NEWS: May 2007

Friday, May 4, 2007

TSA loses hard drive with personal info

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The Transportation Security Administration has lost a computer hard drive containing
Social Security' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Social Security numbers, bank data and payroll information for about 100,000 employees.

Authorities realized Thursday the hard drive was missing from a controlled area at
TSA' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> TSA headquarters. TSA Administrator Kip Hawley sent a letter to employees Friday apologizing for the lost data and promising to pay for one year of credit monitoring services.
"TSA has no evidence that an unauthorized individual is using your personal information, but we bring this incident to your attention so that you can be alert to signs of any possible misuse of your identity," Hawley wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press. "We profoundly apologize for any inconvenience and concern that this incident has caused you."
The agency said it did not know whether the device is still within headquarters or was stolen.
TSA said it has asked the
FBI' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> FBI and
Secret Service' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Secret Service to investigate and said it would fire anyone discovered to have violated the agency's data-protection policies.
In a statement released Friday night, the agency said the external — or portable — hard drive contained information on employees who worked for the
Homeland Security' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Homeland Security agency from January 2002 until August 2005.
TSA, a division of the Homeland Security Department, employs about 50,000 people and is responsible for security of the nation's transportation systems, including airports and train stations.
"It's seems like there's a problem with security inside Homeland Security and that makes no sense," said James Slade, a TSA screener and the executive vice president of the National Treasury Employees Union chapter at John F. Kennedy International Airport. "That's scary. That's my identity. And now who has a hold of it? So many things go on in your mind."
The agency added a section to its Web site Friday night addressing the data security breach and directing people to information about identity theft.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (news, bio, voting record), D-Texas, whose Homeland Security subcommittee oversees the TSA, promised to hold hearings on the security breach. She said Homeland Security buildings are part of the critical infrastructure the agency is charged with protecting.
"We should expect it to be secure," she said.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., called the security breach "a terrible and unfortunate blow" for an agency he said already suffered from low morale.
It's the latest mishap for the government involving computer data. Last year, a laptop with information for more than 26.5 million military personnel, was stolen from a Veterans Affairs Department employee's home. Law enforcement officials recovered the laptop, and the FBI said Social Security numbers and other personal data had not been copied.
___
Associated Press writer Ted Bridis contributed to this report.

Lapses found in battlefield ethics study

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer 59 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - In a survey of U.S. troops in combat in
Iraq' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Iraq, less than half of Marines and a little more than half of Army soldiers said they would report a member of their unit for killing or wounding an innocent civilian.

More than 40 percent support the idea of torture in some cases, and 10 percent reported personally abusing Iraqi civilians, the
Pentagon' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Pentagon said Friday in what it called its first ethics study of troops at the war front. Units exposed to the most combat were chosen for the study, officials said.
"It is disappointing," said analyst John Pike of the Globalsecurity.org think tank. "But anybody who is surprised by it doesn't understand war. ... This is about combat stress."
The military has seen a number of high-profile incidents of alleged abuse in the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Afghanistan, including the killings of 24 civilians by Marines, the rape and killing of a 14-year-old girl and the slaying of her family and the sexual humiliation of detainees at
Abu Ghraib' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Abu Ghraib prison.
"I don't want to, for a minute, second-guess the behavior of any person in the military — look at the kind of moral dilemma you are putting people in," Christopher Preble of the libertarian Cato Institute think tank, said of the mission in Iraq. "There's a real tension between using too much force, which generally means using force to protect yourself, and using too little and therefore exposing yourself to greater risk."
The overall study was the fourth in a series done by a special mental health advisory team since 2003 aimed at assessing the well-being of forces serving in Iraq.
Officials said the teams visited Iraq last August to October, talking to troops, health care providers and chaplains.
The study team also found that long and repeated deployments were increasing troop mental health problems.
But Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, the Army's acting surgeon general, said the team's "most critical" findings were on ethics.
"They looked under every rock, and what they found was not always easy to look at," said Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health.
Findings included:
_Sixty-two percent of soldiers and 66 percent of Marines said that they knew someone seriously injured or killed, or that a member of their team had become a casualty.
_The 2006 adjusted rate of suicides per 100,000 soldiers was 17.3 soldiers, lower than the 19.9 rate reported in 2005.
_Only 47 percent of the soldiers and 38 percent of Marines said noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect.
_About a third of troops said they had insulted or cursed at civilians in their presence.
_About 10 percent of soldiers and Marines reported mistreating civilians or damaging property when it was not necessary. Mistreatment includes hitting or kicking a civilian.
_Forty-four percent of Marines and 41 percent of soldiers said torture should be allowed to save the life of a soldier or Marine.
_Thirty-nine percent of Marines and 36 percent of soldiers said torture should be allowed to gather important information from insurgents.
Lt. Col. Scott Fazekas, a Marine Corps spokesman, said officials were looking closely at the ethics results, taken from a questionnaire survey of 1,320 soldiers and 447 Marines.
"The Marine Corps takes this issue of battlefield ethics very seriously," he said. "We are examining the study and its recommendations and we'll find ways to improve our approach."
Pollock said officials concluded from the overall study that "there's a robust system in place to provide mental health care, but issues continue with the stress of a combat deployment."
Based on the findings, officials have revised training programs to focus more on Army values, suicide prevention, battlefield ethics and behavioral health awareness, Pollock said.
The study team said shorter deployments or longer intervals between deployments would give soldiers and Marines a better chance "to reset mentally" before returning to combat. The Pentagon last month announced a policy that extends tours of duty for all active duty Army troops from a year to 15 months. Pollock acknowledged that was "going to be a stress" on troops.
Marine tours are seven months, one likely reason that soldier morale was lower than Marine morale, she said.
Pike contrasted Iraq's campaign to World War I, saying: "The trenches were pretty stressful, but a unit would only be up at the front for a few months and then get rotated to the rear. There's no rear in Iraq; you're subject to combat stress for your entire tour."
___
On the Net: The redacted report is at http://www.armymedicine.army.mil/news/mhat/mhat.html

Bush promises to veto abortion measures

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer 46 minutes ago
WASHINGTON -
President Bush' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> President Bush is warning Democratic leaders that any attempt to weaken federal policies that restrict abortion will be met with a veto.

