CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The six astronauts who flew back to Earth aboard shuttle Atlantis Wednesday said their trip was a blast, and they wish they could ride a space shuttle again.
But the spaceflyers admitted there was very little chance of this, since there are only two more shuttle missions planned before NASA's three-orbiter fleet is retired at the end of this year. Nonetheless, the experience on Atlantis was one the crew of STS-132 will remember forever, the astronauts said.
"It certainly did strike me walking around the orbiter today, that I probably just did the coolest thing I'll ever do in my life," Atlantis' STS-132 commander Kenneth Ham said after the landing. "And it's over, it's behind me, it's great, it's a great memory."
The flight was the final planned voyage for Atlantis, though NASA and lawmakers are considering whether to add just one more mission next year to install extra spare supplies on the station.
"From the condition we brought her back in, she is so ready to get stacked and back on the launch pad," STS-132 pilot Dominic "Tony" Antonelli said. "You can tell that's where she wants to be."
Ham and company plan to leave Kennedy Space Center here and fly home to Houston today.
The astronauts spent 12 days orbiting Earth on Atlantis, which linked up with the International Space Station to deliver spare supplies and a new Russian research module. Their work included three spacewalks, which marked a high point for the three astronauts who conducted them.
At one point, spacewalker Stephen Bowen was left with some spare time to wait for further instructions while his teammate wrapped up a task.
"I had about 20 to 30 minutes, sitting there basically laying on my back, watching the world go by past the Russian segment, and I was just thinking, 'How in the world did I end up here? This is just unbelievable, just seems totally surreal and a lot of fun at the same time,'" Bowen recalled.
The astronauts – all veteran space travelers – said they appreciated seeing the space station in its now almost-completely built state.
Mission specialist Garrett Reisman served as a long-duration crewmember on the station's Expedition 16 and 17 in 2008.
"It felt like home when I got back there," Reisman said. "But there were some definite changes. This crew has got the station really shipshape."
He particularly appreciated a recent addition to the orbiting laboratory called the Cupola, a giant dome window that offers sweeping views of the Earth below.
"It's fantastic to look out at the Earth from the Cupola," Reisman said. "You can see from horizon to horizon."
Ultimately, an essential part of the reason the STS-132 mission went so well was the crew's bond, the astronauts said.
"The fun is really these five guys next to me, and we're going to be around together for quite a while longer and we're going to continue to have fun," Ham said.
NASA's next shuttle mission, the STS-133 flight of Discovery, is slated to lift off Sept. 16. Endeavour is planned to launch in late November on what could be the last-ever shuttle mission.
vineri, 28 mai 2010
Obama heads to Gulf as BP reports progress
VENICE, Louisiana (Reuters) – BP reported some progress on Friday in its struggle to shut off its gushing deepwater Gulf of Mexico oil well, and President Barack Obama was set to assert control with a visit to coastal areas threatened by the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said a "top kill" attempt that started on Wednesday to plug the ruptured seabed well had had some success in keeping oil and gas down in the bore. But the final outcome was still uncertain and it could be another 48 hours before it would be known whether it was successful.
"We don't know whether we will be able to overcome the well," he told NBC's "Today Show". The British-based energy giant was maintaining its assessment that the "top kill" plugging operation had a 60-70 percent chance of success.
Rising public anger and frustration over the uncontrolled spill has made it a major challenge for Obama, who will visit the Louisiana coast where sticky oil has permeated wetlands, closed down a lucrative fishing trade and angered locals still on the mend from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Appearing on several U.S. TV morning news shows, Hayward said BP engineers had injected a "junk shot" of heavier blocking materials -- such as pieces of rubber -- into the failed blowout preventer of the ruptured wellhead.
Later on Friday, they would also pump in more heavy drilling "mud" -- all part of the top kill procedure being attempted.
"We have some indications of partial bridging which is good news," he told CNN. "I think it's probably 48 hours before we have a conclusive view," he added.
Thad Allen, a Coast Guard admiral who is leading the oil spill response, told ABC's "Good Morning America," the next 12 to 18 hours would be "very critical"
BP shares were down around 4 percent in London amid uncertainty over the success of the effort to plug the well.
BP said on Friday the cost of the disaster so far was $930 million, up from a $760 million estimate on Monday. The cost is sure to multiply with clean-up of the spill, which has now surpassed the Exxon Valdez disaster off the Alaska coast in 1989.
"This is clearly an environmental catastrophe, there are no two ways about it," Hayward told CNN, reversing previous comments by him in which he had predicted the ecological impact from the spill would be small.
POLITICAL CHALLENGE FOR OBAMA
Friday's trip will be Obama's second visit to the Gulf in the more than five weeks since a rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed the oil from a well head one mile down.
His tour comes a day after he vowed to "get this fixed" as criticism swelled over what many Americans see as a slow government response to one of the country's biggest environmental catastrophes.
Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, was slammed for his administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina, and Obama is anxious to avoid comparisons.
But however much he seeks to assert control, the federal government lacks the tools and technology to solve the deep-sea disaster and depends on BP to find the way to stanch the flow. Relations between the two camps have been strained as Washington put the blame squarely on the London-based company.
If top kill fails, BP said it will immediately try other remedies, such as containing the oil so it can be transported by pipe to a drillship at the water's surface or placing a new blowout preventer atop the failed one.
It is also drilling two relief wells that will stop the flow but those will take several weeks to complete.
The scale of the spill expanded hugely with new government calculations on Thursday that put the flow rate from the ruptured well at as much as four or five times BP's estimate of 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) a day.
The U.S. Geological Survey now estimates that the flow ranges from 12,000 barrels (504,000 gallons/1.9 million liters) to 25,000 barrels (1.05 million gallons/3.97 million liters ) per day. The team's best estimate is 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day.
In the Louisiana wetlands, scientists showed where oil washed into wild cane fields, discoloring the base of green cane and reeds and piercing the air with its pungent smell.
Many of these small islands of wetlands were surrounded by the white protective boom that has been laid out to prevent the oil from seeping in but it was clearly being breached.
"Each of these islands has been fouled," said Ian MacDoland, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, as he surveyed the scene.
BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said a "top kill" attempt that started on Wednesday to plug the ruptured seabed well had had some success in keeping oil and gas down in the bore. But the final outcome was still uncertain and it could be another 48 hours before it would be known whether it was successful.
"We don't know whether we will be able to overcome the well," he told NBC's "Today Show". The British-based energy giant was maintaining its assessment that the "top kill" plugging operation had a 60-70 percent chance of success.
Rising public anger and frustration over the uncontrolled spill has made it a major challenge for Obama, who will visit the Louisiana coast where sticky oil has permeated wetlands, closed down a lucrative fishing trade and angered locals still on the mend from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Appearing on several U.S. TV morning news shows, Hayward said BP engineers had injected a "junk shot" of heavier blocking materials -- such as pieces of rubber -- into the failed blowout preventer of the ruptured wellhead.
Later on Friday, they would also pump in more heavy drilling "mud" -- all part of the top kill procedure being attempted.
"We have some indications of partial bridging which is good news," he told CNN. "I think it's probably 48 hours before we have a conclusive view," he added.
Thad Allen, a Coast Guard admiral who is leading the oil spill response, told ABC's "Good Morning America," the next 12 to 18 hours would be "very critical"
BP shares were down around 4 percent in London amid uncertainty over the success of the effort to plug the well.
BP said on Friday the cost of the disaster so far was $930 million, up from a $760 million estimate on Monday. The cost is sure to multiply with clean-up of the spill, which has now surpassed the Exxon Valdez disaster off the Alaska coast in 1989.
"This is clearly an environmental catastrophe, there are no two ways about it," Hayward told CNN, reversing previous comments by him in which he had predicted the ecological impact from the spill would be small.
POLITICAL CHALLENGE FOR OBAMA
Friday's trip will be Obama's second visit to the Gulf in the more than five weeks since a rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed the oil from a well head one mile down.
His tour comes a day after he vowed to "get this fixed" as criticism swelled over what many Americans see as a slow government response to one of the country's biggest environmental catastrophes.
Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, was slammed for his administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina, and Obama is anxious to avoid comparisons.
But however much he seeks to assert control, the federal government lacks the tools and technology to solve the deep-sea disaster and depends on BP to find the way to stanch the flow. Relations between the two camps have been strained as Washington put the blame squarely on the London-based company.
If top kill fails, BP said it will immediately try other remedies, such as containing the oil so it can be transported by pipe to a drillship at the water's surface or placing a new blowout preventer atop the failed one.
It is also drilling two relief wells that will stop the flow but those will take several weeks to complete.
The scale of the spill expanded hugely with new government calculations on Thursday that put the flow rate from the ruptured well at as much as four or five times BP's estimate of 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) a day.
The U.S. Geological Survey now estimates that the flow ranges from 12,000 barrels (504,000 gallons/1.9 million liters) to 25,000 barrels (1.05 million gallons/3.97 million liters ) per day. The team's best estimate is 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day.
In the Louisiana wetlands, scientists showed where oil washed into wild cane fields, discoloring the base of green cane and reeds and piercing the air with its pungent smell.
Many of these small islands of wetlands were surrounded by the white protective boom that has been laid out to prevent the oil from seeping in but it was clearly being breached.
"Each of these islands has been fouled," said Ian MacDoland, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, as he surveyed the scene.
3 million feet of boom in Gulf, but does it help?
GRAND ISLE, La. – Globs of sticky brownish ooze soil miles of sensitive shoreline and marsh from Alabama to Louisiana. Pelican rookeries are awash in oil. Oyster beds and shrimp nurseries face certain death. All the while, long, slender barriers intended to protect the shoreline float twisted, tangled or sometimes just broken apart, unable to stop the creeping crude.
Since last month's rig explosion and spill of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico — now the largest spill in U.S. history, surpassing the Exxon Valdez — more than 3 million feet of so-called boom has been deployed along the coast. But it's not a fail-safe method of keeping the oil from washing ashore. It's not always sturdy enough and high winds and waves can send the slime cascading over the barriers.
The key line of defense is sometimes defenseless itself against the elements.
"Even if it's working properly, the best it will do is move the problem somewhere else," said Doug Helton, incident operations coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response Division.
"It might be moving it somewhere that's not boomed or it might be moving it 100 yards away where there's a failure in the boom," Helton said. "The use of booms is just one tool but all the boom does is deflect oil, and that's if it functions properly."
