Newsbriefs

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Tremper Circle?
Mount Tremper's famous Four Corners has caught the attention of State Department of Transportation officials, who have prepared a plan to turn the intersection into a traffic circle.
Long before the State carved the present day route 28 highway through the Catskills, the Four Corners, where the old Route 28 met Route 212 and Wittenberg Road, was a crossroads point where travelers could head toward Woodstock, Kingston, Phoenicia, or Olive. Low speeds and rough roads back then made the intersection safe, but present day drivers and the more frantic pace of today have created concerns about the location. Neighbors say many drivers run the stop signs. Others don’t even see them until it’s too late. In the winter the Wittenberg Road is dangerous, as it ends at the intersection at the base of a hill, where vehicles can sometimes slide right into the traffic of Route 212.
Amidst frequent jabs about the unpopular traffic circle built in Kingston a few years ago, DOT Engineer Robert Rella, recently explained to the Shandaken Town Board that the Ulster County Sheriffs Department has long complained about the intersection.
DOT’s interest in doing the project is unusual. While the department has a reputation for coldly denying requests for such changes unless there is proof of high accident rate, DOT appears ready to put money in this project without any significant accident record to justify it. Rella admits that even traffic flow through the intersection is light.
Asked why DOT is even considering such a plan, Rella said because the site lends itself toward the project being relatively inexpensive, as there is already enough right of way to do the project. However Rella would not even venture a guess as to what it might cost.
Neighbors of the site like the idea, although one, Kathy Nolan, convinced the town board to hold off on supporting the plan until all nearby landowners had a chance to review the project.
Rella said DOT is ready to go with the project, but if the town didn’t want to do it, DOT would back off.
Jerry Neil of Shandaken wondered if snowplows would be able to successfully navigate the small circle. Rella said it would not be a problem, but many in the audience chuckled about similar DOT claims about the infamous Traffic circle in Kingston, which large trucks can barely fit on. Rella said he had nothing to do with the design of the Kingston circle.
Another issue is that the current intersection provides space in the center for the Trailways bus to take on and drop off passengers. That would no longer be allowed if the circle were built.
Mike Malloy, the town’s code enforcement officer, said DOT should just consider the much less expensive alternative of better signage to alert drivers to the intersection instead of such a drastic change, especially since there appears to be little reason to justify the project beyond it being easy and cheap.
“If aint broke don’t fix it,” Malloy said.

Election Totals
Although the nation, despite exit polling to the contrary, went for Bush on November 2, Ulster County continued its trend towards becoming a Democrat enclave… even in our Route 28 corridor towns of Olive and Shandaken.
Shandaken showed Democratic strength by giving Kerry a win over Bush, 970 to 712, with 33 for Nader. Congressional candidate Maurice Hinchey and U.S. Senate candidate Chuck Schumer, both incumbents, easily won in the town and Family Court Judge Mary Work beat incumbent Surrogate Court Justice Paul Gruner 939 to 647, a margin of 59 to 41 percent.
Individual districts saw Kerry defeating Bush 355 to 240 in District 1, 157 to 147 in District 2, 229 to 159 in District 3 and 190 to 115 in District 4.
In Olive, Kerry defeated Bush by 1,525 to 1,075, with 33 voting for Nader. Schumer and Hinchey had similar margins and Work downed Gruner, 1,439 to 948.
District-wise, Kerry defeated Bush 353 to 294 in District 1, 335 to 175 in District 2, 245 to 177 in District 3, 281 to 179 in District 4 and 240 to 152 in District 5.
A proposal to increase funding for local libraries passed by a wide margin in Shandaken.
Back to local elections next year…

