Eeyores News and Views

Another piece of the puzzle
Russia to start Iran nuclear plant by year end
Reuters
Published: February 5, 2009
By Denis Dyomkin and Guy Faulconbridge
Russia plans to start up a nuclear reactor at Iran's Bushehr plant by the end of the year, the head of Russia's state nuclear corporation said on Thursday.
"If there are no unforeseen events...then the launch will go according to the timetable," Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko told reporters in the Kremlin.
"The launch is scheduled for this year," he said, adding that this was the original plan laid down in a timetable agreed with Iran. "I plan to be at the Bushehr plant in February."
The West, which suspects Iran of seeking to produce its own nuclear bomb, has been critical of Russia's involvement in Bushehr. Russia says the plant is purely civilian and cannot be used for any weapons programme.
Analysts say Iran could become a key issue in relations between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and new U.S. President Barack Obama, who said last month that the United States was prepared to talk to Tehran.
A Rosatom spokesman said Kiriyenko was talking about the so- called "technical" start-up, which will be the first time the reactor is fully switched on and aims to test its systems before electricity is supplied to the grid.
The start up the Bushehr plant's nuclear reactor has been delayed frequently, though Russia last year completed delivery of nuclear fuel to the station under a total contract estimated to be worth about $1 billion (683 million pound).
BARGAINING CHIP
Analysts say Russia has used Bushehr as a lever in relations with Tehran, which is suspected by the United States and some European countries of seeking to build nuclear weapons.
Russia started deliveries of nuclear fuel for the plant in late 2007, a step both Washington and Moscow said removed any need for Iran to have its own uranium enrichment programme.
European diplomats say Russia's leverage with Tehran has played a constructive role in talks on Iran and cite joint work on Iran as an example of good cooperation between powers.
But switching on the Bushehr plant could still dismay some in the United States, Israel and Europe who are deeply suspicious of Iran's intentions.
Russia agreed to build the plant in 1995 on the site of an earlier project begun in the 1970s by German firm Siemens. The Siemens' project was disrupted by Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Work on readying the reactor for start up has been complicated by having to integrate German infrastructure that was as much as 25 years old, Kiriyenko said.
"We are working to integrate the old equipment, it is a unique project that no-one has ever done before -- we are integrating in the project old German infrastructure that was delivered 25 years ago,"
"The absolute priority is security. No matter how many times we need to prepare for a safe start up we will do it," he said.
Russia says the plant poses no proliferation risk as Iran will return all spent fuel rods to Russia.
http://iht.com/articles/reuters/2009/02/05/africa/OUKWD-UK-IRAN-NUCLEAR-RUSSIA.php

