Libya Sentences 6 to Die in H.I.V. Case

PARIS, Dec. 19 — A Libyan court on Tuesday again sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to be shot by a firing squad for deliberately infecting more than 400 children with H.I.V., more than 50 of whom have died. The decision complicates Libya’s efforts to improve relations with the West.

The verdict drew expressions of anger and alarm from Bulgaria and its supporters in the nearly eight-year-old case, which now appears likely to drag on for months, if not years, more.
“We are going to urge the Libyan political leadership to engage in the process,” Bulgaria’s foreign minister, Ivaylo Kalfin, said from Washington, where he met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hours after the verdict was announced.
Mr. Kalfin said his country was working through the Libyan Foreign Ministry to ask the nation’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and political institutions to intervene on the ground that an inefficient and biased judicial system had failed to deal with the case credibly.
Lawyers for the medical workers said they would appeal to Libya’s Supreme Court.
The episode began in February 1998 when the nurses arrived to take up jobs at Al Fateh Children’s Hospital in Benghazi, the country’s second largest city. By August that year, children at the hospital began testing positive for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Health authorities soon realized they had a major problem.
An investigation concluded that the infections came from the wards where the Bulgarian nurses had been assigned. Dozens of Bulgarian medical workers were arrested, and vials of H.I.V.-tainted blood were found in a videotaped search of one nurse’s apartment.
According to a Libyan intelligence report submitted to the court, that nurse, Kristiyana Vulcheva, later confessed that the vials had been given to her by a British friend who was working in Libya. She said she and her colleagues had used the vials to infect the children.
Colonel Qaddafi subsequently charged that the health care workers had acted on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency and Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad.
A Benghazi court eventually convicted five nurses and a Palestinian doctor of deliberately injecting the children with the virus. But Ms. Vulcheva and another nurse said they were tortured into confessing, and international AIDS experts — including Luc Montagnier, the French virologist and a co-discoverer of H.I.V. — concluded that the virus predated the nurses’ arrival and was probably spread by contaminated needles.
The medical workers were sentenced to death in May 2004, which led to difficult negotiations among Libya, Bulgaria, the United States and the European Union to find out a way out of the impasse.
Finally, last December, the four announced that they were setting up an international fund to cover medical care and other costs incurred by the families of the H.I.V.-infected children. Libya’s Supreme Court quashed the death sentences two days later and called for a retrial, this time by a court in the capital, Tripoli.
The families have asked that Bulgaria or other donors provide $10 million per child, the same amount that Libya agreed to pay each of the families of the 270 people killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, for which Libya has accepted responsibility.
The families have said they would agree to release the nurses and the doctor if their request was satisfied. Under Libyan law, victims’ families have the power to grant clemency in return for compensation.
But only a few million dollars in cash, services and equipment has been donated to the fund; some of that was used to treat the children in Europe this year. Talks over further donations stalled while the trial was under way, apparently because, the Libyan families said, Bulgaria had hoped the new court would find the nurses not guilty.
But on Tuesday, the presiding judge, Mahmoud Hawissa, announced the latest guilty verdict in a seven-minute hearing. The Bulgarian foreign minister and defense lawyers argue that this trial was as equally flawed as the previous one.
Emmanuel Altit, a French lawyer in Paris who worked on the defense team, said: “The question of torture by electricity, proof that the nurses had been beaten, sexually harassed, kept for six months without contact, the question of fabricated evidence, none of this was discussed at all. The court refused to hear our experts.”
The justice commissioner of the European Union, Franco Frattini, called on Libyan authorities to rethink their handling of the case, calling it “an obstacle to cooperation with the E.U.” Bulgaria will become a member of the union on Jan. 1.
But for those Libyans who believe the nurses are guilty, the verdict was a foregone conclusion, even if their execution is not. Ramadan al-Faitore, whose 4-year-old stepsister was among the first to die, predicted earlier this month that the medical workers would be sentenced to death but not executed.
“No one will kill the nurses,” Mr. Faitore said in Paris, echoing a statement made by Colonel Qaddafi’s son Seif two years ago. Mr. Faitore said the nurses’ freedom would depend on donations to the international fund. “After the trial, negotiations will start again,” he said.
Mr. Kalfin, the Bulgarian foreign minister, said his country was committed to making sure that the fund would “provide lifelong medical treatment for the children and create conditions that would prevent this from ever happening again.”
But he bristled at the suggestion that Bulgaria would pay “blood money” for the release of the nurses, calling such talk cynical.
Standing in a muddy field across the street from the Libyan Embassy in Sofia, Zorka Anachkova, the mother of Ms. Vulcheva, the nurse, said she wasn’t surprised by the verdict.
“What kind of negotiations can you have for innocent people?” she asked. “All the evidence proves their innocence. Their innocence is axiomatic. What else is there to talk about?”

