Super Bowl may trigger heart attacks

By Matt McMillen, Health.com

January 31, 2011 9:19 a.m. EST

Fans develop an emotional connection to their team and when their team loses, that's an emotional stress.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Study finds emotional stress fans feel after a loss may trigger fatal heart attacks
• Stress generates the so-called fight-or-flight response
• Consuming copious amounts of beer and fatty foods can also trigger attacks

(Health.com) -- This Sunday's Super Bowl could prove to be a real heartbreaker for some fans of the losing team.
A new study suggests that the emotional stress fans feel after a loss may trigger fatal heart attacks, especially in people who already have heart disease. Stress generates the so-called fight-or-flight response, which causes sharp upticks in heart rate and blood pressure that can strain the heart.
For people with heart disease -- or for those who are at risk due to factors such as obesity, smoking, and diabetes -- such strain can prove harmful, if not fatal.
In the study, which was published Monday in the journal Clinical Cardiology, researchers analyzed death records in Los Angeles County for the two weeks after the 1980 and 1984 Super Bowls, both of which featured teams from Los Angeles. (The game days were included.) Then, as a control, the researchers looked at the same data from the corresponding days in the intervening years.
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In 1980, when the Pittsburgh Steelers staged a fourth-quarter comeback to beat the underdog L.A. Rams, heart-related deaths shot up 15% among men and 27% among women in the subsequent two weeks, compared with the same period in 1981 through 1983.
There was also a significant increase in deaths among people ages 65 and older, the study found.

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RELATED TOPICS

• Heart Attacks
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The 1984 Super Bowl was a different story. The L.A. Raiders handily beat the Washington Redskins, and unlike four years earlier, the cardiac death rate didn't increase after the game. In fact, the death rate for women and older people dropped slightly.
"Fans develop an emotional connection to their team...and when their team loses, that's an emotional stress," says the lead author of the study, Robert A. Kloner, M.D., a professor of cardiology at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, in Los Angeles. "There's a brain-heart connection, and it is important for people to be aware of that."
Health.com: 11 healthy Super Bowl snacks
The apparent link between the Super Bowl loss and heart-related deaths is plausible but largely speculative.
Kloner and his colleagues looked only at death-certificate data, not individuals, and they can't be sure that the people who succumbed to heart attacks following the 1980 game were Rams fans, or even watched the game.
David Frid, M.D., a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who was not involved in the study, agrees that "emotional triggers" can set off heart attacks and other cardiac events. But he's not convinced that grief caused by the hometown loss was responsible for the spike in deaths.
"Was it due to the fact that the Rams lost?" Frid asks. "Or was it the emotional roller coaster of the game itself? Does it have to do with the excitement of the event?"
Health.com: How stress can break your heart -- literally
The 1980 Super Bowl was indeed an intense contest, as the study notes. The Rams and Steelers repeatedly traded the lead, and fans of both teams would have experienced extreme and fluctuating emotions -- joy, frustration, anger, elation -- throughout the game. (The fact that the game was played in the Rose Bowl, in Pasadena, may have only intensified the emotions for Rams fans.)
For a number of reasons, the 1984 game would have been much less stressful for people in Los Angeles. The outcome was never in doubt, the Raiders were relatively new to the city, and the game was played far from home, in Florida.
Stress may not be the only factor at work, however. For instance, consuming copious amounts of beer and fatty foods like buffalo wings -- practically a requirement at many Super Bowl parties -- can also trigger a potentially deadly heart attack.
"One high-fat meal can cause your blood to be more likely to clot," Frid says.
Health.com: The 50 fattiest foods in the states
The researchers were surprised by the increase in heart-related deaths among women after the Rams' loss. A similar study conducted in Germany during the 2006 World Cup found that heart attacks spiked on days when the German team played, but mainly among men.
"It may be the same emotional response as it is for men. Women root for their teams, too," Kloner says. "Another possibility is that perhaps a mate's reaction adversely affects the female."
Many people in the U.S. have heart disease and don't even know it, Frid says. With Super Bowl Sunday approaching, he has a simple piece of advice for fans whose diet or lifestyle may be putting them at risk for a heart attack:

"Address what needs to be changed so that you can make it to the end of the game."

U.S. Begins Evacuation Flights From Cairo

By LIAM STACK and J. DAVID GOODMAN

Published: January 31, 2011

CAIRO — The State Department began a voluntary evacuation of American citizens from Egypt on specially chartered flights on Monday as protesters returned in large numbers to the central Liberation Square for a seventh day, the army increased its presence and the security police redeployed in the capital.
The first American government flight departed Cairo International Airport for Larnaca, Cyprus, in the early afternoon with 42 passengers, and as many as eight more flights were preparing to take off for other nearby “safe haven” destinations, including Turkey and Greece, said Elizabeth O. Colton, a spokeswoman for the American Embassy in Cairo. Two more flights left for Athens later in the afternoon with about 177 passengers each, she said..
“Our goal is to get people to a safe place where they can make their own onward travel arrangements,” the embassy said in a statement on Monday. Americans taking government-chartered flights — including dependents of government officials in Egypt, some diplomats and private citizens — would be expected to reimburse the State Department for the cost of travel, which had yet to be determined, at a later date.
Even as the government worked to process all the requests for flights, many Americans had already found room on planes chartered by private companies with workers in Egypt. An estimated 90,000 Americans live and work in the country, most in cities now roiled by antigovernment protests, looting and a military presence that includes tanks and helicopters. Privately chartered flights began over the weekend.
For travelers forced to rely on commercial airlines, the scene was chaotic as the Cairo airport overflowed with tourists and Egyptians desperate to get on an outgoing flight. Outside Terminal 1 more than 1,000 people — mostly Egyptians — sat on sidewalks and in the airport parking lot, surrounded by luggage.
Tempers boiled over in places as travelers struggled to get aboard a limited number of commercial flights. At one point the airport’s departures board stopped announcing flight times, The Associated Press reported, in an attempt to ease tensions. But the move served only to stoke anger over delays and cancellations.

Liam Stack reported from Cairo, and J. David Goodman from New York.