Loopholes allow contaminated food to go unchecked
February 5, 2009 - 12:52pm
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE
WASHINGTON (AP) - Lawmakers reacted angrily Thursday when told that food makers and state safety inspectors are allowed to keep tests results secret. That keeps federal health officials in the dark even when products have been contaminated by salmonella or other dangerous bacteria.
"I'd like to see some people go to jail," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said during a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on a deadly salmonella outbreak linked to a Georgia peanut plant that has sickened more than 550 people and killed at least eight.
Federal law does not require reporting of contaminants if companies receive private test results showing them or states find them in their inspections, said Dr. Stephen Sundlof, food safety director for the Food and Drug Administration.
"That's one of the very serious loopholes we need to plug," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican and the committee's ranking minority member.
Sundlof defended the FDA's handling of the current outbreak, but also noted gaps in the country's food safety system that hamper the agency's efforts. The FDA learned only weeks ago that the Peanut Corp. of America had received a series of private tests dating back to 2007 showing salmonella in their products from the Georgia plant, but later shipped the items after obtaining negative test results.
"We would like to have as much information as possible" from food makers, Sundlof said.
Leahy said food manufacturers should face possible jail time and other tough penalties to beef up compliance with federal food safety rules. "Fines won't do it," he said.
Sundlof pointed out that a federal criminal investigation of the outbreak is under way.
Also Thursday, the Department of Agriculture suspended Peanut Corp. from participating in government contract programs for at least a year. Secretary Tom Vilsack also removed Stewart Parnell, president of the company, from USDA's Peanut Standards Board.
"The actions of (Peanut Corp. of America) indicate that the company lacks business integrity and business honesty, which seriously and directly hinders its ability to do business with the federal government," said David Shipman, Acting Administrator of USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service.
Peanut Corp. has denied any wrongdoing in the outbreak and has said its Blakely plant had received regular visits and inspections from state and federal authorities in 2008 and had gotten a "superior" rating from an independent inspection.
Sundlof told senators the FDA was hot on the trail of a Georgia processor even before they were certain that peanuts were to blame for hundreds of illnesses.
The first signs of the outbreak were detected in November by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But disease detectives initially suspected chicken was the culprit in clusters of salmonella infections that states were reporting.
On Jan. 7 and 8, after discussions between federal and Minnesota authorities, peanut butter was added to the short list of suspects when some people who had gotten sick reported eating peanut butter in nursing homes and at an elementary school. On Jan. 8, the FDA visited an Ohio distributor for Peanut Corp. of America.
The next day federal inspectors were at the company's Blakely, Ga. facility, which ultimately was identified as the source of the food poisoning. That same day, Jan. 9, Minnesota health officials found salmonella in an open container of peanut butter made at the plant. On Jan. 10, Minnesota made a positive match to the salmonella strain that caused the outbreak.
Sundlof said the FDA has made many improvements in its food-safety system, and acted quickly in the current outbreak.
"The American food supply continues to be among the safest in the world," Sundlof said.
Lawmakers, however, may not be reassured. They are concerned about the state of the national food safety system, a collaboration between the FDA, CDC and authorities in each state. As the list of recalled items containing peanut products surpasses 1,000, lawmakers are vowing to press for stronger food safety laws and more money for inspections.
"To say that food safety in this country is a patchwork system is giving it too much credit. Food safety in America has become a hit or miss gamble, and that is truly frightening," said Agriculture Committee Chairman Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. "It's time to find the gaps in the system and remedy them."
Waving a peanut butter sandwich at one point and a jar of peanut butter later, Harkin said he was "nothing short of outraged" at the increasing number of food-poisoning outbreaks. He said consumers should be able to rely on the safety of food staples like peanut butter found in nearly every home.
"If that's not safe, we have to ask what is," Harkin said, adding he would eat his peanut butter sandwich to show major brands found in grocery stores are not affected by the current outbreak or recall.
Harkin asked how a Texas plant owned by Peanut Corp. could have operated unlicensed and uninspected for nearly four years. The Associated Press reported this week that the company did not register with Texas health officials after it opened in March 2005 and state officials inspected it only after discovering it during the current outbreak.
"Should I be alarmed about that?" Harkin asked Sundlof. "I mean, how many plants are operating like this?
Sundlof, who didn't answer Harkin's question directly, said states have different licensing and inspection requirements.
More illnesses could be linked to the salmonella-contaminated peanut products over the next two to three weeks, although the outbreak is slowing, Assistant Surgeon General Ali Khan said.
On the Net:
The FDA's recall page: http://tinyurl.com/8srctw
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=116&sid=1578833

