can happen at any time.

Source:BBC

Honduras rejects OAS delegation
The interim government of Honduras has said it will not allow a high-level delegation from the Organisation of American States to visit for talks.It said OAS chief Jose Miguel Insulza would not be an impartial observer. The delegation was hoping the Honduran government would accept a plan under which ousted President Manuel Zelaya would return and elections be held. Mr Zelaya was sent into exile after a coup in June amid a power struggle over his plans for constitutional change. His critics said the move was aimed at removing the current one-term limit on serving as president, and paving the way for his re-election. Following the army-led coup on 28 June, the speaker of Congress, Roberto Micheletti – constitutionally second in line to the presidency – was sworn in as interim leader. The OAS has demanded Mr Zelaya’s immediate reinstatement. It suspended Honduras’ membership after the interim government failed to abide by a deadline to restore Mr Zelaya to power. ‘Damage to democracy’Mr Insulza was to be accompanied on the visit to Tegucigalpa on Tuesday by the foreign ministers of Argentina, Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
But on Sunday, the Honduran foreign ministry announced that it would turn back the group because of the presence of the OAS secretary-general. It also said other unnamed countries it considered more sympathetic were not represented in the delegation. “Unfortunately, Insulza’s intransigence and his insistence on including himself in the delegation and to exclude foreign ministers of member states that… are open to reconsidering our case has made it impossible to allow this visit in the scheduled date,” it said. But the foreign ministry said it was willing to reschedule the visit as long as the delegation does not include Mr Insulza, whose “lack of objectivity, impartiality and professionalism” in his role had “resulted in serious damage to democracy”. The OAS hopes Mr Micheletti can be persuaded to accept a detailed plan proposed by the Costa Rican President, Oscar Arias. Under this, Mr Zelaya would return to serve out his presidency and a government of national reconciliation would be set up. There would be an amnesty for political crimes committed during the crisis, and presidential elections would be brought forward to 28 October. But the interim government says his return to power is an impossibility. Mr Zelaya says it is “non-negotiable”.

Source:BBC

Obama heads for regional summit
Leaders of the US, Canada and Mexico are to meet for talks focusing on the economic crisis and rising drug crime.The three men will meet late on Sunday and then hold talks all day Monday in the Mexican city of Guadalajara. It will be President Barack Obama’s first attendance at the annual meeting of North American leaders. It has been dubbed the meeting of three amigos, but difficult issues divide the participants, says BBC Mexico correspondent Stephen Gibbs. Mexico is currently experiencing what looks set to be its deepest recession since the 1930s. It is concerned that recent US moves, including a ban on Mexican truckers operating in the US, suggest protectionism and could worsen its economic situation, our correspondent says. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to press Mr Obama to revise the Buy America policy on public works, which has hit Canadian exporters hard. Mexico is also unhappy with Canada’s decision to require visas from Mexican visitors to the country. The threat of organised crime is something which is more likely to unite the leaders, our correspondent adds. Drug violence, an acute problem in Mexico, is showing some signs of spilling over the border into the southern US. It also a growing problem in parts of Canada. Mexico will be pressing the US to free up more of its promised 1.4bn (840,000m) in aid to combat drug trafficking. The leaders are also planning to discuss swine flu during their two-day summit.

Source:BBC

TARRYTOWN, N.Y. – Police said a 75-year-old woman drove the wrong way on New York’s Tappan Zee Bridge. State police in Tarrytown said the woman entered the highway from the Exit 9 off-ramp Sunday morning and drove north in the southbound lanes of the bridge. She drove about two miles before she was stopped.
She told police she knew she had been driving the wrong way but kept going because she thought there would be a place to make a U-turn.
She was given tickets for improperly entering a highway, driving in the wrong direction and reckless driving.
Eight people died on July 26 when Diane Schuler drove a van carrying her three nieces and her own two children the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway. She crashed head-on into an SUV.
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Information from: The Journal News, http://www.thejournalnews.com

