Acura RDX

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's announcement of plans to build 10 more uranium enrichment facilities is largely bluster after a strong rebuke from the U.N.'s nuclear agency, analysts said Monday. Nonetheless, the defiance is fueling calls among Western allies for new punitive sanctions to freeze Iran's nuclear program.
U.S. and European officials were swift to condemn the plans, warning that Iran risked sinking ever deeper into isolation. Iran responded that it felt forced to move forward with the plans after the International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution Friday demanding that it halt all enrichment activities.
Iran's bold announcement Sunday appears to be largely impossible to achieve as long as sanctions continue to throw up roadblocks and force Iran to turn to black markets and smuggling for nuclear equipment, said nuclear expert David Albright.
"They can't build those plants. There's no way," he said. "They have sanctions to overcome, they have technical problems. They have to buy things overseas ... and increasingly it's all illegal."
A more worrisome escalation in the standoff would be if Iran reduced its cooperation with the IAEA, as some Iranian officials have threatened to do if the West continues its pressure. The U.N. inspectors and monitoring are the world's only eyes on Tehran's program. The head of Iran's nuclear agency on Monday ruled out an even more drastic move, saying Tehran does not intend to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Enrichment is at the center of the standoff between Iran and the West because it can be used both to produce material needed for atomic weapons as well as fuel for nuclear power plants. Iran insists it only wants the latter.
New enrichment plants, on the scale of the one Iran already operates in the town of Natanz, would be extremely expensive, take years to build and would be difficult to stock with centrifuges and other necessary equipment while sanctions are in place, Albright said.
Further dimming the credibility of the plan, 10 new facilities on the scale of Natanz would put Iran in league with the production levels of any of Europe's major commercial enrichment suppliers, said Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.
"And also they don't have enough uranium. They would need a massive amount of uranium," he said.
A diplomat from one of the six world powers attempting to engage Iran on its nuclear program described the Iranian announcement as a "political move" with little immediate significance beyond demonstrating Tehran's defiance.
The diplomat, who follows the nuclear dossier the IAEA has gathered on Iran, noted that Tehran appears to have significant problems with its present enrichment program, to the point that it cannot even keep the centrifuges it has set up at Natanz running without breakdowns.
The diplomat demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the issue.
Still, the announcement is of major concern because it could signal an intention to put up numerous decoy sites to deceive the outside world, while building perhaps a few secret military enrichment sites on a small scale that could be put to use in weapons production if Tehran decides to do go down that path, Albright said.
Such concerns were heightened with the recent discovery that Iran had a second, previously unknown enrichment facility burrowed partway into a mountain near the holy city of Qom.
"I tend to think that this Qom site was probably meant to be a clandestine facility for breakout that they wanted built for nuclear weapons," said Albright. "And now that it's been exposed they may want to replace it."
Iran's announcement triggered calls for new penalties that Albright said could evolve into a "mini-cold war strategy" to further isolate and contain Iran while holding out a hand for negotiations.
The United States' ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, said Iran's plans would be "completely inappropriate" and would further isolate it from the world.
In Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called Iran's decision "a bit childish."

"Iran is playing an extremely dangerous game," Kouchner said on France's RTL radio Monday. "There's no coherence in all this, other than a gut reaction."

The French defense minister, Herve Morin, said the international community should "probably commit toward new economic sanctions against Iran."

Iran and the top powers at the U.N. are deadlocked over a U.N.-drafted proposal for Iran to send much of its enriched uranium abroad, which the West seeks because it would at least temporary leave Tehran unable to develop a nuclear bomb. So far Iran has balked at the offer. The unusually strong IAEA censure of Iran over enrichment was a sign of the West's growing impatience with its defiance.

Iranian Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads the nuclear program, told state radio that the decision to build the new uranium enrichment facilities was necessary to respond to the resolution.

"We had no intention of building many facilities like the Natanz site, but apparently the West doesn't want to understand Iran's peaceful message," Salehi said.

Salehi said Iran would not go so far as to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, under which Iran is subject to oversight by the U.N. nuclear agency.

"If we wanted to obtain nuclear weapons, we would have pulled out of NPT ... Iran doesn't want to withdraw from the treaty," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying Monday.

Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani insisted "a diplomatic opportunity" was still possible "under which Iran will continue its (nuclear) work under international surveillance."

But a day earlier, Larijani warned that Iran could reduce its cooperation with the IAEA if the West continues its pressure and doesn't compromise.

___

Keyser reported from Cairo. Associated Press Writers George Jahn in Vienna and Ingrid Rousseau in Paris contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
The U.S. Senate began work on a sweeping healthcare overhaul on Monday, with senators on both sides pouncing on findings in a nonpartisan budget report on insurance premiums to bolster their arguments.

With the debate expected to last up to three weeks, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid warned senators they would work on weekends if necessary to hammer out compromises on issues like a government-run insurance plan, abortion coverage and holding down costs.

"The next few weeks will tell us a lot about whether senators are more committed to solving problems or creating them," Reid said.

In a report that gave ammunition to both sides, the Congressional Budget Office estimated on Monday that the 70 percent of Americans who receive insurance through employer-sponsored plans would see little change or slight reductions in their insurance premiums by 2016.

Those who buy coverage independently could see premiums rise by 10 percent to 13 percent by 2016, although the federal subsidies given to lower-income individuals to help them purchase coverage would reduce the actual costs for more than half of that group, the CBO said.

The higher premiums would be incurred in part because they would get more comprehensive coverage, it said.

"The analysis we received today indicates that whether you work for a small business, a large company or you work for yourself, the vast majority of Americans will see lower premiums than they would if we don't pass health reform," said Democrat Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Americans do not want the healthcare bill to pass and the CBO report showed why. "A bill that's being sold as a way to reduce costs actually drives them up," McConnell said.

Senator Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said the CBO report showed the Senate bill would not fix a fundamental problem -- the high cost of healthcare.

'MILLIONS PAY MORE'

"Millions of people who are expecting lower costs as a result of health reform will end up paying more in the form of higher premiums," Grassley said.

The Senate plan is designed to rein in costs, expand coverage to about 30 million uninsured Americans and halt industry practices such as denying coverage to those with pre-existing medical conditions.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the healthcare overhaul on November 7. If the Senate passes a plan, the two versions will have to be reconciled and passed again by each chamber before they are sent to Obama for his signature.

Shares of health insurers were weak as the broader market showed modest gains. The Morgan Stanley Healthcare Payor stock index closed 1 percent lower and the S&P Managed Health Care stock index was almost 1.5 percent lower.

Many Democratic senators have expressed concern about the bill's effect on consumer costs and insurance premiums. Democrats cannot afford to lose any of them in the debate -- they control 60 seats in the 100-member Senate, exactly the number needed to overcome Republican opposition.

At least four moderate Democrats have voiced doubts about the bill because it includes a government-run insurance option, which backers say will create more choice but critics believe will lead to a government takeover of the industry.

Some Democrats also hope to tighten language barring the use of federal funds for abortions to make it match the stricter restrictions in the House bill.

The Senate held no votes on the healthcare overhaul on Monday. The first Republican amendment was offered by Senator John McCain, the party's 2008 presidential candidate.

McCain proposed sending the legislation back to the Senate Finance Committee to restore about $400 billion in cuts to Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly.

He chastised AARP, the powerful lobbying group for seniors, and the American Medical Association, which represents doctors, for endorsing a healthcare reform effort he said would cut Medicare benefits for patients and doctors.

"Shame on AARP and shame on the AMA," McCain said.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu and Alan Elsner)

The word perfume used today derives from the Latin "per fumum", meaning through smoke. Perfumery, or the art of making perfumes, began in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt but was developed and further refined by the Romans and Persians. Although perfume and perfumery also existed in East Asia, much of its fragrances are incense based.

The world's first recorded chemist is considered to be a person named Tapputi, a perfume maker who was mentioned in a cuneiform tablet from the second millennium BC in Mesopotamia.

Solid Perfume

JERUSALEM (AFP) –
Israel approved the construction of hundreds of new housing units in annexed Arab east Jerusalem on Tuesday, driving another stake into troubled US efforts to restart Middle East peace talks.

The interior ministry said it approved the construction of 900 new units in Gilo, one of a dozen Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem, adding that the project still faced review.

Israeli news reports said that hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had rejected a request from his US ally to halt construction in Gilo. It was not clear whether the request concerned the project approved on Tuesday.

The approval is likely to further hamper Washington's so-far futile efforts to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table, amid deep disagreements over the thorny issue of settlements.

The Palestinians demand that Israel freeze all settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem, before any resumption of talks but Israel has so far offered only a limited reduction in new building.

The Palestinians condemned the new authorisation, saying it was a fresh blow to efforts to relaunch peace talks.

"The Palestinian Authority strongly condemns this decision," said Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat.

"Settlements must be stopped, that is the only way back to a real peace process," he said.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Tuesday that the impasse has given him no choice but to seek international recognition of a Palestinian state, even as Europe and Washington discouraged the move.

"We feel we are in a very difficult situation," he said in Cairo after talks with Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak. "What is the solution for us? To remain suspended like this, not in peace? That is why I took this step."