BP says it has spent more than $800 million on cleanup and containment efforts since its Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20 and sank 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. Since then, an estimated 19 million gallons or more of crude has spewed into the sea.
While BP couldn't immediately provide a figure for how much money has been spent purchasing and deploying the booms, industry estimates put costs around $20 a foot for the basic product — totaling at least $60 million just to buy it, not to mention the cost to hire people to deploy it.
Experts say while the boom isn't perfect, it provides one necessary line of defense. It also offers a psychological boost to those who feel helpless.
Because the oil spill is so widespread, manpower needed to maintain the boom and regularly collect oil from its constraints is stretched thin, Helton said. And as the barriers break apart, he said, response time to repair them must be quick because once the oil seeps past, it's a losing battle.
The spill's impact on shorelines now stretches across 150 miles, from Dauphin Island, Ala., to Grand Isle, La., and has begun to creep inland into sensitive marshland.
"Normally, a spill would affect a smaller geographic area so you'd have more people per linear mile of boom to maintain it, but here the pressure was on to get the boom deployed," Helton said. "It's a difficult situation and people have very high expectations.
"There's no silver bullet," he added.
Regardless of the setbacks, BP spokesman John Curry said the booms are still proving to be an effective tool.
"Booms, by and large, do work. They're not fail-safe, but they're our best protection to contain the oil and protect the coast," Curry said.
Stephen Reilly, CEO of Slickbar Products Corp., one of the world's largest manufacturers of oil spill equipment, including boom, acknowledged the product has limitations based on wind, waves and currents.
He said Slickbar has so far provided several hundred thousand feet of boom to the Gulf oil spill effort, and calls it "absolutely worth it."
"You have to put something in there," Reilly said. "You have to at least make an attempt to deflect it away from these sensitive areas ... The key is to at least try to contain it."
Inexperience may also be taking a toll on the effectiveness of the booms, said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences.
Hundreds of people, including fishermen and shrimpers who have never deployed boom, have mobilized to help.
"People are frustrated and they want to do something so they say, 'I'll go out and lay the boom.' But if you don't know what you're doing, you're not going to do it right," Overton said. "I'm certain there's a significant percentage of boom deployment that is basically a wasted effort. I've seen shrimp boats just pulling boom and it's not doing anything."
Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said neither BP nor the federal government is listening to the locals, who know these waters, about where to lay the booms.
"We're still deploying boom in areas that in many cases don't make sense to us, but that's where they want it," Newell said. "They're not asking us for input. Someone else is commanding this ship and they're not taking input from the local commercial fishing industry that knows these waters better than anybody.
"We don't have a command post that's totally unified where they're actually listening to the locals," he added.
But even beyond the environmental effort to contain the oil, effective or not, the booming serves another crucial purpose, providing a psychological boost to those who feel helpless, Overton said.
"It's an ecological incident but this is also a sociological disaster," he said. "It's helping people think they're helping the environment, and there's a lot of good to that. I'm talking about getting to their psyche. They don't know what the future will bring.
"Booming is not just about protecting the environment," he added. "It's also to help the people and that should not be considered trivial or a waste of time."
Since last month's rig explosion and spill of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico — now the largest spill in U.S. history, surpassing the Exxon Valdez — more than 3 million feet of so-called boom has been deployed along the coast. But it's not a fail-safe method of keeping the oil from washing ashore. It's not always sturdy enough and high winds and waves can send the slime cascading over the barriers.
The key line of defense is sometimes defenseless itself against the elements.
"Even if it's working properly, the best it will do is move the problem somewhere else," said Doug Helton, incident operations coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response Division.
"It might be moving it somewhere that's not boomed or it might be moving it 100 yards away where there's a failure in the boom," Helton said. "The use of booms is just one tool but all the boom does is deflect oil, and that's if it functions properly."
BP says it has spent more than $800 million on cleanup and containment efforts since its Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20 and sank 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. Since then, an estimated 19 million gallons or more of crude has spewed into the sea.
While BP couldn't immediately provide a figure for how much money has been spent purchasing and deploying the booms, industry estimates put costs around $20 a foot for the basic product — totaling at least $60 million just to buy it, not to mention the cost to hire people to deploy it.
Experts say while the boom isn't perfect, it provides one necessary line of defense. It also offers a psychological boost to those who feel helpless.
Because the oil spill is so widespread, manpower needed to maintain the boom and regularly collect oil from its constraints is stretched thin, Helton said. And as the barriers break apart, he said, response time to repair them must be quick because once the oil seeps past, it's a losing battle.
The spill's impact on shorelines now stretches across 150 miles, from Dauphin Island, Ala., to Grand Isle, La., and has begun to creep inland into sensitive marshland.
"Normally, a spill would affect a smaller geographic area so you'd have more people per linear mile of boom to maintain it, but here the pressure was on to get the boom deployed," Helton said. "It's a difficult situation and people have very high expectations.
"There's no silver bullet," he added.
Regardless of the setbacks, BP spokesman John Curry said the booms are still proving to be an effective tool.
"Booms, by and large, do work. They're not fail-safe, but they're our best protection to contain the oil and protect the coast," Curry said.
Stephen Reilly, CEO of Slickbar Products Corp., one of the world's largest manufacturers of oil spill equipment, including boom, acknowledged the product has limitations based on wind, waves and currents.
He said Slickbar has so far provided several hundred thousand feet of boom to the Gulf oil spill effort, and calls it "absolutely worth it."
"You have to put something in there," Reilly said. "You have to at least make an attempt to deflect it away from these sensitive areas ... The key is to at least try to contain it."
Inexperience may also be taking a toll on the effectiveness of the booms, said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences.
Hundreds of people, including fishermen and shrimpers who have never deployed boom, have mobilized to help.
"People are frustrated and they want to do something so they say, 'I'll go out and lay the boom.' But if you don't know what you're doing, you're not going to do it right," Overton said. "I'm certain there's a significant percentage of boom deployment that is basically a wasted effort. I've seen shrimp boats just pulling boom and it's not doing anything."
Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said neither BP nor the federal government is listening to the locals, who know these waters, about where to lay the booms.
"We're still deploying boom in areas that in many cases don't make sense to us, but that's where they want it," Newell said. "They're not asking us for input. Someone else is commanding this ship and they're not taking input from the local commercial fishing industry that knows these waters better than anybody.
"We don't have a command post that's totally unified where they're actually listening to the locals," he added.
But even beyond the environmental effort to contain the oil, effective or not, the booming serves another crucial purpose, providing a psychological boost to those who feel helpless, Overton said.
"It's an ecological incident but this is also a sociological disaster," he said. "It's helping people think they're helping the environment, and there's a lot of good to that. I'm talking about getting to their psyche. They don't know what the future will bring.
"Booming is not just about protecting the environment," he added. "It's also to help the people and that should not be considered trivial or a waste of time."
Today's College Students Lack Empathy
College students today are less likely to "get" the emotions of others than their counterparts 20 and 30 years ago, a new review study suggests.
Specifically, today's students scored 40 percent lower on a measure of empathy than their elders did.
The findings are based on a review of 72 studies of 14,000 American college students overall conducted between 1979 and 2009.
"We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000," said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.
The study was presented this week at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Boston.
Is "generation me" all about me?
Compared with college students of the late 1970s, current students are less likely to agree with statements such as "I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective," and "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me."
"Many people see the current group of college students - sometimes called 'Generation Me' - as one of the most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and individualistic in recent history," said Konrath, who is also affiliated with the University of Rochester Department of Psychiatry.
Konrath's colleague graduate student Edward O'Brien added, "It's not surprising that this growing emphasis on the self is accompanied by a corresponding devaluation of others."
Other recent studies have shown mixed results on the character of today's youth. For instance, one study of more than 450,000 high-school seniors born at different time periods showed today's youth are no more self-centered than their parents were at their age.
The role of media
Even so, Konrath and O'Brien suggest several reasons for the lower empathy they found, including the ever-increasing exposure to media in the current generation.
"Compared to 30 years ago, the average American now is exposed to three times as much nonwork-related information," Konrath said. "In terms of media content, this generation of college students grew up with video games, and a growing body of research, including work done by my colleagues at Michigan, is establishing that exposure to violent media numbs people to the pain of others."
The rise in social media could also play a role.
"The ease of having 'friends' online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don't feel like responding to others' problems, a behavior that could carry over offline," O'Brien said.
In fact, past research has suggested college students are addicted to social media.
Other possible causes include a society today that's hypercompetitive and focused on success, as well as the fast-paced nature of today, in which people are less likely than in time periods past to slow down to really listen to others, O'Brien added.
"College students today may be so busy worrying about themselves and their own issues that they don't have time to spend empathizing with others, or at least perceive such time to be limited," O'Brien said.
Specifically, today's students scored 40 percent lower on a measure of empathy than their elders did.
The findings are based on a review of 72 studies of 14,000 American college students overall conducted between 1979 and 2009.
"We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000," said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.
The study was presented this week at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Boston.
Is "generation me" all about me?
Compared with college students of the late 1970s, current students are less likely to agree with statements such as "I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective," and "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me."
"Many people see the current group of college students - sometimes called 'Generation Me' - as one of the most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and individualistic in recent history," said Konrath, who is also affiliated with the University of Rochester Department of Psychiatry.
Konrath's colleague graduate student Edward O'Brien added, "It's not surprising that this growing emphasis on the self is accompanied by a corresponding devaluation of others."
Other recent studies have shown mixed results on the character of today's youth. For instance, one study of more than 450,000 high-school seniors born at different time periods showed today's youth are no more self-centered than their parents were at their age.
The role of media
Even so, Konrath and O'Brien suggest several reasons for the lower empathy they found, including the ever-increasing exposure to media in the current generation.
"Compared to 30 years ago, the average American now is exposed to three times as much nonwork-related information," Konrath said. "In terms of media content, this generation of college students grew up with video games, and a growing body of research, including work done by my colleagues at Michigan, is establishing that exposure to violent media numbs people to the pain of others."
The rise in social media could also play a role.
"The ease of having 'friends' online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don't feel like responding to others' problems, a behavior that could carry over offline," O'Brien said.
In fact, past research has suggested college students are addicted to social media.
Other possible causes include a society today that's hypercompetitive and focused on success, as well as the fast-paced nature of today, in which people are less likely than in time periods past to slow down to really listen to others, O'Brien added.
"College students today may be so busy worrying about themselves and their own issues that they don't have time to spend empathizing with others, or at least perceive such time to be limited," O'Brien said.
