http://freeinternetpress.com Free Internet Press :: Uncensored News For Real People Newspaper en-us Copyright (c)2008, FreeInternetPress.com editor@freeinternetpress.com 60 http://freeinternetpress.com/freeinternetpress_sm.gif http://freeinternetpress.com 140 20 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16708 Saudi Arabia Friday rebuffed President Bush's request to immediately pump more oil to lower record prices, saying it does not see enough demand to increase production. The Saudis said they would increase production if customers demanded it, said Steven Hadley, Bush's national security adviser. Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, on Friday said the country had increased its production by 300,000 barrels a day on May 10 in response to customer requests. Al-Naimi said the increased production would bring Saudi Arabia's daily production to 9.45 million barrels per day by June. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16708 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16707 Jaber Elbaneh is one of the world's most-wanted terrorism suspects. In 2003, the U.S. government indicted him, posted a $5 million reward for his capture and distributed posters bearing photos of him around the globe. None of it worked. Elbaneh remains at large, as wanted as ever. The al-Qaeda operative, however, isn't very hard to find. One day last month, he shuffled down a busy street here in the Yemeni capital, past several indifferent policemen. Then he disappeared inside a building, though not before accidentally stepping on a reporter's toes. Elbaneh, 41, is one of two dozen al-Qaeda members listed under a U.S. program that offers enormous sums of cash for information leading to their capture. For years, the Bush administration has touted the bounties as a powerful tool in its fight against terrorism but, in the hunt for al-Qaeda, it has proved a bust. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16707 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16706 A psychologist who helps lead the post-traumatic stress disorder program at a medical facility for veterans in Texas told staff members to refrain from diagnosing PTSD because so many veterans were seeking government disability payments for the condition. "Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I'd like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out," Norma Perez wrote in a March 20 e-mail to mental-health specialists and social workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Olin E. Teague Veterans' Center in Temple, Texas. Instead, she recommended that they "consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder." V.A. staff members "really don't ... have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD," Perez wrote. Adjustment disorder is a less severe reaction to stress than PTSD and has a shorter duration, usually no longer than six months, said Anthony T. Ng, a psychiatrist and member of Mental Health America, a nonprofit professional association. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16706 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16705 The global food crisis has arrived at Safia Ali’s hut. She cannot afford rice or wheat or powdered milk anymore. At the same time, a drought has decimated her family’s herd of goats, turning their sole livelihood into a pile of bleached bones and papery skin. The result is that Ms. Safia, a 25-year-old mother of five, has not eaten in a week. Her 1-year-old son is starving too, an adorable, listless boy who doesn’t even respond to a pinch. Somalia - and much of the volatile Horn of Africa, for that matter - was about the last place on earth that needed a food crisis. Even before commodity prices started shooting up around the globe, civil war, displacement and imperiled aid operations had pushed many people here to the brink of famine. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16705 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16704 Britain's £800 million ($1.6 billion) international project to help the poorest countries in the world adapt to climate change was under fire last night after it emerged that almost all the money offered by Prime Minister Gordon Brown will have to be repaid with interest. The U.K. environmental transformation fund was announced by the prime minister to international acclaim in November 2007, and was widely expected to be made in direct grants to countries experiencing extreme droughts, storms and sea level rise associated with climate change. The Guardian newspaper has learned that the money is not additional British aid and will be administered by the World Bank mainly in the form of concessionary loans which poor countries will have to pay back to Britain with interest. A letter signed by two government ministers and seen by the Guardian shows that Britain has been pressing other G8 countries to also give money to the new fund, which will be launched in July in Japan at the G8's annual meeting. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16704 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16703 The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, said officials, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come. The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift American prison on the Bagram military base  north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Until now, the Bush administration had signaled that it intended to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan. It had planned to transfer a large majority of the prisoners to Afghan custody, in an American-financed, high-security prison outside Kabul to be guarded by Afghan soldiers. American officials now concede that the new Afghan-run prison cannot absorb all the Afghans now detained by the United States, much less the waves of new prisoners from the escalating fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.  The proposal for a new American prison at Bagram underscores the daunting scope and persistence of the United States military’s detention problem, at a time when Bush administration officials continue to say they want to close down the facility at Guantanamo Bay. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16703 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16702 An unusual coalition of antiwar Democrats and angry Republicans in the House Thursday torpedoed a $162.5 billion proposal to continue funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into next year, eliminating, for now, the one part of the controversial bill that had seemed certain to pass. Instead, House members voted to demand troop withdrawals from Iraq, force the Iraqi government to shoulder more war costs and greatly expand the education benefits for returning veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict. The surprise on war-funding left antiwar activists on and off Capitol Hill exultant and Democratic leaders baffled. House leaders had broken the war-funding bill into three separate measures, the first to fund the wars, the second to impose strict military policy measures opposed by President Bush, and the third to fund domestic priorities, including expanded education benefits and flood control work around New Orleans. That legislative legerdemain became the plan's undoing. Democratic leaders knew that many members of their caucus, who have vowed not to approve another penny for the Iraq war, would reject the supplemental appropriation for the conflicts, but they expected Republicans to push it through. Instead, 131 House Republicans voted "present" on the measure, incensed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and a few of her lieutenants had drafted the war bill largely in secret. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16702 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16701 The Bush administration is on the verge of implementing new air quality rules that would make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas, according to rank-and-file agency scientists and park managers who oppose the plan. The new regulations, which are likely to be finalized sometime this summer, rewrite a provision of the Clean Air Act that applies to "Class 1 areas," federal lands that currently have the highest level of protection under the law. Opponents predict the changes will worsen visibility at many of the nation's most prized tourist destinations, including Virginia's Shenandoah, Colorado's Mesa Verde and North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt national parks. Nearly a year ago, with little fanfare, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed changing the way the government measures air pollution near Class 1 areas on the grounds that the nation needed a more uniform way of regulating emissions near protected areas. Jeffrey R. Holmstead, who now heads the environmental strategies group at the law firm of Bracewelll & Giuliani, helped initiate the rule change while leading EPA's air and radiation office. He said agency officials became concerned that EPA's scientific staff was taking "the most conservative approach" in predicting how much pollution new power plants would produce. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16701 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16700 Aliens from outer space have been visiting Britain for years and UFO sightings doubled after the film Close Encounters was released in 1977, according to secret files collating reports by members of the public. The alien craft come in all shapes, sizes and colors but their occupants are uniformly green, the Ministry of Defence files show. The archives (at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos) are the first batch of a four-year release program of all the ministry's UFO files from 1978 to the present day. The ministry dismisses 90 per cent of the reports as having mundane explanations and leave 10 per cent with a question mark and the assurance they are no defense threat. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16700 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16699 President Hugo Chavez was facing serious allegations over Venezuela's links to Colombian guerrillas last night after Interpol bolstered the credibility of intercepted rebel documents. The international police organization announced that a two-month forensic investigation of laptops seized in a raid by Colombian security forces concluded they belonged to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Leaks from the trove of 16,000 files and photographs have suggested high-ranking Venezuelan officials plotted to help the Marxist group to obtain weapons and funding for its decades-long insurgency against the Colombian state. Ronald Noble, Interpol secretary general, said his experts had found "no alteration of the data by Colombian officials". Internationally accepted methods for handling computers were not always followed, he said, but Bogota had not modified, altered or created files. Interpol said the amount of information - 37,872 word documents and 210,880 photographs - was much greater than previously thought. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16699 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16698 The Chinese government made an emergency appeal for cranes and heavy lifting equipment Thursday amid warnings that time is running out to rescue survivors from Monday's huge earthquake. As the state media raised estimates of the final death toll to 50,000, troops, emergency personnel and volunteers continued to find people alive, trapped under collapsed buildings. Dramatic footage broadcast by the state-run China Central Television network showed a young woman waving weakly from under slabs of concrete at the site of a devastated hospital in Dujiangyan. She was eventually freed by rescue workers - one of at least three people found alive three days after the 7.9 magnitude quake that churned up large swaths of Sichuan province in southwest China. Far more bodies than survivors are being uncovered. The official death toll rose by almost a third Thursday to 19,509. About 30,000 others are believed to be buried under mountain landslides and collapsed structures. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16698 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16697 Burma's military rulers are appealing for international funding to get rice farmers in the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy Delta back to their paddy fields, amid concerns about future food shortages if cultivators miss the upcoming planting season. The Burmese government's request for help in restoring farms in the disaster zone was made in closed-door meetings with relief officials in Burma, aid sources said Thursday. The request came as Burma's state television claimed overwhelming public support for a controversial military-sponsored constitution in a May 10 referendum. It reported that 92.4 percent of voters endorsed the charter in areas that were not seriously affected by the storm. Polling in the cyclone-hit section of the country - including the Irrawaddy Delta and Rangoon, Burma's largest city - is scheduled for May 24. The opposition National League for Democracy, the party of detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, promptly denounced the results as fraudulent. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16697 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16696 President Bush's financial fortunes appear to have declined over the past seven years, with his family assets dropping as low as $6.5 million, according to disclosure forms released yesterday. Bush and his wife, Laura, were worth at least $9 million and as much as $24 million at the start of his term. The Bushes could still be worth as much as $20 million now, according to the financial documents filed with the Office of Government Ethics, which requires assets to be reported only within broad ranges http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16696 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16695 A psychologist who helps lead the post-traumatic stress disorder program at a medical facility for veterans in Texas told staff members to refrain from diagnosing PTSD because so many veterans were seeking government disability payments for the condition. "Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I'd like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out," Norma Perez wrote in a March 20 e-mail to mental-health specialists and social workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Olin E. Teague Veterans' Center in Temple, Tex. Instead, she recommended that they "consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder." VA staff members "really don't . . . have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD," Perez wrote. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16695 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16694 Oil prices have hit a record high above $127 a barrel on fresh worries about global supplies. US light sweet crude jumped to $127.43 a barrel, ignoring a forecast from producers' cartel Opec this week that the world will need less oil in 2008. London Brent crude also climbed, touching $125.82 a barrel. Prices have surged about 25% since January, lifted by geopolitical worries and the weakening US dollar, which makes oil cheaper for foreign buyers. The latest price rise comes as US President George W Bush flies into Saudi Arabia to urge the kingdom to pump more crude and help bring prices down. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16694 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16693 The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory. The state high court's 4-3 ruling was unlikely to end the debate over gay matrimony in California. A group has circulated petitions for a November ballot initiative that would amend the state Constitution to block same-sex marriage, while the Legislature has twice passed bills to authorize gay marriage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed both. The long-awaited court opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, stemmed from San Francisco's highly publicized same-sex weddings, which in 2004 helped spur a conservative backlash in a presidential election year and a national dialogue over gay rights. Several states have since passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Today, 27 states have such amendments. The reaction to Thursday's ruling outside the courthouse in San Francisco was one of jubilation as couples, once denied marriage, hugged, kissed, shouted and shook their fists at the sky. Holding up a sign that says, "Life feels different when you're married," Helen Pontac said she was beyond words. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16693 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16692 China warned the death toll from this week's earthquake could soar to 50,000, while the government issued a public appeal today for rescue equipment as it struggled to cope with the disaster. More than 72 hours after the quake rattled central China, rescuers appeared to shift from poring through downed buildings for survivors to the grim duty of searching for bodies - with 10 million directly affected by Monday's temblor. At least 12,300 people remained buried and another 102,100 were injured in Sichuan province, where the quake was centered, the vice governor told reporters. In Luoshui town - on the road to an industrial zone in Shifang city where two chemical plants collapsed, burying hundreds of people - troops used a mechanical shovel to dig a pit on a hilltop to bury the dead. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16692 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16691 Addressing the Israeli parliament, President Bush set off a political firestorm today with an apparent criticism of Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential hopeful, over his position on negotiating with some dictatorships. Obama, who has pledged to talk to regimes in Iran, Cuba and North Korea, promptly accused the Bush White House of launching "a false political attack" for suggesting such outreach amounts to appeasing dictators. In a speech to Israel's Knesset marking the 60th anniversary of that country's independence, Bush said, "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along." Comparing "this foolish delusion" to the reaction of an American senator to Adolf Hitler's rise in 1939, Bush said, "We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." Obama issued a statement calling it "sad" that Bush used the speech to take a partisan shot. "George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel," he said in a statement. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16691 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16690 Britain Prime Minister Gordon Brown's drive to recapture the political agenda with a program of new laws to create "an opportunity-rich Britain" was badly shaken Wednesday by a warning from the governor of the Bank of England that the British economy is heading towards a recession. "The nice decade is behind us," Mervyn King declared in funereal tones, warning that the economy was "traveling along a bumpy road" as he predicted rising prices would put a squeeze on take-home pay for millions of workers. "As those price increases feed through to household bills, they will lead to a squeeze on real take-home pay, which will slow consumer spending and output growth, perhaps sharply," said the governor. Unveiling his draft legislative program of 18 bills offering people a greater say over schools, policing and health services in their area, the prime minister said Britain could avoid a recession. He even asked the public to "judge and test" him on the basis of his stewardship of the economy. Brown promised: "We will see Britain through this difficult time. In the past we were first in and last out of a recession. In the last 11 years