Bush: 'We do need to increase our troops'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush asked his new secretary of defense to draw up plans to increase the overall size of the Army and the Marines, according to an interview with the president published Tuesday in the Washington Post.
"I'm inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops -- the Army, the Marines," Bush said.
"And I talked about this to Secretary Gates and he is going to spend some time talking to the folks in the building, come back with a recommendation to me about how to proceed forward on this idea." (Watch debate on troop level )
Senior administration officials said the timing of the president's comments is connected with Washington's oncoming budget season, and that the president intends for such plans to be part of the fiscal 2008 budget. (War spending to approach record)
But the comments also come amid increasing warnings from officials and experts that the U.S. military is stretched too thin to cope with the stresses of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It is an accurate reflection that this ideological war we're in is going to last for a while, and that we're going to need a military that's capable of being able to sustain our efforts and to help us achieve peace," Bush told the Post.
Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that the military is "bleeding." (Watch concern over military )
"The stretching and the straining of the troops is serious," he said. " ... I think we have to put on a tourniquet and strengthen the forces. I think that will be a major part of our early work."
Bush disagreed with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said the U.S. military was "broken," on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday.
Bush reacted to Powell's statement, saying, "I've heard the word, 'stressed,' ... We need to reset our military. There's no question the military has been used a lot.
"And the fundamental question is, will Republicans and Democrats be able to work with the administration to assure our military and the American people that we will position our military so that it is ready and able to stay engaged in a long war?"
In addition to the overall troop strength, the president is considering whether to send as many as 30,000 or 40,000 additional troops into Iraq on a short-term basis to secure the Baghdad area -- a plan supported by GOP presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
McCain supports an increase in overall troop size.
Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, said on CNN's "The Situation Room" that the United States has already lost the Iraq war.
"Militarily we have lost -- there is no question about it, we cannot win this militarily," the lawmaker said.
Murtha, who has advocated withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq, also said the U.S. has missed its opportunity to stabilize the war-torn country.
"There is no way the United States can solve this problem," Murtha said. "We have gotten so far out and we have missed our opportunity, if we ever had an opportunity early on, to stabilize Iraq. Since we didn't do it then, it cannot be done now."
The congressman also sharply criticized the recommendation of sending more troops to Iraq.
"They don't have an achievable mission -- a defined mission which they can point to," he said. "What's the point in sending another 40,000 troops?"
Some military officials -- reportedly including the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- have balked at the idea of sending more troops temporarily, concerned that the influx of American forces could increase attacks by insurgents.
But White House spokesman Tony Snow said Tuesday that the "notion" of a "feud between the president and the Joint Chiefs would be wrong."
"They work together," he said. "The president has a great deal of respect for the chain of command -- in fact, the chain of command, starting with the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs, the combatant commanders, all the way down to the people who are doing the fighting on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan and that are serving the nation in uniform."

CLONING: World's first cloned cat has 3 healthy kittens

COLLEGE STATION, Texas - The world's first cloned cat just became a mother — and she even did it without test tubes. Copy Cat, who was cloned by Texas A&M University researchers in 2001, had three kittens in September. Mother and kittens are doing well, said Duane Kraemer, an A&M veterinary medicine professor who helped clone her and has been taking care of her since.
"They're cute, and we thought people ought to know about the birth," Kraemer said. "But we're hoping it doesn't cause the same frenzy CC did."
CC got worldwide attention after she was cloned at Texas A&M, which has cloned more species than any institution in the world, including cattle, swine, goats, horses and a deer.

The father is Smokey, a naturally born tabby who was brought in to mate with CC. Two of the kittens take after their mother, while the third has a gray coat like his father.
CC is not the first cloned cat to give birth, Kraemer said. In New Orleans, two cloned wild African cats successfully mated to produce kittens.

