You can check frequently, Monday to Friday, additions to our news &
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http://www.atlanticpacificalliance.com/news.html
US Helping To Clean Up Munitions,
Oil in
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Today's articles (free of charge, sometimes
registration needed):
Politics/Economy/Society
-
- While Insurance Companies Targeted, Taxpayers Soaked. By Ted Frank
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.24825,filter.all/pub_detail.asp
- Has the Internet Increased Trade? By Scott Wallsten, George R. G. Clarke
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.24818,filter.all/pub_detail.asp
- Case for transparent government is open and shut. By Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D.
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed082406b.cfm
How good is government at wasting our tax dollars?
- Deceitful evolution, by Helle Dale
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed082406d.cfm
Gunter Grass
- Race and economics, by Thomas Sowell
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2006/08/25/race_and_economics
Erratum, by Dennis Sevakis
http://americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=5926
- McCain's Machiavellian miscalculation, by David Limbaugh
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DavidLimbaugh/2006/08/25/mccains_machiavellian_miscalculation
- Dialectical Justice, by Lloyd Billingsley
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24060
Revolutionary Marxist gets 60 days for bank robbery
- Soviet Ghosts Haunt the World Council of Churches, by Mark D. Tooley
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24064
A new top official and his communist past
-
Why
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24040
And we wouldn't have been able to. . . .
- ABC's 'The Path to 9/11'. By Govindini Murty
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24042
A powerful -- and honest -- new miniseries.
- How to Kill a Westerner
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24061
- A footnote on Judge Taylor, by Scott Johnson
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015105.php
- The Secret Mechanism, by Russell Roberts
http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2006/08/the_secret_mech.html
The very richest are siphoning off the economic growth
Education/Culture/Media
- The Red Cross Ambulance Incident
http://www.zombietime.com/fraud/ambulance/
- Covering the Conflict in the North, by HonestReporting.com
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24065
- NYT: Do as we say, not as we do. By Thomas Lifson
http://americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=5929
Science/Health
- December 2006 American Geophysical Union meeting “Aerosol Cloud-Precipitation," by Roger Pielke Sr
http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/08/24/agu-meeting/
- A Sea Change in Global Warming?
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/08/24/a-sea-change-in-global-warming/
- Study rules out ancient 'bursts' of methane from seafloor deposits
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-08/osu-sro082106.php
A dramatic increase about 12,000 years ago in levels of
atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas, was most likely caused by higher
emissions from tropical wetlands or from plant production, rather than a
release from seafloor methane deposits, a new study concludes.
For climate researchers, an understanding of methane behavior is of some significance because it is the second most important "greenhouse gas" after carbon dioxide. Its atmospheric concentration has increased about 250 percent in the last 250 years, and it continues to rise about 1 percent a year.
Interesting. But, please,
don’t say methane is the “second most important”: first, water vapor, later,
clouds, after that carbon dioxide and ozone. And, after all
that, methane.
Also, it is
wrong to say that atmospheric concentrations of methane are increasing. See
CDIAC/Oak Ridge Nat'l Lab: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/otheratg/blake/methane/methane.html.
- Russian scientist predicts global cooling
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060825-091321-7556r
- Research Papers On The Accuracy Of Weather and Climate Modeling Simulation and Prediction Of The Stable Atmospheric Boundary Layer. By Roger Pielke Sr
- Counterfeit Drugs Threat to Global Health, Says New Report
http://www.acsh.org/news/newsID.1385/news_detail.asp
- Boomers Targeted in New Waistline Scare, by Steven Milloy
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,210350,00.html
'Just a few extra pounds could mean fewer years, study finds,' headlined a front-page, above-the-fold story in the Washington Post this week.
- One way to get rid of insect pests may be to build a better bug, by Scott LaFee
http://www.paramuspost.com/article.php/20060821013128942
Technology
GOOGLE WILL BUNDLE email and scheduling offerings,
among other services, increasing its competition with Microsoft.