Millions face hunger in arid belt of Africa
GADABEJI, Niger – At this time of year, the Gadabeji Reserve should be refuge for the nomadic tribes who travel across a moonscape on the edge of the Sahara to graze their cattle. But the grass is meager after a drought killed off the last year's crops. Now the cattle are too weak to stand and too skinny to sell, leaving the poor without any way to buy grain to feed their families.
The threat of famine is again stalking the Sahel, a band of semiarid land stretching across Africa south of the Sahara. The U.N. World Food Program warned on Friday that some 10 million people face hunger over the next three months before the next harvest in September — if it comes.
"People have lost crops, livestock, and the ability to cope on their own, and the levels of malnutrition among women and children have already risen to very high levels," said Thomas Yanga, WFP Regional Director for West Africa.
The U.N.'s humanitarian chief, John Holmes, said at the end of a four-day visit to neighboring Chad that many Chadians have gone as far as Libya to search for food.
"The level of malnutrition is already beyond the danger point," Holmes said Thursday. "If we do not act now or as quickly as possible, there is a chance the food crisis will become a disaster."
In Niger, some say the growing food crisis could be worse than the one that struck the country in 2005, when aid organizations treated tens of thousands of children for malnutrition.
"We have lost so much we cannot count," said one 45-year-old tribesman with a family of 20 to feed. He and others on Gadabeji Reserve drive starving donkeys through the burnt orange haze of a sandstorm to gather what little water they can on the desiccated plain and struggle to draw water from private wells.
Famine is nothing new to Niger, a former French colony nearly twice the size of Texas. The Sahel cuts through the middle of the country, serving as the dividing line between the sands of the Sahara and the lush farmlands of neighboring Nigeria to the south. Severe droughts have punctuated the region's history for centuries.
Yet outside of uranium mining, agriculture serves as the sole economic engine for a country where just more than a quarter of the population knows how to read. Generation after generation follows worn seasonal tracks, their belongings often fitted onto a single donkey-driven pallet.
Typically, the herders move south at the onset of December, searching for grazing lands. But this year they found only dried lakes and diminishing wells, said Hasane Baka, a regional administrator for AREN, a Nigerien development group for cattlemen.
"People were moving in all directions," Baka said.
Some have crossed into Nigeria, begging for food on the streets of the northern city of Katsina. Others remain behind with their cattle, knowing the livestock would die on a long trip south that could end with Nigerian police simply turning them back. Instead, they wait for rains that might not come.
Those who remain drive their cows into Dakoro, the largest and closest city for nomadic cattlemen. At the open-air market, the ribs of some cattle are starkly visible against their hides. Others die along the road or in trucks on the way.
"You can see the skin and bones of much of them," said trader Ibrahim Tarbanassa, 68.
A single cow once sold for the equivalent of $200. Now, some go for as little as $120 — if they sell at all. Food prices remain high after speculators cornered the already poor harvest last year.
Even in better times, roughly half of Niger's children suffered stunted growth. Now, mothers walk their children as far as 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) to reach one of two aid stations operated by Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said Barbara Maccagno, the agency's medical coordinator in Niger. The two stations now see about 1,000 children a week, some two or three times underweight, Maccagno said. The number of admissions has doubled in recent weeks.
"It's very hot and without any food available to the family, we're afraid we'll see more," she said.
Maccagno said her agency could offer children meals of vitamin-enriched powdered milks and other foods to help bring a child's weight up, but many children need up to five weeks to gain a stable weight. During that time, the mother must stay with the child, impossible for those who left other children behind, she said.
Other agencies like Oxfam hand out cereals and grains directly to nomadic families living in the bush, but money for such aid is short because of the global economic downturn. The WFP said it has a $96 million shortfall for a program it planned for 1.5 million people in the worst-hit areas of Niger.
Niger's government, now being run by a military council after a February coup ousted President Mamadou Tandja, has said it will provide more than 21,000 tons of food. In 2005, Tandja played down a similar food crisis, dismissing it as "false propaganda" used by the U.N., aid agencies and opposition parties for political and economic gain.
Each drought and crisis ends up gaining its own name. In 2005, traders and nomads began to refer to the crisis as the Tandja famine.
There's no name yet for the drought now facing the country. Many can only wait in a nation that faces cyclical hunger without an end in sight.
The threat of famine is again stalking the Sahel, a band of semiarid land stretching across Africa south of the Sahara. The U.N. World Food Program warned on Friday that some 10 million people face hunger over the next three months before the next harvest in September — if it comes.
"People have lost crops, livestock, and the ability to cope on their own, and the levels of malnutrition among women and children have already risen to very high levels," said Thomas Yanga, WFP Regional Director for West Africa.
The U.N.'s humanitarian chief, John Holmes, said at the end of a four-day visit to neighboring Chad that many Chadians have gone as far as Libya to search for food.
"The level of malnutrition is already beyond the danger point," Holmes said Thursday. "If we do not act now or as quickly as possible, there is a chance the food crisis will become a disaster."
In Niger, some say the growing food crisis could be worse than the one that struck the country in 2005, when aid organizations treated tens of thousands of children for malnutrition.
"We have lost so much we cannot count," said one 45-year-old tribesman with a family of 20 to feed. He and others on Gadabeji Reserve drive starving donkeys through the burnt orange haze of a sandstorm to gather what little water they can on the desiccated plain and struggle to draw water from private wells.
Famine is nothing new to Niger, a former French colony nearly twice the size of Texas. The Sahel cuts through the middle of the country, serving as the dividing line between the sands of the Sahara and the lush farmlands of neighboring Nigeria to the south. Severe droughts have punctuated the region's history for centuries.
Yet outside of uranium mining, agriculture serves as the sole economic engine for a country where just more than a quarter of the population knows how to read. Generation after generation follows worn seasonal tracks, their belongings often fitted onto a single donkey-driven pallet.
Typically, the herders move south at the onset of December, searching for grazing lands. But this year they found only dried lakes and diminishing wells, said Hasane Baka, a regional administrator for AREN, a Nigerien development group for cattlemen.
"People were moving in all directions," Baka said.
Some have crossed into Nigeria, begging for food on the streets of the northern city of Katsina. Others remain behind with their cattle, knowing the livestock would die on a long trip south that could end with Nigerian police simply turning them back. Instead, they wait for rains that might not come.
Those who remain drive their cows into Dakoro, the largest and closest city for nomadic cattlemen. At the open-air market, the ribs of some cattle are starkly visible against their hides. Others die along the road or in trucks on the way.
"You can see the skin and bones of much of them," said trader Ibrahim Tarbanassa, 68.
A single cow once sold for the equivalent of $200. Now, some go for as little as $120 — if they sell at all. Food prices remain high after speculators cornered the already poor harvest last year.
Even in better times, roughly half of Niger's children suffered stunted growth. Now, mothers walk their children as far as 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) to reach one of two aid stations operated by Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said Barbara Maccagno, the agency's medical coordinator in Niger. The two stations now see about 1,000 children a week, some two or three times underweight, Maccagno said. The number of admissions has doubled in recent weeks.
"It's very hot and without any food available to the family, we're afraid we'll see more," she said.
Maccagno said her agency could offer children meals of vitamin-enriched powdered milks and other foods to help bring a child's weight up, but many children need up to five weeks to gain a stable weight. During that time, the mother must stay with the child, impossible for those who left other children behind, she said.
Other agencies like Oxfam hand out cereals and grains directly to nomadic families living in the bush, but money for such aid is short because of the global economic downturn. The WFP said it has a $96 million shortfall for a program it planned for 1.5 million people in the worst-hit areas of Niger.
Niger's government, now being run by a military council after a February coup ousted President Mamadou Tandja, has said it will provide more than 21,000 tons of food. In 2005, Tandja played down a similar food crisis, dismissing it as "false propaganda" used by the U.N., aid agencies and opposition parties for political and economic gain.
Each drought and crisis ends up gaining its own name. In 2005, traders and nomads began to refer to the crisis as the Tandja famine.
There's no name yet for the drought now facing the country. Many can only wait in a nation that faces cyclical hunger without an end in sight.
Congress moves to end ban on gays in military
WASHINGTON – Congress has taken two big steps toward ending the "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.
In quick succession Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the full House approved measures to repeal the 1993 law that allows gay people to serve in the armed services only if they hide their sexual orientation.
The votes were a victory for President Barack Obama, who has actively supported ending the policy, and for gay rights groups who have made repealing the ban their top legislative priority this year.
"Lawmakers today stood on the right side of history," said Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign, a major gay rights organization.
With passage, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, "We honor the values of our nation and we close the door on a fundamental unfairness."
The drive to end the ban still has a long way to go. The 234-194 House vote was an amendment to a defense spending bill that comes up for a final vote Friday. While the spending bill, which approves more than $700 billion in funds for military operations, enjoys wide support, some lawmakers vowed to vote against it if the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal was included.
"It jeopardizes passage of the entire bill," said Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi, a conservative Democrat who opposed it.
The full Senate is expected to take up the defense bill next month, and Republicans are threatening a filibuster if the change in policy toward gays remains in the legislation.
In quick succession Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the full House approved measures to repeal the 1993 law that allows gay people to serve in the armed services only if they hide their sexual orientation.
The votes were a victory for President Barack Obama, who has actively supported ending the policy, and for gay rights groups who have made repealing the ban their top legislative priority this year.
"Lawmakers today stood on the right side of history," said Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign, a major gay rights organization.
With passage, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, "We honor the values of our nation and we close the door on a fundamental unfairness."
The drive to end the ban still has a long way to go. The 234-194 House vote was an amendment to a defense spending bill that comes up for a final vote Friday. While the spending bill, which approves more than $700 billion in funds for military operations, enjoys wide support, some lawmakers vowed to vote against it if the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal was included.
"It jeopardizes passage of the entire bill," said Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi, a conservative Democrat who opposed it.
The full Senate is expected to take up the defense bill next month, and Republicans are threatening a filibuster if the change in policy toward gays remains in the legislation.
Israel partly opens West Bank road to Palestinians
BEIT SIRA, West Bank – The Israeli military opened part of a major West Bank highway to Palestinian cars on Friday to comply with a ruling of the country's highest court.
The road, known as Highway 443, is a major link between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and is heavily traveled by Israeli commuters.
About 12 miles (20 kilometers) of it run though the West Bank, one of the territories Palestinians and the international community say should form part of a future Palestinian state, and it was built in parts on land expropriated from the Palestinians living there.