WASHINGTON — Although hundreds of well-trained eyes are watching over the 700 billion that Congress last year decided to spend bailing out the nation's financial sector, it's still difficult to answer some of the most basic questions about where the money went.
Despite a new oversight panel, a new special inspector general, the existing Government Accountability Office and eight other inspectors general, those charged with minding the store say they don't have all the weapons they need. Ten months into the Troubled Asset Relief Program, some members of Congress say that some oversight of bailout dollars has been so lacking that it's essentially worthless.
“TARP has become a program in which taxpayers are not being told what most of the TARP recipients are doing with their money, have still not been told how much their substantial investments are worth, and will not be told the full details of how their money is being invested,” a special inspector general over the program reported last month. The “very credibility” of the program is at stake, it said.
Access and openness have improved in recent months, watchdogs say, but the program still has a way to go before it's truly transparent.
For its part, the Treasury Department said it's fully committed to transparency, and that it's taken unprecedented steps to report the status of TARP to the public. It regularly posts information on which banks have received money, as well as details about each of those transactions. Further, Treasury said, it doesn't agree with all of its watchdogs' recommendations, which it said could hamper the program's effectiveness.
TARP was passed in the midst of last fall's financial meltdown as a way to keep American banks from falling deeper into the abyss.
The program was controversial from the start. Its supporters say it's helped spark bank lending in the country, but critics say it's unfairly rewarded the big banks and Wall Street firms that pushed the economy to the brink.
The program also has undergone a major transformation. When the Bush administration first went to Congress for the money, TARP's main purpose was to buy up hundreds of billions of dollars in bad mortgages and so-called mortgage-backed securities that were bought and sold on Wall Street .
Today, TARP consists of 12 programs that sent those hundreds of billions of dollars to big banks, but it's also bailed out auto companies, auto suppliers, individuals delinquent on their mortgages, small businesses and American International Group , the big insurance company.
The watchdogs now must oversee the maze that TARP has become.
Just because a lot of people are watching, however, doesn't mean they get everything they want to see.
One of the most prominent watchdogs is Elizabeth Warren , a Harvard Law School professor who chairs a TARP oversight panel created by Congress .
Her panel has released 10 major reports that examine TARP's plans and policies, finding that much of the work by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve has been opaque, with unclear or contradictory goals.
One report took Treasury to task for vastly undervaluing more than 250 billion in transactions with the country's major banks, and another suggested several ways to revamp federal regulation over the financial sector. Other reports have criticized the Treasury for its initial defensiveness in opening its books.
Despite its mandate, however, the panel doesn't have subpoena power. That means it can ask, but can't compel, officials from Treasury, the Federal Reserve or the nation's banks to testify.
Henry Paulson , the Treasury secretary under former President George W. Bush , repeatedly stiff-armed the panel. Timothy Geithner , the current secretary, has been more open, but so far has testified just once before Warren's group. Geithner is scheduled to appear again in September, and has agreed to do so quarterly, and two other senior Treasury officials also have appeared.
The relative lack of testimony from top officials, however, is one reason why critics of Warren's panel think it hasn't delivered on its promise.
In June, in an otherwise mundane congressional hearing, Republican Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas surprised Warren with an aggressive critique of the panel, saying it's failed to help taxpayers understand what Treasury is doing with the billions at its disposal.
“There's been very little value that the panel has brought to this issue or even insight on how these bailout dollars have been used,” he said. “I frankly believe at this point, given the reports that we've seen again with little value, I think the panel needs to be abolished.”
Warren defended the panel's work, saying the lack of subpoena power means we “only have the capacity to invite” witnesses.
“So you asked Secretary Paulson in the first month of existence?” Brady asked.
“I believe we asked him repeatedly,” Warren said. “We asked him in our first month, in our second month, in our third month.”
Warren said she took the criticism seriously, dropping by Brady's congressional office as soon as the hearing adjourned. The two had never met before, she said, and “I was really surprised,” by his comments.
“He said he felt frustrated,” she said. “He wanted us to be even blunter” in the panel's reports.
Brady amplified his comments in an interview last month, saying that some of the panel's work seems like a “PR ploy” and that “the moment has passed” for Warren's group to play the role Congress envisioned.
His feelings have been partially echoed by two other members of the panel, Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas and former Sen. John E. Sununu of New Hampshire , both Republicans appointed by congressional GOP leaders (the other three members were appointed by Democrats).
Both have accused the panel of mission creep — of straying from the central goal of determining exactly how, and how well, Treasury is doing its job.
Hensarling said that “taxpayers have not received answers as to whether the TARP program works, how decisions are being made or what the banks are doing with the taxpayers' money.” While he praises the “very smart people on the panel,” he said too many questions have been left unexplored.
He acknowledges that the lack of subpoena power makes things tough. “But even if we had it, I'm not sure we would have used it,” said Hensarling, who's pushing to abolish TARP.
The other primary watchdog is Neil Barofsky , a special inspector general named in November by Bush specifically to track TARP funds. His office does have subpoena power, and a growing staff that's expected ultimately to have 160 people pursuing audits and criminal investigations.
It's also made a series of recommendations to the Treasury, asking that it do more to reveal how TARP money is being spent. Treasury has adopted some of its recommendations, but rejected others — including one of the most important: Giving taxpayers precise details on how TARP funds have been used by banks.
The recommendation involves one of the most visible aspects of TARP: investing 218 billion in 650 banks, helping them to strengthen their balance sheets and boost lending to American businesses and homeowners.
Barofsky's office has long advocated that the Treasury require banks to detail how the TARP money they've received has been used. The department has refused, saying that once an investment is made in a big bank, it's not possible to track how it's used.
Barofsky's office rejected that assertion, and did its own survey of 360 institutions, finding that most could say how they'd used the money.
“Treasury's reasons for refusing to adopt this recommendation have been squarely refuted by” the inspector general, his office reported to Congress .
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TUKTOYAKTUK, Northwest Territories – The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles (square kilometers) of ice on Sunday in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap.
From the barren Arctic shore of this village in Canada’s far northwest, 1,500 miles (2,414 kilometers) north of Seattle, veteran observer Eddie Gruben has seen the summer ice retreating more each decade as the world has warmed. By this weekend the ice edge lay some 80 miles (128 kilometers) at sea.
“Forty years ago, it was 40 miles (64 kilometers) out,” said Gruben, 89, patriarch of a local contracting business.
Global average temperatures rose 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degree Celsius) in the past century, but Arctic temperatures rose twice as much or even faster, almost certainly in good part because of manmade greenhouse gases, researchers say.
In late July the mercury soared to almost 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) in this settlement of 900 Inuvialuit, the name for western Arctic Eskimos.
“The water was really warm,” Gruben said. “The kids were swimming in the ocean.”
As of Thursday, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported, the polar ice cap extended over 2.61 million square miles (6.75 million square kilometers) after having shrunk an average 41,000 square miles (106,000 square kilometers) a day in July — equivalent to one Indiana or three Belgiums daily.
The rate of melt was similar to that of July 2007, the year when the ice cap dwindled to a record low minimum extent of 1.7 million square miles (4.3 million square kilometers) in September.
In its latest analysis, the Colorado-based NSIDC said Arctic atmospheric conditions this summer have been similar to those of the summer of 2007, including a high-pressure ridge that produced clear skies and strong melt in the Beaufort Sea, the arm of the Arctic Ocean off northern Alaska and northwestern Canada.
In July, “we saw acceleration in loss of ice,” the U.S. center’s Walt Meier told The Associated Press. In recent days the pace has slowed, making a record-breaking final minimum “less likely but still possible,” he said.
Scientists say the makeup of the frozen polar sea has shifted significantly the past few years, as thick multiyear ice has given way as the Arctic’s dominant form to thin ice that comes and goes with each winter and summer.
The past few years have “signaled a fundamental change in the character of the ice and the Arctic climate,” Meier said.
Ironically, the summer melts since 2007 appear to have allowed disintegrating but still thick multiyear ice to drift this year into the relatively narrow channels of the Northwest Passage, the east-west water route through Canada’s Arctic islands. Usually impassable channels had been relatively ice-free the past two summers.
“We need some warm temperatures with easterly or southeasterly winds to break up and move this ice to the north,” Mark Schrader, skipper of the sailboat “Ocean Watch,” e-mailed The Associated Press from the west entrance to the passage.
The steel-hulled sailboat, with scientists joining it at stops along the way, is on a 25,000-mile (40,232-kilometer), foundation-financed circumnavigation of the Americas, to view and demonstrate the impact of climate change on the continents’ environments.
Environmentalists worry, for example, that the ice-dependent polar bear will struggle to survive as the Arctic cap melts. Schrader reported seeing only one bear, an animal chased from the Arctic shore of Barrow, Alaska, that “swam close to Ocean Watch on its way out to sea.”
Observation satellites’ remote sensors will tell researchers in September whether the polar cap diminished this summer to its smallest size on record. Then the sun will begin to slip below the horizon for several months, and temperatures plunging in the polar darkness will freeze the surface of the sea again, leaving this and other Arctic coastlines in the grip of ice. Most of the sea ice will be new, thinner and weaker annual formations, however.
At a global conference last March in Copenhagen, scientists declared that climate change is occurring faster than had been anticipated, citing the fast-dying Arctic cap as one example. A month later, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted Arctic summers could be almost ice-free within 30 years, not at the century’s end as earlier predicted.