* * *
* * *
Advertisers have shown strong interest in sponsoring
free video-on-demand programs, which have expanded as cable operators devise
new services to battle satellite competitors.
* * *
Belgacom will pay Vodafone $2.55 billion
for the 25% of mobile arm Proximus the Belgian firm
doesn't own.
* * *
BellSouth scrapped plans for a surcharge on
high-speed Internet customers after the FCC turned up the heat on BellSouth and
Verizon.
* * *
Sri Lankan law-enforcement said they have been asked
by the
* * *
The FCC cleared three XM radio models with overly
powerful signals that violated emissions rules, ridding XM Satellite of a big
cloud on its business prospects.
* * *
Microsoft's Zune digital
media player will be manufactured by Toshiba and include an FM tuner and
wireless networking capability. Toshiba revealed details of the player in an
FCC filing.
* * *
• Nacchio's Trial Will
Remain in
• FCC Ruling Boosts XM Shares
•
• Belgacom Buys Rest of
>>>>>>>>>>> You can request these
articles at no charge. Call Jorge Mata at any time to ask.
Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
In Spanish: Europeos
proporcionados
http://gees.org/articulo/2891/
La última guerra en Oriente Medio ha
ofrecido a Europa la enésima oportunidad para demostrar al mundo quien es
alguien, política y militarmente. Varios países europeos corrieron a airear su
intención de enviar soldados como parte del contingente que la ONU pretende
desplegar en el sur de Líbano para reforzar el alto el fuego.
-
¿Cree usted en la ONU?, por Rafael L. Bardají
http://gees.org/articulo/2890/
Si usted es de los que todavía creen en la
Organización de las Naciones Unidas como la garante de la paz y la estabilidad
mundial sin duda se debe a que no ha conocido ninguna de las misiones
desarrolladas por los famosos “cascos azules” a tal fin.
- Cutregrafía: continúa el escándalo mediático. Por Michelle Malkin
http://gees.org/articulo/2886/
Es la noticia que la élite
periodística preferiría que se tragara la tierra. Después del reconocimiento
por parte de Reuters de que uno de sus fotógrafos, Adnán Hajj, había manipulado dos
fotografías de la guerra del Líbano después de que los bloggers
olieran sus crudas alteraciones de Photoshop, y todas
sus 920 fotos de Reuters fueran retiradas, las
pruebas de escenificaciones fotográficas y engaño mediático en Oriente Medio
siguen surgiendo a raudales.
- El
converso, por Cal Thomas
http://gees.org/articulo/2887/
Soloman está en problemas por partida doble. No solamente renegó del Islam y de
los objetivos de los terroristas, también se ha convertido en cristiano, lo que
le etiqueta para morir. Nacido en Oriente Medio, visitaba Washington desde su
país de adopción, el cual rehúsa nombrar con el fin de proteger a su familia.
============================
Wall Street Journal
(excerpts)
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Flawed studies don't help education reform.
Finally, an acknowledgment that competition
in telecom abounds.
Arresting business competitors in
COMMENTARY
HENRY F. COOPER and ROBERT L. PFALTZGRAFF JR.
Lost in Space
The
Hostage Crisis
The U.N.'s inaction against terrorist
abduction.
NEERAJ
BHARGAVA
Good Governance Is Good Business
Why we like the NYSE.
SHIKHA DALMIA
Schwarzenegger Gives Up
Politics trumps fiscal health.
COLUMNS
STATE OF THE
Innovation, Innovation, Innovation
The rest of
By Ann Mettler
OPINION
Three disturbing court cases.
DAVID
IGNATIUS
Tough Love for
What's needed is a reasonable timetable for the
transfer of military control.
DAVID
IGNATIUS
Returning Some Order to
Leading by example on the streets of
Copyright © 2006 Dow
Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
--------------------------------------
The Bush
administration's desire to enlighten parents and taxpayers about alternatives
to failing public schools is admirable. But it'll have to do better than the
misleading report issued last week by the federal Department of Education,
which purports to show that charter schools trail traditional public schools in
student achievement.