White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto said Friday that the warning, issued in letters to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), was intended to stop abortion amendments from being added to spending bills and other legislation that Congress will be considering in the coming weeks.
"There's nothing specific pending right now," Fratto said.
The Republicans who held power in past sessions of Congress ensured that spending bills included language prohibiting federal funding for abortion except to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest, and restricting funding for international family planning groups that might give advice on or provide abortions.
Now in the minority, House and Senate Republicans recently wrote the president urging him to make clear that any weakening of those restrictions would be unacceptable.
"The standing pattern is that appropriate conscience protections must be in place for health care entities, and that taxpayer dollars may not be used in coercive or involuntary family planning programs," Bush said in letters dated Thursday.
"I will veto any legislation that weakens current federal policies and laws on abortion, or that encourages the destruction of human life at any stage," he wrote.
Bush has already threatened to veto legislation, passed by the House and Senate in different forms this year, that would ease restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research. He killed a similar stem cell bill last year in the first veto of his presidency.
Reid's spokesman, Jim Manley, said that "if the president is serious about finding common ground on this divisive issue, he should support Sen. Reid's efforts to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies in this country." Reid and others are sponsoring legislation that would improve family planning services, require insurance companies to pay for birth control and provide effective sex education for young people.
The letter was hailed by anti-abortion leaders such as Douglas Johnson of the
National Right to Life Committee' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> National Right to Life Committee, who said his group appreciates "that the president is drawing a bright line."
"President Bush is not the first man to occupy the Oval Office who talked about valuing preborn life, but no administration has backed up those words with as much consistent policy support as his has," said Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family Action.
On the other side, Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said Bush had essentially told the new Congress "that he wants to continue denying millions of women access to essential medical services, including family planning and safe, legal abortion, even if it means jeopardizing their health."

Democrats not backing down on Iraq Bill

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer 24 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - House Democratic leaders are indicating they are not ready to back down in their confrontation with
President Bush' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> President Bush on
Iraq' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Iraq, even as pressure mounts to approve new funding for U.S. troops.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., and other party leaders are considering a bill that would fund the war as Bush wants, but only guarantee the money through July. After that, Congress could block additional money from being sent if the Iraqi government does not meet certain political and security goals.
The proposal, not yet endorsed or briefed to caucus members, would be a direct challenge to the president, who has demanded Congress fund the war with no strings attached. This week, Bush vetoed a $124.2 billion bill that would have provided money for operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Afghanistan while requiring troops to begin coming home by Oct. 1.
White House officials and Republicans have chastised Democrats for holding up the war spending bill, saying U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan need the money now. Because Democrats do not hold a two-thirds majority to override Bush's veto, Republicans say Democrats ultimately will have to drop their demands or risk hurting the troops.
Democrats say they will provide troops in combat the resources they need and will send Bush a bill by the end of the month. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has reported that the Army has enough bookkeeping flexibility to fund war operations until July.
In a closed-door leadership meeting Thursday, Rep. David Obey (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., suggested that the House guarantee funding of the war only through July. The bill would provide additional money after that point, but give Congress a chance to deny those funds be used if the Iraqi government does not meet certain benchmarks.
Under Obey's proposal, members would vote separately on whether to fund some of the domestic spending in the Iraq bill that Bush opposed, such as agricultural assistance.
The plan was described by Democratic aides who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plan. According to a senior Democratic leadership aide, the plan has not been endorsed by Pelosi or in the Senate.
The move likely would appease a large number of House Democrats who are reluctant to vote for a war spending bill unless it moves toward getting troops out of Iraq. Such a plan would signal to caucus members that the speaker was not willing to back down to Bush and, at the same time, support the troops.
While the House could narrowly pass the measure, it is unlikely to find similar backing in the Senate, where some leading Democrats say they want to fund the war through September.
One option for Pelosi would be to pass the bill only to agree to drop it later when it must be negotiated in the Senate.
Numerous other ideas are being floated in the Senate, most of which involve some combination of goals the Iraqi government must reach. The key impasse, however, is whether to require the withdrawal of U.S. troops if the benchmarks are not met.
Democratic Sens.
Hillary Rodham Clinton' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Robert Byrd (news, bio, voting record) of West Virginia proposed a measure to repeal the 2002 resolution authorizing force in Iraq. Under the bill, Bush would be required in October to seek Congress' blessing to continue operations in Iraq.
"If the president will not bring himself to accept reality, it is time for Congress to bring reality to him," said Clinton, a presidential contender for 2008.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino immediately shot down Clinton's proposal as a nonstarter, adding that such a bold suggestion was "troubling" in light of ongoing negotiations.
"Here we go again," Perino said in a statement. "The Senate is trying another way to put a surrender date on the calendar. Welcome to politics '08-style."
Several Republicans, including Sens. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record) of Maine and John Sununu (news, bio, voting record) of New Hampshire and Reps. Roy Blunt (news, bio, voting record) of Missouri and Adam Putnam (news, bio, voting record) of Florida, have said they are open to restricting the more than $5 billion in aid for Iraq if the Baghdad government does not meet certain benchmarks.

Army officer killed in Cuba highjack bid

By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer Fri May 4, 3:43 AM ET
HAVANA - A pair of heavily armed Cuban soldiers seized a city bus, killed an army officer and triggered a gun battle in a foiled bid to hijack a charter flight bound for the United States.