New Clinic...
New owners have taken over the Phoenicia Health Clinic. As of November 1, Benedictine Hospital, which ran the Clinic on Ava Maria Drive for several years, has handed the operation over to the doctors that have been practicing at the clinic.
On Monday Doctor Martin Krakower came to the Town Board to explain the change and assure people that Phoenicia is not losing the facility.
“It’s not closing. It’s business as usual,” he assured, noting that Nurse Practitioner Brian Callahan would remain with the operation.
Callahan, a popular health care professional, has been the mainstay at the Clinic since the beginning in the early 1990’s while all other staff, from the receptionist right up to the Doctors that run the facility, have changed many times.
For the past four years it has been Krakower and Doctor Randall Rissman of Maverick Family health services in Woodstock that have supplied the doctor presence at the Clinic. The two have now made a deal with Benedictine Hospital, which owns the building housing the clinic, and will lease the location with plans to eventually buy it. The new name of the facility is Maverick West.
Krakower said Maverick West would take all forms of Health Insurance.
He further noted that he and Rissman asked Benedictine officials to release control of the clinic “and turn it over to the community” so there can be greater consistency in the care provided.
“We’ve always been able to maintain quality health care locally,” he said, adding that plans call for new doctors and new nurse practitioners to join the staff, occupy more exam rooms and therefore serve more patients.
While Krakower said there are plans to expand the size of the building, Planning Board member Gerry Setchko wondered if there was enough space on the tiny property to expand.
Shandaken Code Enforcement Officer Mike Malloy, in charge of making such decisions, said “This is the first I’ve heard of this…..I can’t give him an answer.”
Krakower said he hopes they can add onto the back of the building. In the meantime there is another plan to open two exam rooms in the garage that is one the property.

H2O Tankers...
Recently, Shandaken Planners reviewed a draft environmental Impact Statement for the long proposed water project in upper Woodland Valley, and told the developer that they still need more information before calling the document complete. The information was expected to be provided by the November 10th planning board meeting. Unclear at press time was whether the board declared the document complete. While that determination would be a big step in the long approval process for the project, it is not the last. Next the board needs to review the impact statement and decide if the project is too harmful to be allowed. If allowed to proceed, the project must then undergo a site plan review.
“We, the town, are liable for this. We are the lead agency. We have to have a thorough review,” said planner Beth Waterman.
Valley resident Andrew Poncic caused an uproar in the Community several years ago with his plan to drive large trucks up into valley on a daily basis to fill up with spring water out of a natural spring on Poncic’s property. Signs reading “NO WATER TANKERS” quickly appeared on many lawns along the 7 mile dead end road. In reaction, Poncic told planners that he would use smaller trucks, similar in size to the trucks used for residential fuel oil deliveries.
But the DEIS now calls for a 58 foot long tractor trailer to take two loads per day from the spring, which is located about six miles up the thin country lane. Rough estimates Wednesday showed that such a vehicle is almost as long as the town hall building, where the planners held their workshop.


Hospital Woes
Ulster County lawmakers have agreed to loan Ellenville Regional Hospital an additional $400,000 on top of $200,000 already pledged to the hospital to help it recover from bankruptcy… while simultaneously taking ownership of the hospital building and the land on which it sits so the beleagured hospital will henceforth lease the facility from the county, with lease payments drawing down the county’s $600,000 loan. The measure is one of the final steps in the hospital’s bankruptcy recovery plan. Other components, which already have fallen into place, include the hospital receiving “critical access hospital” status, which increases Medicare reimbursements to the hospital by about $500,000 a year; approval by the board of Kingston Regional Health Care Corp. (Kingston Hospital) to take over operations at the facility; and Bankruptcy Court approval of the hospital’s plan.
Meanwhile, Kingston Hospital has hired its third interim president and chief executive officer since August 2003, when longtime hospital chief Anthony P. Marmo re-signed amid revelations that the institution had run up millions of dollars in debt. Michael S. Kaminski, who most recently served as chief executive officer of the Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn, was appointed to the post in recent weeks, taking over from David Buchmueller, who will return to retirement. Since Marmo’s departure, management of the hospital has been delegated by the hospital’s board to Speltz and Weiss, a Boston-based consulting firm, which has worked to implement a turnaround plan to bring the hospital back from a $10.9 million budget deficit via staff cuts, selling off some affiliated businesses and properties and a tough new system of fiscal accountability for department heads.
As a sign of improving finances, the hospital recently began advertising again after a yearlong hiatus. The hospital is also in the process of negotiating an affiliation with Health Quest, the parent company of Vassar Brothers Medical Center and Northern Dutchess Hospital. An earlier plan to merge with Benedictine Hospital in Kingston fell through after the Catholic institution rejected a proposal that the two hospitals merge as a single secular health care facility.
At Benedictine Hospital, officials are saying the complex’s new cancer center, cardiac catheterization lab and other services at the hospital will soon pay dividends and reduce or eliminate an $825,000 budget deficit caused by startup costs for the new ventures and the rising costs of drugs and medical equipment.
The $10.5 million, three-story cancer treatment center will offer radiation oncology services and medical office space leased to independent health-care providers starting in November. The cardiac catheterization lab will share personnel with an identical facility at nearby Kingston Hospital as part of a three-year trial arrangement under Health Department supervision, allowing patients to undergo the diagnostic procedure without traveling to Albany.

County Taxes…
Ulster County is currently looking at a probable 24 percent increase in the countywide property tax levy, with the massive hike being driven by rising benefits costs, lowering state revenues, and cost overages in the county jail project.
Taxpayers have already started protesting the hikes, expressing their critical views of the way legislators are handling county business at recent meetings and hearings on the spending plan.
Some have told lawmakers that rather than looking into spending money on new buildings and starting new projects, the county should focus on making the tough choices required to pare down the property tax burden on county taxpayers.
The $295 million tentative spending plan for 2005 was introduced by the County Administrator’s Office last in late October. While spending would increase by roughly 4 percent over the current budget under the proposal, the property tax levy would increase $10 million next year, resulting in a 23.73 percent hike in the property tax levy.
Protesters pointed out that the problems are based on increased spending of 23 percent over the last four years.
Among County Administrator Arthur Smith’s budget recommendations is cutting the county’s funding of outside agencies by 25 percent from what they received last year, a move that brought representatives and supporters of several agencies to speak at the hearing.
Glenn Hoagland of Mohonk Preserve said the county’s annual contribution of $10,000 has helped fund the preserve’s environmental education program, which he said works annually with about 1,500 kids in 10 Ulster County school districts.
Backers of the Ulster County Library Association, the Ulster County Historical Society, and several supporters of Cornell Cooperative Extension also pleaded for stable county funding.

Jail Again…
The Ulster County Law Enforcement Center is unlikely to open next March, as county and construction officials have repeatedly announced, but at least 14 months after the county’s largest construction project ever was initially slated to open. At a recent meeting of the county’s Law Enforcement Center Committee, Ulster County, the project’s construction manager said he could not give a firm completion date for the controversial project, which has also run millions over budget to date.
Republican county leaders have discounted the contractors’ statements, suggesting they were motivated by legal claims the contractors had filed against the county for additional costs they’ve incurred due to the delay in the project.
News broke in May that the $71.8 million project could be as much as $21 million over budget. In September, lawmakers approved spending an additional $8 million on construction.

Bubble Trouble
Twelve years ago, when a new gasoline additive held the promise of reducing air pollution, New York State made a huge bet that the technology would work. It supported the use of the additive, M.T.B.E., to be mixed with gasoline at some of the highest concentrations in the nation, from 12 to 15 percent, while also allowing the additive to be used in parts of the state where air pollution was less of a problem. But six years later, when studies began to show that the chemical was a potential carcinogen, state officials realized that by trying to clean the air, they may have seriously damaged the water supply.
M.T.B.E. has been leaching into the underground water table from thousands of gas tanks, and now the state has more than 13,000 spills that must be cleaned up, one of the worst cases of drinking-water pollution in the nation, experts say.
“New York is faced with one of the worst M.T.B.E. problems in the country,’’ said Senator Charles Schumer, who has taken up the issue along with other lawmakers in Washington. “And the state is not even done counting the number of spills yet.”
And while New York and other states have banned gasoline with high levels of M.T.B.E., experts say that New York’s troubles are a harbinger of a nationwide problem. Roughly half the country draws its water from underground sources like public and private wells or aquifers.
“People seem to be waiting for some major disaster,” said Walter L. T. Hang, president of Toxics Targeting, a firm that provides environmental data to environmental consultants and drinking water suppliers. “But the disaster is already here. It just happens to be occurring underground.”
Last year, the Bush administration supported a $31 billion national energy bill that would have protected the oil companies from having to pay for the cleanup. Republican supporters of the provision said the companies were not responsible for the decision to use the additive.
In New York, at least 20 municipal water providers, including New York City, have pending lawsuits against oil companies seeking their help in cleaning up M.T.B.E. pollution. More than 150 such lawsuits are pending nationwide.
A spokeswoman for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Maureen Wren, did not respond to questions about cleanup methods, but she said that the state was taking ambitious steps to deal with the M.T.B.E. problem. It banned the additive this year, she said, and is providing incentives to municipalities and companies for cleanup.

Geneva NOT
At the request of the CIA, the U.S. Justice Department drafted a confidential memo that authorizes the agency to transfer detainees out of Iraq for interrogation — a practice that international legal specialists say contravenes the Geneva Conventions. Furthermore, an intelligence official familiar with the operation said the CIA has used the March draft memo as legal support for secretly transporting as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last six months. The agency has concealed the detainees from the International Red Cross and other authorities, the official said.
The draft opinion, written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and dated March 19, 2004, refers to both Iraqi citizens and foreigners in Iraq, who the memo says are protected by the treaty. It permits the CIA to take Iraqis out of the country to be interrogated for a “brief but not indefinite period.” It also says the CIA can permanently remove persons deemed to be “illegal aliens” under “local immigration law.”
Some specialists in international law say the opinion amounts to a reinterpretation of one of the most basic rights of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which protects civilians during wartime and occupation, including insurgents who were not part of Iraq’s military.
The 1949 treaty prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory . . . regardless of their motive” and notes that a violation of this particular provision constitutes a “grave breach” of the accord, and thus a “war crime” under U.S. federal law, according to a footnote in the Justice Department draft.
The CIA, Justice Department and the author of the draft opinion, Jack L. Goldsmith, former director of the Office of Legal Counsel, declined to comment. CIA officials have not disclosed the identities or locations of its Iraq detainees to congressional oversight committees, the Defense Department or CIA investigators who are reviewing detention policy, according to two informed U.S. government officials and a confidential e-mail on the subject shown to The Washington Post.
White House officials disputed the notion that Goldsmith’s interpretation of the treaty was unusual, although they did not explain why.
The Office of Legal Counsel also wrote the Aug. 1, 2002, memo on torture that advised the CIA and White House that torturing al Qaeda terrorists in captivity abroad “may be justified,” and that international laws against torture “may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations” conducted in the war on terrorism.

The Good Oil?
The monounsaturated fat in olive oil may reduce the chances of suffering coronary heart disease, the Food and Drug Administration has said, opening the door to revised food labels. As long as people don’t increase the number of calories they consume daily, the FDA found “limited but not conclusive evidence” suggesting reduced risk of coronary heart disease when people replace foods high in saturated fat with the monounsaturated fat in olive oil.
According to the American Heart Association, coronary heart disease accounted for 502,189 deaths - or one in five deaths - in 2001, the most current statistic available. Another 13.2 million Americans that year survived the heart attacks, chest pains and other ailments caused by coronary heart disease.
Along with lowering cholesterol, cutting out cigarettes and exercising, the group says Americans can boost heart health by eating foods low in saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. An American Heart Association spokeswoman declined comment on the FDA’s action until it reviews the health claim.


Ed Suits…
The federal No Child Left Behind Act threatens costly penalties for schools deemed failing to meet academic standards. In response, many educators have a threat of their own: A flood of lawsuits aimed at avoiding the sanctions.
Since President Bush signed the sweeping education reforms in 2002, the law has drawn criticism from educators debating its strict performance and test requirements. The act requires all students to be proficient in reading, writing and math by 2014. And starting this academic year, parents of children in failing schools can demand transfers to better campuses. Over the next four years, schools must offer tutoring services, administrators and teachers can be fired, states can take over districts, and federal funds can be withheld.
But a number of local school boards across the nation are considering suing federal and state governments, claiming the districts are being held to unreachable goals. And according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, students at more than 27,500 schools nationwide - almost 31 percent of all U.S. public schools - are failing at math and reading.
The federal government allocated a total of $58.3 billion for the program in fiscal year 2005, but critics - including Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry - said that’s far short of the money needed for schools.

Bad BBs!
They are often thought of as toys, but BB guns and other nonpowder guns are sometimes lethal and injure as many as 21,000 Americans each year, according to a new report, which points out that nonpowder guns kill an average of four Americans yearly, and from 1990 to 2000, there were 39 such deaths - 32 of children younger than 15, according to the report in November’s issue of Pediatrics.
The report comes just two weeks after the BB gun death of an 8-year-old South Carolina boy accidentally killed by a 13-year-old friend. The pellet pierced the boy’s heart.

Today’s BB guns, the report points out, “are extremely high-powered,” and some can shoot with a velocity nearly matching a .22 caliber rifle. These guns include powerful air rifles introduced in the 1970s and paintball pistols used in war games. They’re sometimes described as fake guns and often given to children as gifts, but the report says they can cause internal injuries similar to those from bullets.
The gun involved in the Oct. 18 shooting was a present from the older boy’s parents, who had hoped it would lift his spirits after his own brother’s recent death in a car accident.
“They’re being given as toys without recognition that there may be a serious injury risk,” said report author Dr. Danielle Laraque, a New York pediatrician.
Nationally, an estimated 21,840 injuries related to nonpowder guns were treated in emergency departments in 2000 - most in children aged 5 to 14, according to the report prepared by the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Injury, Violence and Prevention.
Most states have laws or regulations governing nonpowder guns. New York’s is one of the strictest, prohibiting the purchase or unsupervised use by someone younger than 16 years, the Pediatrics report said.

Flu Summit
With increasing signs that bird flu is becoming established in Asia and a shortage of flu vaccine in America, health officials from several nations and more than a dozen vaccine companies plan to meet this month for an unprecedented summit to tackle the issue.
Sixteen vaccine companies and health officials from the United States and other large countries already have agreed to attend the summit in Geneva, Switzerland, on Nov. 11, said Klaus Stohr, influenza chief of the United Nations’ health agency, the World Health Organization.
Scientists fear that if the bird flu virus mutates enough to mix with the human influenza virus it could easily pass between humans and trigger a global pandemic.
The world’s total capacity for flu vaccine now is only 300 million doses, and it would take at least six months to develop a new vaccine to fight a pandemic. The WHO wants to get “all issues on the table,” monetary and scientific, that prevent getting more vaccine more quickly, he said.
“If we continue as we are now, there will be no vaccine available, let alone antivirals, when the next pandemic starts,” Stohr said. “We have a window of opportunity now to prepare ourselves.”
Flu kills about 36,000 people in the United States and a million worldwide each year by conservative estimates. But tens of millions die in a pandemic, which occurs every 20 to 30 years, when a flu strain changes so dramatically that people have little immunity from previous flu bouts.
There were three pandemics in the 20th century; all spread worldwide within a year of being detected. The worst was the Spanish flu in 1918-19, when as many as 50 million people worldwide were thought to have died, nearly half of them young, healthy adults. More than 500,000 died in the United States. The 1957-58 Asian flu caused about 70,000 deaths in the United States, followed by the 1968-69 Hong Kong flu, which caused about 34,000 U.S. deaths.

Melting Caps…

A thaw of the Arctic icecap is accelerating because of global warming but nations in the region including the United States are deadlocked about how to stop it. The Nov. 8 eight-nation report compiled by 250 scientists says the Arctic is warming almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet due to a buildup of heat-trapping gases and the trend is set to continue.
“We are taking a risk with the global climate,” said Paal Prestrud, vice-chair of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report, which says emissions of gases from cars, factories and power plants are mostly to blame. The Arctic icecap has shrunk by 15-20 percent in the past 30 years and the contraction is likely to accelerate, Prestrud said. The Arctic Ocean could be almost ice-free in summer by the end of the century. The report says that the thaw will have some positive side-effects. Oil and gas deposits will be easier to reach, more farming may be possible and short-cut trans-Arctic shipping lanes may open. But diplomats in nations around the Arctic rim — the United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland — disagree about what to do, with the United States most opposed to any drastic action. Arctic nations are meant to agree policy recommendations based on the report at a meeting of foreign ministers in Iceland on Nov. 24. “U.S. negotiators say ‘we already have a policy on global warming — we can’t have a new one just for the Arctic’,” one European diplomat said. Government negotiators will try to break deadlock with a new round of talks in mid-November. The report projects that temperatures in the Arctic will rise by 4 to 7 degrees Celsius (8 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit) in the next 100 years. If temperatures then stayed stable, the Greenland icecap would melt altogether in 1,000 years and raise global sea levels by about seven meters (23 ft). The thaw of the icecap floating on the Arctic Ocean does not affect sea levels, in the same way that a full glass of water with an ice cube jutting above the brim does not spill when the ice melts since ice takes up more space than water. Meanwhile, proposals to store tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide under the seabed are to be unveiled and discussed in a dramatic attempt to tackle global warming at the same upcoming summit meeting. The world’s leading industrial nations will be asked to support a plan to develop underground reservoirs of carbon dioxide around the globe by using disused oil fields and old water sources in the surface of the earth. Recent reports have shown sudden and unexplained jumps in CO2 levels in the atmosphere over the past two years - risking a sudden surge in global warming. Scientists also fear that man-made CO2 is making the seas more acidic - and could kill off plankton and coral reefs. Experts who back the proposal claim that, technically, the United Kingdom could store all its carbon emissions for more than 100 years in exhausted oil and gas fields in the North Sea. Around the world, similar projects could theoretically hold all man-made carbon emissions. They claim the gas will be safely trapped in the bedrock for tens of thousands of years or more - long enough for the human race to stop and even reverse global warming, and to find a long-term alternative to the use of fossil fuels. The revolutionary technique involves pumping liquified carbon dioxide at high pressure from places such as coal- and gas-fired power stations along pipes on the ocean floor. But the scheme will be heavily criticized by environment groups such as Greenpeace, who claims the plan is a technically unproven “distraction” from the real task of deeply cutting
The Real Osama The Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera released a full transcript of the most recent videotape from Osama bin Laden in which the head of al Qaeda said his group’s goal is to force America into bankruptcy. But it was not released to the American public until after the recent election. “We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah,” bin Laden said in the transcript, noting that the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, “using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers.” “We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat,” bin Laden said. “ It wasz easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations.” U.S. intelligence officials Monday confirmed that the transcript made public by Al-Jazeera was a complete one. As part of the “bleed-until-bankruptcy plan,” bin Laden cited a British estimate that it cost al Qaeda about $500,000 to carry out the attacks of September 11, 2001, an amount that he said paled in comparison with the costs incurred by the United States. “Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs,” he said. “As for the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars.
The total U.S. national debt is more than $7 trillion. The U.S. federal deficit was $413 billion in 2004, according to the Treasury Department. “It is true that this shows that al Qaeda has gained, but on the other hand it shows that the Bush administration has also gained, something that anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-corporations, like Halliburton and its kind, will be convinced. And it all shows that the real loser is you,” bin Laden said. “It is the American people and their economy.” As for President Bush’s Iraq policy, Bin Laden said, “the darkness of black gold blurred his vision and insight, and he gave priority to private interests over the public interests of America. “So the war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that threaten his future,” bin Laden said.
Cell Saved? A six year-old boy has been cured of a rare blood disorder after receiving blood cells from a baby brother born to save him, it has been revealed. Doctors belive the saving of Charllie Whitaker from the condition known as Diamond Blackfan anaemia is a major step forward in stem-cell treatment and gives families new hope of saving their sick children. He is believed to be the first child in Britain, and among only five in the world, to receive a successful transplant from a sibling born to help cure an illness. His parents received initial treatment, including IVF, from the Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre, in London. But a ruling by Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) meant the couple were forced to turn to a clinic in Chicago to complete the procedure. In 2002, two embryos were implanted in Mrs Whitaker. In June last year, she gave birth to Jamie, a genetic match for his brother. It meant stem cells from his umbilical cord could be used to treat Charlie. Three months on from the transplant at Sheffield Children’s Hospital, tests on his bone marrow have produced promising results. “All the indications now are that he is almost cured,” said Mohamed Taranissi of the Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre. “It’s very positive news.”

Bad Debts… The Bush administration announced just after winning a second term that it will run out of maneuvering room to manage the government’s massive borrowing needs in the coming weeks, putting more pressure on Congress to raise the debt ceiling when it convenes for a special post-election session. Treasury Department officials announced that they will be able to conduct a scheduled series of debt auctions to raise $51 billion. However, an auction of four-week Treasury bills due to be completed on Nov. 18 will have to be postponed unless Congress acts before then to raise the debt ceiling. Congress is scheduled to return for a lame-duck session beginning on Nov. 16 to deal with the debt ceiling, an omnibus spending plan for the rest of this budget year and other matters. The Republican-controlled Congress put off dealing with the debt ceiling before adjourning in October, preferring not to force members to vote on the politically sensitive issue of adding to the national debt before the November elections. The government hit the current debt ceiling of $7.384 trillion on Oct. 14, forcing Treasury to begin a series of bookkeeping maneuvers to keep financing the government’s normal operations without breaching the debt ceiling. But Treasury Secretary John Snow has warned that those special measures would last only until mid-November. Republicans have proposed that the debt ceiling be raised by $690 billion to $8.074 trillion, an amount that would get the government through next September, when the 2005 budget year ends.
Real Right Now Exulting in their electoral victories, President Bush’s conservative supporters immediately turned the day after the recent election to staking out mandates for an ambitious agenda of long-cherished goals, including privatizing Social Security, banning same-sex marriage, remaking the Supreme Court and overturning the court’s decisions in support of abortion rights. “Now comes the revolution,” Richard Viguerie, the dean of conservative direct mail, told about a dozen fellow movement stalwarts gathered around a television here, tallying up their Senate seats in the earliest hours of the morning. “If you don’t implement a conservative agenda now, when do you?” By midday, however, fights over the spoils had already begun, as conservatives debated the electorate’s verdict on the war in Iraq, the Bush administration’s spending and the administration’s hearty embrace of traditionalist social causes. Dr. James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family and an influential evangelical Protestant, said he had issued a warning to a “White House operative” who called yesterday morning to thank him for his help. Dr. Dobson said he told the caller that many Christians believed the country “on the verge of self-destruction” as it abandoned traditional family roles. He argued that “through prayer and the involvement of millions of evangelicals, and mainline Protestants and Catholics, God has given us a reprieve.” “But I believe it is a short reprieve,” he continued, adding that conservatives now had four years to pass an amendment banning same-sex marriage, to stop abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, and most of all to remake the Supreme Court. “I believe that the Bush administration now needs to be more aggressive in pursuing those values, and if they don’t do it I believe they will pay a price in four years,” he said. Dr. Dobson and several other Christian conservatives said they believed the expanded Republican majority in the Senate and the defeat of the Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, put them in striking distance of both amending the constitution to ban same-sex marriage and approving the appointment of enough conservative Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade and other abortion rights cases.
Eat Fruit! A multiyear study involving more than 100,000 participants provides added support that eating lots of fruit and vegetables is good for the heart. But the analysis failed to show similar benefits for cancer, a result that prompted the Journal of the National Cancer Institute to raise questions about its findings. The report supports the American Heart Association’s recommendations to consume at least five servings of fruit and vegetables per day. But for cancer, the report said, “The protective effect of fruit and vegetable intake may have been overstated.” The research team studied 71,910 females in the Nurse’s Health study and 37,725 males in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. The research began in the mid-1980s and the report followed the participants until 1998. They found participants who ate five or more servings of fruit and vegetables daily had a slightly decreased risk of heart disease, but there was no statistically significant difference in cancer rates.
Critic Critical The NAACP’s chairman says the group’s tax-exempt status is under review by the government in an investigation he contends stems from a speech he gave that criticized President Bush. The head of the Internal Revenue Service did not confirm that his agency was investigating the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, but he strongly rejected the idea the agency would conduct an audit for political reasons. But documents provided to The Associated Press by the office of Julian Bond, chairman of the Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said IRS agents were investigating his keynote address July 11 at the NAACP’s annual convention in Philadelphia. In that speech, Bond said of the Bush administration: “They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division. They’ve tried to patch the leaky economy and every other domestic problem with duct tape and plastic sheets. They write a new constitution of Iraq and they ignore the Constitution here at home.” For an organization to keep its tax-exempt status, “leaders cannot make partisan comments in official organization publications or at official organizational functions,” according to an Oct. 8 letter to the NAACP from the IRS office in Louisville, Ky. Bond criticized the IRS for trying to limit the group’s ability to express its opinions. The White House has accused the group’s leaders of growing more partisan since the 2000 campaign.