Palestinian officials said earlier this week that they intend to ask the UN Security Council to recognise a state in a move analysts said was aimed at pressuring Israel amid the floundering US peace efforts.

The European Union, the Palestinians' biggest donor, joined the United States in urging reconsideration of the move and instead called for a return to talks.

"I don't think we are there yet," said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency.

"I would hope that we would be in a position to recognise a Palestinian state but there has to be one first, so I think it is somewhat premature," he told reporters in Brussels.

The United States said it opposed any unilateral moves.

"We support the creation of a Palestinian state that is contiguous ... We are convinced that has to be achieved through negotiations between two parties," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said on Monday.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who was due to meet with Abbas in Amman later on Tuesday and with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem on Wednesday, said he will insist on a resumption of negotiations.

"We have to find ways to surmount the current obstacles," he told the Palestinian Al-Quds daily.

Netanyahu has warned that "any unilateral action will undo the framework of past accords and lead to unilateral actions from Israel."

And the Islamist Hamas movement, a bitter rival of Abbas's Fatah movement, poured cold water on the move to seek international recognition.

"The proclamation of a Palestinian state should be the result of the resistance putting an end to the occupation ... and not a decision taken by (the Palestinian Authority) to fill the void after the political option has failed," said Hamas's exiled political supremo Khaled Meshaal.

Israel captured east Jerusalem with the rest of the West Bank in the Six Day War of 1967. It later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community and insists on retaining the whole of the Holy City as its "eternal, indivisible" capital.

The Palestinians are determined to make the city's eastern sector the capital of their promised state.

LOS ANGELES – Ken Ober, who hosted the 1980s MTV game show "Remote Control" and helped produce the shows "Mind of Mencia" and "The New Adventures of Old Christine," has died. He was 52.
His agent, Lee Kernis, says Ober was found dead Sunday in his Santa Monica home. Kernis says Ober complained of headaches and flu-like symptoms on Saturday night but the cause of his death wasn't clear.
Ober hosted five seasons of "Remote Control" beginning in 1987. Contestants in lounge chairs were asked pop-culture questions from categories such as "Dead or Canadian?" The show featured early appearances by comedians Adam Sandler, Denis Leary and Colin Quinn.
Ober, who was born Ken Oberding in Massachusetts, is survived by his parents and a brother.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Space shuttle Atlantis' astronauts scoured their ship Tuesday for any signs of launch damage while pursuing the International Space Station.
Atlantis and its crew of six will hook up with the space station Wednesday.
After waking to their first full day in orbit, the astronauts pulled out a 100-foot, laser-tipped inspection boom to check the shuttle's thermal shielding, routine work before arriving at the space station. The right wing was scanned first.
It was a long, laborious job that was expected to last well into the afternoon.
NASA said a quick look at the images from Monday's launch shows nothing to be worried about. The inspection will provide additional data, as will pictures taken right before Wednesday's docking. The space station residents will take a few hundred close digital photos as Atlantis pulls up and performs a somersault.
Engineers will pore over all the information to ascertain whether Atlantis is intact and able to make a safe descent, when it comes time to return home at the end of next week.
The space agency has been extra cautious since the Columbia disaster nearly seven years ago. The left wing was punctured by a big chunk of foam insulation that came off the fuel tank at liftoff, causing the shuttle to break apart during re-entry. All seven astronauts were killed.
Officials believe three small foam pieces peeled away from Atlantis' tank, but it happened too many minutes after liftoff to pose any danger.
Atlantis is delivering big spare parts to the space station — nearly 15 tons' worth.
It's an 11-day flight, which will keep the crew in orbit over Thanksgiving.
"Congratulations on a beautiful, flawless launch, Atlantis!" Mission Control told the crew in a wake-up message. "Now the fun begins."
___
On the Net:
NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission(underscore)pages/shuttle/main/index.html

A wallet, or billfold, is a small, flat case used to carry personal items such as cash, credit cards and identification documents, such as a driver's license. Wallets are generally made of leather or fabrics, and they are usually pocket-sized.

Wallets are usually designed to hold bills and credit cards and fit into a pocket (or handbag). Small cases for securing bills which do not have space for credit cards or identification cards may be classified as money clips.

Wallets

WASHINGTON – German Chancellor Angela Merkel was making the case Tuesday for a global deal on climate change to a skeptical audience: members of Congress.
Merkel was addressing both chambers of Congress, a rare honor extended to America's closest allies and not to a German chancellor since Konrad Adenauer in 1957. She was to meet with President Barack Obama before the speech.
It is an opportunity for Germany to make a case to the lawmakers whose support will be crucial if the United States is to sign on to a new global climate deal that European leaders and Obama are seeking.
Merkel's address comes ahead of the 20th anniversary Nov. 9 of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and she also was expected to highlight the trans-Atlantic cooperation that brought it down. The theme of solidarity probably will touch on Germany's commitment to Afghanistan, a delicate issue for Merkel. The United States has urged European countries to step up efforts in NATO's operations, but the war is unpopular in Germany.
The speech comes less than a week after Merkel was sworn in for a second term. Her formation of a new center-right coalition has created some expectations in Washington that the coalition would make it easier for Merkel to support the United States on Afghanistan and other foreign policy issues, including reining in Iran's nuclear program.
Annette Heuser, executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation Washington, a nonprofit organization that focuses on trans-Atlantic cooperation, said political pressures in Germany against the war in Afghanistan remain the same for Merkel.
"On Afghanistan, it will be a big challenge for her to balance the speech for both an American and a German audience," Heuser said.
Despite some skeptical lawmakers, climate change may be less contentious. Ahead of her trip, Merkel said she would look to build support for the climate change deal, which will be under negotiation during a December meeting in Copenhagen. World leaders had hoped the meeting would seal a follow-on agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, but now expect it will take longer.
The United States did not sign the Kyoto document, even though former Vice President Al Gore was a negotiator behind it.
"The world will be watching Copenhagen, and the fight against climate change is one of the most urgent tasks worldwide," Merkel said in a weekend video message posted on the Internet.
U.S. commitments have been tied up in legislation slowly making its way through Congress and unlikely to be completed before the conference. The House has passed a version of a bill that has been criticized as not going far enough, while the Senate is just beginning legislation.
Obama has promised to return the United States to a position of leadership on managing climate change after years of U.S. resistance to capping emissions that scientists believe contribute to global warming.
Merkel also was expected to take up the issue in her meeting with Obama. The leaders also were likely to discuss Afghanistan, Iran, Middle East peace talks and the delicate global economic recovery.
Merkel and Obama have demonstrated a friendly and pragmatic relationship, but there have been few signs that they have forged particularly close ties.

ROME – More than 100,000 women have signed a petition saying they are offended by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi — an initiative launched by a newspaper after the premier made a sexist remark to an opposition politician.
Berlusconi, 73, made the jab during a call in to a late-night talk show Oct. 7 that featured, among other guests, Rosy Bindi, a 58-year-old former minister who dresses conservatively, wears glasses and has short, gray hair.
"You are always more beautiful than intelligent," Berlusconi told her. She snapped back: "I'm not one of the women at your disposal."
Berlusconi's remark sparked outrage, and prompted three prominent Italian intellectuals to draft a petition stating that Berlusconi uses women's bodies for his political ends, denigrating women and democracy in the process.
"This man offends us. Stop him," reads the petition, which has been signed by well-known Italian artists, musicians, television personalities as well as ordinary Italians.
The left-leaning La Repubblica daily, which has been at the forefront of exposing accusations of impropriety against Berlusconi over his relations with young women and been sued by the premier as a result, is organizing the petition and reported Thursday that more than 100,000 women had signed.
Many women sent their photos into the newspaper's Web site, with the words "offended by the premier" or "not at your disposal" or similar statements written on them.
Berlusconi's scandal began earlier this year when his wife announced she was divorcing him, citing his presence at the birthday party of an 18-year-old model and his decision to run former showgirls as candidates for European Parliament elections.
In the aftermath several women, including a prostitute, came forward with stories that they had been paid by a Berlusconi associate to attend parties at the premier's homes. The associate, who is under investigation as part of an unrelated corruption probe, has said Berlusconi never knew the women had been paid.
Berlusconi has denied ever paying anyone for sex and denounced what he says is a media campaign to smear him. He has acknowledged, however, he is "no saint" and loves beautiful women, but insists Italians want him that way.
The petition is the second targeting Berlusconi following revelations about his scandals.
The first was launched over the summer calling on first ladies not to attend the Group of Eight summit in the town of L'Aquila to denounce what they say is Berlusconi's sexist behavior in public and private.

ALMATY, Kazakhstan – An international media rights group has criticized a Kazakh court that upheld a three-year prison sentence against an editor convicted of publishing state secrets.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday it was "outraged by the imprisonment" of independent newspaper editor Ramazan Yesergepov. It cited "the lack of due process" in his case.
Yesergepov was sentenced in August, and a court rejected his appeal Thursday.
The case is the latest embarrassment for Kazakhstan as it prepares to assume chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe next year.
The Committee to Protect Journalists urged authorities to release Yesergepov as a sign of Kazakhstan's commitment to media freedoms and its readiness to lead the OSCE.