The young army deserters were arrested before dawn Thursday on the tarmac of a terminal that handles special charter flights between Havana and Miami, as well as New York and other American cities.
The soldiers forced a city bus to head to Havana's Jose Marti International Airport at gunpoint and killed Army Lt. Col. Victor Ibo Acuna Velazquez aboard a plane that had no passengers or crew — apparently because there were no flights at the early hour. Both were apprehended.
An Interior Ministry statement suggested that Acuna Velazquez, who was unarmed, happened to be on the bus at the time it was commandeered and died "heroically" trying to thwart the hijacking. Other bus passengers were unharmed.
The government blamed anti-Cuba U.S. policy for the incident.
"The responsibility for these new crimes lies with the highest-ranking authorities of the United States, adding to the long list of terrorist acts that Cuba has been the victim of for nearly half a century," it said.
Havana says U.S. immigration policies giving most Cubans almost guaranteed residency encourages them to risk their lives to get to the United States, and says that American officials have long tolerated — even encouraged — violence against the communist-run country.
The incident comes amid an ongoing political campaign by Cuba's government accusing U.S. authorities of protecting its archenemy Luis Posada Carriles, a 79-year-old Cuban militant who it accuses of an airliner bombing three decades ago and a string of Havana hotel bombings in the late 1990s.
Thursday's was the first Cuban hijacking attempt reported since the spring of 2003, when an architect seized an airliner carrying passengers on a domestic flight from the Isle of Youth and diverted it to the United States by brandishing fake grenades. The hijacker was later sentenced to 20 years in prison in the United States.
The previous month, six hijackers forced a Cuban passenger plane to fly to the U.S. at knifepoint. U.S. Air Force fighter jets forced the aircraft to land in Key West.
Thursday's suspects were among three army soldiers on mandatory military service who fled their base with assault rifles Sunday after killing a fellow soldier and wounding another. The statement said the third escaped soldier was captured before the attempted hijacking but it did not say when.
Because they were active soldiers when the crimes occurred, the three almost certainly will face a lightening-quick trial by military tribunal. The death penalty is likely.
Before the attempted hijacking, the three escaped soldiers were the focus of a huge manhunt. The Defense Ministry over the weekend distributed circulars, describing the fugitive soldiers as armed and dangerous.
The men, all from the eastern province of Camaguey, were identified as Leandro Cerezo Sirut and Alain Forbus Lameru, both 19, and Yoan Torres Martinez, 21. It was unclear which two were involved in the attempted hijacking.
Caridad Carbonel, who has lived near Havana's airport for 34 years, said she was awakened by gunfire Thursday and saw a vehicle roll onto the tarmac through a side checkpoint.
"There was a terrible shootout," the 68-year-old said. "I feel awful because things shouldn't be this way. Young people need to live differently."
Within hours of the attempted hijacking, all was calm and running on-time at the airport, though the bus and plane involved sat on the tarmac for hours.

Jordan's queen launches new microcredit anti-poverty program

by Justin Cole Wed May 2, 9:17 PM ET
NEW YORK (AFP) - Jordan's Queen Rania and Hollywood actress Natalie Portman teamed up Wednesday to launch a major new microcredit program targeting global poverty that will focus initially on the Middle East.

The Jordanian queen and the US-Israeli actress both spoke at the launch of the Village Banking Campaign, which aims to bring banking services to one million of the world's poorest families.
As part of the Middle East effort, the queen said FINCA International (Foundation for International Community Assistance), a global microcredit group, plans to start its first operations in Jordan in July.
"I know that creating opportunity in my region is not an option; it is a necessity," the queen said as she unveiled the campaign at New York University at a luncheon attended by Golden Globe-winning Portman, FINCA staffers, business executives and students.
"To my mind, microfinance is both a sound and smart investment, not only in lifting the lives of the working poor, but in stitching together the fragile, fraying seams of our troubled world," Queen Rania said.
The planned Jordan microcredit project follows the 2004 launch of a FINCA program in
Afghanistan' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Afghanistan, an Islamic-compliant lending operation that claims to have over 34,000 "clients."
Microcredit, or microfinance, works by extending tiny loans, ranging from a few dollars to 1,000 dollars, to the poor without collateral so that budding entrepreneurs can expand a small business, such as a handicraft shop or a food stall.
The aim is to help the poor, who pay back the loans with interest, boost their livelihoods.
Portman urged people not to be "indifferent" to the plight of the world's poor, who number in the hundreds of millions. Experts say there are between 1.0 and 1.2 billion people around the world who survive on less than one dollar a day.
"My goal for this campaign is to galvanize my generation to support Village Banking, and take a leadership role in the fight against poverty," Portman said.
Another campaign goal is to get 100,000 microcredit village banks up and running by 2010 to serve people surviving on less than two dollars a day.
The Jordanian queen sits on FINCA's board, while Portman -- who has starred in Hollywood blockbusters including three Star Wars movies -- is an "Ambassador of Hope" for the poverty-busting group.
Portman stressed that it's barely possible to buy a cup of coffee in New York for two dollars, but that tiny micro loans of that amount and more can have a big impact on the poor, enabling them to buy seed packets and grow crops for example.
Microcredit programs exist across the Americas, Asia and Africa and are growing in the Middle East, in such places as Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
The sector has expanded to include savings and microinsurance programs, as well as gaining
United Nations' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> United Nations support.
Few people, except those toiling in the sector, had heard of microcredit until a few years ago, but it is riding a wave of publicity and acclaim and got a significant boost last year when microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize.
And the global banking industry, which critics charge had all but shunned the poor, appears to be taking note.
Top executives from insurance giant AIG and credit card behemoth VISA International attended Wednesday's luncheon. AIG, which has worked with microcredit groups in Uganda, said it would pledge 1.5 million dollars towards FINCA's new efforts.
US financial behemoth Citigroup is also vying to muscle into the action, declaring in a recent advertising campaign: "There's nothing MICRO about it."
FINCA, which is based in Washington, plans to self-finance its Jordan program

Caribbean murder rates hurting growth: World Bank

Caribbean murder rates hurting growth: World Bank

By Michael Christie Thu May 3, 5:11 PM ET
MIAMI (Reuters) - The tourism-dependent Caribbean may now have the world's highest murder rate as a region, severely affecting potential economic growth, the
World Bank' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> World Bank and a U.N. agency said in a report on Thursday.