WASHINGTON – When President Barack Obama visited Mexico in April, the now-global swine flu epidemic — unbeknownst to the White House — had just begun there and an Obama aide returned home sick.
What could have become a diplomatic downer, however, ultimately turned into a bright spot.
Obama was never in danger, the aide and his family recovered, and the two nations cooperated extensively on the flu outbreak through the spring and beyond. The United States earned huge points with its southern neighbor for not joining the countries banning flights, halting trade and taking other actions that Mexico considered unfairly punitive.
Now, as Obama returns to Mexico, the swine flu that spread from there across the world is increasingly back in the news — and at the top of the agenda of at a lightning-quick, three-way summit Sunday and Monday in Guadalajara.
Obama, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will try to build on that earlier cooperation to handle an expected new wave of cases during North America’s upcoming flu season.
John Brennan, Obama’s chief homeland security aide, said the talks are timely — and crucial, given the long borders the U.S. shares with Mexico and Canada. As important as it is to further link up health officials and ready vaccine and antiviral supplies, the three leaders also must together and publicly reinforce a determination not to panic when cases arise, he said.
“There are people who are going to be getting sick in the fall and die,” Brennan said. Keeping the severity and reach of the illnesses to a minimum is a priority, but officials also “want to make sure that we do everything possible to ensure the continuation of commerce, transportation and trade between the three countries.”
America’s first- and third-largest trade relationships are with Canada and Mexico. All three are partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement, the largest free-trade zone in the world. Closing borders or restricting travel would be very costly for families and businesses on all sides of the borders, an important consideration given the limping economy and the fact that health experts see such actions as pointless in containing the flu’s spread.
President George W. Bush kicked off the trilateral tradition in 2005 with the first summit held near his Texas ranch.
They typically are rather sleepy affairs — no splashy news, little attention. Despite the lofty name of North American Leaders Summit, it lacks a defining cause and is usually more a progress report on commercial and security integration than an action-packed headline-grabber.
Officials say the meetings are vital nonetheless.
Peter DeShazo, a former State Department official for Western Hemisphere affairs, said Canada and Mexico are vital to the U.S. economy and security, making regular conversations at the highest levels a must. “These relationships are so complex and multifaceted,” said DeShazo, who directs the Americas Program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Said Obama national security adviser James Jones: “I think you get in trouble when you wait too long before talking to your neighbors.”
The fifth North American summit is short — just one evening and barely half the next day, but the list of issues is long.
The U.S. neighbors will want Obama to explain where America’s economic recovery is going because both countries saw their own fortunes fall as a result of problems in the U.S. Obama will hear complaints from Calderon and Harper about “Buy American” requirements in the 787 billion economic stimulus package.
Climate change is a priority, too.
The three leaders also are expected to take a joint stand on a recent problem in their hemisphere — the June coup in Honduras that saw President Manuel Zelaya ousted by the military.
Obama planned a meeting late Sunday afternoon with Calderon. He did not schedule a separate session with Harper while in Mexico; the Canadian leader will see the president on Sept. 16 in Washington.
The three leaders were to have dinner together Sunday night, with the agenda intentionally open and free-flowing. The next day, they have more formalized meetings. They appear together before reporters ahead of their midday departures.
Obama’s meeting with Calderon will continue his drive for a new tone in U.S.-Mexico relations.
They had their ups and downs under Bush, driven by a divide over the Iraq war, the United States’ building of a border fence and Bush’s failure to produce an immigration overhaul.
Like Bush, Obama has emphasized tighter border security. But he also has pledged to renew immigration overhaul efforts, including a citizenship path for illegal immigrants.
During his April visit, Obama made a welcome acknowledgment to Mexicans that Americans share the blame for violence south of border because of drug consumption and gun trafficking. Since then, the U.S. has made a bigger effort to halt the southward flow of guns and money.
Drug violence has killed more than 11,000 people since Mexico launched a national crackdown in 2006. But a 100 million installment of U.S. drug-fighting aid to Mexico is being held up over concerns in Congress over abuses by the military.