'There's no reason only poor people should get malaria': The moment Bill Gates released jar of mosquitoes at packed conference
By David Gardner
Last updated at 6:36 PM on 05th February 2009
It was a show-stopping move by any standards.
Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft and a renowned philanthropist, let loose a swarm of mosquitoes at a technology conference in California to highlight the dangers of malaria.
‘Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,’ the Microsoft founder yelled at a well-heeled crowd at a technology conference in California.
I brought some,’ he added. ‘Here, I’ll let them roam around – there is no reason only poor people should be infected.’
He let the shocked audience sweat for a minute or so before assuring them that the freed insects were malaria- free.
But that didn’t satisfy all the attendees.
‘That’s it. I am not sitting up front anymore,’ eBay founder Pierre Omidyar said.
The stunt was an attempt by Gates – who quit Microsoft last year to concentrate on his charity work - to hammer home the importance of malaria prevention.
It is one of the pet projects of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that announced last year it was donating £115 million to help develop a vaccine for the deadly disease.
Up to 2.7 million people a year still die of malaria each year, 75 per cent of them African children.
Although malaria has been eradicated in most countries with temperate climates, it is still prevalent on continents like Africa and Asia, which have tropical or subtropical climates.
Gates was speaking at the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Long Beach, California which attracts the great and the good from the worlds of science, technology, business, entertainment and academia.
The organisers of the TED conference said it was an 'amazing moment' and provided the audience with 'food for thought'.
Chris Anderson, curator of the show, quipped that the moment should be headlined, 'Gates releases more bugs into the world'.
Gates said more money was being spent finding a cure for baldness than developing drugs to combat malaria.
'Now, baldness is a terrible thing and rich men are afflicted,' he joked. 'That is why that priority has been set.
'The market does not drive scientists, thinkers, or governments to do the right things. Only by paying attention and making people care can we make as much progress as we need to.'
He called for greater distribution of insect nets and other protective gear, and revealed that an anti-malaria vaccine funded by his foundation and currently in development would enter a more advanced testing phase in the coming months.
'I am an optimist; I think any tough problem can be solved,' he said.
Malaria: The facts
Malaria is one of the biggest killers in the developing world. Most casualties occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where the most deadly strain of malaria is prevalent.
The disease is caused by a parasite transmitted by certain types of mosquitoes. Symptoms usually begin with a high fever, neck and back pain and progress to shivering, vomiting and convulsions. Children are particularly vulnerable.
Although pills exist that can help prevent malaria, there is currently no vaccine. Preventative medication is used mainly by travellers and is not available to the vast majority of people living in the Third World.
Resistance to antibiotics by the malaria parasite is also becoming a problem, with some preventative medications no longer effective in certain parts of the world.
However, there is hope. Australian researchers this week announced they had discovered a new way to treat malaria by deactivating an enzyme that the malaria parasite uses to feed on red blood cells.
When the new method is used to target the enzyme, 'the parasite simply cannot complete the proper digestion of its food and dies,' lead researcher James Whisstock said.
The study, published this week in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted at Monash University in Melbourne.
Also this week, British scientists claimed to have identified genes that make some malaria-carrying mosquitoes resistant to insecticide. They hope the breakthrough could boost efforts to prevent the disease.
Knowing which genes help the mosquitoes dodge pesticides could point to ways to make better ones that are safer for people, too, said Charles Wondji of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and colleagues.
Killing mosquitoes with insecticides is one way to prevent malaria but finding potent, low-cost chemicals safe for humans is difficult, Wondji and his colleagues said.
In their study published in the journal Genome Research, the team studied strains of the mosquito Anopheles funestus that are both susceptible and resistant to a commonly used insecticide.
This allowed them to link defence against insecticides to two genes in a family of genes known as P450, considered a first line of resistance to toxins.
Importantly, this gene family has also been associated with resistance in the other major malaria-causing mosquito strain in Africa, suggesting that a well-designed insecticide could make a big impact in tackling the disease.
nd because humans do not have these particular genes, scientists may be able to develop new chemicals to kill mosquitoes that are not poisonous to people, the researchers said.
'Routine use of these molecular markers for resistance will provide early warning of future control problems due to insecticide resistance,' said Hilary Ranson of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who helped lead the study.
'(This) should greatly enhance our ability to mitigate the potentially devastating effects of resistance on malaria control.'
Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced it will review one malaria prophylactic, Lariam, because of the risk it can cause severe psychiatric reactions in some people.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1136463/Theres-reason-poor-people-malaria-The-moment-Bill-Gates-released-jar-mosquitoes-packed-conference.html