California, Florida Use of Lethal Injection Halted

By Joel Rosenblatt and Karen Gullo
Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The use of lethal injection in California and Florida was ordered halted because of questions about the length of such executions, and the possibility of causing pain and discomfort before the condemned dies.
A federal judge in San Jose, California, ruled today that the method is unconstitutional because it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In Florida, Governor Jeb Bush suspended the practice after a Dec. 13 execution took 34 minutes. The prisoner appeared to suffer, moved for 24 minutes and tried to speak as he died, said Suzanne Myers Keffer, his lawyer.
California's use of lethal injection, a combination of chemicals meant to sedate, end breathing, and stop the heart, creates a ``risk that an inmate will suffer pain so extreme that it offends the Eighth Amendment,'' U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled.
The federal government, the U.S. military and 38 states allow capital punishment, and all of those except Nebraska use lethal injection as the primary method of killing inmates sentenced to death, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. Executive Director Richard Dieter said the actions by the two states may lead to a national review of the procedure.
``Taken together, today's decisions are historic,'' said Dieter. ``The two states with the largest death rows in the country now have holds on all executions.''
Other States
Elisabeth Semel, director of the American Bar Association's Death Penalty Representation Project, said the events in California and Florida may force other states to make changes in their lethal injection procedures.
``For people who oppose the death penalty it's an affirmation of the kind of problems we have pointed out for a long time,'' said Semel. ``For people who support the death penalty, this isn't going to change their minds.''
Bush, the brother of President George W. Bush, halted the signing of any additional death warrants in Florida until a commission he created to investigate the state's execution process completes its report, scheduled for March 1.
The ruling in San Jose involved Michael Morales, convicted in 1983 of the murder of 17-year-old Terry Lynn Winchell. Morales argued he might remain conscious and experience excruciating pain when given the three-drug lethal injection.
The number of Americans who support the death penalty has dropped from 80 percent in 1994 to 65 percent this year, Dieter said.
Drop in Support
``That's a drop, although its still strong support,'' he said. ``People are more hesitant about the death penalty than they have been.''
Appeals stemming from today's events in California and Florida may eventually end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, Dieter predicted.
``If they take a case, all executions will be on hold, in Texas and everywhere,'' he said. ``This sort of sets the stage, recognizing there are problems with the current method.''
Judge Fogel in February ordered California officials to review the state's method of administering the injections due to ``numerous anomalies'' in previous executions, said David Senior, a lawyer representing Morales.
``Here we are in December and the state hasn't even begun,'' Senior said. ``By contrast, the governor of Florida has taken prompt action to investigate and examine the issues. For some reason the state of California has elected not to do so.''
`Petulant'
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's office has been ``petulant in their response to a very thoughtful judge who, using his language, respectfully suggested that they review their procedures,'' Senior said.
Morales' execution, originally scheduled for Feb. 21, was postponed after Fogel placed restrictions on how the state could carry out the procedure, including having a licensed health care professional inject any drugs used in the execution.
Schwarzenegger's administration will review the injections to make sure the procedure is constitutional, the governor's Legal Affairs Secretary Andrea Lynn said in an e-mailed statement.
``Governor Schwarzenegger will continue to defend the death penalty and ensure the will of the people is represented throughout the ongoing court proceedings,'' the statement said.
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has ``urged'' the state's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and Schwarzenegger ``to take advantage of this opportunity'' to reform the procedure, Lockyer spokesman Nathan Barankin said.
The California case is Morales v. Woodford, 06-219, U.S. District Court Northern District of California, San Jose.

The Princess Diana Conspiracies: The Di is Cast

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Diana_Study_overview.pdf


PRINCESS Diana feared she and Camilla Parker Bowles were to be eliminated in a royal plot, paving the way for the Prince of Wales to marry another woman.She believed the two rivals were to be "put aside" to make "the path clear" for Prince Charles to marry royal nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke.
The extraordinary allegation against the Prince is at the heart of the report published yesterday by Lord Stevens into the death of Diana and Dodi Fayed, when their Mercedes crashed in a Paris underpass.
The 832-page report stops short of naming the other woman but it is widely believed to have been Miss Legge-Bourke.
The exhaustive dossier systematically demolishes conspiracy theories that Diana and Dodi were murdered. But Operation Paget's report also provides startling details of the Princess's state of mind as her marriage to Charles disintegrated.
Diana was convinced that he and Miss Legge-Bourke were having an affair.
The "plot" was revealed by Labour peer Lord Mishcon, who took a confidential note of Diana's fears in August 1997. A similar claim was made by Diana in a letter sent to her former butler Paul Burrell.
It read: "This particular phase of my life is the most dangerous my husband is planning "an accident" in my car, brake failure & serious head injury, in order to make the path clear for him to marry." Interviewed by Lord Stevens, Prince Charles said he had no knowledge of Diana's claims until the note was released by Mr Burrell in 2003.
"The Princess of Wales did not speak to him about it," the report said. "HRH the Prince of Wales knew the woman named in the note as a family friend. There has never been any possibility of marriage to her."
The Stevens report said: "The Princess of Wales did name a woman in her note. It was not Camilla Parker Bowles."
Confronted with the allegations at the Welsh farmhouse where she now lives, Miss Legge-Bourke, 41, said only: "I am not going to talk to you. Happy Christmas."