The Israeli military, which maintains overall control of the West Bank, banned Palestinian cars from the highway in 2002, after a string of Palestinian shooting attacks there killed Israeli motorists. The military later connected some nearby Palestinian villages with alternative roads, many of them passing through tunnels underneath the highway.
The West Bank's system of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians has drawn sharp criticism from Palestinians and human rights groups.
In 2007, with the level of Israeli-Palestinian violence declining, local Palestinians petitioned Israel's Supreme Court for access to the road. The court ruled the military's sweeping closure discriminatory and ordered that a nine-mile (14 kilometer) stretch be opened to Palestinian cars, overriding the army's argument that doing so would endanger Israelis.
Military spokesman Peter Lerner said Friday the opening complied fully with the ruling.
"It is to the letter and also to the spirit" of the ruling, he said. "The spirit is to give them access, free access, and we are ensuring safety and security for all people using the road."
But Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups say the opening falls short of making the road worth using for most Palestinian motorists. The two entrances and four exits for Palestinian cars effectively allow them to travel only on a stretch of about 6 miles (10 kilometers), and they can't reach the city of Ramallah, the main destination for Palestinian traffic. Cars entering the roadway must pass security checks, which drivers say will lengthen drive times.
The opening has also angered Israelis, many of whom fear it will expose them to Palestinian shooting attacks similar to those that killed six Israelis on the road between 2000 and 2002.
"They are opening the road to terrorists," said Shmuel Landau, whose 17-year-old son was shot and killed there by Palestinian gunmen in 2001. "I hope nothing will happen to anyone, but I am afraid that the court is endangering our lives and those of our children."
Attorney Dan Yakir of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which filed the court appeal on behalf of the Palestinians, said at a press conference this week that the opening could facilitate Palestinian movement between villages but won't make it a major highway, as it is for Israelis.
Noting that the road was constructed partially on Palestinian-owned land and was supposed to benefit Palestinians, he said the only solution to any security problems would be to bar Israelis, not Palestinians, from the road.
Only about five Palestinian drivers used the road during the first two hours of the Friday opening, and only after having their engines, trunks, back seats and ID cards inspected by Israeli soldiers.
After exiting the road, driver Farouq Ankawi said the checkpoints would keep many drivers off the newly opened highway and encourage them to use the backroads.
"If I want to avoid the searches, I'll take the old road through the villages," he said. "It's better than going through here."
The road, known as Highway 443, is a major link between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and is heavily traveled by Israeli commuters.
About 12 miles (20 kilometers) of it run though the West Bank, one of the territories Palestinians and the international community say should form part of a future Palestinian state, and it was built in parts on land expropriated from the Palestinians living there.
The Israeli military, which maintains overall control of the West Bank, banned Palestinian cars from the highway in 2002, after a string of Palestinian shooting attacks there killed Israeli motorists. The military later connected some nearby Palestinian villages with alternative roads, many of them passing through tunnels underneath the highway.
The West Bank's system of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians has drawn sharp criticism from Palestinians and human rights groups.
In 2007, with the level of Israeli-Palestinian violence declining, local Palestinians petitioned Israel's Supreme Court for access to the road. The court ruled the military's sweeping closure discriminatory and ordered that a nine-mile (14 kilometer) stretch be opened to Palestinian cars, overriding the army's argument that doing so would endanger Israelis.
Military spokesman Peter Lerner said Friday the opening complied fully with the ruling.
"It is to the letter and also to the spirit" of the ruling, he said. "The spirit is to give them access, free access, and we are ensuring safety and security for all people using the road."
But Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups say the opening falls short of making the road worth using for most Palestinian motorists. The two entrances and four exits for Palestinian cars effectively allow them to travel only on a stretch of about 6 miles (10 kilometers), and they can't reach the city of Ramallah, the main destination for Palestinian traffic. Cars entering the roadway must pass security checks, which drivers say will lengthen drive times.
The opening has also angered Israelis, many of whom fear it will expose them to Palestinian shooting attacks similar to those that killed six Israelis on the road between 2000 and 2002.
"They are opening the road to terrorists," said Shmuel Landau, whose 17-year-old son was shot and killed there by Palestinian gunmen in 2001. "I hope nothing will happen to anyone, but I am afraid that the court is endangering our lives and those of our children."
Attorney Dan Yakir of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which filed the court appeal on behalf of the Palestinians, said at a press conference this week that the opening could facilitate Palestinian movement between villages but won't make it a major highway, as it is for Israelis.
Noting that the road was constructed partially on Palestinian-owned land and was supposed to benefit Palestinians, he said the only solution to any security problems would be to bar Israelis, not Palestinians, from the road.
Only about five Palestinian drivers used the road during the first two hours of the Friday opening, and only after having their engines, trunks, back seats and ID cards inspected by Israeli soldiers.
After exiting the road, driver Farouq Ankawi said the checkpoints would keep many drivers off the newly opened highway and encourage them to use the backroads.
"If I want to avoid the searches, I'll take the old road through the villages," he said. "It's better than going through here."
Trott double ton frustrates battling Bangladesh
LONDON (AFP) – Jonathan Trott became only the seventh England batsman to score a Test double century at Lord's as the hosts consolidated their position of strength against Bangladesh here on Friday.
England, at lunch on the second day of the first of a two-match series, were 456 for six with Trott - in his maiden Test innings at Lord's -- 217 not out and Tim Bresnan 24 not out.
But Bangladesh, who have won just three out of their 66 Tests and lost all six against England, could take heart from an improved display by their seamers, with Trott managing just two boundaries in the session.
Worryingly for Bangladesh, opening batsman Tamim Iqbal left the field after appearing to aggravate a wrist injury as he crashed into the boundary rope when attempting a diving stop.
England resumed well-placed on 362 for four, with Trott already a Test-best 175 not out - his second century in as many Test innings in England after his 119 on debut against Australia in the second innings at the Oval last year.
Eoin Morgan, on his Test debut, was 40 not out.
But the left-hander and former Ireland batsman, on his Middlesex home ground, had added just four runs when, pushing outside off-stump against Shahadat Hossain, he saw wicketkeeper Mushfiqur Rahim hold a good diving catch.
England were 370 for five and they gifted Bangladesh a sixth wicket on 400.
Trott drove Robiul Islam through the covers and took a single.
Matt Prior always wanted the second run but Trott was slow to decline and by the time he sent the wicketkeeper back, Prior was already halfway down the pitch and run out for 16 by substitute Shamsur Rahman's throw to Mushfiqur.
The normally methodical Trott had a nervous moment on 197, when he just missed edging a cut through to the keeper off debutant paceman Robiul Islam.
But a controlled pull for two off Rubel Hossain took the former South Africa junior international to 200 in 381 balls with 18 boundaries in over seven hours at the crease.
Trott's was the first double century by an England batsman in a Lord's Test since Robert Key's 221 against the West Indies in 2004.
In all, 14 players from around the world have made Test double hundreds at the 'home of cricket', with the highest individual score former England captain Graham Gooch's 333 against India in 1990.
England, at lunch on the second day of the first of a two-match series, were 456 for six with Trott - in his maiden Test innings at Lord's -- 217 not out and Tim Bresnan 24 not out.
But Bangladesh, who have won just three out of their 66 Tests and lost all six against England, could take heart from an improved display by their seamers, with Trott managing just two boundaries in the session.
Worryingly for Bangladesh, opening batsman Tamim Iqbal left the field after appearing to aggravate a wrist injury as he crashed into the boundary rope when attempting a diving stop.
England resumed well-placed on 362 for four, with Trott already a Test-best 175 not out - his second century in as many Test innings in England after his 119 on debut against Australia in the second innings at the Oval last year.
Eoin Morgan, on his Test debut, was 40 not out.
But the left-hander and former Ireland batsman, on his Middlesex home ground, had added just four runs when, pushing outside off-stump against Shahadat Hossain, he saw wicketkeeper Mushfiqur Rahim hold a good diving catch.
England were 370 for five and they gifted Bangladesh a sixth wicket on 400.
Trott drove Robiul Islam through the covers and took a single.
Matt Prior always wanted the second run but Trott was slow to decline and by the time he sent the wicketkeeper back, Prior was already halfway down the pitch and run out for 16 by substitute Shamsur Rahman's throw to Mushfiqur.
The normally methodical Trott had a nervous moment on 197, when he just missed edging a cut through to the keeper off debutant paceman Robiul Islam.
But a controlled pull for two off Rubel Hossain took the former South Africa junior international to 200 in 381 balls with 18 boundaries in over seven hours at the crease.
Trott's was the first double century by an England batsman in a Lord's Test since Robert Key's 221 against the West Indies in 2004.
In all, 14 players from around the world have made Test double hundreds at the 'home of cricket', with the highest individual score former England captain Graham Gooch's 333 against India in 1990.
Karzai's Delayed Peace Jirga: Any Chance of Success?
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's heavily trumpeted peace jirga - a proposed grand assembly meant to build national consensus toward a path of reconciliation with the Taliban - has been delayed for a second time, from a start date of late this week to June 2. The National Consultative Peace Jirga Preparation Commission says the delay merely accounts for logistics - that not all of the attending delegates would have been able to make it on time.
But others say that regardless of the reason, multiple postponements and the government's failure to articulate a clear plan for the meeting have caused the traditional Afghan assembly to lose momentum and that by this point, it's unlikely to yield much of anything. "I would be very interested to see what the outcome of the jirga will be, or if there will even be an outcome at all," says a high-ranking European diplomat. (See pictures of life in the Afghan army.)
The three-day jirga has already been subject to criticisms ranging from a lack of legitimacy - jirgas are a traditional Afghan legal practice but are not governed by Afghan law - to accusations of being a political stunt by Karzai ahead of July's Kabul Conference, when Afghanistan's international partners are scheduled to discuss the country's future. The latest delay only reflects the government's continued lack of organization, says Haroun Mir, a former researcher at the Afghan Center for Research and Policy and a candidate in the upcoming parliamentary elections. "But it [is] also because the government does not have a specific plan," he adds. "How can you - in three days - reach a consensus on something that is very complicated?" (See a video on the situation on the ground in Afghanistan.)