The study used 2003
test-score data from the National Assessment for Education Progress (NAEP) to
determine that fourth-graders attending regular public schools scored 4.2
points higher in reading, and 4.7 points higher in math, than their
counterparts in charter schools, which are also public schools but operate
independently and without many of the union and bureaucratic rules. The study
claims to have taken family income into consideration, and that's important
because a large number of charter schools cater to mostly low-income students.
But the use of
federal-lunch program participation as a poverty indicator is problematic and
likely skewed the results. According to the Center for Education Reform, a
school choice advocacy group, as many as 1-in-4 charters nationwide would
qualify for free- and reduced-lunch programs but don't take advantage of them.
Cost and bureaucratic red tape are two primary reasons.
For example, to
participate in a federal lunch program, a school must hire certified food
service workers. Many charters operating on tight budgets choose to use parents
or volunteers in the cafeteria and steer their limited resources into the
classroom. By relying on a flawed proxy for poverty, the government's
methodology penalizes this sort of efficiency.
It's also worth pointing
out how little can be properly extrapolated about the quality of charter
schools from a 2003 "snapshot" of fourth-grade reading and math
scores. The study tells us nothing about the students' prior or subsequent
academic record. Nor do we know how long the school had been open at the time
or whether it's still in operation today.
Teachers unions and
others averse to school choice want to use the study's results to indict the
entire charter model. But they'd never dream of using such a crude approach to
assess the effectiveness of traditional public schools. The NAEP data are
merely a measure of current student performance. The only way to measure school
effectiveness is through longitudinal studies that compare the same students
over time.
"You compare
students year to year in certain subjects to find out whether they're learning
and how much of it can be attributed to the school," says Jeanne Allen of
the Center for Education Reform. "This national study doesn't do
that." This federal picture is incomplete, in part, because the feds only
began including charter schools in NAEP data three years ago. But states have
been measuring performance trends for much longer. And the value-added effects
of charter schools are clear.
Studies in
Writing in the New York
Post last week, Peter Murphy of the New York Charter Schools Association said a
state report issued this summer found that "in 2005, a majority of charter
schools had a higher percentage of students passing the state exams in English
language arts and mathematics at the elementary and middle school levels"
than did their respective school districts.
All charters aren't
successful, but the bad ones tend to close in due course, which is a good thing
and more than can be said for failing traditional public schools. As for the
rest, they are providing a fast-growing option for underprivileged children. This
irks unions, school boards and others with a vested interest in a public school
monopoly that's failing to educate millions of kids. But it doesn't mean the
Bush administration has to give its political opponents fodder in the form of
shoddy, oversold research on school performance.
--------------------------------------
How much competition is
there in
The move was instigated
by Rachelle Chong, who was appointed to the
Commission in January by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to a
Other states, including
It's unfortunate that
the Commission felt the need to delay matters by locking residential retail
rates in place until 2009, thus dampening the incentive for AT&T, Verizon and others to continue building advanced networks.
But the temporary rate freeze was probably the political price for passing
broader structural reform in a state not exactly known for its deregulatory
instincts.