Gay Couples Get Civil Union NJ

New Jersey became the third state to bless civil unions as an alternative to marriage for same-sex couples, choosing a middle ground that establishes a type of relationship that didn’t exist before Vermont created it in 2000.
Under orders by the state high court, the New Jersey Legislature took less than eight weeks to grab the safer political option of civil unions over marriage for gays. The state House voted 59-19 on Thursday (Dec. 14) to create civil unions, just hours before the state Senate gave its approval by a 23-12 margin. New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D) has signaled he will sign the measure.
The legislation was prompted by the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Oct. 25 order that the state either legalize same-sex marriage or provide equal statutory treatment for gay couples by April 2007. New Jersey opted to follow the example of Vermont and Connecticut by adopting civil unions. Vermont adopted civil unions in 2000 after a legal decision similar to New Jersey's court ruling. Connecticut's Legislature voluntarily adopted civil unions in 2005.
Massachusetts remains the only state to legally sanction gay marriages as ordered by a landmark 2003 ruling from its highest court. Three more states – California, Connecticut and Maryland – may be pushed to decide how to handle recognition of gay couples next year because high court rulings on gay marriage are awaited in those states.
The authors of the New Jersey measure said they intend for civil unions to be identical to marriage in all but name. The legislation spells out specific benefits to be extended, such as full adoption rights and the right to change surnames without a court petition. It also updates state marriage statutes by painstakingly adding the phrase "or civil union" after every mention of "marriage" in more than 80 pages of rules governing nuptials.
But while a civil union license may carry the same weight as a marriage license within New Jersey, it's still short of marriage and doesn’t satisfy gay rights groups. Gay rights advocates say it lacks societal recognition and is not legally recognized by other states or by federal law. Gay rights advocates in New Jersey acknowledged civil unions are a step forward but called them a second-class alternative to marriage.
"If you say, hey, I'm unionized, what does that mean? Everybody knows what marriage means, it's the only currency that's accepted, that everybody understands," said Barbra Casbar, president of New Jersey Stonewall Democrats, a pro-gay rights political group that had lobbied for full marriage rights.
New Jersey's high court ruled unanimously that same-sex couples deserved full access to the rights and privileges of marriage. However, four of the seven justices ruled that civil unions would be an acceptable alternative to marriage. State Democratic leaders quickly signaled they preferred the less controversial option of civil unions and approved the legislation with little debate only nine days after it was introduced.
"The public is accepting of the state of New Jersey allowing civil unions, but they're not yet accepting of using the word ‘marriage’ with regards to same-sex couples," former governor and Senate President Richard Codey (D), chief sponsor of the civil unions bill, told Stateline.org.
"In another 10 years that probably will change, and I fully expect the Legislature to address this issue again," he said.
Unlike civil union statutes adopted by Vermont and Connecticut that included language codifying marriage as a union for only a man and a woman, New Jersey lawmakers left out such a definition. The law also creates a task force to monitor implementation of civil unions to ensure the high court's demands are met.
However, several legal organizations criticized civil unions as insufficient to meet the requirements of the state Supreme Court's directive. The New Jersey State Bar Association said in a statement that civil unions “will create a separate, unequal and unnecessarily complex legal scheme."
More than half of the states have written bans on same-sex marriage into their state constitutions, to guard against state judges ordering them to legalize gay weddings. However, more states are expected to consider expanding gay rights in 2007 than to restrict them.
Gay rights advocates, emboldened by the unprecedented defeat of a constitutional same-sex marriage ban in Arizona on Election Day, hope that Democratic gains at the state level will translate into an expansion of gay partnership rights and a slowdown in the number of states adopting constitutional bans on gay marriage.