On May 1, 2007, the United States Copyright Royalty Board approved a rate increase in the royalties payable to performers of recorded works broadcast on the internet. This was the result of a two year proceeding, with dozens of witnesses and hundreds of documents from over twenty different parties, including large and small webcasters, NPR, college stations, and SoundExchange. The CRB was privy to private financial records and business models of the webcasters, and after reviewing the evidence and testimony, issued their decision on May 1, 2007 (which is currently under appeal). If enforced, this decision will undermine the business models of many Internet radio stations, which had previously relied on the rate of $0.000768 per song that had been unchanged from 1998-2005. These rules were scheduled to go into effect on May 1, 2007, with the first due date being July 15, 2007, and apply retroactively to January 1, 2006.

Due to these rate increases, it has been suggested that some U.S.-based Internet broadcasts should be moved to foreign jurisdictions where US royalties do not apply. "For example, Mercora, a service that allows individuals to launch their own webcasts, has established a Canadian site that they believe falls outside U.S. regulatory and royalty rules."

Internet Radio

MADRID – The European Union has launched an investigation into a prized Spanish wetland that has turned bone dry through mismanagement of water resources and is now on fire underground, white smoke now rising from areas where fish once swam.
The EU wants the Spanish government to explain how it plans to save Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park in the central Castilla-La Mancha region, European Commission spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The park, one of Spain's few wetlands, is classified as a UNESCO biosphere site and an EU-protected area because of its birdlife.
But it has been drying up for decades, largely because of wells dug by farmers on the edges of the park to tap an aquifer that feeds the wetland's lagoons. Many of the wells are illegal. Environmentalists call this case a particularly glaring example of how a natural resource can be abused.
In August, intense summer heat and parched soil caused the peat just under the surface of the soil to spontaneously ignite. Now, several areas of the park are on fire underground and white smoke seeps out of deep cracks in the parched soil.
"We have seen a situation where there is continuous degradation of territory," Helfferich said from Brussels.
The EU told the Spanish government about its investigation last week and Spain has 10 weeks to explain how it plans to respond to the crisis, Helfferich said.
"Underground fires at the moment cannot be extinguished," she said, adding that the 27-nation bloc has asked Spain how it plans to deal with it.
In a worst-case scenario, the EU could punish Spain with a hefty fine if it deems that the government's management of the wetlands was insufficient.
Josep Puxeau, the Environment Ministry's top official on water issues, said the government has an emergency plan to pump in torrents of water from a river to put out the fires and restore the acquifer.
It will also continue with a policy of buying up land and farms outside the park to halt water being drawn from wells, he told reporters.
The park lies 90 miles (150 kilometers) south of Madrid. Not all of it is wetland. The area capable of holding water covers about 4,500 acres (1,800 hectares) but less than 1 percent of that actually has water.
Park ranger Jesus Garcia Consuegra, who grew up in the area, remembers lusher times. He would go fishing there as a boy, venturing out at night in a rowboat equipped with a lantern to draw fish to the surface.
"It was so clear you could see to the bottom. You could see the fish there. You could watch them and it was simply marvelous," he said in a documentary on the park's Web site.
Jose Manuel Hernandez, spokesman for the environmental group Ecologists in Action, placed the blame for the wetland's demise squarely on excessive use of underground water tables for irrigation. He said climate change has nothing to do with the problem because La Mancha is dry anyway and rain levels have not dropped that much.
Rather, the culprit is a government policy over the past 20 years that allowed farmers to shift from non-irrigated crops like olive groves and wheat to thirsty ones like grapes and melons, he told the AP.
The Guadiana River, for instance, which once flowed through La Mancha, has essentially vanished for this reason and peat fires like the ones in Las Tablas de Daimiel have been common in that riverbed for years.
"The Guadiana has been burning for 20 years," Hernandez said. "People are just waking up now because the fires have cropped up in a national park."

He called the idea of bringing in huge amounts of water to put out the fires and restore the acquifer a pointless stopgap measure: the land is so dry and the water table now so low that water brought in from outside will simply get sucked up by the soil and not reach the acquifer.

It is artificial to try to save a wetland this way, and better to manage the existing water more efficiently by cutting down on use of wells, Hernandez said.

"What we need to do is recover the dynamics of the ecosystem."

Voice Cards

Early computer sound chips had only simple tone and noise generators with few channels, imposing limitations on both the complexity of the sounds they could produce and the number of notes that could be played at once. In their desire to create a more complex arrangement than what the medium apparently allowed, composers developed creative approaches when developing their own electronic sounds and scores, employing a diversity of both methods of sound synthesis, such as pulse width modulation and wavetable synthesis, and compositional techniques, such as a liberal use of arpeggiation. The resultant chiptunes sometimes seem harsh or squeaky to the unaccustomed listener.

The June 2008 issue of Paste Magazine has an article on chiptune artist Jeremiah "Nullsleep" Johnson, and the included sampler CD features chiptune song "Local Hero" by Crazy Q.

HARARE, Zimbabwe – Zimbabwe's prime minister announced he was boycotting the country's troubled unity government Friday, citing the "persecution" of a top aide being tried on what are widely seen as trumped up coup allegations.
At a news conference Friday, longtime opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said, "We are not really pulling out officially," but that his party would not attend Cabinet meetings or engage in other executive work with President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party. Tsvangirai said his Movement for Democratic Change party would continue parliament activities.
Tsvangirai said the freeze will continue until there was a resolution of the dispute over Roy Bennett.
Bennett is being tried on charges linked to long-discredited allegations that his party, the MDC, plotted President Mugabe's violent overthrow.
Friday's move demonstrates deep unhappiness within the MDC with the coalition. But Tsvangirai has repeatedly said he sees the coalition as the only way to ensure Zimbabwe's future, and he made that clear again by stopping short of bringing down the government by pulling out altogether.
ZANU-PF's reaction underlined tensions within the coalition.
"If MDC wants to disengage ... we don't have a problem with that," said Ephraim Masawi, a ZANU-PF spokesman. "We were having problems with MDC, working together. We have been trying but it was not easy."
Tsvangirai and Mugabe entered the unity government in February after two violence-plagued elections left the country at a political standstill and in economic ruin.
"Until confidence has been restored we can't continue to pretend that everything is well," Tsvangirai said. "It is our right to disengage from ZANU-PF."
Bennett, who was ordered back to jail earlier this week after seven months on bail, was due to stand trial starting Monday.
Tsvangirai had nominated Bennett as deputy agriculture minister in the coalition. Bennett was arrested the day the Cabinet was sworn in February and charged with weapons violations. He denies the charges against him.
"Roy Bennett is not being prosecuted, he is being persecuted," Tsvangirai said Friday.
The European Union said Thursday it was "deeply concerned" over Bennett's jailing. The bloc added it regretted "that politically motivated abuse persists in the country."
In Washington Thursday, U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters that the case against Bennett was a "blatant example of the absence of the rule of law in Zimbabwe."
Zimbabwe's neighbors had urged Mugabe, who has held power since independence in 1980, to form the partnership with former labor leader Tsvangirai. In forming their coalition, the longtime opponents pledged to work together to turn around the country's economic and political collapse.
Since the coalition was formed, Tsvangirai has condemned continuing human rights violations. Mugabe has demanded that Tsvangirai do more to get international sanctions lifted and foreign aid and investment restored.
The sanctions target top Mugabe aides, banning them from traveling abroad and freezing foreign bank accounts. Tsvangirai's extensive travels since becoming prime minister have rankled in ZANU-PF ranks.
"Our legs and hands are tied up because of the sanctions that we are facing, but the MDC continues to roam all over without being denied to go anywhere else," Masawi said Friday.

The coalition is Mugabe's only hope for taking Zimbabwe out of international isolation, and it has brought Tsvangirai closer to power than any election.

The cost and quality of hotels are usually indicative of the range and type of services available. Due to the enormous increase in tourism worldwide during the last decades of the 20th century, standards, especially those of smaller establishments, have improved considerably. For the sake of greater comparability, rating systems have been introduced, with the one to five stars classification being most common.[citation needed]

Many hotels can be considered destinations in themselves, by dint of unusual features of the lodging and/or its immediate environment:

http://www.sandsresorts.com/

Adult Diaper

The decision to use cloth or disposable diapers is a controversial one, owing to issues ranging from convenience, health, cost, and their effect on the environment. Currently, disposable diapers are the most commonly used, with Pampers and Huggies being the most well-known brands in the industry. Plastic pants can be worn over diapers to avoid leaks.

In the 20th century, the disposable diaper gradually evolved through the inventions of several different people. In 1942, a Swedish paper company known as PauliStróm created the first disposable diaper using sheets of tissue placed inside rubber pants.

Creatures that are the most common choices for live foods, ranging from feeder mice to crickets and mealworms, generally are bred and raised in captivity themselves, and can often be found both through local pet stores and from wholesalers or "farms" that breed them specifically for live food sales.