January 30, 2011

New Electricity Meters Stir Fears

By FELICITY BARRINGER

INVERNESS PARK, Calif. — Pacific Gas and Electric’s campaign to introduce wireless smart meters in Northern California is facing fierce opposition from an eclectic mix of Tea Party conservatives and left-leaning individualists who say the meters threaten their liberties and their health.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, “Stop Smart Meters” signs and bumper stickers have been multiplying on front lawns and cars. Four protesters have been arrested for blocking trucks seeking to deliver the meters.
Since 2006, PG&E has installed more than seven million of the devices, which transmit real-time data on customers’ use of electricity.
But in Santa Cruz County, south of San Jose, the Board of Supervisors recently extended a yearlong moratorium on installations. Officials in Marin County, north of San Francisco, approved a ban this month on meters in unincorporated, largely rural areas, where about a quarter of its population lives.
The meters are a crucial building block for what the Obama administration and the industry envision as an efficient “green grid.” The goals are to help utilities allocate power more smoothly and to give people more information on how they consume energy and incentives to use less.
At first, the backlash against PG&E focused on the notion that the meters were giving artificially high readings, but that died down after studies confirmed their overall accuracy.
The new wave of protests comes from conservatives and individualists who view the monitoring of home appliances as a breach of privacy, as well as from a cadre of environmental health campaigners who see the meters’ radio-frequency radiation — like emissions from cellphones and other common devices — as a health threat.
Hypervigilance on health questions has long been typical of Bay Area residents; some local schools ban cupcakes or other sugared treats for classroom birthday celebrations in favor of more nutritious treats like crunchy seaweed snacks, for example.
The health concerns about the smart meters focus on the phenomenon known as “electromagnetic hypersensitivity,” or E.H.S., in which people claim that radiation from cellphones, WiFi systems or smart meters causes them to suffer dizziness, fatigue, headaches, sleeplessness or heart palpitations. (At a recent Public Utilities Commission hearing on smart meters, an audience member requested that all cellphones be turned off as a gesture to the electrosensitive people in the audience.)
The two most recent government reviews of available research found no link between health problems and common levels of electromagnetic radiation. Both reports indicated that more research would be welcome; on that basis, opponents say the meters should not be installed until they are proved safe.
Although there is scientific data on the health concerns, the privacy worries can be answered only by assurances from the utility. And the groups most concerned about privacy — like the local Tea Party affiliate, the North Bay Patriots — tend to have little faith in corporate assurances.
At a meeting of the North Bay Patriots this month, Jed Gladstein, a 64-year-old lawyer, called the devices “the sharp end of a very long spear pointed at your freedoms.” Others have raised concern about how the utility would use the information about individuals’ home appliance use.
David K. Owens, the executive vice president for business operations at the Edison Electric Institute, the national association of utilities, has tried to allay such concerns. “We’ve always gotten information about customers’ usage and always kept it confidential,” he said, adding, “We’re going to honor their privacy.”
Protests related to health and privacy concerns have also blossomed elsewhere in the country. In Maine, for example, residents have waged e-mail campaigns and some towns have adopted moratoriums on installations.
In Northern California, the visceral reaction against the meters and the instant bonding of “electromagnetically sensitive” people also reflects the reality that green solutions often involve new technologies. From genetically engineered seeds to solar tower arrays in the desert, those technologies elicit distrust here.
“It’s not all about saving money — it’s about control,” said Deborah Tavares, 61, a Republican who was arrested this month with other protesters who blocked the driveway of the dispatch center for meter installation trucks in Rohnert Park, south of Santa Rosa.
Her words echoed those of a staunch Democrat who was arrested in nearby Marin County. “It’s another example of corporate control if they are going to roll over our concerns and not listen to us,” said Katharina Sandizell, 41, who helped block installation trucks here in Inverness Park, a hamlet in the environmentally sensitive precincts of Marin County.
As she chatted on a recent day outside a deli on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, she and fellow protesters held up signs urging passing drivers to “Refuse PG&E.” Perhaps one driver in 10 honked in support, and one woman pulled over to ask how she could get a lawn sign.
Heeding his constituents’ worries about electromagnetic frequencies, a state assemblyman from Marin County, Jared Huffman, has introduced a bill to require the utility to offer customers the option of hard-wired smart meters. “It’s not that I personally believe that smart meters are harmful,” he said in an interview. “I have one in my house.”
“But it’s reasonable to let people opt out of a wireless device,” he said. “There’s fiber optic, phone line, Internet — there’s any number of ways to get this information.”
Jeff Smith, a spokesman for PG&E, said the utility was considering the hard-wire option. “We do understand that some of our customers have concerns,” he said, even though “the evidence shows overwhelmingly” that no link to health effects has been established.
The two most recent government reviews of the relevant health studies on electromagnetic hypersensitivity were conducted by health experts drafted by the Maine Public Utilities Commission and by a California technical panel. Neither found a link between such health problems and levels of radiation associated with a smart meter.
“The majority of studies indicated that people who described themselves as suffering from such sensitivity could not detect whether they were being exposed to an electromagnetic field in experiments any more accurately than non-E.H.S. individuals,” said the Maine review, issued in November.
The largest relevant scientific study, a 10-year, $24 million effort dealing with exposure to cellphone radio-frequency radiation, showed a correlation between heavy cellphone use and an increase in brain cancer rates but did not establish that one caused the other. Both sides in the debate quote the study to bolster their arguments.
“No one who’s been affected by this is willing to wait for the science to catch up with the causal link,” said Elisa Baker-Cook, 40, a former journalist from Scarborough, Me., who is leading protests against Central Maine Power’s meters. “When someone is sensitive to wireless, they don’t need a causal link. Our bodies’ reaction is the causal link, and we learn to trust that.”
Dave DeSante, 68, an ornithologist who lives in Marin County, has tried for six weeks to get PG&E to remove a smart meter in his home. His son, Forest, a college student whose skull was severely damaged two years ago, now has a network of titanium filigree in his forehead.
Forest DeSante, who had been unaware that a smart meter was installed in the house just after Thanksgiving, began having severe headaches when he sat near it, his father said.
Dave DeSante said PG&E had promised to look into the problem but had not yet done so.
“The concerns and opposition to this are not going away,” said Mr. Huffman, the assemblyman. “If anything, they’re growing.”

Midwest on Blizzard Watch, Bracing for "Dangerous Storm"

Very heavy snow will fall from Oklahoma northeastward through Kansas, Missouri and Illinois.