Seven states adopted same-sex marriage bans on Nov. 7 -- bringing the total to 27 states nationwide -- but gay rights advocates claimed a major breakthrough when Arizona voters became the first to reject such a measure at the ballot box -- 52 percent to 48 percent.
Gay rights advocates see progress in the Election Day results, even though all but one ban passed. In 2004, 13 state constitutional same-sex marriage bans passed with 71 percent support, compared to 56 percent support this year. South Dakota voters approved a ban by a surprisingly narrow margin of 52 percent to 48 percent margin.
Observers said the campaign against the same-sex marriage amendment in Arizona, Proposition 107, was successful because it avoided almost any mention of gay marriage. Instead, millions of dollars of advertising focused on the section of the measure that would have banned government agencies from recognizing civil unions or domestic partnerships between heterosexual partners. The campaign may have resonated strongly among the state's large population of senior citizens, many of whom may avoid new marriages because their retirement incomes may be affected.
Bills to expand same-sex partnership rights, ranging from full marriage to domestic partnerships to civil unions, are expected in California, Connecticut, Maryland, Oregon, New York and Washington. High courts in New York and Washington in July upheld their states' same-sex marriage bans but recommended that state lawmakers address the issue of rights for gay couples.
Currently, partnership rights for same-sex couples differ widely in the seven states that recognize some form of gay unions. Besides marriage licenses in Massachusetts and civil unions in Connecticut, New Jersey and Vermont, domestic partnership registries have been created in three states: California, Hawaii and Maine. Domestic partnerships differ from civil unions in that they confer a specific list of benefits to registered couples who may be of the same-sex or opposite sex. For example, Maine and Hawaii list specific legal rights for domestic partners such as inheritance and hospital visitations. California's domestic partnership law is similar to civil unions in that it extends all state-level rights and responsibilities to registered domestic partners.
But the rush to write same-sex marriage bans into constitutions is slowing. In the 23 states that have not yet adopted constitutional amendments defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman, Democrats now control one or both legislative chambers in all but Florida. There, gay marriage foes are collecting signatures to put a same-sex marriage ban on the ballot.
Gay rights advocates say they have the votes to defeat any new same-sex marriage ban in each of these states accept possibly Indiana and Pennsylvania, where Democrats now hold just a one-vote margin in each state House. Indiana lawmakers took the first step in passing a same-sex marriage ban in 2005 but must vote on the proposal again in 2007 before sending it to voters. Democratic lawmakers said they have enough votes to delay passage of the proposed amendment. Pennsylvania lawmakers voted down a same-sex marriage ban in 2005 when Republicans controlled both chambers.
Proponents of same-sex marriage bans, such as the conservative family values group, Family Research Council (FRC), acknowledge that they face an uphill battle passing bans in the remaining states.
"We've gotten a lot of the low-hanging fruit and don't expect to see the same numbers of states (adopting constitutional same-sex marriage bans) we've seen in the last two years," said Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs for the Washington, D.C.-based FRC.
Same-sex marriage foes in Florida are expected to collect more than 600,000 signatures needed to put a same-sex marriage ban on the 2008 ballot. But passage of the proposal may be in doubt.
Florida voters this year approved a ballot measure intended to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution in the future by requiring 60 percent approval by voters. Gay rights advocates also are looking to emulate the success in Arizona by launching a similar campaign targeted at Florida's senior-citizen population.
Florida is demographically and politically closer to Arizona than any other state, said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, a gay rights group.
"Our polling has shown similar responses from people who are very concerned about the broad language of this proposal harming communities that already have domestic partnership protections," including Miami Beach, Monroe, Tampa Bay and Palm Beach, she said.