we have avoided recession and we will emerge from this world slowdown stronger and better, both as a country and a government." http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16690 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16689 China mobilized 30,000 additional soldiers to the earthquake-shattered expanses of the nation’s southwestern regions on Wednesday - not just to help victims, but also to shore up weakened dams and other elements of the infrastructure whose failure could compound the disaster. Experts said that these dams were built around the well-recognized Longmen Shan fault. They warned that such dams might have sustained damage that could cause them to fail even weeks later. Much depends on efforts to reduce the menacing pressure of water behind the dam walls. Two thousand soldiers were sent to a dam just three miles upriver from the devastated town of Dujiangyan, northwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu, to inspect a structure that has shown some cracks and is “in great danger,” according to state-controlled China National Radio. Dams and their electric generators are only the most visible aspects of the infrastructure battered by the earthquake: The region also is the site of the cities of Guangyuan and Mianyang, which are home to plants that build Chinese nuclear arms and process plutonium for the weapons. It is not clear whether the plants suffered damage. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16689 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16688 Ignoring a veto threat from President Bush, who says he wants to sharply limit government subsidies to farmers at a time of near-record commodity prices and soaring global demand for grain, the House on Wednesday approved a five-year, $307 billion farm bill with a solid bipartisan majority. The House voted 318 to 106 - well above the two-thirds needed to hand Bush the second veto override of his presidency - with 100 Republicans joining the Democratic majority in favor. The Senate is expected to follow suit with wide bipartisan support on Thursday, sending Bush a bill that he described this week as bloated and expensive and said “resorts to a variety of gimmicks.” The bill includes a $10.3 billion increase in spending on nutrition programs, including food stamps, that supporters called “historic,” as well as increases for rural development and land conservation programs. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16688 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16687 Global warming is disrupting wildlife and the environment on every continent, according to an unprecedented study that reveals the extent to which climate change is already affecting the world's ecosystems. Scientists examined published reports dating back to 1970 and found that at least 90% of environmental damage and disruption around the world could be explained by rising temperatures driven by human activity. Big falls in Antarctic penguin populations, fewer fish in African lakes, shifts in American river flows and earlier flowering and bird migrations in Europe are all likely to be driven by global warming, the study found. The team of experts, including members of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from America, Europe, Australia and China, is the first to formally link some of the most dramatic changes to the world's wildlife and habitats with human-induced climate change. In the study, which appears in the journal Nature, researchers analyzed reports highlighting changes in populations or behavior of 28,800 animal and plant species. They examined a further 829 reports that focused on different environmental effects, including surging rivers, retreating glaciers and shifting forests, across the seven continents. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16687 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16686 The Republican defeat in a special Congressional contest in Mississippi sent waves of apprehension across an already troubled party Wednesday, with some senior Republicans urging Congressional candidates to distance themselves from President Bush to head off what could be heavy losses in the fall. The victory by Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat elected in a once-steadfast Republican district on Tuesday, was the third defeat of a Republican in a special Congressional race this year. In addition to foreshadowing more losses for the party in November, the outcome appeared to call into question the belief that Senator Barack Obama,  of Illinois, could be a heavy liability for his party’s down-ticket candidates in conservative regions. Republicans had sought to link Childers to Obama in an advertising campaign there. Republican leaders said they were looking to Senator John McCain, of Arizona, the likely Republican nominee, as a model whose independent reputation appears to allow him to rise above party in a year when the Republican label seems tarnished. McCain’s advisers said the Mississippi race underlined his intention to distance himself as much as possible from Congressional Republicans. McCain has already been openly critical of some of President Bush’s strategies. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16686 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16685 Millions of historic sites, crumbling and collapsing in national forests around the country, are in danger of being lost forever, according to a study set to be released today by a prominent preservation group. The National Trust for Historic Preservation estimates that only a small slice of about 2 million "cultural resources" that sit on 193 million acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service have been properly preserved. Their deterioration has been accelerated by vandalism, theft, fire, damage from off-road vehicles and other recreation, as well as oil and gas extraction, mining, timber harvesting and grazing, the study found. The resources include Native American archaeological sites, Civil War battlefields, ranger stations, fire lookout towers, cabins and camps built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16685 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16684 Fears for the future of the world's biggest tropical rainforest grew Wednesday, after the sudden resignation of Brazil's environment minister, Marina Silva. Environmentalists had seen Silva, 50, who was born in the Brazilian Amazon, as an important ally in the fight against the destruction of the country's rainforest, 20% of which they believe has been destroyed. In her resignation letter to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the president, on Tuesday, Silva said her decision was the result of difficulties she was facing in "pursuing the federal environmental agenda". She said her efforts to protect the environment had faced "growing resistance ... [from] important sectors of the government and society". Two other top environmental officials, including Bazileu Margarido, the president of Brazil's environmental agency, Ibama, also resigned. Sergio Leitao, the director of public policy for Greenpeace in Brazil, said Silva had taken her decision because of pressure from within the government to relax laws outlawing bank loans to those who destroyed the rainforest. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16684 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16683 Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards gave his long-sought endorsement to Sen. Barack Obama  Wednesday night, calling on Democrats to unite behind him and turn their attention to the fall campaign. "The reason I am here tonight," Edwards declared, "is the voters have made their choice, and so have I." Edwards had been heavily courted by Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton since he quit the race three months ago. His decision to climb off the fence with just five contests remaining is likely to yield limited benefits, but it sends a strong signal that Edwards, at least, thinks the nomination battle is over. Appearing with Obama at a rally here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the former senator from North Carolina and 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee gave what sounded in places like a eulogy for Clinton's candidacy, praising her tenacity and describing her as "made of steel." But he emphasized that the party must now get behind Obama. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16683 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16682 Scientists Wednesday reported the discovery of the youngest supernova in the Milky Way, ending a 50-year search for the exploded stars that remain mysteriously difficult to spot in our galaxy. The supernova, given the obscure name of G1.9+0.3, was detected via remnants from the powerful, element-rich blast it set off an estimated 140 years ago. The youngest previously known supernova, called Cassiopeia A, was 330 years old. Astronomers have scoured the skies for supernovae since Cassiopeia surfaced in the 1950s. Only a half-dozen of the stellar explosions have been noted in the last millennium, but somewhere between 20 and 30 should be occurring in the Milky Way based on galactic evidence. "It's clear that we've not been getting our share [of supernovae] … this lack is a significant puzzle," said North Carolina state university scientist Stephen Reynolds, who aided in the search. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16682 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16681 Rising global grain prices helped spark the largest increase in monthly food costs in nearly 20 years, as consumers paid more in April for cereals, baked goods, and the dairy, meat and other animal products that rely on feedstocks, the government reported Wednesday. Food prices have risen 6.1 percent in the past three months on a seasonally adjusted annual basis. The one-month rise between March and April of 0.9 percent was the biggest since January 1990, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The rise in prices covered all categories of food but was most severe among such staple goods as grains and oils - goods where inflation has touched off food riots in some less developed countries and led to concerns about supply shortages. The costs of cereal and bakery products increased 1.4 percent from March to April and have risen nearly 20 percent in the past three months on a seasonally adjusted basis. Prices for fats and oils jumped more than 5 percent in April, on a seasonally adjusted annual basis, and have increased more than 26 percent in the past three months. Prices for sugars and sweets increased more than 10 percent during that same period. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16681 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16680 The death toll from Monday's deadly earthquake in central China rose to almost 15,000 on Wednesday, with an estimated 40,000 more trapped under rubble or missing, the official New China News Agency reported. The escalating casualty figures were released as soldiers, paramilitary police and civilian rescue workers continued a massive effort to clear debris from collapsed schools, hospitals and residences throughout Sichuan province, the area hardest hit by the 7.9 magnitude tremor. The Associated Press reported that 2,000 Chinese soldiers rushed to repair a dam badly cracked by the earthquake, and damage was reported in hundreds of smaller dams as well. In a news conference in the provincial capital of Chengdu, Sichuan Vice Governor Li Chengyun acknowledged that the latest figures of dead and missing were incomplete, the news agency reported. It is expected that the toll will rise as authorities continue clearing rubble in Mianyang and other towns and move deeper into Wenchuan county, the quake's epicenter. Roads into Wenchuan were severed by rocks and mudslides, according to the news agency, and efforts to airlift supplies by helicopter have been hampered by rain and fog. http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16680 http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16679 House Republicans struggled to regroup Wednesday in the aftermath of a devastating election loss in Mississippi, acknowledging that their party faced a significant challenge in November after the loss of three Republican seats in special elections this year. “It was another wake-up call that we have to show Americans that we can fix the problems here in Washington and fix the problems they deal with every day,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader. Republicans said that the Democratic victor in Mississippi’s 1st District, Travis Childers, successfully co-opted a conservative Republican anti-tax, pro-gun, pro-life message. “We know the message works,” said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 2 Republican. “We’ve got to do a better job connecting that with Republicans. And I personally think there’s a substantial and adequate time to do that.” Republicans were clearly demoralized by the loss and the prospect of sinking deeper into the minority in November. No immediate personnel shake-ups were announced even though Boehner hinted at “changes that may be necessary to adopt to the environment we are living in.” http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=16679