Windy City braces for winter storm (Getty Images)

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CNN

5:32 a.m. PST, January 31, 2011

(CNN) -- Chicago is bracing for a snow storm of historic proportions that was expected to coat the Windy City and large sections of the country's midsection in a thick blanket of snow.

Forecasters have issued a blizzard watch.

"Combined snow totals from the Monday afternoon through Wednesday may exceed a foot and a half across much of northern Illinois and far northwest Indiana," the National Weather Service said. "Snowfall rates up to 3 inches per hour will be probable at the height of the storm Tuesday night."

Some of the coldest air of the season will plummet southward and combine with another storm developing over the southern Plains, according to CNN meteorologist Sean Morris, before moving toward the northeast.

An intense surface low will develop over north Texas and pull abundant warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico into the frigid Arctic air diving southward into the Plains. In addition to blizzard conditions, the storm system is expected to spin off heavy snow, ice storms and tornadoes.

This storm appears to be one for the record books.

It could be one of the top 10 biggest snowstorms ever in the Windy City. The biggest snow storm in Chicago's history occurred from January 26-27, 1967 when 23 inches of snow fell on the city.

According to the National Weather Service, snowstorms that drop over 15 inches of snow occur once in about every 19 years. The last time this happened was in January of 1999 when 21.6 inches of snow was recorded in Chicago.

The storm will likely extend from Oklahoma City to Caribou, Maine, by late week, said CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen.

The National Weather Service said the "dangerous storm" will begin to affect Missouri and Illinois, which were under storm warnings, as early as Monday.

Snowfall, primarily on Tuesday, could be over 12 inches in parts of both states, the agency said.

CNN St. Louis affiliate KSDK indicated the storm could be "historic," saying it could rival a 1982 system that left 13.9 inches of snow in St. Louis and some areas with more than 2 feet.

Very heavy snow will fall from Oklahoma northeastward through Kansas, Missouri and Illinois. Snow accumulations there will be measured in feet, not in inches.

Blizzard or near-blizzard conditions are expected as far south as Oklahoma City on Tuesday. The National Weather Service forecast office in Norman, Oklahoma, warns that a "potentially dangerous winter situation" is developing with travel becoming extremely dangerous or impossible across the state by Tuesday morning.

Accumulations of 16 to 24 inches are possible in a narrow band from Illinois into Ohio, and perhaps through St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit, Hennen said, adding it was not yet possible to pinpoint the exact location.

The peak of the storm in the Midwest should be from Tuesday into Wednesday morning, Hennen said. Snow will affect Oklahoma City; Kansas City, Missouri; St. Louis; Chicago; and into Detroit. Other cities likely to be affected during the week include Milwaukee, Cleveland, Boston and the New York cities of Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany.

Punxsutawney Phil, of Groundhog Day fame, may be more interested in his exposed fur than his spring forecast when the system reaches western Pennsylvania.

In total, more than 20 states fall under winter storm advisories, watches or warnings, stretching from New Mexico in the southwest to New Jersey in the northeast.

Severe thunderstorms will likely develop along a trailing cold front from a main low-pressure area. There could be a significant potential for tornadoes in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama.

Where the warm air overrides the cold Arctic air, rain will fall into subfreezing temperatures at the surface and coat trees, power lines and roads in ice from Missouri to southern Illinois and eastward into central Indiana, Morris said. Ice accumulations of up to three-quarters of an inch will be possible, which will likely combine with gusty winds, which could cause tree branches to fall on power lines.

This will also be some of the coldest air of the season, with temperatures expected to drop well below zero in parts of the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma by Wednesday. Temperatures across the central and southern high Plains will be almost 50 degrees below normal in some areas. Low temperatures on Wednesday morning could be in the single digits as far south as north Texas.

Strong winds will combine with the cold temperatures to create extremely dangerous wind chills of 20 to 35 below zero across the southern Plains.

Japanese volcano still erupting, 1,000 residents urged to evacuate as danger zone widens

By: Eric Talmadge, The Associated Press

Posted: 01/30/2011 6:50 PM | Comments: 0 | Last Modified: 01/30/2011 10:02 PM

TOKYO - Officials urged more than 1,000 residents to seek safer ground on Monday and expanded a no-access zone around a volcano that has exploded back to life in southern Japan.
The 4,662-foot (1,421-meter) Shinmoedake volcano erupted last week for the first time in 52 years. The volcano is located in a remote part of the Kirishima range on the southern Japan island of Kyushu. No injuries have been reported.
On Monday, five days after it burst back to life, the volcano was still spewing a spectacular plume into the air, sending a blanket of ash out over a wide area and prompting several hundred residents to seek shelter in evacuation centres.
Officials in the town of Takaharu urged about 1,100 residents to go to evacuation centres because of the danger of debris, ash and landslides. The warning was not mandatory, however, and some residents were returning to their homes instead.
The Meteorological Agency, meanwhile, broadened a no-access danger zone to two miles (three kilometres) from the peak and was planning to send in helicopters to monitor activity near the crater.
Small rocks ejected from the eruptions have broken windows in buildings and cars near Shinmoedake. The eruption has also disrupted train service, closed schools and forced some domestic flight cancellations. Most transportation had been restored by Monday.
Experts said a dome of lava was growing larger inside the volcano's crater, but it was not certain whether the dome would grow enough to spill over the rim and create large flows down the volcano's sides. Avalanches of superheated gas, ash and rock have already been observed.
The Japanese islands are volcanic in origin and dozens of active volcanos continue to erupt with some regularity across the country. In 1991, 43 people died in the eruption of Mount Unzen, also on Kyushu island.

Detroit police: Precinct shooter sexually assaulted teen girl

From Susan Candiotti and Ross Levitt, CNN

January 30, 2011 8:56 p.m. EST

Lamar Deshea Moore, 38, walked into a Detroit precinct with a shotgun and fired, police say.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Girl was kidnapped and assaulted by Detroit man
• Police: She escaped the day man went to police station, opening fire
• Shotgun-wielding attacker was mortally wounded

(CNN) -- Before a man went on a shooting rampage inside a Detroit police station, he kidnapped and sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl who escaped hours before the police attack, authorities confirmed Sunday.
Lamar Deshea Moore, 38, who was mortally wounded by police, wounded four officers January 23.
Police say Moore kidnapped the runaway girl about 10 days before, police Sgt. Eren Stephens told CNN.
"The assault case is closed," said the spokeswoman. "She was kidnapped, held hostage, sexually assaulted and escaped."
Moore's motive for the attack is not known. He had a relative who was scheduled to be sentenced for double homicide, Police Chief Ralph Godbee said last week.
Moore held the girl against her will in the basement of his home, said Stephens, adding the victim also was handcuffed to a toilet. The unidentified girl escaped in her underwear hours before Moore's attack, police said.
"She was still wearing the handcuffs" when she rushed to a neighborhood resident who contacted police, Stephens said.
Investigators say police had surrounded Moore's empty house while they were waiting for a search warrant to enter the home. At the same time, Moore walked into the precinct and started his shooting rampage, they said.
Police say they have interviewed Moore's fiancee, but wouldn't comment further Sunday.
Police released a graphic surveillance video on Friday that shows the gunman identified as Moore indiscriminately firing inside the police precinct and lunging across a counter with a shotgun.
Godbee said his department released the 68-second video to show the "tremendous acts of heroism" of officers and to be transparent in its investigation.
The video does not show all those involved in the incident, Godbee told reporters. "We are thankful to God that all four members who were injured are going to be OK," he said.
The footage provides two angles of the station and a large semicircular counter. Officers are shown talking with each other behind the counter before the gunman approaches and opens fire.
A shoe repairman also was in the station, police said.
Several officers crouch and return fire with handguns. After a barrage of rounds, Moore, clad in a jacket, leaps over the counter and continues the gunfire.
He and a seriously wounded officer exchange rounds at point-blank range, before he circles around the table and collapses, mortally wounded. The gunman apparently ran out of ammunition, Logan said.

The home where Moore was staying caught fire early last Tuesday and was heavily damaged, police said. Detroit Fire Capt. Kwaku Atara told CNN the fire had been ruled arson.

Unrest Unsettles Global Markets

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Published: January 30, 2011 e

On Wall Street, it’s what’s known as an exogenous event — a sudden political or economic jolt that can’t be predicted or modeled but sends shockwaves rippling through global markets.
Investors have largely shrugged off a series of these unexpected jolts recently, such as the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, but the situation in Egypt has the potential to cause more widespread pain, especially if oil and other commodities keep surging or the unrest spreads to more countries in the Middle East.
While Egypt’s banks and stock market were closed because of the protests there, other Middle Eastern markets shuddered in trading Sunday, with shares in Dubai falling by 4.3 percent, paralleling a 3.7 percent decline in Abu Dhabi and 2.9 percent fall in Qatar.
Last week, the Dow Jones industrial average nearly surpassed the closely-watched 12,000 level, but the index fell 166 points in late trading Friday as the protests in Egypt intensified and oil prices rose 3.7 percent to $89.34 a barrel.
With the United States economy seeming to gain a foothold only recently — new government data released Friday showed the economy grew by 3.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 — a sustained rise in oil prices could choke off growth, analysts said. It could also undermine the more general optimism that lifted the Standard and Poor’s 500 index by 1.5 percent in January, following a 12.8 percent jump in 2010.
“A one-dollar, one-day increase in a barrel of oil takes $12 million out of the U.S. economy,” said Jason S. Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington research group. “If tensions in the Mideast cause oil prices to rise by $5 for even just three months, over $5 billion dollars will leave the U.S. economy. Obviously, this is not a strategy for creating new jobs.”
Until now, the rising stock market in the United States has defied several other outside threats, including the threat of food inflation, interest rate increases in China, and the continuing sovereign debt troubles in Europe, said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist of Standard & Poor’s equity research group.
“But as is usually the case, a boxer never gets knocked out by a punch he’s looking for,” Mr. Stovall said. “This could be what triggers the decline. Geopolitical events are very, very hard to model.”
Egypt is not an oil exporter — nor is its stock market a regional heavyweight. As the home of the Suez Canal and the nearby Sumed pipeline, though, it is one of a handful of places classified as a World Oil Transit Chokepoint by the United States Department of Energy, and events there can have an outsized impact on energy prices. According to the department’s figures, about 2.9 million barrels a day passed through the canal and the pipeline in 2009 — about 3 percent of global production.
As a percentage of world oil demand, that may not sound like much, said William H. Brown III, a former Wall Street energy analyst who now consults for hedge funds and financial institutions.
“But prices are determined at the margin and that’s a lot of oil in markets these days,” said Mr. Brown, who estimates that global spare production capacity stands at about 2.5 million barrels, the bulk of which are in Saudi Arabia.

Man held over threat to Dearborn mosque: police

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A GPS search I did. I'll bet they get a lot of awkward walk-ins. http://t.co/y7z9qqr

 

 

Sun Jan 30, 2011 6:11pm EST

(Recasts lead, adds details)
CHICAGO - A man found with explosives outside one of the nation's largest mosques in suburban Detroit is in jail facing felony charges, police said on Sunday.
Roger Stockham, 63, of California, was arrested with explosives last Monday outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan, and faces felony charges that carry up to 35 years in prison, Dearborn police told Reuters by phone.
Stockham was arraigned on January 26 on one felony count of making a false report or terrorist threat and one count of possessing explosives with unlawful intent.
He carried class-C fireworks -- called "consumer fireworks" by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, a police source said.
"It was a substantial quantity (of explosives), enough to do us harm," said Kassem Allie, 53, the executive administrator of the Islamic Center.
Almost 30 percent of Dearborn's 97,775 residents are Arab, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report from 2006. The Islamic Center of America is a 70,000 square-foot facility that can accommodate 1,000 people, according to news reports.
The incident was called a "bias-motivated attack" in a statement issued on Saturday by Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Michigan branch of the Center on American-Islamic Relations.
"We thank law enforcement authorities for their quick and professional actions in this troubling incident," Walid said. "The increased number of bias incidents targeting American Muslim institutions must be addressed by local, state and national officials and law enforcement authorities."
Bond has been set at $500,000 cash, with the requirement of a GPS tether if bond is posted, and a court date is set for February 4.

U.S. role in Egypt crisis "shameful": Chavez

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Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez speaks during a meeting with United Socialist party members in Caracas, December 17, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Miraflores Palace/Handout

By Andrew Cawthorne

CARACAS | Sun Jan 30, 2011 5:43pm EST

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's firebrand leader Hugo Chavez accused the United States on Sunday of a "shameful" role in the Egyptian crisis and of hypocrisy for supporting, then abandoning strongmen round the world.
Chavez, Washington's leading critic in the Americas, said he had spoken to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and Syria's President Bashar al-Assad for a briefing on the protests in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world.
"In Egypt, the situation is complicated, Chavez said.
"Now you are seeing comments from Washington and some European nations. As President Gaddafi said to me, it's shameful, it makes you kind of sick to see the meddling of the U.S., wanting to take control."
The United States has urged an orderly transition to democracy in Egypt to avoid a power vacuum but has stopped short of calling on President Hosni Mubarak, an ally of three decades, to step down.
The socialist Chavez has generally cast himself as pro-Arab and opposed to the policies of Israel and the United States.
But in brief comments carried on state TV, he avoided any further specific comment on Egypt, saying only that "national sovereignty" should be respected.
Chavez scoffed at what he said was the United States' chameleon-like foreign policy.
"See how the United States, after using such-and-such a president for years, as soon as he hits a crisis, they abandon him. That's how the devil pays," he said.
"They didn't even give a visa or anything to the president of Tunisia," he said, referring to President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who lost power this month after failing to quell the worst unrest of his two-decade rule.
Washington and other Western powers have been caught off guard by the popular uprising on Arab streets after long relying on autocratic regional rulers as a bulwark against Islamic extremism.
Chavez spoke after inspecting an army ammunitions depot where predawn explosions killed one person and injured another three, lighting up the sky and terrifying locals.
Though the incident appeared to be an accident, the government said it was not discounting any cause given the depth of feeling against Chavez by political opponents.
Venezuelans have been following events in the Arab world closely, with some Chavez foes privately expressing hopes for a similar uprising against him after nearly 12 years in power.

House Speaker Boehner warns against debt default

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Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) speaks about the shooting in Arizona during a news conference in West Chester, Ohio, January 9, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Jay LaPrete

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON | Sun Jan 30, 2011 1:26pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner on Sunday said that the United States must continue meeting its obligations to fund government debt or risk a global financial disaster.
With the Treasury Department rapidly coming closer to bumping up against its statutory borrowing limit of $14.3 trillion, some of Boehner's fellow Republicans in Congress have suggested that no further borrowing should be authorized until deep cuts are made in federal spending.
Boehner, interviewed on "Fox News Sunday," was asked about the impact of a government default if the limit on its borrowing authority was not raised in a timely way.
"That would be a financial disaster not only for our country, but for the worldwide economy," Boehner responded. He added, "Remember, the American people on Election Day said we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs. You can't create jobs if you default on the federal debt."
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has estimated that unless Congress acts to increase the debt ceiling, his agency will run out of borrowing authority sometime between March 31 and May 16.
At that point, the government could default on some loans.
Last week, the Treasury Department initiated the first in what is expected to be several stop-gap moves to delay hitting that $14.3 trillion limit on credit.
Even as he pressed for cutting government spending, Boehner said of the notion of Republicans forcing a government default: "I don't think it's a question that is even on the table."
The U.S. debt -- the amount of accumulated government borrowing -- has been rapidly rising to a level that many economists say is potentially dangerous.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office noted last week that debt held by the public will most likely jump from 40 percent of GDP at the end of fiscal 2008 to nearly 70 percent at the end of this fiscal year.
The CBO last week estimated that this year's deficit will hit nearly $1.5 trillion, further worsening the debt problem.
Boehner and fellow Republicans have urged cutting back federal spending to fiscal 2008 levels, which they say would save about $100 billion a year.
During his interview on Fox News Sunday, Boehner said, "There is no limit to the amount of spending we're willing to cut."
In his State of the Union speech to Congress last week, President Barack Obama tried to answer Republican calls for spending cuts by offering up a five-year freeze on some spending, which he said would save about $400 billion.
TAXES DEBATED
But neither the Republican plan nor Obama's would produce anywhere near enough in long-term savings to solve the nation's severe fiscal problems.
Both Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday urged bipartisan talks with the Obama administration to address those long-term problems, which will only grow as an aging U.S. population requires more federal retirement benefits and government-backed healthcare.
McConnell, on NBC's "Meet the Press," would not say, however, whether he would consider tax increases -- a remedy that many Democrats and private analysts say must be included.
When Fox News Sunday asked Boehner about hiking taxes, he responded, "Now, here you're getting -- you're getting right in the same old nonsense we've always gotten into."
White House Chief of Staff William Daley, interviewed on CBS News Face the Nation, said that raising taxes now, with the U.S. economy still trying to recover, was not "the way to go at this point."
While he said the Obama administration wants to sit down with congressional leaders to work on deficit problems, "The reality is ... there is no way they (Republicans) are going to look for any revenue raising in any way, shape or form" for the long-term. "That puts a tremendous constraint on obviously the budget and the deficit," Daley said.

January 28, 2011

As Republicans Resist Closing Prisons, Cuomo Is Said to Scale Back Plan

By DANNY HAKIM and THOMAS KAPLAN

ALBANY — Nearly a month ago, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo made a call to close some prisons an emotional capstone of his first annual address to the Legislature, vowing, to sustained applause from fellow Democrats, that underused prisons would no longer be “an employment program” for upstate New York.
The issue has long prompted resentment, particularly for families of New York City residents who are shipped hours north of the city to be incarcerated, to places like the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, which is perched in the northern Adirondacks.
But now Mr. Cuomo appears to be, at least partly, in retreat.
The governor and his staff had considered closing or consolidating potentially 10 or more adult and youth prisons and other facilities controlled by the corrections department, but they have faced stiff resistance from Senate Republicans, who are trying to fend off the loss of hundreds of state jobs in some of their upstate districts.
Now the governor appears to be scaling back his ambitions, those with knowledge of his plans said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to talk on the record about the governor’s budget deliberations ahead of the budget’s completion.
Any plan to shutter specific prisons is unlikely to be included in the budget Mr. Cuomo releases on Tuesday and will be left to negotiations with the Legislature as it hammers out a final budget over the next two months.
The governor’s office has already signaled a willingness to accommodate Republicans; a plan floated on Friday in The New York Post suggests as few as six prisons would be closed, three of them in New York City, including two that house work-release programs.
If the new strategy holds, it would sharply curtail Mr. Cuomo’s ambition and could ultimately even increase the proportion of prisoners sent upstate.
In his Jan. 5 address to the Legislature, Mr. Cuomo said that “an incarceration program is not an employment program.”
“If people need jobs, let’s get people jobs,” he added. “Don’t put other people in prison to give some people jobs. Don’t put other people in juvenile justice facilities to give some people jobs. That’s not what this state is all about, and that has to end this session.”
On Friday, his administration had little to say publicly on the matter.
“While any speculation about the budget is premature,” Mr. Cuomo’s deputy communications director, Josh Vlasto, said, “prisons with very significant vacancy rates should be evaluated and potentially considered for closure given the state’s fiscal condition.”
Mr. Vlasto also said there was never a plan to close only upstate facilities.
Republicans have certainly made their feelings clear about any potential closings.
“We recognize that this is going to be a tough budget with real cuts, and we just hope that these cuts are equally distributed around the state,” said Senator Thomas W. Libous, a Binghamton Republican and the deputy majority leader.
“I do think the governor understands the prison issue,” he added. “I know he understands the prison issue is always a sensitive one to upstate.”
Leaders of the legislative committees that oversee prisons said Friday that they had not been briefed by Mr. Cuomo or his aides on what closings might be part of his budget.
The chairman of the Assembly’s Committee on Correction, Jeffrion L. Aubry, Democrat of Queens, expressed concerns about possible closings of prisons in New York City that have work-release programs. “We believe in work release,” he said. “We would not want to see a diminution of work release in the city of New York, where a large majority of the prisoners come from.”
“If you close them in the city of New York, where are you going to have those inmates functioning out of?” he added. “Is it going to be some place that’s close to employment?”
Mr. Aubry also rejected the idea of balancing prison closings based on geography. “That’s not good policy,” he said. “That’s just politics.”
Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit prison-monitoring and advocacy group, said he would be disappointed if only six facilities were closed and half were in New York City.
“The totally legitimate corrections wisdom is it’s important to locate prisons in communities that are close to where the people come from that are locked up,” Mr. Gangi said. “The evidence and the research show that when prisoners are able to maintain ties with their family, they cope better with their prison experience and they have a lower recidivism rate.”
But Senator Betty Little, a Republican whose district includes much of the Adirondacks, said the economic effects had to be considered. “The area I represent is northern New York, it’s very rural, and we built an economy around these facilities, first of all because no one else wanted them in their neighborhoods and because the land was cheap,” she said. “Hopefully when they look at closure, they look at economic impact. I’m not trying to create inmates to keep these places open, but we need to look at the whole picture.”
Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson, a Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester County and is chairwoman of the Legislature’s Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, said: “So many of our inmates are already separated by vast distances from their families. And this decision must be carefully thought through with a focus not only on the financial savings, but also, on the impact on our local communities.”

Nicholas Confessore contributed reporting.

January 28, 2011

For Governors, Medicaid Looks Ripe to Slash

By KEVIN SACK

Hamstrung by federal prohibitions against lowering Medicaid eligibility, governors from both parties are exercising their remaining options in proposing bone-deep cuts to the program during the fourth consecutive year of brutal economic conditions.
Because states confront budget gaps estimated at $125 billion, few essential services — schools, roads, parks — are likely to escape the ax. But the election of tough-minded governors, the evaporation of federal aid, the relentless growth of Medicaid rolls and the exhaustion of alternatives have made the program, which primarily covers low-income children and disabled adults, an outsize target.
In Arizona, which last year ended Medicaid payments for some organ transplants, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, is asking the Obama administration to waive a provision of the new health care law so that the state can remove 280,000 adults from the program’s rolls. In California, the newly elected governor, Jerry Brown, a Democrat, proposes cutting Medicaid by $1.7 billion, in part by limiting the beneficiaries to 10 doctor visits a year and six prescriptions a month.
In the budget he will unveil on Tuesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York is expected to propose cutting even more — at least $2 billion from projected state spending on Medicaid, which totaled about $14 billion this year.
And Gov. Nathan Deal, the new Republican leader of Georgia, proposed this month to end Medicaid coverage of dental, vision and podiatry treatments for adults. South Carolina is considering going a step further by also eliminating hospice care.
The governors are taking little joy in their proposals. And many of them, particularly the Republicans, are complaining about provisions of last year’s health care overhaul, and of the stimulus package before it, that require the states to maintain eligibility levels in order to keep their federal Medicaid dollars.
“Please know that I understand fully the impacts of this rollback, and it is with a heavy heart that I make this request,” Ms. Brewer wrote this week in seeking a waiver, the first of its kind, from Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services. “However, I am left with no other viable alternative.”
The shrinking of Medicaid programs, if approved by the state legislatures, would come at a tenuous moment for the Obama administration. Starting in 2014, the health care law calls for an enormous expansion of Medicaid eligibility that is expected to add 16 million beneficiaries by 2019.
Some states are now cutting benefits like prescription drugs and mental health treatment that will be required then. The federal government will cover the entire cost of the expansion through 2016, when states must gradually pick up a share, peaking at 10 percent in 2020 and remaining there.
Governors have known that this precipice was near for close to two years.
Medicaid, which covered 48.5 million people in 2009, up 8 percent in a year, is a joint state and federal program. The federal government provides the lion’s share of the money and sets minimum standards for eligibility and benefits that states may exceed if they wish.
In 2009, Congress provided about $90 billion for states in the stimulus package to offset the cost of surging Medicaid rolls. Last August, it extended the aid at a reduced level, adding $15 billion over six months. The relief raised the federal share to between 65 percent and 82 percent, depending on the state, up from between 50 percent and 75 percent.
While that money is widely credited with staving off catastrophe, deficits were so deep that 39 states cut Medicaid payments to providers in 2010, and 20 states pared benefits, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
On July 1, the enhanced federal aid will disappear, causing an overnight increase of between one-fourth and one-third in each state’s share of Medicaid’s costs. But because of the federal eligibility restrictions, the options for states are largely limited to cutting benefits that are not federally required; reducing payments to doctors, hospitals and nursing homes; and raising taxes on those providers.
“States have already cut payments to health care providers and scaled back benefits over the last few years, so these new proposed cuts are much more painful,” said Edwin Park, a health expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning research group.
A number of states, Texas and California among them, are considering further reductions of as much as 10 percent in payments to providers. Medicaid reimbursement is already so low that many physicians refuse to accept the coverage.
Several states also plan to raise co-payments for beneficiaries. And a number of governors, notably Rick Scott in Florida, are considering vast expansions of managed care plans in an attempt to control costs.
Mr. Brown’s proposed cap on doctors’ visits in California would affect only 10 percent of Medicaid recipients, said Toby Douglas, the state’s Medicaid director. But many of them would be among the sickest beneficiaries. Mr. Brown also has suggested eliminating an adult day care program that serves 27,000 people who might otherwise end up in nursing homes.
“We are having to make proposals that are not the best choices for our most vulnerable beneficiaries,” Mr. Douglas said. “But given our limited resources, they are the best choices for the State of California.”
Lawmakers in a few states have discussed withdrawing from Medicaid, although Texas officials recently concluded that the loss of federal matching dollars would make it impractical. In at least one state, Minnesota, officials are expanding Medicaid eligibility to some childless adults before 2014, largely to win federal dollars for coverage that was being provided by the state.
Arizona’s waiver request will be a test of the new health care law’s flexibility, and of the White House’s disposition. Other states are watching. Twenty-nine Republican governors wrote Mr. Obama and Congressional leaders this month to urge repeal of the prohibition, which they called “unconscionable.”
Jessica Santillo, a spokeswoman for the federal Department of Health and Human Services, said the agency would not comment on Arizona’s pending request or the administration’s approach to waivers. “We want to continue our close partnership with the states and our nation’s governors,” she said.
Arizona is asking to remove 250,000 childless adults and 30,000 parents from Medicaid. They were granted eligibility by a 2000 referendum that made Arizona one of the few states to cover low-income childless adults.
The expansion was financed with proceeds from cigarette taxes and a tobacco lawsuit, but that money became insufficient in 2004. The state’s general fund has been making up the difference ever since. Eliminating the coverage would save $541 million, closing nearly half of the budget gap for the coming year.
In her letter to Ms. Sebelius, Ms. Brewer noted that Medicaid consumed 30 percent of her state’s general fund, up from 17 percent in 2007. And she emphasized that Arizona’s coverage was more generous than that in most states, a pointed reference to Kansas, where Ms. Sebelius was governor until two years ago.

January 28, 2011

Social Security and Welfare Benefits Going Paperless

By CHRISTINE HAUSER

A rooster is crowing, and an alarm clock chimes. “Wake up, wake up, wake up, it’s the first of the month,” the rap song by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony goes. “To get up, get up, get up, so cash your checks and get up.”
Immortalized in rap songs, examined in books on inner city life and discussed on Facebook, the federal benefits check has developed into a social and cultural icon. The checks have generated a “first of the month” economy in some places, as lottery revenue increases and lines at liquor stores and discount retailers swell. And in some communities, the checks serve as security to borrow cars, get a loan or sleep for a few days in someone’s house in hard times, said Sudhir Venkatesh, a professor of sociology at Columbia University.
But now, the days for such rituals are numbered.
In May, the government will no longer pay someone eligible for benefits with a mailed check. Instead, the money will be electronically deposited directly into a bank account or made accessible by a debit card. And by March 2013, the 10 million people who receive checks, out of 70 million people in all, must switch over to direct deposit or use a card.
For the government, the policy is in line with a trend toward paperless banking that will curb theft and save $120 million a year in costs.
But the first of the month won’t be the same anymore.
The change will have social and cultural impact. Some recipients have resisted it because they cannot open an account, or simply because they feel more comfortable with a check in hand.
Robert A. Caciopoli, a 72-year-old retired schoolteacher, was one of the holdouts. Every month, he takes his Social Security check to the local bank in Bridgeport, Conn. He socializes with the tellers, some of them former students, and watches them count out his cash.
“I like my money in my hand once, before everybody and his brother gets their hands on it,” Mr. Caciopoli said.
But Mr. Caciopoli said he was reluctantly switching to direct deposit for his Social Security checks because he had no choice. “That is the new wave of things so they can have their hands on your money,” he said. “It drives you crazy just trying to figure out who is getting what and when.”
The paper check has been synonymous with Social Security since the first recurring payment was mailed to Ida May Fuller in 1940, an event deemed such a milestone that the Social Security Administration archived a photograph of her posing with the $22.54 check next to her mailbox in Brattleboro, Vt.
Many older adults lament the new rule as another step, like automated switchboards, toward impersonal banking. And without a check to hold, they feel they will have less control over their finances. But government officials counter that criminals have long preyed on vulnerable individuals, and the online system provides extra security.
Treasury officials say electronic deposits will eliminate the $93 million in Treasury checks of all kinds that were fraudulently endorsed and cashed in 2010. David A. Lebryk, commissioner of the department’s Financial Management Service, said direct deposit payments would be accessible even in natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, when mail delivery is impossible.
While direct deposit of government checks is already widespread in states like Florida, where there are large populations of retirees, the decision puts the spotlight on places that do not have banks or where people have little access to the Internet.
In Elsa, Tex., given the state’s low literacy rate, some older adults rely on relatives, local stores or senior centers for cashing services.
“Some people did hard labor all their time and they just never learned how to print their name,” said Armando Garza, a former mayor. “They just put the X.”
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said 9.5 percent of Southern households did not have bank accounts — higher than any other region.
Recipients can choose debit cards instead, but that, too, will take some adjustment. Under the program, which will be administered for the government by the financial services company Comerica, recipients will have access to more than 50,000 A.T.M.’s around the country for one free withdrawal a month and 90 cents for additional transactions. If one of the A.T.M.’s is not in their area, they may end up paying fees at other A.T.M.’s.
Some see the decision as government meddling and say they fear their spending habits may be traced. But Mr. Lebryk, the Treasury official, said that information could be obtained only with a court order in a “rare exception.”
He said the department expected to keep mailing checks for people in some areas, including overseas, in remote parts of Alaska and on some Indian reservations.
Government agencies, sheriffs and banks are preparing for the changes.
Lawrence Grimaldi, a spokesman with the Rhode Island Department of Elderly Affairs, said the department had directed social workers to help older adults who might not drive anymore to get state identification cards so they could open accounts.
People’s United Bank in Bridgeport has been holding “senior appreciation” sessions in supermarkets to help older adults, over coffee and cookies, understand online banking and practice using A.T.M.’s. “I know this is a hard sell to a lot of seniors,” said Angela DeLeon, a crime prevention specialist who works with the bank.
In some areas, the new policy may have more of a social impact than an economic one.
At a New York City housing complex, tenants meet in lobbies to wait for mail delivery on check day. Some escort older adults to cashing facilities, wary of the opportunists who may circle on the first of the month. On a remote Indian reservation in South Dakota, residents of the Rosebud Sioux tribe assemble at the post office for the arrival of “first class,” the slang for mailed federal checks.
Those casual gatherings could taper off as benefits are instead electronically deposited into individual accounts.
But other rituals may well survive. There are few places to spend money in Rosebud, S.D., so the group shopping pilgrimages to Nebraska are likely to carry on — once a month.
“It is more or less like a big exodus,” said Perry DeCory, a communications specialist for the tribe.

Police threaten, swipe camera from CNN crew in Cairo

By the CNN Wire Staff

January 28, 2011 -- Updated 1359 GMT (2159 HKT)

Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- A CNN crew working to cover the clashes between security forces and protesters in Cairo felt the wrath of Egypt's police on Friday.
CNN senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman said he and photojournalist Mary Rogers were under an overpass and behind a column as protesters and police were clashing.
Plainclothes police arrived, surrounded the CNN team and wanted "to haul us off," Wedeman said.
"A big struggle began," he said.

Protests renewed in Egypt

CNN iReporter tells Egypt story

Police grabbed a camera from Rogers, cracked its viewfinder and took the camera away.
Wedeman said the police threatened to beat them.
Wedeman said he urged police to give back the camera to show that Egypt believes in freedom of the press. He said the security forces declined to do so.
Wedeman discussed the incident Friday on CNN's "American Morning" and on CNN International, providing an account that unfolded between dramatic video footage of police in riot gear, clouds of tear gas and masses of people on the street.
The security forces' behavior Friday was in stark contrast to their reaction to first day of demonstrations Tuesday in Egypt when officers were relatively restrained, Wedeman said.

In a separate incident, four French journalists were arrested in Cairo, said Bernard Valero, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, but details of their arrest were not immediately available.

January 28, 2011

Republican Congressman Proposes Tracking Freedom of Information Act Requests

By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON — Representative Darrell Issa calls it a way to promote transparency: a request for the names of hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens, business executives, journalists and others who have requested copies of federal government documents in recent years.
Mr. Issa, a California Republican and the new chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, says he wants to make sure agencies respond in a timely fashion to Freedom of Information Act requests and do not delay them out of political considerations.
But his extraordinary request worries some civil libertarians. It “just seems sort of creepy that one person in the government could track who is looking into what and what kinds of questions they are asking,” said David Cuillier, a University of Arizona journalism professor and chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee at the Society of Professional Journalists. “It is an easy way to target people who he might think are up to no good.”
Mr. Issa sent a letter on Tuesday asking 180 federal agencies, from the Department of Defense to the Social Security Administration, for electronic files containing the names of people who requested the documents, the date of their requests and a description of information they sought. For those still pending after more than 45 days, he also asked for any communication between the requestor and the federal agency. The request covers the final three years of Bush administration and the first two years of President Obama’s.
“Our interest is not in the private citizens who make the requests,” said Kurt Bardella, a spokesman for Mr. Issa. “We are looking at government responses to these Freedom of Information requests and the only way to measure that is to tally all that information.”
Yearly, the federal government receives about 600,000 FOIA requests, as they are called, a vast majority from corporate executives seeking information on competitors that might do business with the government. A much smaller number comes from civil libertarians, private citizens, whistle-blowers or journalists seeking information on otherwise secret government operations.
Federal agencies typically keep logsof these requests, and some even post them on their Internet sites. But officials often remove the names of private citizens when releasing the logs to protect their privacy.
Professor Cuillier said that while Mr. Issa’s objectives might be admirable, his request was not practical. The congressman asked the agencies to respond by mid-February, but a comprehensive response could take months, delaying other pending requests.
The Obama administration has tried to improve the FOIA process, with agencies told within days of his inauguration that they should “adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure.”
But civil liberties groups complain that not all agencies are honoring this order. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, delayed some responses last year after it required career staff members to notify political appointees about inquiries submitted by certain news organizations and by a privacy group that has opposed the use of full-body scanners at airports.
A staff member on Mr. Issa’s committee said the congressman’s interest in the documents issue was spurred by such complaints. John Verdi, a senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, whose FOIA requests last year to the Homeland Security Department were subjected to political review, said he welcomed Mr. Issa’s inquiry. Federal law allows information to be withheld only for specific legal reasons.
But Mr. Verdi was uncomfortable with the idea of any single government entity having a list of every person who has made a FOIA request. “This is data that could be used to track who the biggest gadfly is,” he said.
Mr. Bardella said the oversight committee frequently received important information, like mortgage documents or corporate records, and was able to review them without compromising anyone’s privacy. It could be hard to check, though. Congress excluded itself from the Freedom of Information Act.

Pop17 at MacWorld 2011

Egypt army secures museum with pharaonic treasures: report

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CAIRO | Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:25pm EST

CAIRO (Reuters) - Army units secured the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo against possible looting on Friday, protecting a building with spectacular pharaonic treasures such as the death mask of the boy king Tutankhamun, state TV said.
The news follows a day of violent anti-government protests in Cairo and other cities. Some of the most violent scenes in four days of protests have been in squares and streets close to the museum building.
It was also broadcast as reports of looting of some government buildings emerged. One Reuters photographer said looters had broken into a ruling party building near the museum and were walking out with furniture, computers and other items.
Well-known Egyptian film director Khaled Youssef had earlier called on the army to ensure the museum was protected, in comments to the Al Arabiya television channel.
"I am calling on the Egyptian army to head instantly to the Egyptian museum. There is a fire right next to it in the (ruling) Party headquarters," said Youssef, who has directed movies critical of government policies.
State TV carried a brief headline saying the army had secured the museum but did not give any more details.
The museum contains a huge quantity of ancient antiquities, including the contents of the tomb of Tutankhamun that was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922. The gold death mask is one of the most spectacular pieces.
(Writing by Edmund Blair; editing by Philippa Fletcher)