Fred Harteis News & Articles

Fred Harteis News Articles - The presidential candidates spent the last Sunday before the Iowa caucuses attending church services and staging big rallies to make last-minutes appeals as new polls suggested tightening races in both the Democratic and Republican fields.

With three Democrats scrambling for the lead in Iowa, which holds its caucuses on Thursday, the candidates tried to paint their opponents as flawed for the challenges facing the nation.

Former Senator John Edwards, continuing a line of attack, suggested that Senator Barack Obama is too “nice” ... more »

Permanent Link

Sunday, December 30

Fred Harteis News Articles - Tapes by C.I.A. Lived and Died to Save Image

by maba on Sun 30 Dec 2007 04:07 PM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles - If Abu Zubaydah, a senior operative of Al Qaeda, died in American hands, Central Intelligence Agency officers pursuing the terrorist group knew that much of the world would believe they had killed him.

So in the spring of 2002, even as the intelligence officers flew in a surgeon from Johns Hopkins Hospital to treat Abu Zubaydah, who had been shot three times during his capture in Pakistan, they set up video cameras to record his every moment: asleep in his cell, having his ...   more »

Permanent Link

Saturday, December 29

Fred Harteis News Articles - Infection Hits a California Prison Hard

by maba on Sat 29 Dec 2007 07:41 PM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles - When any of the 5,300 inmates at Pleasant Valley State Prison begin coughing and running a fever, doctors do not think flu, bronchitis or even the common cold.

They think valley fever; and, more often than they would like, they are right.

In the past three years, more than 900 inmates at the prison have contracted the fever, a fungal infection that has been both widespread and lethal.

At least a dozen inmates here in Central California have died from the disease, ...   more »

Permanent Link

Friday, December 28

Fred Harteis News Articles - Huckabee Sees Pakistan as Reason for Border Fence

by maba on Fri 28 Dec 2007 08:50 PM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles - Mike Huckabee used the volatile situation in Pakistan Friday to make an argument for building a fence on the American border with Mexico and found himself trying to explain a series of remarks about Pakistanis and their nation.

On Thursday night he told reporters in Orlando, Fla.: “We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country.”

On Friday, in Pella, ...   more »

Permanent Link

Thursday, December 27

Fred Harteis News Articles - Malnutrition Up in Darfur Despite Aid

by maba on Thu 27 Dec 2007 08:00 PM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles - Child malnutrition rates have increased sharply in Darfur, even though it is home to the world’s largest aid operation, according to a new United Nations report.

The report showed that 16.1 percent of children affected by the conflict in Darfur, a vast, turbulent region in western Sudan, are acutely malnourished, compared with 12.9 last year. For the first time since 2004, the malnutrition rate, a gauge of the population’s overall distress, has crossed what United Nations officials consider to be the emergency ...   more »

Permanent Link

Wednesday, December 26

Fred Harteis News Article- Hospitals Look to Nuclear Tool to Fight Cancer

by maba on Wed 26 Dec 2007 10:35 AM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles - There is a new nuclear arms race under way — in hospitals.

Medical centers are rushing to turn nuclear particle accelerators, formerly used only for exotic physics research, into the latest weapons against cancer.

Some experts say the push reflects the best and worst of the nation’s market-based health care system, which tends to pursue the latest, most expensive treatments — without much evidence of improved health — even as soaring costs add to the nation’s economic burden.

The machines accelerate ...   more »

Permanent Link

Sunday, December 23

Fred Harteis News Articles - Billions in Aid to Pakistan Was Wasted, Officials Assert

by maba on Sun 23 Dec 2007 08:27 PM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles - After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.

In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani ...   more »

Permanent Link

Saturday, December 22

Fred Harteis News Articles - 9/11 Panel Study Finds That C.I.A. Withheld Tapes

by maba on Sat 22 Dec 2007 08:22 PM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles - A review of classified documents by former members of the Sept. 11 commission shows that the panel made repeated and detailed requests to the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and were told by a top C.I.A. official that the agency had “produced or made available for review” everything that had been requested.