They can be purchased at most pet stores and bait shops. They are also available via mail order and via internet suppliers (by the thousand). Mealworms are typically sold in a container with bran or oatmeal for food. When rearing mealworms, commercial growers incorporate a juvenile hormone into the feeding process to keep the mealworm in the larval stage and achieve an abnormal length of 2 cm or greater.

Live Food

DALLAS – Banks expanded at a breathtaking pace over the past five years, adding more than 10,000 full-service branches, but barely 1 in 10 were in inner-city, minority neighborhoods, another sign the financial spending spree skipped over substantial parts of the country.
The discrepancy means millions of people who don't live near a bank have had to hand over $2, $5 or $10 at a time — sometimes even more — in service fees to nonbank outlets to conduct basic transactions such as cashing checks or paying bills that most bank customers take for granted.
Nearly six branches were added every day, with bank offices racing to exclusive neighborhoods such as University Park in Dallas, Midtown West in Manhattan and Music Row in Nashville, Tenn., as well as the fast-growing exburban communities surrounding Sacramento, Calif., Phoenix and Cincinnati.
"It's crazy, and they're building another one!" said Mary Morgan, pulling into a parking spot at a JPMorgan Chase branch in University Park. Up the road, Comerica just cleared a lot to build a bank. A half-mile away, a financial institution is replacing a restaurant, she said.
"It's stupid," Morgan said. "How can the market be that big?"
Meanwhile, bank growth either declined or remained stagnant across wide swaths of the nation's inner cities, with branches closing in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and elsewhere.
Data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. shows that the nation's 99,000 banks generally followed the money. About two-thirds of all neighborhoods have a median household income higher than the national average; about two-thirds of the new bank branches were in those neighborhoods.
An Associated Press analysis, however, found that branches weren't added at a proportionate rate in minority neighborhoods. About one-third of the neighborhoods analyzed are predominantly minority, according to the Census Bureau; only about 1 in 10 new bank branches showed up in those areas.
The AP study was reviewed by the American Bankers Association and is consistent with other federal studies.
"It's like the proverbial ambulance chasers," said Charles O'Neal, a vice president at the Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce. "They're all chasing the same dollar and they get little return. Meanwhile, on this side of town, folks are literally spending sleepless nights trying to figure out where do we go to find a financial institution that will be responsive to their needs."
Bank officials say they are following the growth of customers to continue providing services because most people choose banks based on branch locations.
Bank watchdogs, however, say less-regulated financial institutions are filling the void and expanding at the expense of vulnerable, inner-city residents. As a result, they are relying on high-cost lending businesses for services traditionally provided by bank branches.
"When you don't have banks going into poor communities, you're going to wind up with places where there are a lot of predatory products," said Kathleen Day, a spokeswoman for the Center for Responsible Lending, a Washington-based advocacy group. "It's not always the case — payday lending seems to targets black and Hispanic neighorhoods regardless of income level or bank location — but it's a real problem."
Even in a digital age when banking is done online, the 99,000 bank branches are important barometers of economic health for thousands of communities. People in neighborhoods without banks are more likely to spend more of their money for basic financial transactions.
About 30 million people cash checks at businesses that aren't banks, according to MSG CPA, a New York-based accounting and consulting firm. There are more than 13,000 check-cashing outlets, handling about $80 billion annually. Customers use the businesses to cash paychecks, pay utility bills, buy money orders and take out payday loans, often at rates that exceed fees charged by banks or even credit card charges.
Under the Community Reinvestment Act, banks are encouraged to offer services in poor and minority neighborhoods. The vast majority of banks receive outstanding or satisfactory grades from regulators. The grades are important when banks apply to open new branches or acquire other banks.
James Ballantine, a senior vice president with the American Bankers Association, said banks that don't comply can be required to enter into agreements with regulators, fined or even lose their charter.
Even so, small and large banks alike focused most of their efforts on wealthy and fast-growing neighborhoods as the housing boom reached its zenith. Banks now receiving billions in federal bailout loans led the charge, according to the AP's analysis. The largest banks added nearly 6,800 branches between 2004 and 2008. Fewer than 900 of those branches wound up in minority neighborhoods.

Nearly 18 percent of those full-service bank branches were in minority neighborhoods in 2004, according to the FDIC. By last year, that number had dipped to 16 percent as banks worked harder at pursuing customers in distant, mostly white suburbs.

Among the findings in the analysis:

_Fueled by explosive growth and its acquisition of Bank One Corp., JPMorgan Chase added 2,566 branches during the five-year period. Only 342 were in minority neighborhoods. In 2004, nearly 30 percent of Chase's branches were in minority areas. By 2008, that number had dropped nearly half, to 16 percent.

Christine Holevas, a bank spokeswoman, said most of the bank branches were added by acquisitions of other banks. Chase took over Bank One in 2004, adding 1,800 branches. The bank increased its number of branches again in 2004 when it acquired 300 Bank of New York locations. The acquisitions effectively reduced the bank's presence in minority neighborhoods.

Its most recent federal grade, issued in 2007, was "outstanding."

_Citigroup added 272 new branches between 2004 and 2008, the overwhelming majority in white neighborhoods. Only two dozen were created in minority neighborhoods, according to federal figures. The bank still has 28 percent of its banks in minority areas.

Elizabeth Fogarty, a bank spokeswoman, said Citi makes a strong effort to serve poor and minority communities.

_Fifth Third Bancorp increased its presence in minority neighborhoods by more than half, expanding from 60 offices to 95 branches. Still, only 7 percent of its 1,356 branch offices are in minority areas.

Stephanie Honan, a bank spokeswoman, confirmed the figures. She said the company has a small percentage of its branches in minority neighborhoods because of acquisitions over the past two years. She said the company has decided to not close or consolidate branches in minority neighborhoods for the next three years.

The company, she said, "is committed to expanding our presence in minority areas and making the best use of our branch distribution to serve our markets effectively."

Perhaps no place illustrates the expanding chasm as well as Dallas, a major financial center. The typical family living in the University Park section has an annual income of $200,000. The neighborhood, just north of downtown, is 97 percent white. Two percent of its residents are poor. Since 2004, banks have added 16 new branches. The area now has 43 banks, or one for every 475 people.

The market apparently isn't as big five miles away, where the typical south Dallas family earns about $17,000 annually. The neighborhood is 98 percent black. Half the people who live there are poor. In 2004, its residents could choose between a Bank of America branch and a Washington Mutual branch. By 2008, only the Bank of America branch remained, leaving the neighborhood with one bank for every 9,300 people.

It's a community of small, frame houses, some neat and tidy with security bars on the windows and doors; others are weathered, with peeling paint and tiny, weed-choked yards. The bank stands in the shadow of the State Fair of Texas, the giant Ferris wheel looming above the parking lot. The lack of financial services often takes a back seat to worries about crime, fear of unemployment, or simply having a place to live and food to eat.

George Murphy, 68, owns M&W Barber & Beauty Shop, a small business in the heart of the neighborhood. The lack of banks isn't a problem for him because it only takes 30 minutes to walk to one, and a bus is also available.

"I don't deal with checks," he said. "My business is cash only."

Even so, the line is long at the Ace Cash Express, less than two miles away. The sign reads, "No Bank Account Necessary." Customers can have their paychecks automatically loaded on a prepaid Visa card for a fee. William Bates, 70, sits out front on his motorized scooter, waiting for his wife to get a money order.

"Twenty-five or 30 years ago," he said, "there weren't no banks or nothing over here."

___

Bass reported from East Dover, Vt.

___

On the Net:

Center for Responsive Lending: http://www.responsiblelending.org/

JPMorgan Chase & Co.: http://www.jpmorganchase.com

Citigroup Inc.: http://www.citigroup.com

Fifth Third Bancorp: http://www.53.com

Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce: http://www.dbcc.org/

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senator Jim Webb said he hopes
his visit to Myanmar will lay groundwork for restoring democracy
in the Southeast Asian nation, after meeting with pro-democracy
activist Aung San Suu Kyi and winning the release of an
imprisoned American.

“Suu Kyi’s situation is highly unusual,” Webb, a Virginia
Democrat, said during a stop in Bangkok. Webb said he was
pleased the Myanmar government allowed the meeting and freed
John Yettaw, the American imprisoned after swimming uninvited to
Suu Kyi’s Yangon home in May and staying for two days. Yettaw
was freed, departed with Webb and is undergoing medical
treatment, the senator said.

Suu Kyi, 64, was sentenced on Aug. 11 to jail for three
years with hard labor, after being found guilty of breaching a
detention order by letting Yettaw stay in her home. The military
junta that runs Myanmar commuted her sentence to 18 months under
house detention.

“I hope they will consider” freeing Suu Kyi and allowing
her to participate freely in the nation’s politics, Webb said.
He said he told Myanmar’s leaders “it would be impossible for
the rest of the world to believe that the elections were free
and fair if she was not allowed to take part.”

Webb was the first senior U.S. official to meet with the
top leader of the country’s military junta, Senior General Than
Shwe, the senator’s office said in a statement yesterday.

Yettaw Freed

Yettaw is a diabetic and epileptic father of seven,
according to Agence France Presse. He swam to Suu Kyi’s house
once before, in November 2008, and left a copy of the Book of
Mormon before leaving, the news agency reported.