Pakistani Taliban’s leader ‘ill’
The Pakistani Taliban’s leader Baitullah Mehsud is gravely ill, his top aide has told the BBC.Maulan Nur Syed denied this was linked in any way to claims Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a US missile strike on Wednesday in a remote tribal area. Both the US and Pakistan earlier said their intelligence suggested Baitullah Mehsud was killed in the attack. There were also reports of a major gun battle between potential successors to Baitullah Mehsud after the strike. On Sunday, Maulana Nur Syed told the BBC the Pakistani Taliban leader had not been at the house that was attacked by the US missile. But it is thought that by making this statement, the Taliban are preparing the ground for an announcement that Pakistan’s most wanted man is in fact dead, the BBC’s Orla Guerin in Islamabad says. ’90% certainty’Earlier, Pakistani officials said they had “credible evidence” that Baitullah Mehsud had been killed. But senior Taliban commander Hakimullah Mehsud then contacted the BBC to say his chief was alive and well. Officials in Islamabad later said that Hakimullah was himself one of those killed in a fight over succession in South Waziristan. The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool, in Islamabad, says the situation is very unclear and information is based on rumours from deep inside militant territory in north-west Pakistan. In Washington, US National Security Adviser Jim Jones put he level of US certainty that Baitullah Mehsud had been killed “in the 90% category”. The Pakistani interior minister have challenged the Taliban to prove its leaders are still alive. But Taliban commanders have dismissed this as a ploy to flush them out into the open.