Blaming most of the violent crime in countries like Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago on the trafficking of Colombian cocaine to Europe and the United States, the report said the region's homicide rate of 30 per 100,000 inhabitants a year was higher even than troubled southern and western Africa.
It acknowledged that murder statistics in small countries were often problematic because a relatively small number of incidents can result in high rates but said it was clear that homicides were a growing problem in the Caribbean.
"While levels of crime and associated circumstances vary by country, the strongest explanation for the relatively high rates of crime and violence in the region -- and their apparent rise in recent years -- is narcotics trafficking," said the report, jointly prepared by the World Bank and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
The authors cited studies that indicated Haiti, the poorest and most unstable country in the Americas, could raise annual economic growth by 5.4 percent if it cut its murder rate to the same level as Costa Rica in Central America.
Jamaica, the verdant and mountainous home to reggae and a major marijuana producer, could boost gross domestic product growth by the same amount if it did likewise, while the Dominican Republic and Guyana could add 1.8 percent and 1.7 percent respectively to annual
GDP' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> GDP expansion.
The report said an estimated 10 tonnes of cocaine were trafficked through Jamaica and 20 tonnes through Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 2005.
But the signs were that the flow of narcotics through the Caribbean was diminishing as Mexican cartels took over from Colombian organizations in distributing drugs in the United States and shifted trafficking routes to Central America.
The World Bank and U.N. agency called on the region to modernize police forces, improve crime statistics, invest in crime-reduction programs like rehabilitating slums and consider novel methods to counter drug trafficking.
It cited the example of a Dutch program to halt drug couriers flying into Schiphol airport, in Amsterdam, from the Netherlands Antilles islands of Curacao, Bonaire and Aruba.
Under a program called "100 percent Control," all planes and their crews and passengers flying in from the Dutch Caribbean, Suriname or Venezuela are extensively searched. Couriers found with less than 3 kg (6.6 lb) of cocaine are not detained but are deported and added to a blacklist.
"Rather than attempting to scare off potential smugglers with the threat of incarceration, the Dutch approach was based on increasing the rate of interdiction to the point that smuggling becomes unprofitable," the report said.
The number of couriers passing through Schiphol dropped from an estimated 80 to 100 per day in 2003 to around 10 a month in 2005, the report added.

Houston museum offering to buy cockroaches

Wed May 2, 4:26 PM ET
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Houston museum is offering 25 cents per cockroach to fill an exhibit about the wonders of insects that eat decomposing things.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science wants 1,000 American cockroaches, which grow to 2 inches long, can fly and thrive in the city's sub-tropical climate, said museum entomologist Laurie Pierrel on Wednesday.
They will be part of an exhibit polishing the image of bugs that feed off decaying organic matter and in so doing add to the general cleanliness.
"They're decomposers, a bit like a trash disposal," Pierrel said. "If we didn't have cockroaches, there'd be so much more trash around."
Roaches are widely believed to be dirty, disease-carrying creatures, but that is unfair, she said.
"They are very clean like a cat," Pierrel said. "They clean themselves all day."
There is the matter that they often enter houses through the sewer system, and that troublesome organic matter from there can stick on their feet, but only until they clean it off, she said.
The Houston Chronicle on Wednesday had a frontpage illustration of a homemade roach trap to capture the bugs without touching them.
Pierrel said she will be outside the museum the next three Saturdays with a bucket for the bugs and money for the sellers.
What will the museum roaches eat? Pretty much what they would get scavenging in the average home.
"We usually throw in a box of cake mix, some pieces of apple, some pieces of orange, cat food, dog food -- our insects eat well," Pierrel said.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Phoenix 119, LA Lakers 110

Preview - Box Score - Recap - Series Breakdown - Highlights

By BOB BAUM, AP Sports WriterMay 3, 2007
AP - May 3, 2:12 am EDTMore Photos
PHOENIX (AP) -- In the end, the Phoenix Suns had too much speed, too many free throws, and too much talent for the Los Angeles Lakers.
The final game was more methodical than magnificent for the high-speed Suns on Wednesday night, a 119-110 victory that clinched the best-of-seven first-round series in five games.
Amare Stoudemire scored 27 points and Shawn Marion added 26, and the Suns overcame an inspired performance by Lamar Odom and a late scoring binge by Kobe Bryant.
The Suns advanced to a Western Conference semifinal matchup with the San Antonio Spurs, who eliminated Denver in five games earlier in the evening. Game 1 of the series is Sunday in Phoenix.
The Lakers never led Wednesday, trailing by 15 points in the second quarter and 16 with 5:52 to go. They kept coming back, but the Suns held them off.

"It was I guess, a fairly comfortable situation," Phoenix's Steve Nash said. "It never got real desperate. We didn't obviously blow them out, but I thought we did a good job. We weren't real sharp, but that's a tough situation. They had nothing to lose. Everyone expects them to be out."
The Lakers were eliminated in the first round for the second straight year and haven't won a playoff series since 2004, when Shaquille O'Neal left Los Angeles. Bryant let it be known after the game that changes must come.
"Do it and do it now," he said. "Personally for me, it's beyond frustration -- three years and still being at ground zero. This summer's a big summer. We have to see what direction we want to take as an organization and make those steps and make them now."
Odom, playing the whole series with a hyperextended elbow and torn shoulder cartilage, had a career playoff-high 33 points and 10 rebounds for the Lakers, but it was Bryant who put the final scare into the Suns.
The NBA scoring champion, after an uneven night, made consecutive 3-pointers to cut what had been a 16-point fourth-quarter lead to 111-106 with 2:53 to play. Marion made a floater, Stoudemire hit one of two free throws, and the Suns came up with two crucial offensive rebounds on a late possession to help put the game away.
"You have to give them credit," Phoenix coach Mike D'Antoni said. "They would not die. Kobe would not go down."
Bryant -- defended by new father Raja Bell -- scored 34 points but was just 13-of-33 from the field. Bell was playing on precious few hours of sleep after spending the night at a hospital, where his wife gave birth to their first child six hours before Wednesday's tipoff.