The good news is that
these state regulators have finally acknowledged that competition in telecom
abounds, that free-markets work, and that holding residential phone bills below
actual cost is silly in today's brave new telecom world. The other good news is
that if even
--------------------------------------
In the capitalist world,
if you make a bad business decision you live with the consequences. But not, apparently, in
But now comes the
appalling treatment of staff of the Dutch bank ABN-AMRO, caught up in what even
Vietnamese regulators say were legitimate business transactions. The story
highlights how, for all its strides toward a market economy, this Communist
state is still not always a safe place to do business. In
We don't know all the
details of the dispute between ABN-AMRO and the state-owned Industrial and
Commercial Bank of
As a result, one ABN-AMRO
staffer has now been held for more than four months in a top security prison
for hardened criminals and refused permission to see his family or a lawyer. A
second was detained last month. Two more escaped the same fate only because
they have young children; they were placed under house arrest. A senior bank
staffer in
All
this over forex trades that were given a clean bill
of health in a recent audit by the country's financial regulator, the State
Bank of
The ABN-AMRO saga will
be familiar to foreigners who do business in
But even if this case is
resolved through pressure from foreign governments, it stands as testament to
how far
In the free world,
governments don't go around abducting a competitor's staff over a business
dispute. Until state-owned companies are forced to live with the consequences
of bad business deals -- or resolve disputes through the legal system --
--------------------------------------
Lost in Space
By HENRY F.
COOPER and ROBERT L. PFALTZGRAFF JR.
Consider the implications of
When
The blunt truth is that, since withdrawing from the ABM Treaty
in 2002, the
Nevertheless, our continuing vulnerability to missile attack is
the result of easily reversible past choices.
We have already made an $80 billion investment in over 80 Aegis
ships now at sea around the world that have the ability to shoot down cruise missiles.
A minimal additional investment can enable them to shoot down ballistic
missiles: Outfitting a single ship costs $100 million ($20 million for support
systems and $80 million for eight interceptors). There is no better investment
in near-term missile-defense capability.
As the administration has acknowledged, current missile defenses
represent only a "starting point" for building improved capabilities.
But rather than just marginally improving systems that evolved from the ABM
Treaty era, missile-defense designers should start from the basics.
The authors participated in an Independent Working Group that
for the last five years considered these issues in depth. Our full report,
"Missile Defense, the Space Relationship and the 21st Century," is
available at www.ifpa.org/pdf/IWGreport.pdf.
Here, we emphasize several points:
• Missile-defense systems should
protect us against more than just small rogue states. We should make it
virtually impossible for any adversary -- rogue states, non-state actors and
larger strategic competitors -- to influence
Since we cannot be certain where or when a missile will be
launched against us, we need a continuously ready, global, multilayered system
to provide multiple shots at attacking missiles and their warheads in all their
phases of flight -- boost, midcourse and terminal. Such defenses make an attack
more expensive, and therefore less attractive for
enemies to buy the technologies to overcome them. The ABM Treaty era showed
that it is the absence of defenses, rather than their presence, that
encourages the development of offensive technologies.
• Ground-based defenses can
protect specific territory; sea-based defenses can more flexibly defend larger
areas for less money. Neither provides global protection. Only space-based
systems can provide a truly global defense. The
Political factors have dictated technical behavior,
subordinating the development of the most technically sound and cost-effective
defenses. The problem transcends administrations and political parties; it
reflects the unprecedented political opposition that has been mounted against
effective missile defenses over the past five decades. The most technologically
feasible global defense -- space-based -- has not been politically acceptable,
because of concerns about the "weaponization of
space." This is a dubious argument that ignores history, and the current
efforts of other states to weaponize space. But the
result is to leave us with a ground-based defense that is politically the most
acceptable but technologically the least effective.
Because of Ronald Reagan's interest in research on all ballistic
missile-defense concepts, his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) explored all
possible concepts and pursued major technology initiatives, in order to
underwrite those most effective. By the end of his administration, it was clear
that a space-based interceptor system, "Brilliant Pebbles," could
meet even the strict so-called Nitze criteria
(survivability under direct attack and cost-effectiveness at the margin as
compared to investments in attacking missiles).
This interceptor system consisted of a constellation of very
lightweight satellites (each about the size of a watermelon) that would
continuously monitor the Earth below and detect any missile launch within its
field of view. The satellite with the best intercept opportunity would release
a Brilliant Pebble (weighing a few pounds) that maneuvers into the path of the
oncoming missile or its payload and destroys it by impact. All key technologies
were proven by the mid-1990s; today's technology is more advanced and could
intercept even short-range Scuds in their boost phase.