Source:BBC

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford used state aircraft for personal and political trips, often bringing along his wife and children — contrary to state law regarding official use, an Associated Press investigation has found.
According to state budget law, “Any and all aircraft owned or operated by agencies of the State Government shall be used only for official business.”
Records reviewed by the AP show that since he took office in 2003, the two-term Republican has taken trips on state aircraft to locations of his children’s sporting events, hair and dentist appointments, political party gatherings and a birthday party for a campaign donor.
On March 10, 2006, a state plane was sent to pick up Sanford in Myrtle Beach and return him to Columbia, the state capital, at a cost of 1,265 — when his calendar showed his only appointment in Columbia was “personal time” at his favorite discount hair salon. He had flown to Myrtle Beach on a private plane and attended a county GOP event.
The trip home on the state aircraft took off at 1:50 p.m. and arrived in Columbia at 2:35, enabling the governor to keep his plans for a 3 p.m. haircut across town. There were no other appointments on his official schedule that afternoon; the trip back to Columbia would have taken about three hours by car.
Also, on five of the last six Thanksgiving weekends, Sanford used a state plane to fly himself, his wife and their four sons from the family’s plantation in Beaufort County to Columbia for the state Christmas tree lighting. The cost for those flights alone: 5,536, including 2,869 for flying the plane empty to pick them up.
Sanford, 49, has been under increased scrutiny since he admitted in June to having a mistress in Argentina. He’s vowed to stay in office and says he is trying to reconcile with his wife, though she moved out of the governor’s official residence on Friday with their sons and plans to spend the school year at the family’s beach house.
The governor has made a political career out of being outwardly thrifty — known to demand that state employees use both sides of Post-It notes. He has frequently railed against government spending, and attempted for months to block federal stimulus money for South Carolina schools.
Last month, the AP revealed how Sanford had flown first class and business class on commercial airlines at taxpayer expense, despite a law requiring lowest-cost travel.
On many occasions, records show, the governor mingled his non-official travels with official business.
For example, on March 23, 2005, Sanford flew on a state plane from Columbia to Mount Pleasant, near the beach house, where the governor was scheduled for a 5 p.m. appointment with a dentist. Later that day, he had a TV interview before speaking at a Republican Party event for Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties along with U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint.
Such mingling also is problematic under South Carolina regulations.
Aeronautics Division rules say that “under no circumstances shall aircraft owned and operated by” the division “be used for personal or politically partisan purposes.” But there’s no clear enforcement mechanism for such violations; the division says it simply lets citizens know that statements attesting to official use of the planes are open to public inspection.
Still, misuse of state resources arguably could subject Sanford to civil or criminal penalties under the state’s ethics laws, which are enforced by the South Carolina Ethics Commission. Any public official found to have used state property for personal financial gain is subject to as much as a 5,000 fine and five years in prison. Only incidental use that does not result in additional public expense is exempt.
On April 29, 2006, a state plane flew Sanford from Greenville, not far from where one of his sons was in a soccer tournament, to Charleston, so the governor could attend a National Republican Senatorial Committee meeting on Kiawah Island.
“That’s personal use and political use. That’s not what the state plane is for,” said former Gov. Jim Hodges, a Democrat who said he occasionally mingled official state business with political and public events while using state aircraft, but only if the main purpose of the trip was official business.
Peggy Kerns, ethics director for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said she knows of no state that allows its property to be used for personal or campaign purposes. “It’s like a no-brainer,” she said.
Government watchdogs said federal officials have to repay the cost of flying government planes for personal or campaign events and said they didn’t know of a state that permitted planes to be used for such trips.
The AP review also raises questions about how South Carolina polices the use of its aircraft and reveals a system rife with shoddy record keeping and violations of laws that require the public be able to see documents.
In South Carolina, governors are able to use aircraft run by different agencies: a King Air twin turboprop run by the Aeronautics Division that can seat nine passengers, and smaller, slower propeller-driven planes managed by the Department of Natural Resources.
As governor, Sanford has flown 353 hours aboard the larger plane and an additional 73 hours on the smaller, propeller planes — a total cost of nearly 373,000, according to Sanford’s office and other state records.
Sanford’s children spent more time on the bigger state plane than the children of the past two governors, records show. At least one of Sanford’s sons was aboard 43 flights during his first term alone. That compared with 11 during Hodges’ single term and 12 during David Beasley’s one term.
Overall, flights that included his children cost taxpayers more than 50,000, or about 14 percent of his total travel on state planes.
“If it was somewhere the governor was going, sometimes the kids tagged along. There is no additional cost to the taxpayers for the kids to be on the plane if it’s somewhere the governor is headed anyway,” said Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer, who stepped down Aug. 5.
Additional matches of flight documents and Sanford’s schedule show:
• An Oct. 14, 2004 pickup in Bishopville, where his schedule shows his son Marshall’s private school football team was playing. Afterward, the plane took him to Charlotte, N.C., for a commercial flight to Dallas, where his schedule placed the governor at a lake house in Texas for a gathering of Republican donors.
• A Nov. 14, 2006 flight to Mount Pleasant, where he attended a book signing. He then flew to Aiken for the 65th birthday party for a business owner who had donated more than 12,000 to his campaign.
• A July 8, 2005 use of the state’s turboprop to fly from Charleston to Greenville, where Sanford lists the official use of the King Air for a round-table discussion with business leaders, interviews and “Greenville County Bronze Elephant Dinner,” a county GOP event.
Sawyer said the governor had fewer hours on Aeronautics Division planes in his first term than his two predecessors: 229 hours, compared with Beasley’s 303 hours and Hodges’ 310 hours. Sawyer characterized the review of Sanford’s flight schedule as “continued cherry picking,” a term he used when the AP examined the commercial flights.
“Every time the governor used the plane it was for an official state purpose and that state purpose was documented,” Sawyer said.
He also said Sanford’s schedule doesn’t chronicle all his official activities. “The governor’s schedule is not reflective of everything he’s doing that day,” he said.
Former state Rep. Margaret Gamble, a watchdog on political travel issues, said Sanford should get the benefit of the doubt on a case-by-case basis. For instance, one of Sanford’s flights took him from Anderson to Marion County for a soldier’s funeral and then to Greenwood so he could get to a McCormick County GOP fundraiser. “Maybe he had a prior commitment,” she said, but needed to go to the funeral, too, and the plane was the only way to keep his promise.”
Other governors have faced questions about aircraft use, including Beasley for using a state helicopter to get to a speech and then back for a golf game. John Crangle, state director for government watchdog group Common Cause, said governors “have been given almost unlimited latitude to do as they please, to come and go as they please or when they want to and to use the state’s resources for travel when they want.”
He said the AP research indicates Sanford repeatedly made mistakes.
“This was the Wild West for the governor’s travel when basically anything was permitted or done and accepted as normal,” Crangle said.
In fact, state law requires the Aeronautics Division to collect and keep sworn statements from aircraft users certifying flights were for official business within 48 hours of flights. Sanford’s office routinely filed that paperwork days or weeks late and the division destroys documents more than three years old.
“They’re actually destroying data that the Legislature gave them no permission to destroy. That’s like destroying evidence,” said state Sen. David Thomas, a Republican congressional candidate who has begun holding legislative hearings into Sanford’s use of state funds.
The same law requires the agency to post those records on its Web site. That was done briefly earlier this month, but the Aeronautics Division pulled the link to the records as the commission that oversees its operation reviews the law. Until July 1, the agency reported to Sanford’s cabinet.
And the law required the natural resources agency to keep official statements on flights, which it never has. Governors appoint the entire board overseeing the agency.
“The situation is one that’s dramatically out of control and needs to be completely overhauled,” Crangle said.
Added Thomas: “It’s an overwhelming ethical issue here. To me, this is clear misuse of state property.”

