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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-914voting,0,662675.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
Princeton prof writes virus that alters totals on electronic voting machines
By Chris Newmarker
Associated Press Writer and sun-sentinel.com
September 14, 2006, 8:32 AM EDT
TRENTON, N.J. -- A Princeton University computer science professor added new fuel Wednesday to claims that electronic voting machines used across much ofthe country are vulnerable to hacking that could alter vote totals or disable machines.
In a paper posted on the university's Web site, Edward Felten and two graduate students described how they had tested a Diebold AccuVote-TSmachine they obtained, found ways to quickly upload malicious programs andeven developed a computer virus able to spread such programs betweenmachines.
The marketing director for the machine's maker _ Diebold Inc.'s DieboldElection Systems of Allen, Texas _ blasted the report, saying Felten ignored newer software and security measures that prevent such hacking.
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/custom/consumer/sfl-hlpvasquez10sep10,0,3406048.column?coll=sfl-consumer-helpteam
Silver-bullet solutions for warding off `power vampire' electronics
Daniel Vasquez
Consumer columnist
September 10, 2006
Do you sweat your FPL bill every month? Unfortunately, if you're like me, you love firing up your electronics and appliances. I couldn't cope a day without a satellite-TV box, home-theater receiver or computer. Not to mention the air conditioner, refrigerator and microwave.
But did you know some of these things secretly and voraciously suck yourwallet dry? Even feeding on electrical power when not turned on?
A whopping 40 percent of the electricity used to power home electronics isconsumed while they're switched off. That scary stat comes straight from theenergy-saving experts at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S.Department of Energy (www.energystar.gov).
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/15513536.htm
The Miami Herald
Posted on Thu, Sep. 14, 2006
PRIMARY ELECTIONS
Mainstream candidates win over outsiders
BY DAVID S. BRODER
davidbroder@washpost.com
The lesson from Tuesday's round of primaries in nine states and the District of Columbia was simple and reassuring. Credentials count. Experience counts. And so does the willingness to engage some serious issues.
For the most part, the candidates nominated for Congress and governor come from the mainstream establishments of their parties. Despite the widespread voter discontent with the political status quo, few mavericks, rebels or true outsiders won places on the November ballot.
. Rhode Island: In the day's headline event, Sen. Lincoln Chafee, the most liberal Republican in the Senate, turned back the challenge of Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey, a conservative populist.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/13/AR2006091302052_pf.html
U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel - Paper on Nuclear Aims Called Dishonest
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 14, 2006; A17
U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document "outrageous and dishonest" and offering evidence to refute its central claims.
Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements." The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna.
The IAEA openly clashed with the Bush administration on pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Relations all but collapsed when the agency revealed that the White House had based some allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program on forged documents.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/science/earth/14climate.html?pagewanted=print
September 14, 2006
NASA Scientists See New Signs of Global Warming
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Scientists have long suspected that the recent melting of Arctic Ocean ice in the summer might be a result of heat-trapping gases building up in the atmosphere. But yesterday NASA scientists reported that higher temperatures and a retreat of the sea ice over the last two winters offered new evidence that the gases were influencing the region's climate.
While the summer melting could be a result of a number of phenomena like the
flow of warm water, the scientists said, the reduction of winter ice two
seasons in a row is harder to explain without invoking the heat-trapping
effects of gases like carbon dioxide.
Such gases block the escape of some heat radiating from the ocean or earth, like an insulating blanket, even in the depths of the dark Arctic winter, said Josefino C. Comiso, a senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who uses satellites to study Earth's frozen zones.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/us/14bigbox.html?pagewanted=print
September 14, 2006
Chicago Minimum Wage Ordinance Fails
By MONICA DAVEY and MICHAEL BARBARO
CHICAGO, Sept. 13 - A first-in-the-nation effort to impose minimum wage regulations on "big box" stores like Wal-Mart unraveled here on Wednesday, as the Chicago City Council fell three votes short of overriding Mayor Richard M. Daley's veto of the measure.It was an extraordinary shift from just weeks ago, when the aldermen voted 35 to 14 in favor of the measure, which was to place Chicago at the forefront of nationwide efforts to demand more for employees of large retail stores, including Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot. The ordinance would have required the retailers to pay at least $10 an hour by 2010, well above the federal and state minimum wages, along with at least $3 an hour in benefits.
The Council's 35 votes in July were one more than enough to block a veto by Mr. Daley, something he had never before issued. But pressure from the mayor and intense lobbying by the national retailers and local business groups scraped away enough support to uphold the veto.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/opinion/14thu1.html?pagewanted=print
September 14, 2006
Editorial
Port Security Won't Bankrupt Us
Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, seems determined to outdo his commander in chief in ratcheting up fears of Al Qaeda whenever he wants to score political points. This week, he raised the specter that if the government starts too many expensive antiterrorism programs it could further a plot by Osama bin Laden to "drive us crazy, into bankruptcy" through overspending on homeland defense.
It was particularly ironic that Mr. Chertoff spun this theory while he was fighting off a measure, up for a vote today, that would help protect our ports against the threat that he himself deems most worrisome - a nuclear explosion within our borders - without government spending.
In testifying before a Senate committee on Tuesday, Mr. Chertoff flailed away at straw men of his own concoction. He warned darkly about the dangers of trying to protect the country from "every conceivable threat" - an idea no one has ever espoused. The issue has always been the need to set priorities, and in that respect, Mr. Chertoff's department has become a laughingstock. It compiled one list of possible targets that included a petting zoo and a popcorn factory while the government provided only a pittance for our vulnerable subways.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/13/AR2006091301547.html
Ex-CIA official Plame sues Armitage in leak suit
Reuters
Wednesday, September 13, 2006; 5:40 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former covert CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband sued former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage on Wednesday for disclosing her identity after her husband criticized the Bush administration.
Armitage said last week that he was the first one to discuss Plame's identity with reporters after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, criticized the Bush administration's Iraq policy in a 2003 opinion piece in The New York Times.
Armitage, the former No. 2 State Department official expressed regrets and said the leak was inadvertent.
Armitage joins Vice President Dick Cheney, top White House aide Karl Rove and others as defendants in a lawsuit that charges them with invading the Wilsons' privacy and destroying her career.
Knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert CIA agent is against the law, but no officials have been charged with leaking Plame's identity to the news media in 2003.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/13/AR2006091301573.html
Democrats Vs. Wal-Mart
By George F. Will
Thursday, September 14, 2006; A21
EVERGREEN PARK, Ill. -- This suburb, contiguous with Chicago's western edge, is 88 percent white. A large majority of the customers of the Wal-Mart that sits here, less than a block outside Chicago, are from the city, and more than 90 percent of the store's customers are African American.
One of whom, a woman pushing a shopping cart with a stoical 3-year-old along for the ride, has a chip on her shoulder about the size of this 141,000-square-foot Wal-Mart. She applied for a job when the store opened in January and was turned down because, she said, the person doing the hiring "had an attitude." So why is the woman shopping here anyway? She looks at the questioner as though he is dimwitted and directs his attention to the low prices of the DVDs on the rack next to her.
Sensibly, she compartmentalizes her moods and her money. Besides, she should not brood. She had lots of company in not being hired: More than 25,000 people applied for the 325 openings.
Which vexes liberals such as John Kerry. (He and his helpmeet last shopped at Wal-Mart when?) In 2004 he tested what has become one of the Democrats' 2006 themes: Wal-Mart is, he said, "disgraceful" and symbolic of "what's wrong with America." By now Democrats have succeeded, to their embarrassment (if they are susceptible to that), in making the basic numbers familiar:
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/13/AR2006091301572_pf.html
Armitage's Leak
By Robert D. Novak
Thursday, September 14, 2006; A21
When Richard Armitage finally acknowledged last week that he was my source three years ago in revealing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee, the former deputy secretary of state's interviews obscured what he really did. I want to set the record straight based on firsthand knowledge.
First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he
had heard and that he "thought" might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear that he considered it especially suited for my column.
An accurate depiction of what Armitage actually said deepens the irony of his being my source. He was a foremost internal skeptic of the administration's war policy, and I had long opposed military intervention in Iraq. Zealous foes of George W. Bush transformed me, improbably, into the president's lapdog. But they cannot fit Armitage into the left-wing fantasy of a well-crafted White House conspiracy to destroy Joe and Valerie Wilson. The news that he, and not Karl Rove, was the leaker was devastating for the left.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/business/14wolf.html?ei=5094&en=d855979502ab7c33&hp=&ex=1158292800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
September 14, 2006
Wolfowitz Corruption Drive Rattles World Bank
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - In his first 15 months as president of the World Bank, Paul D. Wolfowitz has made the fight against corruption in poor countries a hallmark issue, waging an aggressive campaign that has led to the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contracts to nations including India, Chad, Kenya, Congo, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.
It is a new incarnation for Mr. Wolfowitz, a neoconservative intellectual who was a primary architect of the Iraq war during four years as deputy secretary of defense.
At the World Bank, Mr. Wolfowitz, 62, has maintained an assertive but soft-spoken style, saying recently that the bank's mission was "to send children to school, to help mothers be healthier, to provide jobs for poor people - not to have resources siphoned off into the hands of the corrupt and greedy."
In recent months, however, his campaign has run into a host of critics, both at the bank and among financial officials outside the United States, who say that developing countries are being threatened with arbitrary punishment in a way that jeopardizes the bank's longtime mission to reduce poverty.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/washington/14capital.html
The New York Times
September 14, 2006
Panel in Senate Backs Bush Plan for Eavesdropping
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and KATE ZERNIKE
WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - The White House took a critical step on Wednesday in its effort to get Congressional blessing for President Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, but it ran into increasingly fierce resistance from leading Republicans over its plan to try terror suspects being held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The mixed results signaled the tough road the White House faces in trying to sell the two key planks in its national security agenda to sometimes skeptical Congressional Republicans less than two months before the midterm elections. Democrats have allowed Republicans to fight among themselves over the issues, and appear willing to allow the issues to come to a vote rather than risk charges of political obstructionism in an election season.
The White House has turned its focus to Capitol Hill as part of a broad push to shift the public debate toward national security and away from Iraq. After kicking off the campaign in a series of recent speeches, Mr. Bush is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill on Thursday morning to rally support for his proposals.
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Forwarded from Rusty Gordon and Davy Whims
The Whimsy Loops
twpchwpb@BellSouth.Net
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/12/AR2006091201409.html
Hospital Charity Care Is Probed
Investigators Find Nonprofits Overcharge or Deny Services
By: Kathleen Day, Washington Post Staff Writer
Nonprofit hospitals routinely overcharge or deny care to patients least able to pay, Senate investigators have found, raising questions about whether the institutions should be eligible for tax exemptions that cost the U.S. Treasury billions of dollars a year.
Many of the hospitals that say they offer charity care, meaning free or at reduced prices for low-income people, fail to inform patients about such assistance, Senate Finance Committee staff members found after a 15-month review that included an in-depth survey of 10 nonprofit hospitals.
The investigators found that while federal law requires charity care in exchange for tax-exempt status, a 37-year-old IRS rule implementing the law is so vague that nonprofit hospitals have been able to exploit it by offering some free services but often little aid to the poorest people in their communities.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/13/us/14wire-richards.html?ei=5094&en=d1e7ce4194cde064&hp=&ex=1158206400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
Former Texas Governor Ann Richards Dies at 73
9/14/06 3:06AM GMT
By KELLEY SHANNON , Associated Press Writer
Former Gov. Ann Richards, the witty and flamboyant Democrat who went from homemaker to national political celebrity, died Wednesday night after a battle with cancer, a family spokeswoman said. She was 73.
She died at home surrounded by her family, the spokeswoman said. Richards was found to have esophageal cancer in March and underwent chemotherapy treatments.
The silver-haired, silver-tongued Richards said she entered politics to help others - especially women and minorities who were often ignored by Texas' male-dominated establishment.
"I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone,'" Richards said shortly before leaving office in January 1995.
She was governor for one term, losing her re-election bid to Republican George W. Bush.
She grabbed the national spotlight with her keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention when she was the Texas state treasurer. Richards won cheers from delegates when she reminded them that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, "only backwards and in high heels."
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