Brilliant Pebbles was approved in 1990; the Pentagon's
independent costing agency estimated acquisition and 20-year operations costs
at $11 billion in 1990 dollars, or about $16 billion in inflation-adjusted
dollars. It would have been far more capable than all other missile-defense
concepts pursued since then -- at many times that cost -- but political
considerations killed Brilliant Pebbles in 1993. Even the supporting technology
programs were cancelled and the technologists dispersed -- so those most
important products from the $30-billion SDI investment were lost.
Today the
Great advances in technology have resulted when visionary and
persistent leaders, supported by competent scientists and engineers and set
apart from the normal acquisition bureaucracy, are given the necessary
resources to prove new ideas can and will work. This recipe should again be
employed to revive cutting-edge technologies demonstrated over a decade ago --
and to build the defenses we need in the 21st century.
Mr. Cooper, former director of the SDI and chief U.S.
negotiator to the Geneva Space and Defense Talks, is chairman of High Frontier,
a missile defense advocacy group. Mr. Pfaltzgraff is
president of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies at
the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
--------------------------------------
Hostage Crisis
By
As the parents of Daniel Pearl, The Wall Street Journal's
reporter who was kidnapped and brutally murdered in
Whatever success the U.N. Security Council would presume to
claim, it cannot be said that Resolution 1701 has effectively addressed the direct
cause of the fighting -- the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser, 31, and Eldad Regev, 26, by Hezbollah,
and the earlier abduction of Gilad Shalit, 19, by Hamas.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan's
call for the unconditional release of these soldiers has been ignored.
Moreover, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, the
terrorists have not only seized the soldiers as hostages for political
blackmail, they have not allowed the Red Cross to visit them. Their families do
not know their physical condition; they have no proof they are even alive.
And so now these families of Ehud, Eldad and Gilad are asking to
meet with Kofi Annan. They
wish to plead with the secretary-general to use the full weight of his moral
authority to mobilize and intensify the efforts of the international community
he leads -- an influential body that has managed to compel two fierce armies to
cease hostilities -- to address this flagrant violation of humanitarian law.
On that score, these families are correct: The time has come for
Mr. Annan to personally and aggressively intervene,
and to insist publicly that, at the minimum, the Red Cross, or his personal
humanitarian representatives, be given immediate access to these soldiers.
Will he? It seems unlikely. Sadly, this is not the first time
that concerned parents have turned to Mr. Annan in
much the same circumstances. Six years ago, another delegation of distressed
families came to the U.N. with a similar tragedy, following the abduction of
three Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah from under the noses of Unifil
and, by some accounts, with their help. The investigation that was subsequently
conducted found that the U.N. had made "serious errors in judgment"
by hiding information that "would have been helpful in an assessment of
the condition of the three abducted soldiers." At that time, the U.N.'s
interest in appearing "neutral" overshadowed its commitment to the
preservation of human lives. The world cannot afford a repeat of such inaction
and poor judgment.
Undoubtedly, the secretary-general will tell the families of Ehud, Eldad and Gilad that he has dispatched a high-level team to
When our son Daniel was in captivity, millions of people around
the world prayed for his safe return. In that prayer, they made a solemn pledge
never to allow abductions of innocent people to become the norm of civilized
society, no matter the political purpose, regardless of grievance or goal.
Kofi Annan's
resolve against these acts of terrorism will determine to a great extent what
norms will govern our society in generations to come, and whether organizations
such as Hezbollah and Hamas will gloat in unruly
appetite or be reined in by moral principles. We urge Mr. Annan
to make bold and brave efforts to ensure -- as a legacy and gift -- that we
will not allow our children and our world be taken captive by terror. Mr.
Secretary-General, this time, help bring the boys back
home.
Mr. and Mrs. Pearl are co-founders of the Daniel Pearl
Foundation (www.danielpearl.org), a
U.N.-affiliated NGO.