The American went on a hunger strike after his arrest,
resulting in a series of epileptic fits, AFP reported. He is a
devout Mormon and former member of the military whose lawyer
said he was having visions that Suu Kyi was going to be
assassinated, according to AFP.

European Union governments on Aug. 13 stiffened sanctions
against Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The United Nations
Security Council called on Myanmar’s military rulers Aug. 14 to
open “genuine” talks with Suu Kyi and begin national
reconciliation in the country.

The Council expressed “serious concern” at the extension
of Suu Kyi’s house detention last week and its political impact
before elections planned for next year.

House Arrest

The Nobel Peace Prize winner was placed under house arrest
at her home in Yangon in 2003. She has spent more than 13 years
in custody since her National League for Democracy party won
elections in 1990, a result rejected by the junta.

Myanmar holds about 2,000 political prisoners, according to
the UN. Elections are scheduled for next year under a
constitution that the opposition says is designed to entrench
military rule.

Webb, who is on a two-week trip to Asia, met with Suu Kyi
for nearly an hour and discussed plans for elections in the
nation next year, constitutional issues and her pro-democracy
party. He encouraged her party to work within Myanmar’s
political system, Webb said.

The senator, a Vietnam veteran who served as Navy secretary
under former President Ronald Reagan, has worked and traveled in
Southeast Asia for almost four decades, his office said.

Before he was elected to the Senate in 2006, Webb visited
Myanmar in 2001 to meet with business leaders, workers and
members of the junta. In March this year, he said U.S. sanctions
against the country appeared to be “counter-productive in terms
of our ability to affect the difficulties faced by the Burmese
people.â€

Webb has advocated the U.S. speak directly with Myanmar’s
leadership to work to resolve differences. He said in June that
as long as authorities in Myanmar continued the trial of Suu
Kyi, “it will be very difficult to pursue a meaningful change
in relations with Burma.”

To contact the reporters on this story:
Shiyin Chen in Bangkok at
schen37@bloomberg.net ;
Suttinee Yuvejwattana in Bangkok at
Suttinee1@bloomberg.net .

MILWAUKEE – Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett remained hospitalized Sunday after a man attacked him with a metal pipe as the mayor tried to assist a grandmother screaming for help near the Wisconsin State Fair.
Barrett, 55, was in stable condition at a local hospital with a fractured hand and other head and hand wounds, official said.
The mayor had gone to the fair outside Milwaukee on Saturday night with his sister, two daughters and a niece. As the group left and walked to Barrett's car, they heard a woman screaming for someone to call 911, police said.
Police said the woman was a grandmother who was trying to protect her 1-year-old granddaughter from a 20-year-old man, an assault authorities characterized as a domestic dispute.
"The mayor stopped and said something (to the man) like, 'Let's all cool down here, I'm going to call 911,'" the mayor's spokesman Patrick Curley said. "He said it one or two times according to him. When he took out his phone, that's when the suspect attacked him."
The suspect hit Barrett in the head and torso with a metal pipe. Barrett apparently fought back, fracturing his hand when he punched the suspect.
"I think he hit the guy," Curley said. "I don't know where, but it was hard enough, whatever he hit, to fracture his hand."
The suspect then fled the area when he heard sirens. He was arrested on Sunday at a Milwaukee home, and police recovered the alleged weapon. The woman and baby were uninjured.
The mayor, who did not ask for security to accompany him to the fair because he wasn't on official duty, underwent successful surgery Sunday on his fractured right hand and also had cuts on his head and lip stitched up, Curley said. The mayor likely will remain in the hospital through Monday, he said.
The mayor's brother, John Barrett, said the family was optimistic about the mayor's recovery.
"We're extremely proud of Tom's selflessness and his courage," John Barrett said, fighting back tears at a news conference.
Gov. Jim Doyle said he also visited Barrett at the hospital Sunday morning and found him in "good spirits and looking good considering what happened."
"The mayor's heroic actions clearly saved a woman and others from harm," Doyle said in a statement.
Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said authorities had no reason to believe the suspect knew it was the mayor he was attacking. Police said the suspect was intoxicated at the time, had wanted to see his daughter and had threatened to shoot himself and others.
Under the city's line of succession, Common Council President Willie Hines would take command if the mayor were incapacitated. Curley said he briefed Hines but didn't expect a transfer of power would be necessary because Barrett "is engaged, he's conversational."
Barrett was already planning to take this week off for a family vacation, Curley said.
The mayor's only regret about the incident is that his family was there to witness what happened, Curley said.
"He said it was hard because his kids and niece were there at the time of the incident," Curley said. "He knew he had to (intervene). It was the right thing to do."

Barrett was elected Milwaukee mayor in 2004 and re-elected last year with nearly 80 percent of the vote. He also served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1992 to 2002. His name also has begun circulating as a possible Democratic candidate for governor in 2010 after Doyle scheduled a news conference for Monday, reportedly to announce he will not seek a third term.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – Fierce clashes between Taliban fighters and those loyal to a pro-government warlord killed at least 70 people Wednesday, intelligence officials said, a week after a CIA drone reportedly killed the top Taliban leader in Pakistan.
The battles pitched Taliban militants against followers of tribal warlord Turkistan Bitani on the fringes of the South Waziristan border region, where U.S. and Pakistani officials believe Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud died in a missile strike on Aug. 5.
Pakistan's army sent in helicopter gunships as reinforcements to pound about 300 Taliban fighters attacking Bitani's mountain stronghold, two intelligence officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
The fighting raged for five hours, with militants using rockets, mortars and anti-aircraft guns against Bitani's village of Sura Ghar, the officials said. They said wireless intercepts from the area showed at least 70 people — including one woman in the village — were killed. Ten of the dead were from Bitani's stronghold, the officials said, while the rest were militants.
It was impossible to independently confirm the death toll, as the fighting was taking place in a remote mountainous area that is off-limits to journalists.
Bitani put the casualty figure higher, telling The Associated Press that about 90 fighters were killed and 40 houses destroyed.
The fighting followed days of confusion and competing claims over Mehsud's fate. While U.S. and Pakistani officials say they are almost certain he is dead, Taliban commanders insist he is alive.
Neither side has produced any evidence, and since the claims of Mehsud's death, both the Taliban and the Pakistani government have been waging competing propaganda campaigns over the state of the Taliban's leadership.
Days after the missile strike, Interior Minister Rehman Malik claimed a Taliban meeting to choose Mehsud's successor degenerated into a gunbattle between the leading contenders — Waliur Rehman and Hakimullah Mehsud — and that one of the two was dead.
Bitani made similar claims, saying there had been a gunfight at the meeting, known as a shura — although he had said both Rehman and Hakimullah Mehsud were dead.
The two militant commanders both later phoned international media organizations to prove they survived.
Baitullah Mehsud and his followers have been the target of both U.S. and Pakistani operations aimed at ridding the country's volatile northwest of militants.
Washington has increased its focus on Pakistan's rugged tribal regions because they provide safe haven for insurgents fighting international forces across the border in Afghanistan. The U.S. is also concerned the militants could undermine the stability of the government in Islamabad, especially after Taliban insurgents briefly captured areas some 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the capital. That bold takeover stoked fears Pakistan's nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands.
A recent report written by a U.K.-based security expert said militants had attacked nuclear facilities three times in two years, but a military spokesman denied that on Wednesday.
Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said there is "absolutely no chance" the country's atomic weapons could fall into terrorist hands.
Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University's Pakistan Security Research Unit, wrote that several militant attacks have already hit military bases where nuclear components are secretly stored. The article appeared in the July newsletter of the Combating Terrorism Center of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Abbas said Wednesday that none of the military bases named was used to store atomic weapons.
Separately, a bomb and gunfire attack against a paramilitary checkpoint in the southwestern city of Quetta killed at least two passers-by and wounded four other people, including a police officer, authorities said.

Senior police officer Mohammad Suleman said a booby-trapped motorcycle exploded near a Frontier Corps checkpoint, and then gunmen on another motorcycle opened fire.

Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan, where ethnic Baluch militants have waged a low-level insurgency for decades. Suleman said Baluch separatists were suspected in the attack.

