Foreign drugs get little scrutiny by FDA

November 1, 2007
Foreign drugs get little scrutiny by FDA

Prescription drugs and drug ingredients pour into the United States from an estimated 3,000 foreign companies, though the real number is unknown and could be as high as 6,700, congressional inspectors said in a memo to members of the subcommittee ahead of Thursday's hearing. Among those invited to testify: FDA commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach. The agency declined an interview request ahead of the hearing.

The FDA plans to inspect just 300 foreign drug firms this year, announcing in advance its intent to do so each time. Of those inspections, most are of plants that make drugs awaiting FDA approval. Just 15 are of the type of periodic assessment meant to ensure a company's products remain safe in the years following FDA approval, though some pre-approval inspections also include some post-approval surveillance.

Pentagon reels from second major nuclear arms blunder in a month

October 26, 2007
Pentagon reels from second major nuclear arms blunder in a month

The Pentagon was reeling last night from the American military's second major nuclear weapons blunder in a month.

The latest outrage came as Commander Michael Portland, the officer in charge of the USS Hampton, the most advanced nuclear attack submarine in the world, was fired after it was discovered that he had neglected to make basic daily safety checks.

The Pentagon said that it had lost confidence in Commander Portland's leadership after checks showed that he had failed to analyse the chemical and radiological properties of the submarine's nuclear reactor for a month.

It is considered vital that the reactor's condition be fully examined every day so that any malfunction can be caught early.

Taliban Continue to Control Musa Qala

October 28, 2007
Taliban Continue to Control Musa Qala

KABUL, Afghanistan — Days after Taliban fighters overran Musa Qala in February a U.S. commander pledged that Western troops would take it back. Nine months later, the town is still Taliban territory, a symbol of the West's struggles to control the poppy-growing south.

But a string of recent battles, won overwhelmingly by American Special Forces, signal a renewed U.S. interest in the symbolic Taliban stronghold, and an Afghan army commander on Sunday said talks are being held with Musa Qala's tribal leaders to help win back the town from the Arab, Chechen and Uzbek fighters who roam its streets.

ElBaradei: UN has no evidence Iran is making nuclear weapons

October 29, 2007
ElBaradei: UN has no evidence Iran is making nuclear weapons

The head of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reiterated on Sunday that he had no evidence Iran is building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric. "I have not received any information that there is a concrete active nuclear weapons program going on right now," Mohamed ElBaradei told CNN.

"Even if Iran were to be working on a nuclear weapon ... they are at least a few years from having such a weapon," he added, citing assessments by US officials themselves.

Immunity deal hampers Blackwater inquiry

October 29, 2007
Immunity deal hampers Blackwater inquiry

WASHINGTON - The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month's deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

As a result, it will likely be months before the United States can — if ever — bring criminal charges in the case that has infuriated the Iraqi government.

"Once you give immunity, you can't take it away," said a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.

Judgment Day for the CIA?

October 26, 2007
Judgment Day for the CIA?

The de jure trial has now been postponed until next week. It may be postponed again, or it might never happen, but for 25 alleged CIA officers and paramilitaries charged in an Italian court with kidnapping an imam from a Milan street in 2003, the de facto trial is pretty much over. Their identities have been exposed in hundreds of pages of warrants and indictments and then picked up by the Italian press and various bloggers worldwide. A couple of them have even made it into Wikipedia. Not only has the court revealed sacrosanct "sources and methods," it offers full names, passport details, home addresses, credit card numbers—even the frequent flier numbers they are said to have used while they traveled on missions to abduct suspected terrorists and deliver them in secret to interrogation centers beyond the reach of the U.S. Constitution or, for that matter, common humanity.

In the past the American Congress, American prosecutors and an aggressive American press carried out these kinds of investigations. Now it seems we're so intimidated by the words "national security" that we have to count on foreign cops and courts to tell us when our own spies run amok.

FEMA's fake 'news conference'

October 26, 2007
FEMA's fake 'news conference'

On Tuesday, FEMA held what was called a "news briefing" on the California fires, but the questions asked did not come from reporters. They were asked instead by FEMA staffers.

"It is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House or that we -- we certainly don't condone it," Press Secretary Dana Perino said. "We didn't know about it beforehand. FEMA has issued an apology, saying that they had an error judgment when they were attempting to get out a lot of information to reporters, who were asking for answers to a variety of questions in regard to the wildfires in California. It's not something I would have condoned. And they, I'm sure, will not do it again."

The Evangelical Crackup

October 28, 2007
The Evangelical Crackup

The hundred-foot white cross atop the Immanuel Baptist Church in downtown Wichita, Kan., casts a shadow over a neighborhood of payday lenders, pawnbrokers and pornographic video stores. To its parishioners, this has long been the front line of the culture war. Immanuel has stood for Southern Baptist traditionalism for more than half a century. Until recently, its pastor, Terry Fox, was the Jerry Falwell of the Sunflower State — the public face of the conservative Christian political movement in a place where that made him a very big deal.

With flushed red cheeks and a pudgy, dimpled chin, Fox roared down from Immanuel's pulpit about the wickedness of abortion, evolution and homosexuality. He mobilized hundreds of Kansas pastors to push through a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, helping to unseat a handful of legislators in the process. His Sunday-morning services reached tens of thousands of listeners on regional cable television, and on Sunday nights he was a host of a talk-radio program, "Answering the Call." Major national conservative Christian groups like Focus on the Family lauded his work, and the Southern Baptist Convention named him chairman of its North American Mission Board.

So when Fox announced to his flock one Sunday in August last year that it was his final appearance in the pulpit, the news startled evangelical activists from Atlanta to Grand Rapids. Fox told the congregation that he was quitting so he could work full time on "cultural issues." Within days, The Wichita Eagle reported that Fox left under pressure. The board of deacons had told him that his activism was getting in the way of the Gospel. "It just wasn't pertinent," Associate Pastor Gayle Tenbrook later told me.

From CIA Jails, Inmates Fade Into Obscurity

October 27, 2007
From CIA Jails, Inmates Fade Into Obscurity

Since 2004, for example, the CIA has handed five Libyan fighters to authorities in Tripoli. Two had been covertly nabbed by the CIA in China and Thailand, while the others were caught in Pakistan and held in CIA prisons in Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and other locations, according to Libyan sources.

The Libyan government has kept silent about the cases. But Libyan political exiles said the men are kept in isolation with no prospect of an open trial.

Other ghost prisoners are believed to remain in U.S. custody after passing into and out of the CIA's hands, according to human rights groups.

At least one former CIA prisoner has been quietly freed. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence agent captured after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was detained at a secret location until he was released last year.

Ani gained notoriety before the Iraq war when Bush administration officials said he had met in Prague with Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker Mohamed Atta. Some officials, including Vice President Cheney, cited the rendezvous as evidence of an alliance between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The theory was later debunked by U.S. intelligence agencies and the Sept. 11 commission, which revealed in 2004 that Ani was in U.S. custody.

The Iraqi spy resurfaced two months ago when Czech officials revealed that he had filed a multimillion-dollar compensation claim. His complaint: that unfounded Czech intelligence reports had prompted his imprisonment by the CIA.

The CIA has resumed its detention program. Since March, five new terrorism suspects have been transferred to Guantanamo. Although the Pentagon has not disclosed details about how or precisely when they were captured, officials have said one of the prisoners, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, had spent months in CIA custody overseas.