BAGHDAD – Iraqi authorities arrested a British contractor Sunday over the shooting deaths of two co-workers in Baghdad’s protected Green Zone. The suspected gunman could be the first Westerner to face an Iraqi trial on murder charges since a security pact lifted the immunity that had been enjoyed by foreign contractors for most of the war.
The gunman shot his colleagues — one British and one Australian — during a quarrel, then he wounded an Iraqi while trying to flee their compound inside the vast area that is sealed off from the rest of the capital, Iraqi officials said.
“It started as a squabble,” Iraqi military spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi told The Associated Press. “The suspect is facing a premeditated murder charge. The matter is now in the hands of Iraqi justice.”
He said the suspect was being held at an Iraqi police station in the Green Zone.
The Green Zone houses the U.S. and British embassies as well as the Iraqi government headquarters. The U.S. military turned over security of the area over to Iraqi forces when the security pact took effect on Jan. 1 but many foreign organizations maintain separate guarded compounds within the area.
The British Embassy said two Britons were in Iraqi custody in connection with Sunday’s shooting.
But Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf maintained that only one suspect was being held, identifying him as Danny Fitzsimmons. The conflicting reports could not immediately be reconciled.
Patrick Toyne-Sewell, a spokesman for ArmorGroup Iraq, confirmed that two employees of the group identified as Paul McGuigan of Britain and Darren Hoare of Australia were killed early Sunday in a firearms incident.
“We are working closely with the Iraqi authorities to investigate the circumstances of their deaths,” he said, adding that their relatives had been informed.
The U.S. Embassy referred questions to British, Australian and Iraqi officials.
The shooting occurred in the compound operated by Research Triangle Institute, the headquarters of two U.S.-funded non-profit groups — the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute.
A U.S.-Iraqi security pact, which took effect on Jan. 1 and replaced the U.N. mandate for foreign forces, lifted the immunity that had been enjoyed by foreign contractors in Iraq for much of the six-year war.
The move was provoked by outrage over a deadly September 2007 shooting in Baghdad involving another North Carolina security firm, Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe.
The agreement also set a timeline for the withdrawal of American forces from urban areas by the end of this month and from the entire country by 2012.
Sunday’s incident is the second case involving foreign contractors in less than three months.
In the first case, U.S.-backed Iraqi forces detained five Americans on June 3 in connection with an investigation into the stabbing death of a fellow contractor.
But the five were later released into U.S. custody and Iraqi authorities said their case did not involve the killing of James Kitterman of Houston, who was found dead in his car in the Green Zone on May 22.
Foreign contractors have long been accused by Iraqis and others of unruly behavior.
___
Associated Press Writer Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this report.

BEIJING – An Afghan plane bound for the restive western Chinese region of Xinjiang was sent back to Afghanistan after a bomb threat, Chinese media said Sunday.
Kam Air deputy chief Feda Mohammad Fedawi told The Associated Press that the plane, carrying 160 passengers, left Kabul and was crossing Kyrgyzstan on its way to the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi, when it was told to turn back.
The Xinhua News Agency said there had been a bomb threat and Urumqi airport authorities had been told not to let the plane land.
Kyrgyz authorities told the crew that Chinese authorities would not allow them into their airspace, Fedawi said. The plane could not return to the Afghan capital because of windy weather and was diverted to the southern city of Kandahar, Fedawi said.
He said there had been no bomb threat.
There was no immediate way to explain the differing accounts.
Urumqi was the scene of China’s worst ethnic violence in China in decades when rioting last month killed 197 people and injured more than 1,700, according to official count.
Fedawi said the plane’s passengers and crew were fine and it was expected to return to Kabul on Monday morning.
He said the plane had been inspected by Afghan officers and a foreign security company before departure in a security check he described as unusually thorough.
A press officer for NATO forces in Afghanistan, which control the Kandahar airport, said the alliance had received no report of a plane forced to land there.
A Xinjiang regional government duty officer, who refused to give his name, said he had not received any information about the incident, while calls to the region’s public security bureau rang unanswered.
Calls to the Urumqi airport’s information counter also rang unanswered.
The government has said that Urumqi has slowly been returning to normal since the rioting erupted on July 5 after police stopped a protest by ethnic Uighur residents. The Uighurs went on a rampage, smashing windows, burning cars and beating Han Chinese — the nation’s dominant ethnic group. Two days later, the Han took to the streets and attacked Uighurs.
___
Amir Shah in Kabul reported from Kabul.

WASHINGTON – The White House national security adviser says he’s confident the administration will meet President Barack Obama’s deadline for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility by January.
National security adviser Jim Jones says officials are working every day to find the right solution for dealing with suspected terrorists being held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
But the Senate’s leading Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, predicts that the effort to close the prison will meet with strong bipartisan opposition in Congress.
McConnell argues there is no reason to close Guantanamo’s prison, saying it’s not broken and doesn’t need fixing.
Jones and McConnell appeared on “Fox News Sunday.”

RENO, Nev. – The woman suing quarterback Ben Roethlisberger for alleged sexual assault has been accused of bragging about having consensual sex with him to a co-worker.
Angela Antonetti said the woman who made the rape claim “did not appear to be upset, stressed-out or nervous” about her time with the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback during a 2008 celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe, according to court documents filed late Friday.
Antonetti said her Harrah’s hotel-casino co-worker “appeared happy and boastful,” and later said she thought she might be pregnant from the encounter. Antonetti made the remarks in a sworn statement attached to a motion to move the case from Reno to Minden, Nev.
“Rather than indicating that she was afraid or apprehensive about this, (the woman) expressed to me that she was hoping for a ‘little Roethlisberger,” said Antonetti, who worked with her at Harrah’s between 2006 and 2009.
Lawyer Cal Dunlap, who represents the woman, declined to comment Saturday.
“We’ll just deal with it in the lawsuit,” he said.
In her lawsuit, the 31-year-old Nevada woman says she was working as a VIP hostess during the tournament when the two-time Super Bowl winner raped her in a hotel penthouse across the street from the golf course — a claim he vehemently denies.
She also alleges Harrah’s officials orchestrated a cover-up, and worked to silence her and undermine her credibility rather than investigate her claims.
But the motion, filed by Roethlisberger’s Nevada lawyer John Echeverria, says her claims were an attempt to exploit his celebrity status and secure an “extortionate payday.”
Antonetti said the woman’s emotional collapse had nothing to do with a rape but resulted from a failed relationship with a married man and then a long-distance relationship that turned out to be a hoax.
Antonetti claims the woman became “very emotionally distraught” afterward, and took a leave of absence from Harrah’s.
Antonetti says she wanted “to set the record straight” after hearing about the claims against Roethlisberger.