--------------------------------------
Good
Governance Is Good Business
By
NEERAJ BHARGAVA
A growing number of
headlines suggest that stringent Securities and Exchange Commission
regulations,
Based on our recent
experience going public on the New York Stock Exchange, we at WNS Global
Services, an India-based business process outsourcing provider, believe the
answer is no.
Exchanges in
• Credibility:
Meeting the financial reporting, corporate governance and disclosure
requirements necessary for listing on the NYSE builds confidence among clients,
the government and other regulators. Clients prefer reporting in
• Global
visibility: The prestige of an NYSE listing not only builds brand
recognition among U.S. clients and potential clients, but also among
international audiences, who recognize the high standards that must be met. The
enhanced visibility associated with becoming a U.S.-listed public company
translates directly into new business opportunities.
• Shareholder
value: Companies that list in the
• Liquidity:
A
Even the much-maligned
requirements for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance have benefits: Business processes
are better defined, vetted by experts and made more efficient. There also could
be potential for long-term benefits such as a lower cost of capital, smoother
follow-on financing and greater flexibility in future M&A activities.
Good corporate
governance is good business. Meeting global best practices, we help to ensure
the healthy growth of our company. This helps to make it a better employer for
our associates, a better corporate citizen in the countries in which we operate
and a better partner for the companies and other organizations with which we
interact.
Headlines are likely to
continue to assert that stringent financial reporting and corporate governance
guidelines are diminishing the prestige of a
Mr. Bhargava
is co-founder and group chief executive officer of WNS (Holdings) Limited, the
parent company of WNS Global Services, an offshore business process outsourcing
provider.
--------------------------------------
Schwarzenegger
Gives Up
By
SHIKHA DALMIA
Arnold Schwarzenegger is
following the wrong script. After taking over as governor in 2003, he was
expected to vanquish business-as-usual politicians in
Mr. Schwarzenegger's
move officially marks the end of his grand plans to reform
The real issue, however,
is what this bond measure will do to
The housing bond is
simply welfare masquerading as a capital project. A bulk of its money won't
fund general infrastructure -- an acceptable use of general-obligation bonds
like these -- but such things as cheap multifamily dwellings for low-income
families, and down-payment assistance for first-time home buyers.
The education bond is
equally misguided, given that 40% of the state's $94 billion general-fund
revenues are already constitutionally earmarked for education. Moreover,
In contrast to schools,
Even after the proposed
$19 billion transportation bond and the $384 billion in planned transportation
spending by the state's biggest three regions (Los Angeles, the Bay Area and
San Diego), California's traffic congestion will actually be worse in 2030 than
it is today because the state is choosing pork and pet transit projects instead
of prioritizing and adding much-needed highway capacity.
There are better ways of
generating steady revenues to fund transportation and other needed
infrastructure that don't involve giving Sacramento's politicians a ready
excuse to dip into the pockets of future taxpayers. Among them, notes Donna Arduin, Mr. Schwarzenegger's former finance director, are
things like privately built toll roads and congestion pricing. "These were
things that were recommended to him back when he first took office," she
says.
It is disheartening that
the governor -- who claims to have been inspired to enter political life by the
small-government ideas of Milton Friedman and Adam Smith -- has ignored these
measures, especially now when government spending in California is touching the
stratosphere. Indeed, despite the fact that
"That would not
have been the case had the state simply held its spending increases to the
expected gains in revenues," laments Tom McClintock, a Republican state
senator who is running for lieutenant governor this year and who has refused to
endorse any of the bond measures except for the one pertaining to levees.
"This would have covered inflation, population increases and then
some."
The deficit is not all
Mr. Schwarzenegger's fault, of course. He deserves much credit for killing Gray
Davis's notorious car tax and reforming
But the bond proposal
suggests that Mr. Schwarzenegger has given up on even trying to
put
Ms. Dalmia
is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation.