NATIONAL & WORLD DIGEST - July 23, 2008

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New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-A Time for Urgency
The nation's leaders must act quickly and take the necessary, if politicallyunpopular, steps to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from insolvency.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/opinion/23wed1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

-Lieberman, Obama and the Jews
The Huffington Post's Sam Stein is very excited about a new poll by the"progressive pro-Israel" group JStreet, which finds that Senator JoeLieberman, an orthodox Jew, is far less popular among his co-religioniststhan Barack Obama. "Among the most high-profile Jews in Congress, Liebermanis viewed far more unfavorably than the presumptive Democratic nominee"reports Stein. "Only 37 percent of Jews view the Connecticut Independent ina favorable light compared to 48 percent who have a negative perception. Asfor Obama, 60 percent of Jews view him favorably while 34 percent view himunfavorably."
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/lieberman-obama-and-the-jews/index.html?ref=opinion

-Mukasey's Wary Start Dismays Ex-Backers
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey appears to be seeing mixed results fromhis efforts to restore credibility to a department tainted by hispredecessor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/washington/23mukasey.html?hp

-Obama Meets Israeli and Palestinian Leaders
Senator Barack Obama met with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak andPalestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/us/politics/24obama.html?hp

-Health Plan From Obama Spurs Debate
It is one of the most audacious promises in a campaign that has been thickwith them. In speech after speech, Senator Barack Obama has vowed that hewill lower the country's health care costs enough to "bring down premiums by$2,500 for the typical family." Moreover, Mr. Obama, the presumptiveDemocratic nominee, has promised that his health plan will be in place "bythe end of my first term as president of the United States."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/us/23health.html

-Karadzic Arrest Is Big Step for a Land Tired of Being Europe's Pariah
The arrest of the wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, charged inthe worst massacre since World War II, was an unlikely yet radicaltransformation in a country that had appeared to be headed on a path towardvirulent nationalism and isolation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/world/europe/23serbia.html


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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-AIDS Among Latinos on Rise
Hispanics in U.S. Face Unique Obstacles to Diagnosis, TreatmentAIDS rates in the nation's Latino community are increasing and, with littlenotice, have reached what experts are calling a simmering public healthcrisis. Though Hispanics make up about 14 percent of the U.S. population,they represented 22 percent of new HIV and AIDS diagnoses tallied by federalofficials in 2006. According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation,Hispanics in the District have the highest rate of new AIDS cases in thecountry.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202837.html

-The Face of Evil
Richard Holbrooke
My first and last meeting with Radovan Karadzic was 13 years ago. Hiscapture this week is a great moment for international justice.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202593.html

-Obama's Strategic Vision
Harold Meyerson
Maybe the symbolism of Barack Obama giving a major speech this week atBerlin's Victory Column -- a 19th-century monument to Prussia's militarytriumphs -- isn't as incongruous at it might seem. After all, it wasFrederick the Great -- the 18th-century Prussian monarch who transformed hiskingdom into the dominant German state -- who once advised his generals, "Hewho would defend everything ends up defending nothing."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202170.html

-Obama Shifts the Foreign Policy Debate
Candidate Moves Focus From Iraq To Broader Issues
Sen. Barack Obama, on his first and likely only overseas trip as thepresumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has remade the campaign'sforeign policy playing field, neatly sidestepping Republican charges that hehas been naive and wrong on Iraq and moving to a broader, post-Iraq focus onAfghanistan and Pakistan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202942.html?hpid=topnews

-India's Government Wins Parliament Confidence Vote
NEW DELHI, July 22 -- The Indian government survived a crucial vote ofconfidence Tuesday, clearing the way for the contentious nuclear energy dealwith the United States, after a debate peppered with dramatic allegations ofbackroom lobbying and bribery.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072200161.html?hpid=sec-world

-India's Outstretched Hand
New Delhi does its part to salvage a nuclear pact; now it's Congress's turn.
UNTIL RECENTLY, it seemed that an ambitious Bush administration bid torestore nuclear cooperation between the United States and India might bedead, a victim of domestic Indian politics. Anti-American communist partiesthat support Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's centrist government wereblocking the deal. But Mr. Singh took a bold risk to salvage the pact,trading communist support for that of a smaller regional party in hopes ofassembling a new majority. Yesterday the gamble paid off, as Mr. Singh'sgovernment survived a parliamentary no-confidence vote. Now, the question iswhether the pact can survive the American political process.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202656.html

-Mr. Obama in Iraq
Did he really find support for his withdrawal plan? THE INITIAL MEDIAcoverage of Barack Obama's visit to Iraq suggested that the Democraticcandidate found agreement with his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forceson a 16-month timetable. So it seems worthwhile to point out that, by Mr.Obama's own account, neither U.S. commanders nor Iraq's principal politicalleaders actually support his strategy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202462.html

-What You Should Know Before You Spit Into That Test Tube
Jeffrey Gulcher had no reason to think much about prostate cancer. He wasjust 48, and the disease typically strikes later in life. Even the mostcautious medical groups agree that most men need not begin annual prostatescreenings until age 50. But Gulcher happens to be the chief scientificofficer of deCODE Genetics -- one of several companies that, amid somecontroversy, have begun offering direct-to-consumer DNA tests that can helppeople predict which diseases they are likely to get. So in April, he spatinto a test tube and, without giving the matter much thought, sent thesample in for analysis by his own company.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/18/AR2008071802555.html

-A Quiet Humanitarian
KIGALI, Rwanda -- Cindy McCain's first visit to this country, in 1994, wasduring the high season of roadblocks and machetes and shallow graves.Following a call for help from Doctors Without Borders, McCain had assembleda medical team with the intention of setting up a mobile hospital in Rwanda.Arriving by private plane in mid-April, a couple of weeks into themassacres, she realized that the chaos made deploying her team impossible.At the airport, she paid for the use of a truck and set out for Goma inthen-Zaire, where hundreds of thousands of refugees were also headed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202114.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

-Ex-Advisers Warn Against Threatening to Attack Iran
The Bush administration should stop talking about a military attack as anoption if negotiations do not immediately halt Iran's uranium reprocessingprogram, two former national security advisers said yesterday.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202698.html?hpid=moreheadlines

-Methodists, Politics, and Bush's Library
The fact that George W. Bush wants to build a library, any library, is causefor celebration. So why are my beloved United Methodists still fightingabout whether Southern Methodist University should host such an improbableinstitution? Actually, it's not the library they object to so much as thepolicy institute that comes with it -- and the policies that precede it."Theplacement of the George W. Bush library and the establishment of aninstitute to promote the policies of this president at SMU would be atragedy," retired Bishop William Boyd Grove of West Virginia toldfrontpagemag.com. "The policies of the Bush administration are in directconflict with the Social Principles of The United Methodist Church on issuesof war and peace, civil liberties and human rights, care for theenvironment, and health care."
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2008/07/the_battle_over_bushs_library.html

-Anglicans Could One Day Be Led by a Woman: Bishop
CANTERBURY (Reuters) - The Anglican Church's most senior woman bishop saidshe believed that one day the church would be led by a woman Archbishop ofCanterbury. "The signposts are pointing in one direction," said VictoriaMatthews, for 15 years a bishop in Canada and now moving to minister inChristchurch, New Zealand.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072200975.html?hpid=sec-religion


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Sun-Sentinel
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-85-mph Dolly takes aim at Texas coast; officials fear levee breaksRain started to fall along the Gulf Coast as Hurricane Dolly -- upgraded inforce from a tropical storm -- closed in on towns straddling theTexas-Mexico border. The Category 1 hurricane was expected to strengthenslightly before making landfall Wednesday and bringing with it up to 15inches of rain. Dolly was upgraded from a tropical storm Tuesday afternoon,and sustained winds have strengthened to about 85 mph. At 5 a.m. Wednesday,the storm's center was about 65 miles east-southeast of Brownsville, movingnorthwest at about 8 mph.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/weather/hurricane/sfl-hurricane-dolly,0,1026107.story


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Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-Do Not Call registry due for a tune up
Five years have passed since the Federal Trade Commission created a nationalDo Not Call registry -- and considering the rapid changes in marketing and telecommunications, it is time for an update of the rules. It just sohappens that the FTC is considering revising its regulations to make it evenclearer that marketers can only call customers who have given their consent.The changes are necessary and should be adopted.
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/story/614319.html

-Athletic competition vs. academic standards
Recently NBC renewed its television contract with Notre Dame footballthrough the 2015 season, betting the bank that the Irish, who have not won anational championship since 1988 or a bowl game since 1993, can consistentlydeliver ratings that keep corporate sponsors happy and revenue streamsflowing. Notre Dame's attempt to return to glory raises a fundamentalquestion: Can the nation's top-25 academic institutions -- Stanford, Duke,Northwestern, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt and Michigan are examples --successfully compete in the world of corporate college football withoutsubstantially compromising academic standards? California's Division Ischools suggest that the answer is no. [...] These data suggest thatschools that hold their ground on academic standards for athletes might beat a disadvantage in college sport's recruiting wars. Is it merelycoincidence that Stanford and Duke, two of the teams the Irish were able tobeat in 2007, have football graduation rates above 90 percent? The NationalCollegiate Athletic Association no longer discloses the average standardizedtest scores of various football teams. But would anyone be surprised to findthat test scores, like federal graduation rates, correlate negatively withgridiron success?
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/614327.html


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Fort Report
http://www.fortreport.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-Vanity Fair Covers The New Yorker
We here at Vanity Fair maintain a kind of affectionate rivalry with ourdownstairs neighbors at The New Yorker. We play softball every year, competefor some of the same stories, and share an elevator bank. (You can tell theones who are headed to the 20th floor by their Brooklyn pallor and dog-earedpaperbacks.)
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2008/07/new-yorker-cover.html

-Obama Survives Iraq, Looks Ahead
In his first news conference following his trip to Iraq and Afghanistan,presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama acknowledged that General DavidPetraeus had argued in their private meeting against Obama's 16-monthtimeline for a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. But Obama said that ifelected, he would persist with that plan so that additional troops could besent to Afghanistan, which he again called "the central front in the waragainst terrorism."
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1825525,00.html

-A big story is our biggest bias
A respected group of media researchers has found that Barack Obama gets alot more coverage than John McCain. I didn't need a think tank to tell methat. After all, Madonna gets more coverage than McCain does, even when shedoesn't want it-although it is hard to imagine when she wouldn't.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0723pagejul23,0,1657032.column

-Barack And The Dollar
Why is the dollar so weak? Part of the reason, says Douglas Holtz-Eakin,senior policy adviser to John McCain, is Barack Obama. He's scaring offinternational investors.
http://www.forbes.com/business/2008/07/21/obama-dollar-mccain-biz-cx_jz_bw_0721barack.html?partner=rcp

-Vogue Italia's Black Issue spurred by Obama
MILAN (Reuters Life!) - Vogue Italia editor Franca Sozzani says the spur forJuly's first-ever "Black Issue" of the fashion magazine came in part fromBarack Obama's progress en route to becoming Democratic presidentialcandidate.
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSL23101967020080723?feedType=RSS&feedName=lifestyleMolt

-Press coverage of Obama puts envy in the air at McCain headquarters
'The media is in LOVE with Barack,' McCain's camp says in a video that mocksthe reporting on the Democrat. After months of frustration about what theysee as fawning media coverage of Barack Obama, John McCain's campaign wenton the offensive Tuesday with a Web video called "The media is in LOVE withBarack."
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-mccain23-2008jul23,0,2276309.story?track=rss

-CNN's 'Black In America' Is An Expressive Portrait:
Ordinary Stories Make An Extraordinary Series
Going back to such ancient classics as "The Plow That Broke the Plains" and"Harvest of Shame," the best documentaries have been those that engage theheart as well as the brain. Two new entries in CNN's ongoing "Black inAmerica" project manage precisely that feat, reporting in words and picturesof equal expressiveness on the current state of African American life in theUnited States.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072203218.html


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Technology Review
http://www.technologyreview.com/

-A Concrete Fix to Global Warming
A new process stores carbon dioxide in precast concrete.
A Canadian company says that it has developed a way for makers of precastconcrete products to take all the carbon-dioxide emissions from theirfactories, as well as neighboring industrial facilities, and store theminthe products that they produce by exposing concrete slurrytocarbon-dioxide-rich flue gases during the curing process. Industryexpertssay that the technology is unproven but holds great potential if itworks.
http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=21117&channel=energy§ion


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Forwarded from Susan Frishkorn
frishkorn@bellsouth.net
Go to this link for the following article:

-Israel Fears Scathing US Report On Its West Bank Policies
The United States security coordinator for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,retired general James Jones, is preparing an extremely critical report ofIsrael's policies in the territories and its attitude toward the PalestinianAuthority's security services. A few copies of the report's executivesummary (or, according to some sources, a draft of it) have been given tosenior Bush Administration officials, and it is reportedly arousingconsiderable discomfort. In recent weeks, the administration has beendebating whether to allow Jones to publish his full report, or whether totell him to shelve it and make do with the summary, given the approachingend of President George Bush's term.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1004143.html

-McCain gaffes pile up; critics pile on
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said "Iraq" on Monday when he apparently meant "Afghanistan", adding to a string of mixed-up word choices that is givingammunition to the opposition. Just in the past three weeks, McCain has alsomistaken "Somalia" for "Sudan," and even football's Green Bay Packers forthe Pittsburgh Steelers. Ironically, the errors have been concentrated inwhat should be his area of expertise: foreign affairs. McCain will turn 72the day after Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) accepts his party's nomination forpresident at the age of 47, calling new attention to the sensitive issue ofMcCain's advanced age three days before the start of his own convention. TheMcCain campaign says Obama has had plenty of flubs of his own, including areference to "57 states" and a string of misstated place names during theprimaries that Republicans gleefully sent around as YouTube links.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11939.html


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Pew Research center
http://pewresearch.org/
Go to this link for the following articles:

-The Chinese Celebrate Their Roaring Economy,As They Struggle With Its Costs
More than eight-in-ten Chinese are satisfied with their country's overalldirection and their national economy, a significant increase in contentmentfrom earlier in the decade. But levels of personal satisfaction aregenerally lower than the national measures, and a new Pew Global Attitudespoll suggests the Chinese people -- who express concern about inflation andpollution -- may be struggling with the consequences of economic growth.Read more

-The Changing Newsroom: Gains and Losses in Today's Papers
It has fewer pages than three years ago, the paper stock is thinner, and thestories are shorter. There is less foreign and national news, less spacedevoted to science, the arts, features and a range of specialized subjects.These and other changes are documented in a new report by the Project forExcellence in Journalism that examines the resources in American newsroomsat a critical time. Read more

-McCain's Lead Among Evangelicals Smaller than Bush's in '04
Many white evangelicals remain undecided and Obama has made few inroads intothis key constituency. But the Democratic candidate enjoys strong supportamong the religiously unaffiliated. Read more

-Stem Cell Research: Religion and Politics Collide
An overview of the stem cell debate in America examines the science behindstem cell technology and looks at public opinion trends. Read more

-Daily Number - 58% - Gen Dems
Trends among America's youngest voters are often a barometer for thepolitical climate, a troubling thought for the GOP since the Democrats'current lead in party identification among young voters has more thandoubled since 2004, from 11 points to 25 points. Check back every weekdayfor another number in the news. Read more

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