WASHINGTON – When President Barack Obama visited Mexico in April, the now-global swine flu epidemic — unbeknownst to the White House — had just begun there and an Obama aide returned home sick.
What could have become a diplomatic downer, however, ultimately turned into a bright spot.
Obama was never in danger, the aide and his family recovered, and the two nations cooperated extensively on the flu outbreak through the spring and beyond. The United States earned huge points with its southern neighbor for not joining the countries banning flights, halting trade and taking other actions that Mexico considered unfairly punitive.
Now, as Obama returns to Mexico, the swine flu that spread from there across the world is increasingly back in the news — and at the top of the agenda of at a lightning-quick, three-way summit Sunday and Monday in Guadalajara.
Obama, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will try to build on that earlier cooperation to handle an expected new wave of cases during North America’s upcoming flu season.
John Brennan, Obama’s chief homeland security aide, said the talks are timely — and crucial, given the long borders the U.S. shares with Mexico and Canada. As important as it is to further link up health officials and ready vaccine and antiviral supplies, the three leaders also must together and publicly reinforce a determination not to panic when cases arise, he said.
“There are people who are going to be getting sick in the fall and die,” Brennan said. Keeping the severity and reach of the illnesses to a minimum is a priority, but officials also “want to make sure that we do everything possible to ensure the continuation of commerce, transportation and trade between the three countries.”
America’s first- and third-largest trade relationships are with Canada and Mexico. All three are partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement, the largest free-trade zone in the world. Closing borders or restricting travel would be very costly for families and businesses on all sides of the borders, an important consideration given the limping economy and the fact that health experts see such actions as pointless in containing the flu’s spread.
President George W. Bush kicked off the trilateral tradition in 2005 with the first summit held near his Texas ranch.
They typically are rather sleepy affairs — no splashy news, little attention. Despite the lofty name of North American Leaders Summit, it lacks a defining cause and is usually more a progress report on commercial and security integration than an action-packed headline-grabber.
Officials say the meetings are vital nonetheless.
Peter DeShazo, a former State Department official for Western Hemisphere affairs, said Canada and Mexico are vital to the U.S. economy and security, making regular conversations at the highest levels a must. “These relationships are so complex and multifaceted,” said DeShazo, who directs the Americas Program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Said Obama national security adviser James Jones: “I think you get in trouble when you wait too long before talking to your neighbors.”
The fifth North American summit is short — just one evening and barely half the next day, but the list of issues is long.
The U.S. neighbors will want Obama to explain where America’s economic recovery is going because both countries saw their own fortunes fall as a result of problems in the U.S. Obama will hear complaints from Calderon and Harper about “Buy American” requirements in the 787 billion economic stimulus package.
Climate change is a priority, too.
The three leaders also are expected to take a joint stand on a recent problem in their hemisphere — the June coup in Honduras that saw President Manuel Zelaya ousted by the military.
Obama planned a meeting late Sunday afternoon with Calderon. He did not schedule a separate session with Harper while in Mexico; the Canadian leader will see the president on Sept. 16 in Washington.
The three leaders were to have dinner together Sunday night, with the agenda intentionally open and free-flowing. The next day, they have more formalized meetings. They appear together before reporters ahead of their midday departures.
Obama’s meeting with Calderon will continue his drive for a new tone in U.S.-Mexico relations.
They had their ups and downs under Bush, driven by a divide over the Iraq war, the United States’ building of a border fence and Bush’s failure to produce an immigration overhaul.
Like Bush, Obama has emphasized tighter border security. But he also has pledged to renew immigration overhaul efforts, including a citizenship path for illegal immigrants.
During his April visit, Obama made a welcome acknowledgment to Mexicans that Americans share the blame for violence south of border because of drug consumption and gun trafficking. Since then, the U.S. has made a bigger effort to halt the southward flow of guns and money.
Drug violence has killed more than 11,000 people since Mexico launched a national crackdown in 2006. But a 100 million installment of U.S. drug-fighting aid to Mexico is being held up over concerns in Congress over abuses by the military.