According to the jirga's preparatory commission, an estimated 1,600 delegates - 20% of whom are women - are expected to attend. They include members of parliament, tribal elders, religious authorities and representatives of every district. But there is no clear-cut approach to national reconciliation in this war-ravaged country, where military and civilian deaths are on the rise. One of the main local criticisms of Karzai's latest effort is that it focuses on rallying Afghans to a cause that many people - even government officials - believe is far more regional than national. "Certainly everyone will say they would love to start negotiating with the Taliban," predicts Mir. "But the problem is how Karzai will implement it ... Karzai cannot negotiate with Taliban without engaging Pakistan in the process."
In January, Karzai was enraged by Pakistan's arrest of a top Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, with whom Karzai was said to be engaging in secret talks and who some say would have been key to any forthcoming negotiations. This week Afghanistan's intelligence agency accused Pakistan of playing a role in a Kabul car bombing last week that killed 18 people, including six NATO troops. "If the foreigners want peace, they can bring it in one month," says Kandahar native Haji Shamsolah, owner of a construction company, referring to Pakistan, Iran and the U.S.
But even if the jirga does yield a consensus on how to negotiate with the Taliban, a reasonable question is: Then what? Despite popular sentiment in Afghanistan, few in the international community have embraced Karzai's desire to launch negotiations with the Taliban, and the Obama Administration has maintained that any overture at this point would be premature; the Taliban must be weakened first.
In the Taliban's spiritual homeland of Kandahar, where the next major NATO offensive is already under way, that goal still seems a long way off. And NATO commanders are already downplaying their expectations for an offensive that recently has come to be characterized as more of a slow process than a military assault like the February operation in Marjah. "There is no specific D-Day for this," says British Navy Lieut. Commander Iain Baxter at NATO's International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul. "It's all about connecting the people to the government and the government to the people."
Others say the softer tone is a reflection of failure in Marjah, in neighboring Helmand province, where the U.S.-led offensive has yet to rout the Taliban from the area. "They know that if they do that kind of big operation and they can't secure the area, it will create problems later on," says Shamsolah of his hometown, Kandahar. That apprehension has carried over, in some instances, to the jirga. Earlier this week, gunmen killed a popular northern tribal leader who had defied the Taliban by planning to attend the meeting.
But few in Kabul seem optimistic about any potential results of the jirga. And most civilians and low-ranking government bureaucrats interviewed by TIME this week admitted that they were not aware of the jirga's actual purpose - if one would even occur. "It's not important; it's just bulls___," says Mohamed Azim, a former NATO interpreter who quit his job in frustration with what he saw as a lack of progress. "It's all extra expenses to show the people that they are working and thinking about the people. Go make schools with that money. Give it to the poor people."
"It has been eight years, and lots of jirgas have happened with no results," says Shah Mahmoud, a security guard who fled his home in Wardak province two months ago, for fear of Taliban harassment. Mahmoud is not opposed to negotiations with the Taliban but says the government and foreign powers have dragged their feet on a resolution. Says he: "Whatever positive step is needed, they should take it."
See pictures of the presidential election in Afghanistan.
See pictures of the battle against the Taliban.
View this article on Time.com
Related articles on Time.com:
* Afghanistan: Karzai's Peace Talks with Taliban Delayed
* Bagram Attack: Taliban Keeps Focus Kabul Ahead of Jirga
* How Pakistani Assistance is Undermining Afghanistan
* Karzai Talks to the Enemy But Is the U.S. On Board?
* After Obama-Karzai Washington Visit, Kandahar on Radar
But others say that regardless of the reason, multiple postponements and the government's failure to articulate a clear plan for the meeting have caused the traditional Afghan assembly to lose momentum and that by this point, it's unlikely to yield much of anything. "I would be very interested to see what the outcome of the jirga will be, or if there will even be an outcome at all," says a high-ranking European diplomat. (See pictures of life in the Afghan army.)
The three-day jirga has already been subject to criticisms ranging from a lack of legitimacy - jirgas are a traditional Afghan legal practice but are not governed by Afghan law - to accusations of being a political stunt by Karzai ahead of July's Kabul Conference, when Afghanistan's international partners are scheduled to discuss the country's future. The latest delay only reflects the government's continued lack of organization, says Haroun Mir, a former researcher at the Afghan Center for Research and Policy and a candidate in the upcoming parliamentary elections. "But it [is] also because the government does not have a specific plan," he adds. "How can you - in three days - reach a consensus on something that is very complicated?" (See a video on the situation on the ground in Afghanistan.)
According to the jirga's preparatory commission, an estimated 1,600 delegates - 20% of whom are women - are expected to attend. They include members of parliament, tribal elders, religious authorities and representatives of every district. But there is no clear-cut approach to national reconciliation in this war-ravaged country, where military and civilian deaths are on the rise. One of the main local criticisms of Karzai's latest effort is that it focuses on rallying Afghans to a cause that many people - even government officials - believe is far more regional than national. "Certainly everyone will say they would love to start negotiating with the Taliban," predicts Mir. "But the problem is how Karzai will implement it ... Karzai cannot negotiate with Taliban without engaging Pakistan in the process."
In January, Karzai was enraged by Pakistan's arrest of a top Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, with whom Karzai was said to be engaging in secret talks and who some say would have been key to any forthcoming negotiations. This week Afghanistan's intelligence agency accused Pakistan of playing a role in a Kabul car bombing last week that killed 18 people, including six NATO troops. "If the foreigners want peace, they can bring it in one month," says Kandahar native Haji Shamsolah, owner of a construction company, referring to Pakistan, Iran and the U.S.
But even if the jirga does yield a consensus on how to negotiate with the Taliban, a reasonable question is: Then what? Despite popular sentiment in Afghanistan, few in the international community have embraced Karzai's desire to launch negotiations with the Taliban, and the Obama Administration has maintained that any overture at this point would be premature; the Taliban must be weakened first.
In the Taliban's spiritual homeland of Kandahar, where the next major NATO offensive is already under way, that goal still seems a long way off. And NATO commanders are already downplaying their expectations for an offensive that recently has come to be characterized as more of a slow process than a military assault like the February operation in Marjah. "There is no specific D-Day for this," says British Navy Lieut. Commander Iain Baxter at NATO's International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul. "It's all about connecting the people to the government and the government to the people."
Others say the softer tone is a reflection of failure in Marjah, in neighboring Helmand province, where the U.S.-led offensive has yet to rout the Taliban from the area. "They know that if they do that kind of big operation and they can't secure the area, it will create problems later on," says Shamsolah of his hometown, Kandahar. That apprehension has carried over, in some instances, to the jirga. Earlier this week, gunmen killed a popular northern tribal leader who had defied the Taliban by planning to attend the meeting.
But few in Kabul seem optimistic about any potential results of the jirga. And most civilians and low-ranking government bureaucrats interviewed by TIME this week admitted that they were not aware of the jirga's actual purpose - if one would even occur. "It's not important; it's just bulls___," says Mohamed Azim, a former NATO interpreter who quit his job in frustration with what he saw as a lack of progress. "It's all extra expenses to show the people that they are working and thinking about the people. Go make schools with that money. Give it to the poor people."
"It has been eight years, and lots of jirgas have happened with no results," says Shah Mahmoud, a security guard who fled his home in Wardak province two months ago, for fear of Taliban harassment. Mahmoud is not opposed to negotiations with the Taliban but says the government and foreign powers have dragged their feet on a resolution. Says he: "Whatever positive step is needed, they should take it."
See pictures of the presidential election in Afghanistan.
See pictures of the battle against the Taliban.
View this article on Time.com
Related articles on Time.com:
* Afghanistan: Karzai's Peace Talks with Taliban Delayed
* Bagram Attack: Taliban Keeps Focus Kabul Ahead of Jirga
* How Pakistani Assistance is Undermining Afghanistan
* Karzai Talks to the Enemy But Is the U.S. On Board?
* After Obama-Karzai Washington Visit, Kandahar on Radar
Israel's Gaza blockade baffles residents
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Military bureaucrats enforcing Israel's blockade of Gaza allow frozen salmon filet, facial scrub and low-fat yogurt into the Hamas-ruled territory. Cilantro and instant coffee are another matter — they are banned as luxury items.
Over the past three years, Israel has determined down to the tiniest detail what gets into the Gaza Strip and to its population of 1.5 million, using secret guidelines to differentiate between humanitarian necessities and nonessential luxuries in its blockade meant to squeeze the Islamic militant group Hamas.
The results are often baffling.
"Frozen salmon — we never had it before the blockade," said perplexed salesman Abed Nasser, examining a frozen chunk of fish.
Critics have long maintained that Israel's blockade, imposed after Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza in 2007, has not just been confusing, but counterproductive. It has come under renewed scrutiny this week as hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists sail a flotilla to Gaza loaded with thousands of tons of goods.
Israeli Col. Moshe Levy, a senior military official dealing with Gaza, called the flotilla a "provocation" and said all necessary humanitarian aid already reaches Gaza. Israeli officials say they will stop the flotilla by hauling the ships to an Israeli port if they don't turn back.
Critics say the blockade has failed to dislodge Hamas and has hurt Gaza's poor and blocked reconstruction after Israel's devastating three-week military offensive in the winter of 2008-2009. A Palestinian industry report says the blockade has wiped out over 100,000 jobs in Gaza by banning raw materials and stifling trade.
With small exceptions for international aid projects, raw goods vital for trade and construction are banned. A biscuit factory cannot import margarine, and a tomato paste factory cannot bring in empty cans. While fruits, vegetables and frozen meats are let in, fresh meat, vinegar and jam, are not, said Sari Bashi of the Israeli rights group Gisha.
"There are enough quantities of basic food items in Gaza. But because there is a ban on raw materials needed for production and a ban on exporting finished products, people don't have enough money to buy things," she said. "That's why 80 percent of Gaza residents are dependent on international assistance."
Meanwhile, tunnels built under the Gaza-Egypt border haul in scarce goods at inflated prices, enriching smugglers and Hamas, which taxes the trade. Gaza markets are filled with smuggled products like chocolate sauce and shiny children's shoes that most residents cannot afford.
Hamas officials have used smuggled cement to rebuild the notorious Ansar prison where they detain their rivals, and are currently building a shopping center.
But three years after the blockade, Israel is only now shipping in the building materials the U.N. needs to construct 151 apartments for some of Gaza's poorest residents.
"Gaza is being reconstructed — it's just that the U.N. is not doing any of the reconstruction," said U.N. spokesman Chris Gunness. He said the U.N. still had not been given permission to build another 450 apartments in the same project, nor to start rebuilding the 2,400 homes that were destroyed during the war.