Prince William gets his army commission

December 15, 2006
LONDON --Prince William was commissioned as an army officer on Friday, and shared the spotlight at the ceremony with his girlfriend, Kate Middleton.

The two have been a couple since William's university days, and speculation about their future is a continuing subject of gossip.
With grandmother Queen Elizabeth II addressing the new second lieutenants and father Prince Charles taking the salute, William was one face in a crowd of cadets participating in "passing out" ceremonies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, following a 44-week commissioning course.
William's younger brother, Prince Harry, was commissioned at a similar ceremony earlier this year. Both of the young royals were assigned to the Blues and Royals regiment of the Household Cavalry.
Middleton, wearing a bright scarlet coat and dark hat, attracted lingering gazes from the television cameras covering the ceremony.
"For those who are to be commissioned today and to those who will shortly follow, a great deal will be expected of you," the queen told cadets.
"You must be courageous yet selfless, leaders yet carers, confident yet considerate... These are very special attributes, but those whom you will command and your country too will expect nothing less. My prayer for your success and safety will follow you wherever you happen to serve."

Princess Diana Memorial Concert Sold Out Instantly

The first release of about 22,500 tickets to the Princess Diana memorial concert sold out in 20 minutes on Wednesday morning, according to a spokesperson for her two sons, princes William and Harry. More tickets are likely to be made available at a later date. The capacity of the stadium, which is currently under re-construction, is expected to be 60,000.Diana, Princess of Wales, is to be honored on the 10th anniversary of her tragic death with a huge concert. Her two sons, Princes William and Harry, who are second and third, respectively, in line to the throne of the United Kingdom, will host the concert on July 1st, at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium in London. It will be "full of energy, full of the sort of fun and happiness which I know she would have wanted," Prince William said in an interview with his father's press secretary, Patrick Harrison, which was released to the media.Tickets from a certain category, which were priced initially at £45 (about $102), quickly turned up on eBay for more than five times their face value. However, eBay firmly pledged to remove the re-sale entries out of respect for the memory of the late Princess of Wales. After all, they removed OJ Simpson's book, too. "In view of the unique and commemorative nature of the Concert for Diana event and as a mark of respect for the memory of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, eBay has decided to not allow the re-sale of tickets to this event on the site," a spokesperson said.An official website was launched. Check it at www.concertfordiana.com. After going on sale at 9am, the tickets had been snapped up within minutes, with a message appearing on the website: "For now, tickets have sold out. We hope very much that more tickets will be released in the New Year. Please keep checking back here for further information."The band Duran Duran will perform along with Elton John, who sang "Candle In The Wind" at Diana's funeral. The concert will also include a performance by the English National Ballet and songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber in honor of the princess' love of dancing and theater.A Christian memorial service is also planned at a secret location in London on Aug. 31, the 10th anniversary of her tragic death. Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, the princes' stepmother, Camilla, and Princess Diana's siblings plan to attend."The service is going to include both sides of the family, our mother's side and our father's side, everyone getting together," prince Harry said.A British investigation into the death of Princess Diana concludes the Paris crash was caused by a drunken chauffeur who lost control of the car, the report of a two-year investigation by a former head of the Metropolitan Police says. It is to be released Thursday. Among other conspiracy theories, Mohammed al-Fayed, Diana's lover's father, has contended that the British Secret Service arranged Diana's death because she was pregnant and she and his son planned to marry. The head of the investigation, John Stevens, found no evidence of pregnancy.After allegations in the British press that they were taping her phones, the United States NSA said in a statement yesterday that it had 39 classified documents containing references to Diana the princess. But they "only contained references to the princess and she was never the communicant," according to agency spokesman Don Weber.The memorial concert will be filmed by the American company Live Nation, who have tendered out the broadcast rights. "We're organising the filming so the set-up won't [require] that broadcasters have their own cameras," said a Live Nation spokesperson. "A decision on rights will be made in January."