Nash also struggled, shooting 5-for-15 and committing seven turnovers. He scored 17 points and had 10 assists, four in the decisive fourth-quarter stretch. Stoudemire, 15-of-21 at the foul line, also had 16 rebounds. Marion had 10 boards.
Leandro Barbosa, winner of the NBA's Sixth Man Award, had eight of his 18 points in the fourth quarter on two early 3-pointers and a breathless fastbreak layup on a halfcourt pass from Nash.
"It was a desperate game for them," Stoudemire said, "so you knew they would fight back in the second half."
Phoenix won the game at the free throw line, going 31-of-39 to the Lakers' 20-of-28.
"I don't know how you put Amare at the free throw line 21 times," Los Angeles coach Phil Jackson said, "but we did."
Barbosa's layup on the long pass from Nash put the Suns ahead 104-91, then Bryant was called for a technical foul. Nash's free throw made it 105-91.
"He felt he was getting fouled on four subsequent plays," Jackson said. "We told him to fight through that and keep moving the basketball, and we'd find a way to do it."
Marion's consecutive dunks on passes from Nash gave Phoenix its biggest lead, 109-93, with 5:52 to play.
The Lakers, down 64-52 at halftime, cut the lead to two in the third quarter.
Bryant's two free throws with 3:39 left punctuated an 11-2 run that cut Phoenix's lead to 80-75, then it was 85-83 after Kwame Brown's inside basket with 1:30 to go in the third. Brown, fouled on the play, missed the free throw that could have made it a one-point game.
In the final 49 seconds of the quarter, Stoudemire sank a 14-foot fadeaway jumper from the baseline, then Barbosa made an acrobatic driving bank shot and the Suns eked out a 91-85 lead entering the fourth.
It was the second straight year the Suns eliminated the Lakers in the first round. A year ago, Phoenix had to rally from a 3-1 deficit. With Stoudemire and Kurt Thomas back from injuries, this Suns team needed no such drama.
Bell, who said before the game he was on "a natural high," sandwiched a driving layup around two 3-pointers in the game's first two minutes.
Thomas came in after Stoudemire drew his second foul with 5:39 to play in the first. In the remainder of the quarter, Thomas was 4-of-5 shooting -- three from outside 15 feet -- for eight points, grabbed three rebounds, had two assists and blocked a shot.
Notes
Phoenix was 1-2 against the Spurs in the regular season. ... The Suns won their third consecutive first-round series, the first time that's happened since they won four straight from 1992-1995. ... Marion became the seventh player in franchise history to score 1,000 postseason points.
Updated on Thursday, May 3, 2007 2:40 am EDT

Historian claims to ID Jack the Ripper

By CELEAN JACOBSON, Associated Press Writer Wed May 2, 8:12 AM ET
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - An eminent South African historian believes he has stumbled on the identity of Jack the Ripper.

Charles van Onselen said at first he wasn't sure he wanted to publicize the conclusions he drew when he noticed parallels in the century-old, unsolved Ripper case and the background of Joseph Silver, who terrorized women as "King of the Pimps" in Johannesburg.
"I was left with a choice: I have got intelligent speculation, which I think is pretty long way down the track to proving that this guy was the Ripper. Do I include or exclude it?
"If I include it, it buggers up the book and people get excited for the wrong reasons. If I exclude it and a really sharp professional spots it ... I had to explore this possibility," he said, sitting in his tree-filled garden, about 3 miles from where Silver reigned, in a city still regarded as one of the most crime-ridden in the world.
The publicity around van Onselen's "The Fox and The Flies: The World of Joseph Silver, Racketeer and Psychopath", published in April, has made much of Silver being Jack the Ripper, the notorious Victorian serial killer who murdered at least five East London prostitutes in 1888.
But van Onselen, an acclaimed biographer who specializes in South Africa's criminal history and who took nearly three decades to research the book, only makes his Ripper case in the final 25th chapter, written in the last 36 months.
While the book has been well-received, reaction from "Ripperologists" has been skeptical as van Onselen makes his case on circumstantial evidence.
To his doubters the author said: "How many coincidences do you want to mount up in your mind simultaneously until you start saying this is a real possibility?"
Scores of people have been accused of the Ripper murders, but no one has ever been proven guilty and London police put the number of most likely suspects at just four, among them a poor Whitechapel resident named Kosminski who, like Silver, was a Polish Jew. At the time, Londoners speculated the killer was Jewish, leading to fears of an anti-Jewish backlash.
Van Onselen believes Silver fits the psychological profile of the Whitechapel murderer and he places his subject at the center of the scene of the Ripper murders. The evidence that Silver was in Whitechapel at the time of the Ripper murders includes the birth of his daughter there, van Onselen said.
As pimp and brothel keeper, Silver would have been familiar with the prostitutes working in the area, van Onselen said.
Silver, who was born in Poland, arrived in Johannesburg in 1898 fresh from a stint in Sing Sing for burglary and a stay in London a decade earlier. Shortly after arriving in Johannesburg, Silver set up a string of cafes, cigar shops and police-protected brothels.
Silver was litigious, wrote bold letters to newspapers and had an array of mocking aliases, van Onselen said. Jack the Ripper is believed to have taunted police with brazen letters to the papers.
Van Onselen, the son of a detective, tracked Silver across Africa, the Americas and Europe, "staggered by how mobile this guy was." In the end, Silver was executed as a spy in Poland in 1918.
Van Onselen points to similarities between the subject of his book and the Whitechapel murderer, both psychopaths with a deep hatred of women. Silver had bitter, violent relationships with women all his life.
"In terms of a template for this person, in terms of age, personality, mental illness, pattern for rest of life, this is the best fit there has ever been," he said.
___
On the Net:
Scotland Yard: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_en_ot/storytext/safrica_jack_the_ripper/22858212/SIG=11d5q2nqt/*http://www.met.police.uk/history/ripper.htm

Honeybee die-off threatens food supply

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Wed May 2, 10:49 PM ET
BELTSVILLE, Md. - Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.