Israel has bristled at criticism, insisting there are no shortages of food or other essential goods. On Wednesday, Israel's Government Press Office issued a news release sarcastically encouraging people to visit one of Gaza's few upscale restaurants, Roots Club, which uses a mixture of smuggled and legally imported goods for its menu.
"We have been told the beef stroganoff and cream of spinach soup are highly recommended," it said, attaching a menu.
The press office's director, Daniel Seaman, said he issued the release to counter "propaganda" about a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Gaza's tiny elite and foreigners are well served by the handful of restaurants like Roots, where a meal costs more than a typical Gazan's daily wage. But such places are out of reach for virtually all of Gaza's residents, who overwhelmingly rely on U.N.-donated food aid.
Israel says the blockade aims to dry up Hamas' homegrown weapons industry by keeping out steel that can be forged into rockets and fertilizer that can be turned into explosives.
Officials say the blockade also constrains Hamas' ability to rule and pressures it to release Sgt. Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier held captive for four years.
With Egypt destroying some tunnels and restricting the inflow of cash, Hamas has struggled to pay the salaries of its 32,000 civil servants and security forces in recent months. But Hamas remains firmly in power, and residents are left uncertain about what Israel will allow in at any given time.
Israeli refuses to say what it bans or permits. The government said revealing that information would harm Israel's security and foreign relations, in response to a court challenge by the rights group Gisha in May.
Maj. Guy Inbar, an Israeli military official, said Israel bans "luxury" food items because they "will not be consumed by the public — but only by the rich and corrupt Hamas leaders."
The luxuries include goods considered staples in Gaza, like honey, instant coffee and spices, according to Bashi and Palestinian liaison official Raed Fattouh.
Not included are the frozen seafood or low-fat yogurt purchased by Gaza's wealthy few at the al-Rimal supermarket, or facial scrubs and skin-whitening sunscreen at a nearby upmarket pharmacy — all from Israel. Seafood comes as frozen meat, skin creams as feminine hygiene products and diet yogurt comes as dairy, categories permitted by Israel.
Some items have now been allowed to enter after being banned for years, like clothing, shoes and tea, providing the surreal sight of gleaming, expensive boxes of Israeli-imported caffeine-free blueberry tea sold alongside knocked-around boxes of tunnel-smuggled black tea.
"Sometimes we ask (the Israelis) why some things are banned," Fattouh said. "'Release Schalit and make Hamas step down and then we'll lift the blockade,'" he said, quoting Israeli officials. "But there's no problem if you want to have a salmon dinner."
Over the past three years, Israel has determined down to the tiniest detail what gets into the Gaza Strip and to its population of 1.5 million, using secret guidelines to differentiate between humanitarian necessities and nonessential luxuries in its blockade meant to squeeze the Islamic militant group Hamas.
The results are often baffling.
"Frozen salmon — we never had it before the blockade," said perplexed salesman Abed Nasser, examining a frozen chunk of fish.
Critics have long maintained that Israel's blockade, imposed after Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza in 2007, has not just been confusing, but counterproductive. It has come under renewed scrutiny this week as hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists sail a flotilla to Gaza loaded with thousands of tons of goods.
Israeli Col. Moshe Levy, a senior military official dealing with Gaza, called the flotilla a "provocation" and said all necessary humanitarian aid already reaches Gaza. Israeli officials say they will stop the flotilla by hauling the ships to an Israeli port if they don't turn back.
Critics say the blockade has failed to dislodge Hamas and has hurt Gaza's poor and blocked reconstruction after Israel's devastating three-week military offensive in the winter of 2008-2009. A Palestinian industry report says the blockade has wiped out over 100,000 jobs in Gaza by banning raw materials and stifling trade.
With small exceptions for international aid projects, raw goods vital for trade and construction are banned. A biscuit factory cannot import margarine, and a tomato paste factory cannot bring in empty cans. While fruits, vegetables and frozen meats are let in, fresh meat, vinegar and jam, are not, said Sari Bashi of the Israeli rights group Gisha.
"There are enough quantities of basic food items in Gaza. But because there is a ban on raw materials needed for production and a ban on exporting finished products, people don't have enough money to buy things," she said. "That's why 80 percent of Gaza residents are dependent on international assistance."
Meanwhile, tunnels built under the Gaza-Egypt border haul in scarce goods at inflated prices, enriching smugglers and Hamas, which taxes the trade. Gaza markets are filled with smuggled products like chocolate sauce and shiny children's shoes that most residents cannot afford.
Hamas officials have used smuggled cement to rebuild the notorious Ansar prison where they detain their rivals, and are currently building a shopping center.
But three years after the blockade, Israel is only now shipping in the building materials the U.N. needs to construct 151 apartments for some of Gaza's poorest residents.
"Gaza is being reconstructed — it's just that the U.N. is not doing any of the reconstruction," said U.N. spokesman Chris Gunness. He said the U.N. still had not been given permission to build another 450 apartments in the same project, nor to start rebuilding the 2,400 homes that were destroyed during the war.
Israel has bristled at criticism, insisting there are no shortages of food or other essential goods. On Wednesday, Israel's Government Press Office issued a news release sarcastically encouraging people to visit one of Gaza's few upscale restaurants, Roots Club, which uses a mixture of smuggled and legally imported goods for its menu.
"We have been told the beef stroganoff and cream of spinach soup are highly recommended," it said, attaching a menu.
The press office's director, Daniel Seaman, said he issued the release to counter "propaganda" about a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Gaza's tiny elite and foreigners are well served by the handful of restaurants like Roots, where a meal costs more than a typical Gazan's daily wage. But such places are out of reach for virtually all of Gaza's residents, who overwhelmingly rely on U.N.-donated food aid.
Israel says the blockade aims to dry up Hamas' homegrown weapons industry by keeping out steel that can be forged into rockets and fertilizer that can be turned into explosives.
Officials say the blockade also constrains Hamas' ability to rule and pressures it to release Sgt. Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier held captive for four years.
With Egypt destroying some tunnels and restricting the inflow of cash, Hamas has struggled to pay the salaries of its 32,000 civil servants and security forces in recent months. But Hamas remains firmly in power, and residents are left uncertain about what Israel will allow in at any given time.
Israeli refuses to say what it bans or permits. The government said revealing that information would harm Israel's security and foreign relations, in response to a court challenge by the rights group Gisha in May.
Maj. Guy Inbar, an Israeli military official, said Israel bans "luxury" food items because they "will not be consumed by the public — but only by the rich and corrupt Hamas leaders."
The luxuries include goods considered staples in Gaza, like honey, instant coffee and spices, according to Bashi and Palestinian liaison official Raed Fattouh.
Not included are the frozen seafood or low-fat yogurt purchased by Gaza's wealthy few at the al-Rimal supermarket, or facial scrubs and skin-whitening sunscreen at a nearby upmarket pharmacy — all from Israel. Seafood comes as frozen meat, skin creams as feminine hygiene products and diet yogurt comes as dairy, categories permitted by Israel.
Some items have now been allowed to enter after being banned for years, like clothing, shoes and tea, providing the surreal sight of gleaming, expensive boxes of Israeli-imported caffeine-free blueberry tea sold alongside knocked-around boxes of tunnel-smuggled black tea.
"Sometimes we ask (the Israelis) why some things are banned," Fattouh said. "'Release Schalit and make Hamas step down and then we'll lift the blockade,'" he said, quoting Israeli officials. "But there's no problem if you want to have a salmon dinner."
Suspected sabotage derails train in India; 71 dead
SARDIHA, India – Suspected Maoist rebels derailed an overnight passenger train Friday in eastern India, triggering a crash with an oncoming cargo train that killed at least 71 people and injured about 200 more, officials said.
Survivors described a night of screaming and chaos after the derailment and said it took rescuers more than three hours to reach the scene. The blue passenger train and the red cargo train were knotted together in mangled metal along a rural stretch of track near the small town of Sardiha, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of Calcutta in West Bengal state.
Officials disagreed on the cause of the derailment, with some saying it was caused by an explosion but others blaming sabotaged rail lines. Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in a statement that a section of the railway tracks had been cut, but "whether explosives were used is not yet clear."
Bhupinder Singh, the top police official in West Bengal, said posters from the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities, a group local officials believe is closely tied to the Maoists, had been found at the scene taking responsibility for the attack.
However, a spokesman for the group, Asit Mahato, denied any role, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
"We were in no way involved. This is not our act," PTI quoted him as saying by phone.
"What can we do if somebody claims responsibility on our behalf?" he told PTI when asked about the posters found near the scene.
The area is an isolated, rural stronghold of India's Maoist rebels, known as Naxalites, who have stepped up attacks in recent months and had called for a four-day general strike starting Friday. Earlier this month, the rebels ambushed a bus in central India, killing 31 police officers and civilians.
Nearly 10 hours after the blast, railway police and paramilitary soldiers were using blowtorches and cables to try to reach at least a dozen passengers still trapped in the wreckage, said A.P. Mishra, general manager of the railway system in that area.
Sher Ali, a 25-year-old Mumbai factory worker, was traveling with his wife, two children and his brother's family when they were jerked awake by a loud thud. A moment later, their car was tossed from the track, he said.
"My sister-in-law was crushed when the coach overturned. We saw her dying, but we couldn't do anything to help her," said Ali, who had cuts on his head and arms. The rest of the family survived, though a 10-year-old nephew was badly injured and hospitalized.
Ali was unable to go to the hospital, though, because all his money was in his luggage inside the wreckage and he was afraid it would be stolen unless he kept watch.
The passenger train was traveling from Calcutta to the Mumbai suburb of Kurla when 13 cars derailed. A cargo train then slammed into three of the cars from the other direction, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee said.
Mishra said the train had been derailed by a bomb and that the tracks had also been sabotaged. Banerjee said authorities suspected the bomb was planted by Maoist rebels.
Soumitra Majumdar, a railway spokesman said 71 people were confirmed dead and nearly 200 people were injured. He said it was likely the toll would rise as search and rescue operations continued.
Helicopters were eventually brought in to help evacuate the injured to local hospitals, officials said.
The rebels, who have tapped into the rural poor's growing anger at being left out of the country's economic gains, are now present in 20 of the country's 28 states and have an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 fighters, according to the Home Ministry.
Banerjee said the Saridha area had been the scene of earlier Naxalite attacks, and that trains were under orders to travel slowly through the region — in part so the drivers can keep watch for sabotaged tracks or bombs, and in part so the effects of a crash are lessened if a train does derail.
Survivors described a night of screaming and chaos after the derailment and said it took rescuers more than three hours to reach the scene. The blue passenger train and the red cargo train were knotted together in mangled metal along a rural stretch of track near the small town of Sardiha, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of Calcutta in West Bengal state.
Officials disagreed on the cause of the derailment, with some saying it was caused by an explosion but others blaming sabotaged rail lines. Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in a statement that a section of the railway tracks had been cut, but "whether explosives were used is not yet clear."
Bhupinder Singh, the top police official in West Bengal, said posters from the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities, a group local officials believe is closely tied to the Maoists, had been found at the scene taking responsibility for the attack.
However, a spokesman for the group, Asit Mahato, denied any role, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
"We were in no way involved. This is not our act," PTI quoted him as saying by phone.
"What can we do if somebody claims responsibility on our behalf?" he told PTI when asked about the posters found near the scene.
The area is an isolated, rural stronghold of India's Maoist rebels, known as Naxalites, who have stepped up attacks in recent months and had called for a four-day general strike starting Friday. Earlier this month, the rebels ambushed a bus in central India, killing 31 police officers and civilians.
Nearly 10 hours after the blast, railway police and paramilitary soldiers were using blowtorches and cables to try to reach at least a dozen passengers still trapped in the wreckage, said A.P. Mishra, general manager of the railway system in that area.
Sher Ali, a 25-year-old Mumbai factory worker, was traveling with his wife, two children and his brother's family when they were jerked awake by a loud thud. A moment later, their car was tossed from the track, he said.
"My sister-in-law was crushed when the coach overturned. We saw her dying, but we couldn't do anything to help her," said Ali, who had cuts on his head and arms. The rest of the family survived, though a 10-year-old nephew was badly injured and hospitalized.
Ali was unable to go to the hospital, though, because all his money was in his luggage inside the wreckage and he was afraid it would be stolen unless he kept watch.
The passenger train was traveling from Calcutta to the Mumbai suburb of Kurla when 13 cars derailed. A cargo train then slammed into three of the cars from the other direction, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee said.
Mishra said the train had been derailed by a bomb and that the tracks had also been sabotaged. Banerjee said authorities suspected the bomb was planted by Maoist rebels.
Soumitra Majumdar, a railway spokesman said 71 people were confirmed dead and nearly 200 people were injured. He said it was likely the toll would rise as search and rescue operations continued.
Helicopters were eventually brought in to help evacuate the injured to local hospitals, officials said.
The rebels, who have tapped into the rural poor's growing anger at being left out of the country's economic gains, are now present in 20 of the country's 28 states and have an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 fighters, according to the Home Ministry.
Banerjee said the Saridha area had been the scene of earlier Naxalite attacks, and that trains were under orders to travel slowly through the region — in part so the drivers can keep watch for sabotaged tracks or bombs, and in part so the effects of a crash are lessened if a train does derail.
US toll reaches 1,000 deaths in Afghanistan war
KABUL, Afghanistan – The American military death toll in Afghanistan reached 1,000 at a time when President Barack Obama's strategy to turn back the Taliban is facing its greatest test — an ambitious campaign to win over a disgruntled population in the insurgents' southern heartland.
More casualties are expected when the campaign kicks into high gear this summer. The results may determine the outcome of a nearly nine-year conflict that became "Obama's war" after he decided to shift the fight against Islamist militancy from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Afghan insurgents find sanctuary.
The grim milestone was reached when NATO reported that a service member was killed Friday in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan. The statement did not identify the victim or give the nationality. U.S. spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said the service member was American — the 32nd U.S. war death this month by an Associated Press count.
Already the new focus on the once-forgotten Afghan war has come at a heavy price. More than 430 of the U.S. dead were killed after Obama took office in January 2009.
The list of American service members killed in combat in Afghanistan begins with Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman of San Antonio, Texas, a 31-year-old career Special forces soldier ambushed on Jan. 4, 2002, after attending a meeting with Afghan leaders in Khost province. He left a wife and two children. The base where a suicide bomber killed seven CIA employees last December bears his name.
For many of the more than 94,000 U.S. service members in Afghanistan, the 1,000-mark passed without fanfare.
Capt. Nick Ziemba of Wilbraham, Massachusetts, serving with the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment in southern Afghanistan, said 1,000 was an arbitrary number and would have no impact on troop morale or operations.
"We're going to continue to work," he said.
The AP bases its tally on Defense Department reports of deaths suffered as a direct result of the Afghan conflict, including personnel assigned to units in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Uzbekistan. Other news organizations count deaths suffered by service members assigned elsewhere as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, which includes operations in the Philippines, the Horn of Africa and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The grim milestone comes midway between the president's decision last December to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan and a gut check on the war's progress that he has promised by the end of the year.
After a long and wrenching conflict in Iraq — which has claimed nearly 4,400 American military lives — Obama has promised not to be backed into an open-ended war in Afghanistan. He has insisted that some U.S. troops will come home beginning in July 2011.
That has not been enough to satisfy his anti-war supporters. At the same time, mid-2011 may be too soon to turn the tide.
More casualties are expected when the campaign kicks into high gear this summer. The results may determine the outcome of a nearly nine-year conflict that became "Obama's war" after he decided to shift the fight against Islamist militancy from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Afghan insurgents find sanctuary.
The grim milestone was reached when NATO reported that a service member was killed Friday in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan. The statement did not identify the victim or give the nationality. U.S. spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said the service member was American — the 32nd U.S. war death this month by an Associated Press count.
Already the new focus on the once-forgotten Afghan war has come at a heavy price. More than 430 of the U.S. dead were killed after Obama took office in January 2009.
The list of American service members killed in combat in Afghanistan begins with Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman of San Antonio, Texas, a 31-year-old career Special forces soldier ambushed on Jan. 4, 2002, after attending a meeting with Afghan leaders in Khost province. He left a wife and two children. The base where a suicide bomber killed seven CIA employees last December bears his name.
For many of the more than 94,000 U.S. service members in Afghanistan, the 1,000-mark passed without fanfare.
Capt. Nick Ziemba of Wilbraham, Massachusetts, serving with the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment in southern Afghanistan, said 1,000 was an arbitrary number and would have no impact on troop morale or operations.
"We're going to continue to work," he said.
The AP bases its tally on Defense Department reports of deaths suffered as a direct result of the Afghan conflict, including personnel assigned to units in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Uzbekistan. Other news organizations count deaths suffered by service members assigned elsewhere as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, which includes operations in the Philippines, the Horn of Africa and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The grim milestone comes midway between the president's decision last December to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan and a gut check on the war's progress that he has promised by the end of the year.
After a long and wrenching conflict in Iraq — which has claimed nearly 4,400 American military lives — Obama has promised not to be backed into an open-ended war in Afghanistan. He has insisted that some U.S. troops will come home beginning in July 2011.
That has not been enough to satisfy his anti-war supporters. At the same time, mid-2011 may be too soon to turn the tide.
Shell buys US company East Resources for $4.7B
AMSTERDAM – Royal Dutch Shell PLC says it has agreed to buy East Resources Inc., a major owner of shale gas holdings in the United States, for $4.7 billion from private investors.
Shell says it will pay cash for the company, which is capable of producing the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil per day in Marcellus Shale, which extends over large parts of the northeastern United States.
Shell said Friday it was buying the company from East Resources itself, from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., and from Jefferies & Company.
Shell says it will pay cash for the company, which is capable of producing the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil per day in Marcellus Shale, which extends over large parts of the northeastern United States.
Shell said Friday it was buying the company from East Resources itself, from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., and from Jefferies & Company.
Highlights of House and Senate spending bills
A $58.8 billion measure funding the president's Afghanistan troop surge passed the Senate on Thursday. But a $143 billion package of spending and tax cuts was being rewritten by House leaders after rank-and-file protests about the budget deficit.
___
Highlights of the Senate war-funding legislation:
_$33.5 billion for the Pentagon to fund President Barack Obama's 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan and other costs.
_$5.1 billion to replenish federal disaster aid accounts.
_$6.2 billion for State Department diplomatic operations and foreign aid, including for allies in the war on terror such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
_$13.4 billion to pay disability pensions for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange.
___
Highlights of House tax and spending legislation:
TAXES
_Extends for one year about $32 billion in tax breaks that expired in January, including a property tax deduction for people who don't itemize, lucrative credits that help businesses finance research and develop new products, and a sales tax deduction that mainly helps people in states without income taxes.
_Increases taxes on investment and hedge fund managers, venture capitalists and many real estate investment partnerships by $18.7 billion.
_Increases taxes on oil companies by $11.8 billion by raising from 8 cents a barrel to 34 cents a barrel the tax they pay into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
_Raises taxes on multinational companies some $14.5 billion by limiting their ability to use credits for paying foreign taxes to lower their U.S. tax liability.
_Imposes $11.2 billion in new Medicare taxes on lawyers, doctors and other service providers.
SPENDING
_$39.5 billion to continue unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless through November. In a majority of states, the unemployed could receive benefits for up to 99 weeks.
_$4.6 billion to settle long-running class-action lawsuits brought by black farmers and American Indians. One lawsuit concerned the government's management and accounting of more than 300,000 trust accounts of American Indians. The other is a discrimination lawsuit brought by black farmers against the Agriculture Department.
_$4 billion to expand the Build America Bonds program, which subsidizes interest costs paid by local governments when they borrow for construction projects.
_$1.5 billion in relief for farmers who suffered crop damage from natural disasters in 2009.
_$1 billion for summer jobs programs, for workers ages 16 to 21.
___
Provisions dropped by House Democratic leaders in response to deficit concerns:
_$24 billion for states to help cover Medicaid costs.
_$6.8 billion to provide health insurance subsidies to the jobless under the COBRA program.
_$22 billion to provide a 19-month reprieve from a scheduled 21 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors.
___
Highlights of the Senate war-funding legislation:
_$33.5 billion for the Pentagon to fund President Barack Obama's 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan and other costs.
_$5.1 billion to replenish federal disaster aid accounts.
_$6.2 billion for State Department diplomatic operations and foreign aid, including for allies in the war on terror such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
_$13.4 billion to pay disability pensions for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange.
___
Highlights of House tax and spending legislation:
TAXES
_Extends for one year about $32 billion in tax breaks that expired in January, including a property tax deduction for people who don't itemize, lucrative credits that help businesses finance research and develop new products, and a sales tax deduction that mainly helps people in states without income taxes.