Circumcision Reduces Risk of AIDS

Circumcising African men may cut their risk of catching AIDS in half, the National Institutes of Health said today as it stopped two clinical trials in Africa, when preliminary results suggested that circumcision worked so well that it would be unethical not to offer it to uncircumcised men in the trials.
AIDS experts immediately hailed the result, saying it gave the world a new way to fight the spread of AIDS, and the directors of the two largest funds for fighting the disease said they would now consider paying for circumcisions.
“This is very exciting news,” said Daniel Halperin, an H.I.V. specialist at Harvard’s Center for Population and Development, who has argued in scientific journals for years that circumcision slows the spread of AIDS in the parts of Africa where it is practiced.
In an interview from Zimbabwe, Mr. Halperin added: “I have no doubt that, as word of this gets around, millions of African men will want to get circumcised and that will save many lives.”
But experts also cautioned that circumcision is no cure-all. It only lessens the chances that a man will catch the virus, it is expensive compared to condoms, abstinence or other methods, and the surgery has serious risks if performed by folk healers using dirty blades, as often happens in rural Africa.
Sex education messages to young men need to make it clear that “this does not mean that you have an absolute protection,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, an AIDS researcher and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which sponsored the trials. Circumcision should be added to other prevention methods, not replace them, he said.
The two trials were carried out among nearly 3,000 men in Kisumu, Kenya, and nearly 5,000 men in Rakai, Uganda. None were infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS; they were divided into circumcised and uncircumcised groups. They were given safe sex advice — although many presumably did not take it — and retested regularly.
The trials were stopped by the National Institutes of Health’s Data Safety and Monitoring Board this week after data showed that the Kenyan men had a 53 percent reduction in new H.I.V. cases and the Ugandan men a 48 percent reduction.
In Kenya, 22 of the 1,393 circumcised young men in the study caught the disease, compared with 47 of the 1,391 uncircumcised men.
Those results echo the finding of a trial completed last year in the town of Orange Farm, South Africa, financed by the French government, which demonstrated a reduction of 60 percent among circumcised men.
Two agencies, one under the State Department and the other financed by a number of countries, said they now would be willing to pay for circumcisions, which they have not before, citing a lack of hard evidence that it works.
Dr. Richard G. A. Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said that if a country seeking money submitted plans to conduct safe, sterile circumcisions, “I think it’s very likely that our technical panel would approve it.”
Ambassador Mark Dybul, executive director of the $15 billion President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in the State Department, said his agency “will support implementation of safe medical male circumcision for HIV/AIDS prevention.”
He too warned that it was only one new weapon.
“Prevention efforts must reinforce the ABC approach — abstain, be faithful and correct and consistent use of condoms,” he said.
Uncircumcised men are thought to be more susceptible to AIDS because the underside of the foreskin is rich in Langerhans’ cells, which attach easily to the virus. The foreskin may also suffer small tears during intercourse, making it more susceptible to infection.
Researchers have long noted that parts of Africa where circumcision is practiced — particularly in the Muslim countries of West Africa — had much lower AIDS rates. But it was unclear whether other factors, such as religion or polygamy, played important roles.
Outside Muslim regions, circumcision is spotty. In South Africa, for example, the Xhosa people circumcise teen-age boys, while Zulus, whose traditional homeland abuts theirs, do not. AIDS is common in members of both tribes.
In recent years, as word has spread that circumcision might be protective, many African men have sought it out. A Zambian hospital offered $3 circumcisions last year, and Swaziland trained 60 doctors to give them at $40 each after its waiting lists grew.
“Private practitioners also do it,” Dr. Halperin said. “In some places, it’s $20, in others, much more. Lots of the wealthy elite have already done it. It prevents STD’s, it’s seen as cleaner, sex is better, women like it. I predict that a lot of men who can’t afford private clinics will start clamoring for it.”

Peter Boyle - RIP

Sure, he didn't die racing against time and the elements in the snow trying to rescue family members, but he did give us a deeply moving interpretation of one of the silver screen icons of all time: Frankenstein's monster in Young Frankenstein.

Peter Boyle, who died Tuesday at 71 after battling multiple myeloma and heart disease, was best-known for playing the grumpiest father in modern television in Everybody Loves Raymond, and for his classic scene in 1974’s Young Frankenstein, in which his melancholy monster broke into a tap-dance routine to the tune of “Puttin’ On The Ritz.”
Boyle was a complicated, fascinating man. Raymond may have made him rich and a household face, but he’d made his breakthrough decades earlier in the title role of Joe, the 1970 film in which he starred as a bigoted hard-hat construction worker who wreaked a murderous vengeance upon that era’s hippies. As was true of his committed performance as Frank Barone, Joe briefly stereotyped the prematurely-balding Boyle as a conservative icon, "It was a very strange experience,” Boyle once told The New York Times. “People coming up and saying, 'That's what they ought to do with all these hippies.' I was in an identity crisis." That’s because Joe’s opinions couldn’t have been further from Boyle’s own life and many of his acting choices, which tended to be leftist and countercultural. Let me just throw this fact out for a start: John Lennon was the best man at Boyle’s 1977 wedding to Laraine Alterman, one of the first prominent female rock-music writers. (They had two children.)
addCredit("Peter Boyle: Kevin Parry/WireImage.com")