____

Becatoros contributed from Islamabad. Associated Press writer Zarar Khan in Islamabad also contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – NASA is charged with seeking out nearly all the asteroids that threaten Earth but doesn't have the money to do the job, a federal report says.
That's because even though Congress assigned the space agency this mission four years ago, it never gave NASA money to build the necessary telescopes, the new National Academy of Sciences report says. Specifically, NASA has been ordered to spot 90 percent of the potentially deadly rocks hurtling through space by 2020.
Even so, NASA says it's completed about one-third of its assignment with its current telescope system.
NASA estimates that there are about 20,000 asteroids and comets in our solar system that are potential threats to Earth. They are larger than 460 feet in diameter — slightly smaller than the Superdome in New Orleans. So far, scientists know where about 6,000 of these objects are.
Rocks between 460 feet and 3,280 feet in diameter can devastate an entire region but not the entire globe, said Lindley Johnson, NASA's manager of the near-Earth objects program. Objects bigger than that are even more threatening, of course.
Just last month astronomers were surprised when an object of unknown size and origin bashed into Jupiter and created an Earth-sized bruise that is still spreading. Jupiter does get slammed more often than Earth because of its immense gravity, enormous size and location.
Disaster movies like "Armageddon" and near misses in previous years may have scared people and alerted them to a serious issue. But when it comes to doing something about monitoring the threat, the academy concluded "there has been relatively little effort by the U.S. government."
And the U.S. government is practically the only government doing anything at all, the report found.
"It shows we have a problem we're not addressing," said Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, an advocacy group.
NASA calculated that to spot the asteroids as required by law would cost about $800 million between now and 2020, either with a new ground-based telescope or a space observation system, Johnson said. If NASA got only $300 million it could find most asteroids bigger than 1,000 feet across, he said.
But so far NASA has gotten neither sum.
It may never get the money, said John Logsdon, a space policy professor at George Washington University.
"The program is a little bit of a lame duck," Logsdon said. There is not a big enough group pushing for the money, he said.
At the moment, NASA has identified about five near-Earth objects that pose better than a 1-in-a-million risk of hitting our planet and being big enough to cause serious damage, Johnson said. That number changes from time to time, usually with new asteroids added and old ones removed as more information is gathered on their orbits.
The space rocks astronomers are keeping a closest eye on are a 430-foot diameter rock that has a 1-in-3,000 chance of hitting Earth in 2048 and a much-talked about asteroid, Apophis, which is twice that size and has a one-in-43,000 chance of hitting in 2036, 2037 or 2069.
Last month, NASA started a new Web site for the public to learn about threatening near-Earth objects.
___
On the Net:

NASA's near-Earth object site: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch

BAGHDAD – An Iraqi court has fined a television channel $87,000 after ruling that it slandered a military official by misquoting him, a spokesman said Wednesday.
The Iraqi military filed a lawsuit in April seeking to shut down the Iraq operations of Al-Hayat, a major London-based Arabic language newspaper, and Al-Sharqiya television station, for falsely reporting that orders had been issued to arrest ex-detainees recently released by the United States.
Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, the main military spokesman in Baghdad, insisted he said only that ex-detainee files would be reviewed to determine if any of them were involved in a recent uptick in bombings.
Al-Hayat issued a correction on its Web site saying its information did not come from al-Moussawi but another unidentified official. Al-Sharqiya, which quoted the newspaper report, said the military complaint "is not worthy of a response."
The Baghdad court fined Al-Sharqiya 100 million dinars ($87,000) for slander against al-Moussawi, according to judicial spokesman Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar.
The Dubai-based Iraqi channel is known for its harsh criticism of the Iraqi government and security forces. Officials with the station refused to comment on the court verdict.
The decision comes amid fears of a worsening environment for media in Iraq despite U.S.-backed efforts to promote an independent press.
"We do respect the Iraqi judiciary system, but we do not like to see an Iraqi channel being fined for delivering news in a country that honors freedom of expression," said Hadi Chalou of the Baghdad-based independent Journalistic Freedom Observatory.
Iraq has been the most dangerous place in the world for journalists to work, with the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists saying 139 have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

From splachnopleuric mesoderm tissue, the cardiogenic plate develops cranially and laterally to the neural plate. In the cardiogenic plate, two separate angiogenic cell clusters form on either side of the embryo. Each cell cluster coalesces to form an endocardial tube continuous with a dorsal aorta and a vitteloumbilical vein. As embryonic tissue continues to fold, the two endocardial tubes are pushed into the thoracic cavity and begin to fuse together and are completely fused at approximately 21 days.
At 21 days after conception, the human heart begins beating at 70 to 80 beats per minute and accelerates linearly for the first month of beating.

The apex is the blunt point situated in an inferior (pointing down and left) direction. A stethoscope can be placed directly over the apex so that the beats can be counted. It is located posterior to the 5th intercostal space just medial of the left mid-clavicular line. In normal adults, the mass of the heart is 250-350 g (9-12 oz), or about twice the size of a clenched fist (it is about the size of a clenched fist in children), but extremely diseased hearts can be up to 1000 g (2 lb) in mass due to hypertrophy. It consists of four chambers, the two upper atria and the two lower ventricles.

EKG Machines

Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:
Aug. 8
The Austin (Texas) American-Statesman, on the recent health care debates:
... When you go to hear elected officials or political candidates discuss the issues of the day, be polite as well as respectful of others attending the event.
Feel free to be -- and in fact we encourage you to be -- challenging, assertive and skeptical of what you hear. Make the officeholders and candidates talk with you, not at you.
That's good for democracy.
What's bad for democracy is screaming at, shouting down or in any way discouraging conversation. ...
Here's an ... example, taken from a memo from the Tea Party Patriots, a group that wants members to harass Democratic lawmakers:
"Be disruptive early and often. You need to rock the boat early in the rep's presentation. Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the rep's statements early. ... The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions."
There's a bad idea. These tactics are not productive and probably won't change any minds.
So how about if we try to show each other as well as our elected leaders, love 'em or hate 'em a little respect? ...
___
On the Net:
http://www.statesman.com
___
Aug, 9
The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, on obesity and health care:
Just as the national debate over health-care reform enters a critical stage, along comes a national study pointing out that obesity adds $147 billion every year to the cost of health care in this country. ...

Americans consume an average of 250 more calories per day than they did two decades ago. That's 26 extra pounds to burn off every year just to stay even. And medical costs associated with the resulting obesity have nearly doubled in less than a decade. ...

The extra weight Americans are packing leads to numerous and often avoidable health problems: heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, heart failure, kidney problems, and arthritis. As Congress debates health care reform, the question becomes: Who will foot the bill? ...

While the debate over health care reform has focused mainly on the cost and how to pay for it, what's been missing is any real discussion of the preventive component — how to avoid weight-related maladies in the first place.

... Choosing a healthier lifestyle is the best way to hold down medical bills for everyone. Failure to heed that message may turn out to be the deciding factor in whether health care reform succeeds this time. ...

___

On the Net:

http://tinyurl.com/kw7sqc

___

Aug. 9

Chicago Sun-Times, on the American Psychological Association and sexual orientation:

There's nothing like a dry research paper to help clear up the sexiest and most controversial of topics.

With a 138-page report to back them up, the American Psychological Association this week declared that mental health professionals should not tell their gay clients that they can become straight through therapy or other treatments. ...

We doubt this will dissuade die-hard proponents of "reparative therapy," but we applaud the APA for taking a sober look at the topic — and for coming out strongly against it. The group has long espoused the view that homosexuality is normal. But this declaration, we hope, will reach gay people who are considering this discredited therapy and will lend more authority to the therapists who reject it.

The association also gets credit for carefully examining the difficult conflict between a person's sexual orientation and his or her religious views, which often leads gays to seek out such therapies. The APA discusses this conflict in its report, noting several studies that document the intense emotional stress it can cause. Therapists are urged to respect their client's religious views and to help them explore ways to live a spiritually meaningful life, including choosing celibacy.

But the APA didn't back down on the conversion question, urging therapists to first and foremost address "the reality" of a client's "sexual orientation."

The APA was respectful when it mattered — both to a range of religious views and to the facts.

___

On the Net:

http://tinyurl.com/mm62lk

___

Aug. 11

Daily Freeman, Kingston, N.Y., on Bill Clinton, the Obama administration and North Korea:

So the former president of the United States flies half way around the globe on a secret mission and, to the surprise of the world, comes home with two Americans who'd been imprisoned in a ruthless foreign land.

You would have thought that Bill Clinton getting two Americans out of a tough jam in North Korea would be universally received as a good thing.

You'd a'thunk wrong.

Critics in the United States have bent themselves from here to Pyongyang and back to criticize the whole thing.

The Obama administration, which negotiated the release and sanctioned the trip by Citizen Clinton, surely rewarded North Korea's bad behavior, setting a terrible precedent, they say.

Or the trip was really about Bill Clinton weaseling himself into an Obama administration role.

Or surely Clinton's discussion with Kim Jong-il must have strayed into areas that compromised official U.S. diplomatic policy toward North Korea, despite White House insistence to the contrary.

Or the stage managing of the return of the plane carrying Clinton, Laura Ling and Euna Lee was unseemly.

The manufactured kerfuffle over Clinton's humanitarian trip shows just how poisonous our politics have become. It's in danger of being all partisan, all of the time. ...

The critics are wrong. In the end, what happened was no rollover by the Obama administration. Reduced to its essentials, the deal secured the release of two American citizens from a hellish fate at the cost of a photo op. That's solid diplomacy in the service of a limited, but humanitarian, outcome. And that's worth celebrating.

___

On the Net:

http://tinyurl.com/kn35uc

___

Aug. 7

The Paducah (Ky.) Sun, on taxes:

Your taxes are going up.

Much as we hate to be the bearer of bad news, we think you ought to know.

No, we haven't forgotten the president's oft-repeated campaign promise not to raise your taxes. Unless you are rich, of course. But to the middle class he promised, "You will not see your taxes increased by a single dime. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains tax. No taxes."