The review was conducted earlier this month after the disclosure that in November 2005, the C.I.A. destroyed ...   more »

Permanent Link

Thursday, December 20

Fred Harteis News Articles - Scientists Weigh Stem Cells' Role as Cancer Cause

by maba on Thu 20 Dec 2007 07:18 PM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles - Within the next few months, researchers at three medical centers expect to start the first test in patients of one of the most promising — and contentious — ideas about the cause and treatment of cancer.

The idea is to take aim at what some scientists say are cancerous stem cells — aberrant cells that maintain and propagate malignant tumors.

Although many scientists have assumed that cancer cells are immortal — that they divide and grow indefinitely — most can only divide ...   more »

Permanent Link

Tuesday, December 18

Fred Harteis News Articles- Fed Approves Plan to Curb Risky Lending

by maba on Tue 18 Dec 2007 05:52 PM EST

Fred Harteis - The Federal Reserve moved Tuesday to impose new restrictions intended to curb unfair and deceptive home-lending practices and prevent a recurrence of this year’s meltdown in subprime mortgages.

By a 5-to-0 vote, the Fed approved a plan that would tighten provisions meant to protect borrowers and apply them to a far larger share of home loans — whether from banks, mortgage companies or other lenders — than under current regulations.

The proposed rules underscore the more assertive role the Fed is now prepared to take ...   more »

Permanent Link

Friday, December 14

Fred Harteis News Articles - House Votes to Ban Harsh C.I.A. Methods

by maba on Fri 14 Dec 2007 07:00 PM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles - The House approved an intelligence bill Thursday that would prohibit the CIA from using waterboarding, mock executions and other harsh interrogation methods.

The 222-199 vote sent the measure to the Senate, which still must act before it can go to President Bush. The White House has threatened a veto.

The bill, a House-Senate compromise to authorize intelligence operations in 2008, also blocks spending 70 percent of the intelligence budget until the House and Senate intelligence committees are briefed on Israel's Sept. 6 ...   more »

Permanent Link

Thursday, December 13

Fred Harteis News Articles - Steroid Report Implicates Top Players

by maba on Thu 13 Dec 2007 07:00 PM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles – Roger Clemens who won the Cy Young award a record seven times, and seven players who won baseball’s most valuable player award were among dozens of players named Thursday in the former Senator George Mitchell’s report on his investigation into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the sport.

“For more than a decade there has been widespread anabolic steroid use,” Mitchell said in a news conference announcing the results of a 20-month investigation he led at the behest of Major League Baseball.

Clemens ...   more »

Permanent Link

Tuesday, December 11

Fred Harteis News Articles - C.I.A. Chief Says Others Decided Fate of Video

by maba on Tue 11 Dec 2007 08:35 PM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles - Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, distanced himself today from the decision to record and subsequently destroy hundreds of hours of video footage taken during the interrogations of senior Al Qaeda captives.

Speaking in public after delivering classified testimony before a Senate committee, General Hayden said that the decision to record the interrogations in 2002 was made under George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, and that the destruction of those tapes in 2005 came under the ...   more »

Permanent Link

Monday, December 10

Fred Harteis News Articles - G.O.P. Voters Are Uninspired by Candidates

by maba on Mon 10 Dec 2007 07:04 PM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles - Three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Republicans voters across the country appear uninspired by their field of presidential candidates, with a vast majority saying they have not made a final decision about who to support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

None of the Republican candidates is viewed favorably by even half of the Republican electorate, the poll found. In a sign of the fluidity of the race, one candidate who had barely registered in early polls several months ago, ...   more »

Permanent Link

Sunday, December 9

Fred Harteis News Articles - Many Seeking Disability From Social Security Face Big Delays

by maba on Sun 09 Dec 2007 08:40 PM EST

Fred Harteis News Articles - Steadily lengthening delays in the resolution of Social Security disability claims have left hundreds of thousands of people in a kind of purgatory, now waiting as long as three years for a decision.

Two-thirds of those who appeal an initial rejection eventually win their cases.

But in the meantime, more and more people have lost their homes, declared bankruptcy or even died while awaiting an appeals hearing, say lawyers representing claimants and officials of the Social Security Administration, which administers disability benefits ...   more »

Permanent Link