_Increases taxes on investment and hedge fund managers, venture capitalists and many real estate investment partnerships by $18.7 billion.
_Increases taxes on oil companies by $11.8 billion by raising from 8 cents a barrel to 34 cents a barrel the tax they pay into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
_Raises taxes on multinational companies some $14.5 billion by limiting their ability to use credits for paying foreign taxes to lower their U.S. tax liability.
_Imposes $11.2 billion in new Medicare taxes on lawyers, doctors and other service providers.
SPENDING
_$39.5 billion to continue unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless through November. In a majority of states, the unemployed could receive benefits for up to 99 weeks.
_$4.6 billion to settle long-running class-action lawsuits brought by black farmers and American Indians. One lawsuit concerned the government's management and accounting of more than 300,000 trust accounts of American Indians. The other is a discrimination lawsuit brought by black farmers against the Agriculture Department.
_$4 billion to expand the Build America Bonds program, which subsidizes interest costs paid by local governments when they borrow for construction projects.
_$1.5 billion in relief for farmers who suffered crop damage from natural disasters in 2009.
_$1 billion for summer jobs programs, for workers ages 16 to 21.
___
Provisions dropped by House Democratic leaders in response to deficit concerns:
_$24 billion for states to help cover Medicaid costs.
_$6.8 billion to provide health insurance subsidies to the jobless under the COBRA program.
_$22 billion to provide a 19-month reprieve from a scheduled 21 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors.
2 more days before BP knows if mud stops oil leak
ROBERT, La. – BP won't know until Sunday if pumping heavy mud into a blown-out well on the seafloor is successful in stopping the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, its chief executive said.
CEO Tony Hayward said on the CBS "Early Show" that his confidence level in the well-plugging effort remains at 60 to 70 percent.
BP PLC, which owns the well and is the largest oil and gas producer in the United States, began injecting mud into the well on Wednesday afternoon in an untested bid to end a spill whose millions of gallons have surpassed the Exxon Valdez disaster. The catastrophe started with an oil rig explosion April 20 that killed 11 workers.
The maneuver, called a top kill, has worked on land but has never been tried in deep water. It comes after BP failed to plug the leak with a blowout preventer, a massive piece of machinery on top of the well that is supposed to be a fail-safe device, and couldn't capture the crude with a mile-long tube or a 100-ton containment box.
The Obama administration's point man on the disaster, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, said BP's work Friday will tell if a cap can hold.
Allen told ABC's "Good Morning America" that the mud pumped into the well has pushed the oil down, but the challenge is going to be to keep enough pressure on the oil flow to put a cement plug in place.
"The real question is, can we sustain it, and that'll be the critical issue going through the next 12 to 18 hours," Allen said.
As the world waited, President Barack Obama announced major new restrictions on drilling projects, and the head of the federal agency that regulates the industry resigned under pressure, becoming the highest-ranking political casualty of the crisis so far.
Obama was scheduled to attend a briefing Friday at the U.S. Coast Guard Station in Grand Isle, La., by Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the response to the spill. It would be his second visit to the region since the disaster began.
At the White House on Thursday, Obama acknowledged that his administration could have done a better job dealing with the spill and that it misjudged the industry's ability to handle a worst-case scenario.
"I take responsibility. It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down," Obama said.
Hayward said on CBS that things were progressing as planned. He said BP engineers had completed a second phase by pumping what he called "loss prevention material" into the blowout preventer to form a bridge against which they could pump more heavyweight mud.
That part of the operation was completed early Friday and appeared to have been partially successful. BP would go back to pumping more mud later Friday, he said.
"I believe it will be around 48 hours before we'll have clarity as to whether or not it has been successful," Hayward told CBS.
If the mud works, BP would pour cement to seal the well.
"Clearly I'm as anxious as everyone in America is to get this thing done," Hayward said.
BP has spent $930 million so far responding to the ruptured well, it said in a regulatory filing Friday, including costs for clean-up and prevention work, drilling relief wells, paying grants to Gulf states, damage claims and federal costs. BP says it's too early to quantify other potential costs and liabilities associated with the spill.
The stakes were higher than ever as public frustration over the spill grew and a team of government scientists said the oil has been flowing at a rate 2 1/2 to five times higher than what BP and the Coast Guard previously estimated.
Two teams of scientists calculated the well has been spewing between 504,000 and more than a million gallons a day. Even using the most conservative estimate, that means about 18 million gallons have spilled so far. In the worst-case scenario, 39 million gallons have leaked.
That larger figure would be nearly four times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster, in which a tanker ran aground in Alaska in 1989, spilling nearly 11 million gallons.
The spill is not the biggest ever in the Gulf. In 1979, a drilling rig in Mexican waters — the Ixtoc I — blew up, releasing 140 million gallons of oil.
CEO Tony Hayward said on the CBS "Early Show" that his confidence level in the well-plugging effort remains at 60 to 70 percent.
BP PLC, which owns the well and is the largest oil and gas producer in the United States, began injecting mud into the well on Wednesday afternoon in an untested bid to end a spill whose millions of gallons have surpassed the Exxon Valdez disaster. The catastrophe started with an oil rig explosion April 20 that killed 11 workers.
The maneuver, called a top kill, has worked on land but has never been tried in deep water. It comes after BP failed to plug the leak with a blowout preventer, a massive piece of machinery on top of the well that is supposed to be a fail-safe device, and couldn't capture the crude with a mile-long tube or a 100-ton containment box.
The Obama administration's point man on the disaster, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, said BP's work Friday will tell if a cap can hold.
Allen told ABC's "Good Morning America" that the mud pumped into the well has pushed the oil down, but the challenge is going to be to keep enough pressure on the oil flow to put a cement plug in place.
"The real question is, can we sustain it, and that'll be the critical issue going through the next 12 to 18 hours," Allen said.
As the world waited, President Barack Obama announced major new restrictions on drilling projects, and the head of the federal agency that regulates the industry resigned under pressure, becoming the highest-ranking political casualty of the crisis so far.
Obama was scheduled to attend a briefing Friday at the U.S. Coast Guard Station in Grand Isle, La., by Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the response to the spill. It would be his second visit to the region since the disaster began.
At the White House on Thursday, Obama acknowledged that his administration could have done a better job dealing with the spill and that it misjudged the industry's ability to handle a worst-case scenario.
"I take responsibility. It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down," Obama said.
Hayward said on CBS that things were progressing as planned. He said BP engineers had completed a second phase by pumping what he called "loss prevention material" into the blowout preventer to form a bridge against which they could pump more heavyweight mud.
That part of the operation was completed early Friday and appeared to have been partially successful. BP would go back to pumping more mud later Friday, he said.
"I believe it will be around 48 hours before we'll have clarity as to whether or not it has been successful," Hayward told CBS.
If the mud works, BP would pour cement to seal the well.
"Clearly I'm as anxious as everyone in America is to get this thing done," Hayward said.
BP has spent $930 million so far responding to the ruptured well, it said in a regulatory filing Friday, including costs for clean-up and prevention work, drilling relief wells, paying grants to Gulf states, damage claims and federal costs. BP says it's too early to quantify other potential costs and liabilities associated with the spill.
The stakes were higher than ever as public frustration over the spill grew and a team of government scientists said the oil has been flowing at a rate 2 1/2 to five times higher than what BP and the Coast Guard previously estimated.
Two teams of scientists calculated the well has been spewing between 504,000 and more than a million gallons a day. Even using the most conservative estimate, that means about 18 million gallons have spilled so far. In the worst-case scenario, 39 million gallons have leaked.
That larger figure would be nearly four times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster, in which a tanker ran aground in Alaska in 1989, spilling nearly 11 million gallons.
The spill is not the biggest ever in the Gulf. In 1979, a drilling rig in Mexican waters — the Ixtoc I — blew up, releasing 140 million gallons of oil.
Consumer spending posts weak April reading
WASHINGTON – Consumer spending was stagnant in April while incomes posted a tiny advance, signs that the economic recovery could slow.
The Commerce Department said Friday that consumer spending was unchanged last month, the weakest showing in seven months. Economists had expected a 0.3 percent rise. Personal incomes rose 0.4 percent, less than the 0.5 percent gain economists had forecast.
More people are holding on to their money, the report noted. The savings rate rose 3.6 percent in April. The rate had fallen to 3.1 percent in March, the lowest reading since October 2008.
Consumer spending is closely watched because it accounts for 70 percent of total economic activity. The flat reading for April raises concerns about whether the recovery could slow in coming months if households cut back on purchases.
April's unchanged level of spending followed a sizable 0.6 percent rise in March. Economists had expected some slowing but had not forecast that growth would disappear entirely.
The 0.4 percent rise in incomes followed a similar 0.4 percent jump in March. It reflected a pickup in wages and salaries, which are being helped by increases in payroll employment.
The country added 290,000 jobs in April. But the unemployment rate jumped to 9.9 percent as disappointed workers returned to the labor market to search for jobs. High unemployment could dampen spending going forward, limiting the pace of the economic recovery.
The government reported Thursday that the overall economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the January-March quarter. That was below the initial 3.2 percent estimate for first quarter GDP growth. Economists worry that growth won't be high enough to push down the unemployment rate and generate the kinds of income gains that will support sustained spending increases.
The Commerce Department said Friday that consumer spending was unchanged last month, the weakest showing in seven months. Economists had expected a 0.3 percent rise. Personal incomes rose 0.4 percent, less than the 0.5 percent gain economists had forecast.
More people are holding on to their money, the report noted. The savings rate rose 3.6 percent in April. The rate had fallen to 3.1 percent in March, the lowest reading since October 2008.
Consumer spending is closely watched because it accounts for 70 percent of total economic activity. The flat reading for April raises concerns about whether the recovery could slow in coming months if households cut back on purchases.
April's unchanged level of spending followed a sizable 0.6 percent rise in March. Economists had expected some slowing but had not forecast that growth would disappear entirely.
The 0.4 percent rise in incomes followed a similar 0.4 percent jump in March. It reflected a pickup in wages and salaries, which are being helped by increases in payroll employment.
The country added 290,000 jobs in April. But the unemployment rate jumped to 9.9 percent as disappointed workers returned to the labor market to search for jobs. High unemployment could dampen spending going forward, limiting the pace of the economic recovery.
The government reported Thursday that the overall economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the January-March quarter. That was below the initial 3.2 percent estimate for first quarter GDP growth. Economists worry that growth won't be high enough to push down the unemployment rate and generate the kinds of income gains that will support sustained spending increases.
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