Honeybees don't just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.
In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Department of Agriculture.
Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water," said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program.
"This is the biggest general threat to our food supply," Hackett said.
While not all scientists foresee a food crisis, noting that large-scale bee die-offs have happened before, this one seems particularly baffling and alarming.
U.S. beekeepers in the past few months have lost one-quarter of their colonies — or about five times the normal winter losses — because of what scientists have dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. The problem started in November and seems to have spread to 27 states, with similar collapses reported in Brazil, Canada and parts of Europe.
Scientists are struggling to figure out what is killing the honeybees, and early results of a key study this week point to some kind of disease or parasite.
Even before this disorder struck, America's honeybees were in trouble. Their numbers were steadily shrinking, because their genes do not equip them to fight poisons and disease very well, and because their gregarious nature exposes them to ailments that afflict thousands of their close cousins.
"Quite frankly, the question is whether the bees can weather this perfect storm," Hackett said. "Do they have the resilience to bounce back? We'll know probably by the end of the summer."
Experts from Brazil and Europe have joined in the detective work at USDA's bee lab in suburban Washington. In recent weeks, Hackett briefed Vice President Cheney's office on the problem. Congress has held hearings on the matter.
"This crisis threatens to wipe out production of crops dependent on bees for pollination," Agriculture Secretary
Mike Johanns' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Mike Johanns said in a statement.
A congressional study said honeybees add about $15 billion a year in value to our food supply.
Of the 17,000 species of bees that scientists know about, "honeybees are, for many reasons, the pollinator of choice for most North American crops," a
National Academy of Sciences' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> National Academy of Sciences study said last year. They pollinate many types of plants, repeatedly visit the same plant, and recruit other honeybees to visit, too.
Pulitzer Prize-winning insect biologist E.O. Wilson of Harvard said the honeybee is nature's "workhorse — and we took it for granted."
"We've hung our own future on a thread," Wilson, author of the book "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth," told The Associated Press on Monday.
Beginning this past fall, beekeepers would open up their hives and find no workers, just newborn bees and the queen. Unlike past bee die-offs, where dead bees would be found near the hive, this time they just disappeared. The die-off takes just one to three weeks.
USDA's top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis, who is coordinating the detective work on this die-off, has more suspected causes than time, people and money to look into them.
The top suspects are a parasite, an unknown virus, some kind of bacteria, pesticides, or a one-two combination of the top four, with one weakening the honeybee and the second killing it.
A quick experiment with some of the devastated hives makes pesticides seem less likely. In the recent experiment, Pettis and colleagues irradiated some hard-hit hives and reintroduced new bee colonies. More bees thrived in the irradiated hives than in the non-irradiated ones, pointing toward some kind of disease or parasite that was killed by radiation.
The parasite hypothesis has history and some new findings to give it a boost: A mite practically wiped out the wild honeybee in the U.S. in the 1990s. And another new one-celled parasitic fungus was found last week in a tiny sample of dead bees by University of California San Francisco molecular biologist Joe DeRisi, who isolated the human
SARS' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> SARS virus.
However, Pettis and others said while the parasite nosema ceranae may be a factor, it cannot be the sole cause. The fungus has been seen before, sometimes in colonies that were healthy.
Recently, scientists have begun to wonder if mankind is too dependent on honeybees. The scientific warning signs came in two reports last October.
First, the National Academy of Sciences said pollinators, especially America's honeybee, were under threat of collapse because of a variety of factors. Captive colonies in the United States shrank from 5.9 million in 1947 to 2.4 million in 2005.
Then, scientists finished mapping the honeybee genome and found that the insect did not have the normal complement of genes that take poisons out of their systems or many immune-disease-fighting genes. A fruitfly or a mosquito has twice the number of genes to fight toxins, University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum.
What the genome mapping revealed was "that honeybees may be peculiarly vulnerable to disease and toxins," Berenbaum said.
University of Montana bee expert Jerry Bromenshenk has surveyed more than 500 beekeepers and found that 38 percent of them had losses of 75 percent or more. A few weeks back, Bromenshenk was visiting California beekeepers and saw a hive that was thriving. Two days later, it had completely collapsed.
Yet Bromenshenk said, "I'm not ready to panic yet." He said he doesn't think a food crisis is looming.
Even though experts this year gave what's happening a new name and think this is a new type of die-off, it may have happened before.
Bromenshenk said cited die-offs in the 1960s and 1970s that sound somewhat the same. There were reports of something like this in the United States in spots in 2004, Pettis said. And Germany had something similar in 2004, said Peter Neumann, co-chairman of a 17-country European research group studying the problem.
"The problem is that everyone wants a simple answer," Pettis said. "And it may not be a simple answer."
___
On the Net:
Colony Collapse Disorder Web page by the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium:
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_sc/storytext/honeybee_die_off/22868462/SIG=11namu920/*http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/ColonyCollapseDisorder.html
National Academy of Sciences study on pollinators: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_sc/storytext/honeybee_die_off/22868462/SIG=11fpqcg3n/*http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id11761

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Bush veto puts new pressure on Democrats

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer 32 minutes ago
WASHINGTON -
President Bush' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> President Bush's veto of an
Iraq' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Iraq war spending bill that set timelines for U.S. troop withdrawals puts new pressure on Democrats in Congress to craft a compromise even as their caucus grows more fractious on the topic