DEA continues pot raids Obama opposes
President vowed to end policy
Stephen Dinan and Ben Conery, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Drug Enforcement Administration agents this week raided four medical marijuana shops in California, contrary to President Obama's campaign promises to stop the raids.
DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart
The White House said it expects those kinds of raids to end once Mr. Obama nominates someone to take charge of DEA, which is still run by Bush administration holdovers.
“The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.
Medical use of marijuana is legal under the law in California and a dozen other states, but the federal government under President Bush, bolstered by a 2005 Supreme Court ruling, argued that federal interests trumped state law.
Dogged by marijuana advocates throughout the campaign, Mr. Obama repeatedly said he was opposed to using the federal government to raid medical marijuana shops, particularly because it was an infringement on states' decisions.
“I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue," Mr. Obama told the Mail Tribune newspaper in Oregon in March, during the Democratic primary campaign.
He told the newspaper the "basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by doctors, I think that's entirely appropriate."
Mr. Obama is still filling key law enforcement posts. For now, DEA is run by acting Administrator Michele Leonhart, a Bush appointee.
Special Agent Sarah Pullen of the DEA's Los Angeles office said agents raided four marijuana dispensaries about noon Tuesday. Two were in Venice and one each was in Marina Del Rey and Playa Del Ray -- all in the Los Angeles area.
A man who answered the phone at Marina Caregivers in Marina Del Rey said his shop was the target of a raid but declined to elaborate, saying the shop was just trying to get back to operating.
Agent Pullen said the four raids seized $10,000 in cash and 224 kilograms of marijuana and marijuana-laced food, such as cookies. No one was arrested, she said, but the raid is part of an ongoing investigation seeking to trace the marijuana back to its suppliers or source.
She said agents have conducted 30 or 40 similar raids in the past several years, many of which resulted in prosecutions.
"It's clear that the DEA is showing no respect for President Obama's campaign promises," said Dan Bernath, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, which advocates for medical marijuana and for decriminalizing the drug.
California allows patients whose doctors prescribe marijuana to use the drug. The state has set up a registry to allow patients to obtain cards allowing them to possess, grow, transport and use marijuana.
Kris Hermes of Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group in California, called the raids an attempt to undermine state law and said they were apparently conducted without the knowledge of Los Angeles city or police officials.
He said the DEA has raided five medical marijuana dispensaries in the state since Mr. Obama was inaugurated and that the first took place on Jan. 22 in South Lake Tahoe.
"President Obama needs to keep a promise he made, not just in one campaign stop, but in multiple speeches that he would not be spending Justice Department funds on these kinds of raids," Mr. Hermes said. "We do want to give him a little bit of leeway, but at the same time we're expecting him to stop this egregious enforcement policy that is continuing into his presidency."
He said he is aware that Mr. Obama has not installed his own DEA chief but that new Attorney General "Eric Holder can still suspend these types of operations."
The Justice Department referred questions to the White House.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/05/dea-led-by-bush-continues-pot-raids/

More consumers fall behind on paying credit cards
By Kathy Chu, USA TODAY
Credit card delinquencies are hitting record highs as more borrowers fall behind on bills amid rising unemployment and falling home values.
The amount of credit card debt delinquent at least 60 days reached 3.75% in December, the latest month available, surpassing the previous high of 3.73% set in February 1998, according to Fitch Ratings, which rates corporate debt. Late payments on credit cards, a precursor to charge-offs, rose during most of 2008 before sharply accelerating in the fourth quarter.
THE CREDIT TRAP: Changing credit card terms squeeze consumers
In December, credit card charge-offs — when banks write off the debt — rose to 7.5%, the highest level since 2005, when thousands of consumers rushed to file for bankruptcy and erase their card debt before a new law made it harder to do.
Fitch expects charge-offs to approach 9% in the second half of 2009.
"Consumers are under a lot of stress from the overall economic situation," says Michael Dean, a Fitch managing director.
It's not surprising for consumers to struggle to pay bills during economic downturns. But the record delinquency level "is a reflection of the severity" of the latest credit crunch, says Mark Lauritano, an executive managing director at IHS Global Insight, a financial services research firm.
"In previous recessions, consumers were still able to obtain some credit," he notes.
During the housing boom, consumers could tap home equity to pay off debt. But this funding source dried up for many borrowers as home prices plunged and lenders pulled back on loans.
Some experts also blame consumers' inability to pay their credit card bills partly on banks getting more aggressive with fees and penalty interest rates in recent months.
"If you start raising fees and rates, you will get an increase in delinquencies," says Christopher Brendler, managing director at Stifel Nicolaus, an equity research firm. Yet, "from the credit card perspective, it makes sense. (Issuers) need to protect their profitability as best they can."
Because most borrowers will be able to manage the higher rates and fees — at least at first — those profits will make up for defaults from others, says Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable, which represents the nation's largest banks, says higher fees can "contribute" but are not the "main cause" behind consumers paying their bills late or not at all.
Banks may be forced to raise credit card rates or fees, he says, "as customers start feeling the effects of the economy, and their risk profile changes."

DELINQUENCIES JUMP
Credit card delinquencies hit a record high in December, and charge-offs are soaring. percentage of debt more than 60 days late in 2008:
July 3.12%
Aug. 3.13%
Sept. 3.18%
Oct. 3.35%
Nov. 3.28%
Dec. 3.75%
Based on $283 billion of credit card debt that is securitized, or sold off, by issuers; Source: Fitch Ratings' credit card index

REDIT CARD RATES
Type Fixed Variable
Standard 13.29% 10.89%
Gold 11.90% 9.54%
Platinum 11.15% 11.00%
All 12.09% 10.71%

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/credit/2009-02-04-credit-card-debt-overdue_N.htm