At the time, Obama's opponents said the math didn't work — he simply would not be able to do all he promised without broad tax hikes. But Obama insisted he could and would. Since then, however, economic realities have set in. And those economic realities were manufactured in Washington.

Now the administration is starting to gently break the bad news: one way or another, you're going to pay more for the federal government's excesses.

But don't take our word for it. Listen to Timothy Geithner, the former New York Fed chief whom the president chose to lead the Treasury Department because Obama deemed him the only person capable of steering the U.S. economy out of the recession. On ABC's "This Week" Sunday, host George Stephanopoulos asked Geithner if the president would have to break his pledge not to raise taxes on 95 percent of Americans. He responded, "We're going to have to do what's necessary." ...

Congress is showing no signs of getting deficit spending under control. Higher taxes are inevitable. The only question is the form. ...

Yes, middle class taxpayers, you're going to pay more. The rich just don't make enough money to keep up with the spending appetites of Congress.

___

On the Net:

http://www.paducahsun.com/

___

Aug. 10

The Decatur (Ala.) Daily, on Obama:

Among the many criticisms hurled at President Barack Obama is that he is a pacifist. How can a man willing to talk to Iran and North Korea have the backbone to exert our military might against enemies?

The reported death of Taliban leader Hakmiullah Mehsud in Pakistan is a reminder that the pacifist label, like so many others pinned to Obama, is inaccurate.

Missile strikes in Pakistan have increased, not decreased, since Obama took office. Evidence suggests that the relentless attacks have disrupted al-Qaida and Taliban operations whether or not the recent strike killed Mehsud.

For the American people, there is a lesson here. Homegrown enemies of Obama — think talk radio — are masters at labels. Obama is not just a pacifist, they say he's a socialist and a fascist and a control freak.

The fact is, he is an intelligent man who is proving himself adept at processing the facts before him. As the missile strikes make clear, he prefers diplomacy but understands that force sometimes is necessary.

Obama is our president. A majority of our population saw in him the wisdom necessary to guide a powerful nation. His detractors, vested in his failure, are increasingly venomous.

Notwithstanding the constant slanders, we as a people can be proud. We saw through the campaign blather and found the right man for the job.

President Obama has made mistakes, and he will make more. But at a time of crisis — international and domestic — he is the best America has to offer. If anyone can see us through these travails, he is the one.

___

On the Net:

http://tinyurl.com/r8jumj

___

Aug. 10

The Ledger, Lakeland, Fla., on teens sending sexually provocative photos via cell phones and e-mails:

"Sexting" - sending sexually provocative photos via cell phone or e-mail - is hardly an innocent pastime. Yet teens who engage in this risky behavior often have no harmful intent, no clue to the potential consequences, and no idea that they may be committing a crime.

Their exhibitionism should not be condoned. But when it is not intentionally exploitative, it should not be prosecuted as felony child pornography.

Unfortunately, too many communities are doing exactly that. In Pennsylvania, for example, a district attorney is threatening to file child-pornography charges against three girls, pictured partially clad, in photos from a slumber party. ...

In such circumstances, a pornography charge is not warranted. It is an overreaction that subjects these children to humiliation, fear, legal expense and a criminal record.

What is needed is a more sensible, moderate response - one that offers juvenile first offenders a life lesson without destroying their lives. ...

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On the Net:

http://tinyurl.com/m3dpeg

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Aug. 6

Home News Tribune, East Brunswick, N.J., on a Little League team's sportsmanship:

An act of sportsmanship and decency occurred on a baseball field in Green Brook last week that we couldn't let pass without notice.

The East Brunswick 9 years old and under Little League team gave their championship trophy to Ryan Walsh, a member of the defeated Green Brook 9 and under team, following their championship victory. In June, Walsh had lost his father and coach, 54-year-old Marty Walsh, to cancer two years after losing his mom, Elizabeth Walsh, also to cancer.

Ryan will soon be moving to a new home in Colorado. ...

Sportsmanship and decency are two qualities too often lacking in today's sports world, on all levels. In pro sports, high-priced athletes parade like peacocks around playing fields, then demand exorbitant sums of money for mediocre performances. In youth sports, the stands are often a place for boorish and vulgar hostility emanating from frustrated parents who view their children as athletic surrogates. Or just because it's all being taken far too seriously.

The role of sports should be to build strong bodies and even stronger character, especially at the youth level. Instead, athletics seems to have become a me-first exercise where teamwork is secondary. And when we see that from the pros and the top stars, it's our children getting all of the wrong messages.

We can all learn much from brave Ryan Walsh, who heroically carried on despite his loss, and the members of the East Brunswick squad, who recognized Ryan's courage and fortitude. ...

All involved are champions.

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On the Net:

http://tinyurl.com/msw9yy

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August 7

The Times, London, on health care:

There is a truth about modern health care that, in the politics of the day, is consistently ignored. Demand will always beat supply. ...

That is because the demands we have of the service are now out of all alignment with our willingness to pay for them. There are more pensioners than there have been in any previous era and they are living to the ripe old ages at which they contract expensively treatable diseases. The innovative genius of health scientists has made more diseases treatable, usually with new drugs that are, at least initially, very expensive. It is not surprising that citizens demand all that can be done. In a public system, every citizen is sensitive to pain and insensitive to price.

At the same time, health care is getting less effective at preventing conditions, such as obesity and its associated links with diabetes, that are the upshot of dietary and lifestyle choices. The National Health Service has never really been that. It is more of a national illness-fixing service. The health of the nation actually has rather little to do with the NHS and that poor correlation is getting worse, to costly effect.

These are serious problems, but the solutions are not hard to enumerate, even if they are difficult to swallow. We cannot afford all that we can do so health care will have to be rationed further. We can do this by price, by availability or by time. Patients can be charged for some services that are currently free; some elective and non-catastrophic services may have to be excluded from the core set of NHS interventions; or people will again have to get used to waiting a long time.

The disposable income of the Britain of 2009 is vastly greater than it was in 1948. It makes no sense to pretend that fully comprehensive health provision can all be funded out of general taxation. ... The greatest danger to health care in Britain comes from those false friends who are still pretending that we do not need to change.

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On the Net:

http://tinyurl.com/mwjl3c

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Aug 11

Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden, on ETA's terror attacks on Mallorca:

The Basque separatist group turns 50 this year and a perverse celebration is under way. ... (T)hree bombs were discovered in bars near the beach in Palma. This after a car bomb exploded on June 29, ... injuring 46 and after two police were killed in a bomb attack in Calvia on Mallorca. ...

It has happened before that the terrorists have targeted tourist areas. But in combination with that they have also started to attack police families lately, this weekend's warded off attack must be seen as an expression that the ETA violence could be on its way to change.

Unpleasantly, it is not completely unlikely that the terror, now to a higher extent than before will be directed directly at civilians. ...

The earlier conservative government put up a strong fight for several years, which triggered a serious attempt to assassinate former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. But the successor Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero naively believed it was possible to negotiate with the barrel of a gun, and therefore the government's hold on the terror organization softened. ...

As such the Basque separatists will continue to be a problem for, and pose a threat to, Spaniards as well as to foreign tourists. ...

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On the Net:

http://www.svd.se

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Aug. 12

Dagsavisen, Norway, on Aung San Suu Kyi's trial:

... (T)he Burmese regime extended Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest by 18 months. In total, the government has stolen 14 years of her freedom, and there is no guarantee that the regime will release her after she's served this latest sentence. The trial was a farce from start to finish. ...

Aung San Suu Kyi has become a symbol of the struggle for freedom — not only in Burma, but the world over. The international community must continue to put increasingly greater pressure on the Burmese regime to free her. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proposed a global ban on selling arms to Burma. The EU has warned that it may use "targeted measures" to punish those responsible for Monday's ruling against Suu Kyi.

This is the right approach, and Norway should support these measures. But what's especially important is that Burma's neighbors — as well as key countries like China, India and Russia — also put pressure on this despotic regime. For Burma, the release of Aung San Suu Kyi would be a step in the right direction.

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On the Net:

http://www.dagsavisen.no

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Aug 6

The Jerusalem Post, on government H1N1 preparations:

When mid-summer headlines warn that 700 young Israelis may die in the course of 2010 from the H1N1 virus, it is natural to feel anxious. A quarter of Israelis, say health experts, may contract swine flu, leaving a third of the population sick at home. Some 150,000 Israelis could find themselves hospitalized. ...

Two basic questions come to mind: How concerned should Israelis be? And is the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu - he's also health minister - managing preparations for the crisis effectively? The two issues are obviously connected. ...

Netanyahu has ordered that NIS (Shekels) 450 million already earmarked for the purchase of medications that would expand the arsenal of treatments available for cancer, mental illness, heart disease and other serious disorders be redirected for battling H1N1.

In contrast, U.S. health officials plan to focus their vaccination efforts on pregnant women, people who live with or care for children younger than six months, health care and emergency services personnel, people between the ages of six months and 24 years, and people aged 25 through 64 who are at higher risk for H1N1 because of chronic health disorders or compromised immune systems.