The party's most liberal members, especially in the House, say they will vote against money for continuing the war if there's no binding language on troop drawdowns. Bush and almost all congressional Republicans continue to insist on a spending bill with no strings attached on troop movements.
Bush on Tuesday rejected legislation pushed by Democratic leaders that would require the first U.S. combat troops to be withdrawn by Oct. 1 with a goal of a complete pullout six months later.
"This is a prescription for chaos and confusion and we must not impose it on our troops," Bush said in a nationally broadcast statement from the White House. "It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing."
The standoff gives Republicans leverage, because even with the liberals' votes, Democrats don't have enough support to override Bush's veto. It will force Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., to seek more Republican help in drafting a new bill that Bush might accept, her allies and opponents say.
"I think the Democrats are in a box," Rep. Eric Cantor (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., said in an interview Tuesday. "We're pretty resolute on our side. We are not going to tie this funding to any type of withdrawal deadline or any type of redeployment deadline."
Some Democrats believe the GOP solidarity will crack over time, noting that polls show heavy public support for a withdrawal plan.
Lawmakers in both parties agree that a workable compromise is a huge challenge in the coming days or weeks. Because Democrats control the House and Senate, the pressure is mainly on them to craft a bill that Bush will sign, and thus avoid accusations that they failed to finance troops in a time of war.
Many Democrats say a new spending bill must include so-called benchmarks for progress in Iraq that, if not met, would trigger movements of U.S. troops out of the country or perhaps to non-urban areas that see little sectarian violence. A new spending bill "has got to be tied to redeployment," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (news, bio, voting record), D-Ill., the House's fourth-ranking Democratic leader.
Emanuel conceded, however, that Democrats have yet to figure out where they will find the votes.
The situation frustrates Democrats, who won control of the House and Senate in an election that largely focused on Iraq.
Moreover, Democrats showed impressive solidarity in passing the bill that Bush vetoed Tuesday, losing only 14 House Democrats while holding 216. Top Democrats say they have no hope of replicating that showing once they begin making even modest concessions in response to Bush's veto.
That makes them dependent on Republican help to some degree — perhaps a lot. As long as most GOP lawmakers stick with the president, "the question is how much policy and change we can push in Iraq," Emanuel said.
In his veto statement Tuesday, Bush again rejected the notion of an "artificial deadline" for troop withdrawals. But he added, "I'm confident that with good will on both sides we can agree on a bill that gets our troops the money and flexibility they need, as soon as possible."
Pelosi, who was to join Republican and Democratic leaders from both houses in a meeting with Bush on Wednesday, told reporters after Bush's remarks: "The president wants a blank check. The Congress is not going to give it to him."
Democrats will work with the White House, she said, "but there is great distance between us right now."
Numerous possible compromises are being floated on Capitol Hill, all involving some combination of benchmarks. Some would require Bush to certify monthly that the Iraqi government is fully cooperating with U.S. efforts in several areas, such as giving troops the authority to pursue extremists. Others would require an Iraqi-run program to disarm militias and a plan to distribute oil revenues fairly.
The key impasse in Congress is whether to require redeployments of U.S. troops if the benchmarks are not met. Many Democrats insist on it, and many Republicans vow not to budge.
"Our members will not accept restraints on the military," House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (news, bio, voting record) of Missouri told reporters Tuesday. He suggested tying benchmarks to continued U.S. nonmilitary aid to Iraq, an idea that many Democrats consider too weak.
Under another proposal being floated, unmet benchmarks would cause some U.S. troops to be removed from especially violent regions such as Baghdad. They would redeploy to places in Iraq where they presumably could fight terrorists but avoid the worst centers of Sunni-Shia conflict.
Still another possibility would change the bill that Bush vetoed only by allowing the president to waive the redeployment requirements under certain conditions
Senate Republicans show a bit more interest in compromise than do their House colleagues, in part because several of them face tough re-elections next year in competitive states.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record) of Kentucky told reporters Tuesday that his party will accept benchmarks. But he declined to say whether he would agree to binding consequences if such benchmarks go unmet.
"You've asked me if there is an area where there's a potential common ground," McConnell said, "and I think benchmarks are a possibility."

Immigration rally turnout lower than '06

By SOPHIA TAREEN, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 14 minutes ago
CHICAGO - Magda Ortiz believes a recent raid in a largely Mexican neighborhood of Chicago made people too afraid to march in an immigration rights rally, which drew far fewer protesters than turned out last year.

Ortiz, a 27-year-old legal resident from Mexico and mother of two, pushed through crowds on the city's lakefront with a stroller bearing a sign that read: "Bush, think about the moms. Stop the raids."
But if the raids kept some people away, organizers said, they drew out others who were determined to show they wouldn't be intimidated.
"If they had fear, they turned that fear into courage to come out and march," said Elias Bermudez, president of the activist group Inmigrantes Sin Fronteras, or Immigrants Without Borders, at a demonstration in Phoenix. About 15,000 people marched there, some with signs reading "Stop the roundups" or "The sleeping giant woke up forever."
A few dozen counter-protesters turned out, including George Propheter, who held up a large handwritten sign that read "Hell No."
"I want to send them back," he said. "I've been in the city for 40 years. They've completely destroyed our city."
In Chicago, where more than 400,000 swarmed the streets last year, police put initial estimates at 150,000, by far the country's largest turnout. In Los Angeles, where several hundred thousand turned out a year earlier, about 25,000 attended a downtown rally, said police Capt. Andrew Smith.
Protests were mostly peaceful, except for an evening rally at a park in Los Angeles, where several people threw rocks and bottles at police and at least person was arrested, Officer Mike Lopez said. Police fired rubber bullets and used batons to push the crowd out of the street and onto the sidewalk. An unknown number of officers and protesters were taken to the hospital with injuries, Lopez said.
March organizers had long predicted lower turnouts, blaming stepped-up raids, frustration that Congress hasn't passed immigration reform and an effort by many groups to shift their focus from street mobilizations to citizenship and voter registration drives.
"There's no reason a pro-immigration bill can't be passed. That's one of the messages being sent today," said Chicago protester Shaun Harkin, 34, of Northern Ireland, who has lived in the United States as a legal resident for 15 years.
Though fewer in number, protesters did show up in cities from Miami to Detroit to San Antonio. Many of those waving flags, chanting, and carrying hand-painted signs said they were frustrated by what they see as little progress.
"After working 22 years here, paying taxes and being a good citizen, I think it's fair they give me residency," said Los Angeles protester Manuel Hernandez, 38-year-old Mexican who along with his wife and two children is undocumented. "It's not fair we don't have documents."
Others were more optimistic.
"This could be a tipping point, where there will be legislation recognizing that laws on the books now are a mess and don't recognize reality," said Gordon Mayer, a vice president of the Community Media Workshop, which helped organize the Chicago march.
"Last year these people were defending themselves. This time they're going on the offensive," Manuel Rendon, 19, a U.S. citizen who lives in Frisco, Texas, said at a rally in Dallas.
After last year's marches, which drew a million-plus protesters, the Senate passed a sweeping bill that would have provided a path to citizenship for many of the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants. But the bill was never reconciled with the then-Republican-controlled House, and legislation has languished since last summer. Subsequent bipartisan proposals have gotten more conservative.
Meanwhile, immigration raids and deportations are increasing.
In fiscal year 2006, federal immigration officials deported 195,024 people, compared with 173,363 the previous year, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data. Six months into the current fiscal year, 125,405 have been deported.
The raids included one last week at a discount mall in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood that resulted in charges against 22 people.
Democratic Party Chairman
Howard Dean' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Howard Dean told immigrant supporters in Miami that a reform bill currently before Congress was "insane" because it would require many illegal immigrants to return home before applying for citizenship.
"This is a government that can't find a 6-foot-4 terrorist. How is it going to find 12 million people?" he told a group of more than 100 party supporters at Parrot Jungle Island.
In New York, immigrants and their supporters added names to a painting of a tree meant to symbolize the American family and the crucial role of immigrants in U.S. history. People in the crowd then attached leaves containing names of relatives.
"These people are hardworking people," said Djounedou Titi, a West African immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for eight years. "They deserve credit. And the only credit this country can give to them is citizenship."
___
Associated Press writers Michael Tarm in Chicago, Peter Prengaman in Los Angeles, Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami, Amanda Lee Myers in Phoenix, Anabelle Garay in Dallas and Deepti Hajela in New York contributed to this report.

Calls for Olmert to resign growing

By ARON HELLER, Associated Press Writer 30 minutes ago
JERUSALEM - Telling his rivals to "slow down," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called an emergency meeting of his Cabinet Wednesday in a feverish attempt to hold on to power following a scathing report on his handling of last year's war in Lebanon.

This week's report has set off a growing chorus of calls for Olmert's resignation, including from members of his coalition government. A top lawmaker in Olmert's Kadima Party became the highest-ranking official to urge Olmert to step down, and party officials said Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a party heavyweight, would follow suit later in the day.
The 34-day war against the Islamic group Hezbollah has been widely perceived as a failure. Monday's report said Olmert bore ultimate responsibility, accusing him of poor judgment, hasty decision making and lack of vision.
A defiant Olmert opened the special Cabinet session by hinting that reports of his political demise were premature.
"To those who are eager to take advantage of this report to reap certain political advantages, I suggest 'slow down,'" he said in comments broadcast on Israeli media.
Two new polls published in Israeli newspapers Wednesday said some two-thirds of Israelis want Olmert to resign immediately. The surveys indicated that the hawkish former prime minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Benjamin Netanyahu of the opposition Likud Party, would likely win handily if new elections were held.
Since the report was issued, Olmert has been scrambling to hold his coalition together. One minister from the Labor Party, the junior coalition partner, already has quit, and there have been increasing signs of eroding support within Kadima.
In a new blow to Olmert, the chairman of Kadima's parliamentary faction, Avigdor Yitzhaki, called for the prime minister to step down.
"In order for Kadima to return to being a legitimate ruling party and for the sake of the prime minister and for the sake of the entire country, I think the prime minister has to resign," he told
Israel' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Israel Radio. "He has to take this responsibility and resign."
Yitzhaki said if Olmert failed to do so immediately he would resign his post as chairman of his coalition. On Tuesday, another Kadima lawmaker, Marina Solodkin, also urged Olmert to step down.
But Livni, the foreign minister, was emerging as the biggest threat to Olmert's survival. Livni, who has stayed silent since the explosive report was released, is Kadima's most popular politician and may be seen as the party's best hope of retaining power. Livni aides said she planned to meet with Olmert later Wednesday.
At Wednesday's Cabinet session, Olmert was expected to appoint a committee to look into the findings of the report, which was compiled by a five-member commission headed by a retired judge.
Israel went to war on July 12, hours after Hezbollah guerrillas crossed into Israel, killed three soldiers and captured two others. The fighting ended without Israel's achieving the two goals Olmert declared — crushing Hezbollah and recovering the captured soldiers.
Instead, almost 4,000 Hezbollah rockets landed in Israel and 158 Israelis were killed. At least 1,000 Lebanese civilians and combatants were also killed, according to Lebanese officials.
Kadima could still potentially replace Olmert without elections, but the front-runner to replace him, Livni, could encounter difficulty in keeping the current coalition together. The ultra-Orthodox Shas party would have trouble serving under a woman, while the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party may be wary of cooperating with Livni, who is more dovish than Olmert.
Wednesday's polls showed that if early elections were held, Netanyahu would easily sweep to power.
The Maariv poll, conducted by the Teleseker agency, found that 73 percent of the public wants Olmert to resign while the Dahaf poll conducted for Yediot Ahronot daily said 65 percent favor his ouster. The first survey had a 4.6 percentage point margin of error, while the second had a 4.5 point margin of error.
On Thursday, Olmert's opponents from all sides planned a show of strength at a demonstration in downtown Tel Aviv. Its size and composition could go a long way toward showing Olmert whether he can weather the storm.
The Labor Party holds a primary election May 28 where Defense Minister Amir Peretz, also a target of criticism from the inquiry commission, is likely to be replaced.
Two of the four candidates opposing Peretz have called on Olmert to resign, and Labor could well leave his coalition, probably forcing elections.

NEWS