MALBORK, Poland – Germans and Poles are laying ghosts of World War II to rest this week — more than 2,000 of them.
At a ceremony Friday, they will rebury the bones that were discovered last fall in a mass grave at the foot of this northern Polish city’s medieval castle, setting aside the grievances that linger from the war and often bedevil relations between the two countries.
But the uncertainties about who the dead were and who killed them may never be resolved. All that authorities can say with some assuredness is that they were probably German civilians who died in the ferocious final months of the war, in a city with a shared Polish-German past that dates back more than 700 years.
Poland and Germany are at peace today — fellow democracies in the 27-nation European Union. But the war still shadows the relationship. They argue, often bitterly, over war damages, past suffering, and the rights of an estimated 3 million ethnic Germans expelled as Poland headed into a future as a Soviet communist satellite.
Yet the grisly find by red-brick Malbork Castle seems to have drawn hearts and minds together. Polish authorities have handled the discovery with sensitivity, neither side has voiced recriminations, and discussions on where to rebury them have reached a cordial, mutually agreed conclusion.
“These were innocent people and they should be treated with respect, and have a proper burial,” said Marian Kempka, a 56-year-old Polish man visiting the Malbork cemetery where the remains were temporarily stored.
The first bones were found in October by construction workers digging foundations for a five-star hotel by the Castle, a tourist attraction and UNESCO World Heritage site. But it took three months for the magnitude of the grave to become clear. While construction of the 175-room hotel was moved to an adjacent plot, an exhumation was ordered by Polish authorities.
Workers spent six months gently working through wet sand to amass the bones of some 2,120 men, women and children. But they found no documents, clothes or personal belongings, save for a child’s pair of glasses. There also are no known witnesses to the burial.
Forensic experts and anthropologists moved in, and the evidence “indicates it is most probable that these are German civilians who died in early 1945, in February or March,” says Maciej Schulz, a prosecutor at Polish state-funded Institute of National Remembrance, who investigated the mass grave.
The supposition is that they were buried in a shell crater after artillery fire demolished buildings, and that because there is no mention of the grave in Polish or German documents, it must have been filled with bodies between March and mid-May, when Soviet forces held the city, he said.
Moreover, it was Red Army practice to clean up cities it entered by dumping stripped bodies into bomb craters, Schulz said.
The few existing witnesses from Malbork talk of many bodies lying in the city at the time.
Bodo Rueckert, whose German family had to leave the town at the end of the war and who now heads an association of Malbork expellees, speculates they may have been killed by Poles seeking revenge for their suffering under six years of German occupation.
But Georg Fritz, an official with an organization that represents the small German minority in Malbork, believes most were German civilians who were killed in the crossfire or died of cold, hunger and disease during the harsh winter and the long Soviet siege of early 1945.
Schulz, the Polish official, shares this view, stressing that fewer than one percent of the skulls bear bullet wounds.
DNA testing would have been too complex and costly for so many remains, he said.
Prosecutors are still digging for clues in Polish archives and have asked Russian archivists to search their files, but say no reply has been received.
Meanwhile Rueckert says he has had many calls from people who say, “Now I know where my grandpa or grandma is, under there.”
Many of them may have been among the 3,000 people who couldn’t find room aboard the last train out of Malbork when Germany ordered its citizens to flee the advancing Soviet army, said Piotr Szwedowski, a city spokesman.
“Maybe they are lying here,” he said.
German records list by name more than 2,600 Malbork Germans as dead and another 1,800 missing — men, women and children; civilians and soldiers, according to Rueckert.
After the Wehrmacht fled March 8 and until late May when the Soviet-backed Polish administration took control, the city was almost empty of civilians.
Then it began to fill up again, this time with Poles who had been expelled from their homes in eastern territories that Poland lost to the Soviet Union after the war.
Among the earliest arrivals was 10-year-old Tadeusz Bronowski, whose family settled into a small house in mid-May. The boy spent much of his time roaming the streets in search of food.
“I remember German prisoners in torn uniforms, guarded by Russian soldiers, driving around the city in an old truck and collecting the decaying bodies from the streets,” Bronowski, now a 74-year-old retired architect, recalled. He said he saw no more than 300 bodies in total, all German or Soviet soldiers. The bodies, he says, were dumped at the foot of the castle hill.
“That was no sight for children,” he said.
Fritz believes the cleanup unit stripped the bodies and burned the clothes to head off typhoid fever and that soldiers looted their valuables.
He said the grave showed traces of lime, which is used to hasten decomposition.
Moreover, some skulls found at the top of the heap had bullet holes, suggesting they may have been German POWs executed by the Soviets once their work was done.
“They did it in such a way that no one knew about it for 60 years,” Fritz said. “It’s a great mystery.”
By Polish-German agreement, the remains are being transported 200 miles to the Polish town of Stare Czarnowo, which has one of Poland’s 13 cemeteries for German soldiers. They will be buried 20 to a coffin in one or two mass graves, and Catholic and Protestant services will be held, Szwedowski, the city spokesman, said.
Former Malbork residents and relatives of Germans who went missing in the city during the war are to attend.
Each year newly discovered war graves yield some 4,000 bodies for these cemeteries, according to the government’s Council for Protecting Monuments of Struggle and Martyrdom.
Sept. 1 is the 70th anniversary of the war that began with the invasion of Poland by Germany from the west, and two weeks later by its then Soviet ally from the east. More than 6 million of Poland’s citizens were killed, the Nazis’ worst concentration camps were built on its soil, cultural treasures and industry were destroyed and some 85 percent of Warsaw, the capital, was razed.
Fritz stresses the respect and compassion the Poles are showing for the Malbork find.
“When you think of all those Polish families that lost their loved ones in the war, they are sure to understand the suffering connected to the grave. They are familiar with such tragedies.”
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Associated Press writer Rachel Nolan in Berlin contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will fly to Mexico for a two-day summit with the leaders of Mexico and Canada.
The three men are expected to work on trade, immigration, drug trafficking and security issues, as well as clean energy. They’re also expected to discuss the swine flu pandemic and the economic crisis.
Obama arrives in Guadalajara Sunday afternoon and will meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
Afterward, Obama will join Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for a working dinner. Then they’ll enjoy a cultural event.
The three leaders will continue their talks Monday.