Israeli health experts are divided over the wisdom of Netanyahu's approach. Deputy Health Minister Ya'acov Litzman favors something closer to the U.S. approach, which would protect those most vulnerable and avoid decimating the expanded health basket for other diseases. ...

We urge him to rethink his plan for mass inoculations at the expense of the expanded health basket.

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On the Net:

http://tinyurl.com/qnyyes

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LED Light Bulbs

Lighting is the deliberate application of light to achieve some aesthetic or practical effect. Lighting includes use of both artificial light sources such as lamps and natural illumination of interiors from daylight. Daylighting (through windows, skylights, etc.) is often used as the main source of light during daytime in buildings given its low cost. Artificial lighting represents a major component of energy consumption, accounting for a significant part of all energy consumed worldwide.

Artificial lighting is most commonly provided today by electric lights, but gas lighting, candles, or oil lamps were used in the past, and still are used in certain situations. Proper lighting can enhance task performance or aesthetics, while there can be energy wastage and adverse health effects of lighting. Indoor lighting is a form of fixture or furnishing, and a key part of interior design. Lighting can also be an intrinsic component of landscaping.

TUESDAY, Aug. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Oral sodium clodronate
improves overall survival in advanced prostate cancer patients but doesn't
reduce the risk of death in those with localized disease, British
researchers say.

They reported on the long-term survival outcomes of more than 800 men
enrolled in two trials launched in 1994. The trials examined the effects
of sodium clodronate in patients with advanced (311 men) or localized
prostate cancer (508 men).

The advanced prostate cancer patients who received the drug had a 23
percent lower death rate than patients who took a placebo. After five
years, overall survival was 30 percent among men who took oral sodium
clodronate and 21 percent among those in the placebo group. After 10
years, the survival rates were 17 percent and 9 percent, respectively, the
researchers found.

However, the drug offered no improvement in overall survival to men
with localized prostate cancer. After five years, overall survival was 78
percent among those who took clodronate and 80 percent among those given a
placebo. After 10 years, the survival rates were 48 percent and 51
percent, respectively.

The findings are believed to be the first "to show an overall survival
benefit conferred by an oral bisphosphonate when given in addition to
standard hormone therapy to men with bone metastases who are starting or
responding to hormone therapy," wrote Matthew Sydes, of the Medical
Research Council Clinical Trials Unit, and colleagues. "However, there is
no evidence that clodronate is of any benefit when given as an adjuvant to
treatment in men with non-metastatic prostate cancer."

The study appears online and in the September print issue of The
Lancet Oncology.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about prostate cancer treatment.

Golf balls are famous for "dimples". These small dips in the surface of the golf ball decrease aerodynamic drag which allows the ball to fly further. Golf is also famous for the use of flags. These show the position of the hole to players when they make their first drive and are too far away from the hole to aim accurately. When all players in a group are within putting distance, the flag is removed by a "caddy" or a fellow player to allow for easier access to the hole.

[edit] Types of Shots Strictly speaking, every shot made in a round of golf will be subtly different, because the conditions of the ball's lie and desired travel path and distance of the ball will virtually never be exactly the same. However, most shots fall into one of the below categories depending on the purpose and desired distance:

Putting Contests

The House Judiciary Committee released thousands of pages of transcripts and e-mails Tuesday providing new details linking Karl Rove, top political adviser in the George W. Bush White House, to the firing of nine U.S. attorneys.

The documents -- which include transcripts of closed-door interviews with Rove and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers -- suggest Rove and his staff were most closely involved in the decision to fire David Iglesias, the U.S. attorney in New Mexico.

Miers told the Judiciary Committee that Rove was "agitated" when he called during a visit to New Mexico in September 2006 and said Iglesias was "a serious problem and he wanted something done about it."

The documents also provide new details about contact members of New Mexico's congressional delegation had with White House officials regarding Iglesias. Former Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M. (1999-2009), e-mailed Rove's staff complaining that Iglesias had failed to prosecute voter fraud cases, while former Sen. GOP Pete V. Domenici (1973-2009) called Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff, in October 2006 asking that Iglesias be replaced.

The Senate Ethics Committee in 2008 issued a letter of admonition to Domenici, saying a 2006 call he had placed to Iglesias regarding a corruption investigation "created an appearance of impropriety that reflected unfavorably on the Senate."

Members of Rove's staff were pushing for Iglesias' removal as early as May 2005, when his aide, Scott Jennings, e-mailed another one of his deputies indicating, "I would really like to move forward with getting rid of NM US ATTY."

Rove told the Judiciary Committee he became concerned about Iglesias' handling of voter fraud cases as well as two public corruption cases, in part due to complaints from members of the state's GOP congressional delegation and Republican state officials.

But Rove said he believed the decision whether to recommend removing any U.S. attorney rested with the Justice Department.

"This was something that Justice needed to make a decision about, and that this was not something that the White House was going to make a decision about," Rove said he told state party officials.

House Judiciary Democrats say the released documents confirm their suspicions that the Bush White House orchestrated the firings for political reasons, after Justice Department officials from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on down were unable to tell lawmakers who initiated the firings.

"The basic truth can no longer be denied: Karl Rove and his cohorts at the Bush White House were the driving force behind several of these firings, which were done for improper reasons," said John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in a statement.

But Lamar Smith of Texas, the panel's top Republican, released a statement saying "the interviews reveal no evidence of wrongdoing in the firings."

"Despite all evidence to the contrary, House Democrats continue to falsely accuse former Bush administration official Karl Rove of wrongdoing in the dismissal of several U.S. Attorneys," Smith said.

In a statement, Rove said he welcomed the documents' release. "They show politics played no role in the Bush administration's removal of U.S. attorneys, that I never sought to influence the conduct of any prosecution, and that I played no role in deciding which U.S. attorneys were retained and which replaced," Rove said.

Long Battle
The documents' release had been expected since July 30, when Rove concluded his second day of closed-door questioning led by Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the Judiciary Committee and a former assistant U.S. attorney.

That same day, The New York Times and The Washington Post published stories based on a pre-emptive joint interview with Rove in which he characterized his role in the firings as minimal.

Conyers and Schiff are forwarding their findings to Nora Dannehy, a U.S. Attorney who was appointed last year by former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey to investigate the firings after the release of a report on the matter by the Justice Department's Offices of Inspecctor General and Professional Resonsibility.

President Bush initially refused to allow Rove and Miers to testify before the House panel. Bush also refused to turn over internal White House records related to the firings.

Bush's decision sparked a lawsuit by the committee that tested the boundaries of executive privilege. The committee filed suit in federal court last year seeking enforcement of its subpoenas against Miers and Bolten, who was subpoenaed as custodian of the records.

A federal judge ruled last year that Miers and Bolten were not immune from the subpoenas. The Bush Justice Department appealed that ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

But earlier this year, the committee struck a deal with Bush -- which was blessed by President Obama -- in which the panel won the right to question Rove and Miers, as well as former deputy Bush White House counsel William K. Kelley, in private, on-the-record interviews. The committee also can seek public testimony from the trio.

Under the deal, the panel also obtained White House documents related to the firings from December 2004 to March 2007.

PHOENIX – Scott Schoeneweis has been placed on the 15-day disabled list by the Arizona Diamondbacks because of depression, less than three months after his wife was found dead at their home.
The 35-year-old left-hander spent three weeks on the bereavement list after his wife, Gabrielle, was found dead on May 20 in the master bedroom of couple's home in the Phoenix area.
Since returning on June 9, Schoeneweis has given up 15 earned runs in nine innings. He is 1-2 with an 8.24 ERA in 38 games this season.
"Obviously this has been an incredibly difficult year," Arizona general manager Josh Byrnes said. "He's done everything he could to deal with a tragedy and to keep playing. At this point, we felt it was a bit overwhelming. He needed a break from it.
"Hopefully he can return to pitch at some point this season. We felt it was necessary and appropriate to do at this time," said Byrnes, who added there is no timetable for a return. "We'll first address real-life issues. We'll see if that will allow him to return to baseball."
A cause of death has not been made public, and an attorney for Schoeneweis said the family has filed suit to keep the records sealed.
Schoeneweis and Gabrielle had three children together, and she also had a daughter before she married the reliever. He has been raising all four children, ages 14, 7, 5, and 2.
"It's obviously been a horrific year for him," Arizona manager A. J. Hinch said. "On a personal level, I can't imagine what he's endured. He has tried his best to be a major league baseball player while going through the worst thing imaginable.
"He's done an incredible job of raising four kids and doing this," Hinch added. "At this point, baseball becomes irrelevant."
Schoeneweis, an 11-year veteran, spent 2007 and 2008 with the New York Mets, who were in Arizona for the second game of a three-game series Tuesday.
Mets manager Jerry Manuel and left-hander Pedro Feliciano said they spoke to Schoeneweis last week, when Arizona played a four-game series at Citi Field.
"My heart goes out to him, his family and his kids. He was a part of us. He gave us everything he had. I'll always have a place in my heart for him," Manuel said. "I gave him a big hug. I told him, 'I don't understand. I don't know. I never felt that.' Thats a tough deal."
Arizona recalled left-hander Daniel Schlereth from Double-A Mobile to take Schoeneweis's place on the roster.