Boyle was frequently at the center of tumultuous pop-culture moments. Born outside of Philadelphia in 1935, Boyle did brief stints in the Navy and then in a monastery in training as a monk. He drifted into acting, working with the Second City improvisational troupe, and was among those tear-gassed during Chicago’s 1968 Democratic Convention. (It was an experience he would relive, in a way, in two films: Haskell Wexler’s groundbreaking 1969 cinema vérité timebomb Medium Cool, and the 1987 HBO film Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago Eight.) With his friend Jane Fonda, with whom he costarred in the 1973 anti-Establishment comedy Steelyard Blues, he attended many anti-Vietnam War rallies. (I remember one night in the late ‘70s being in a restaurant interviewing Bonnie Raitt when she stopped talking, jumped up and hugged Boyle, who was passing our table. “Hey, you’re gonna be at the No Nukes rally, right?” she asked. “You know it, sweetie!” he said with a huge grin.)
As Boyle went into middle-age, he alternated jobs probably taken for money, such as piddly movies like Beyond The Poseidon Adventure (1979) and The In Crowd (1988), with riskier projects like the Hunter Thompson biopic Where The Buffalo Roam (1980) and the excellent, short-lived TV series Joe Bash (1986), in which he played a lonely, sensitive beat cop. And of course, anyone who’s seen Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) probably remembers Boyle’s turn as the hardbitten cabbie The Wizard.
Boyle’s occasional work on the stage was distinguished. In the early '80s, he co-starred with Tommy Lee Jones in the original New York Public Theater production of Sam Shepard’s knock-down, drag-out True West. In ’96, he won an Emmy for one of every sensible X Files-nut’s favorite episodes, taking the title role in “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose,” as a man who could see future deaths.
Even after he became a prime-time star in Raymond, it was great that Boyle still had the desire and skills to take a role such as the unforgivable racist in Monster’s Ball (2001). The next time you watch Frank Barone mutter and whine in an Everybody Loves Raymond rerun, remember that Peter Boyle was a very cool guy.
Posted by Ken Tucker 12.13.06, 03:01 PM

The Ipswich Ripper

Two more bodies have been found by police investigating the murders of three prostitutes.
A member of the public spotted one body on Tuesday afternoon and Suffolk police launched their helicopter and the pilot spotted a second nearby.
A woodland area around the riverside village of Levington, near Ipswich, in Suffolk has been sealed off.
Police said it is likely the two bodies are those of two missing women - Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls.
The area is close to where the body of Anneli Alderton was found on Sunday. The bodies of Gemma Adams, and Tania Nicol, were also found near Ipswich.
Ms Clennell, 24, and 29-year-old Ms Nicholls, have not been heard from since Sunday.

Suffolk police officers were called to Levington shortly after 1500 GMT on Tuesday.
The site is off the main road between Ipswich and Felixstowe docks close to a railway line, the Orwell estuary, a marina and is in a rural area close Ipswich.
The officer leading the murder inquiry, Det Chief Sup Stewart Gull, said the "natural assumption" was that the bodies were those of missing prostitutes Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls.
Final interview
Ms Clennell gave an interview to ITV on 5 December in which she said she was prepared to go back on the streets despite the emerging danger because "I need the money".
But she admitted the killings had made her "a bit wary about getting into cars".
However, she said she would probably still continue to do so despite already having had "a couple of nasty experiences", including being beaten up once.
Ms Clennell also said she had noticed there were now fewer men and prostitutes around.
"The girls are probably wary about coming out now," she said.
The naked body of Gemma Adams, 25, was found on December 2 in woodland at Hintlesham, on the outskirts of Ipswich. She had last been seen on November 15.
On December 8 the body of Tania Nicol, 19, was found in nearby Copdock. She was the first to go missing and had last been seen on October 30.
It was still not known if there was one or more than one killer on the loose
Alastair McWhirter
The naked body of the third prostitute, Anneli Alderton, 24, from Colchester in Essex, was discovered at the weekend in Nacton, a few miles further east.
Two more bodies have now been found in the neighbouring village of Levington, a mile or so from Nacton.
All the bodies were found close to the A14, which runs to the nearby port of Felixstowe.
Mr Gull said: "We've formally linked the murders of Tania and Gemma because of significant similarities, and they continue with Anneli, Paula and Annette.
"Clearly they were all prostitutes from Ipswich, they were found naked and in an open rural environment.
"This is so fast-moving, we need to take stock and maximise opportunities to recover forensic evidence from the scene before formally establishing whether they are linked or not.
"We need to catch this person or persons as quickly as possible."
Suffolk Chief Constable Alastair McWhirter described the multiple murder inquiry as "unprecedented".
"If you think of the Yorkshire Ripper, the murders took place over a long period of time," he said.
Mr McWhirter said it was still not known if there was one or more than one killer on the loose.
He said the force was bringing in assistance from other forces around the country to help in the inquiry.
Mr Gull said no further prostitutes had been reported as missing in Ipswich.

Iranian Holocaust Conference: IN DENIAL

On Monday, the Iranian foreign ministry held an international conference. There's nothing unusual in that. Foreign ministries hold conferences, mostly dull ones, all the time. But this one was different. For one thing, the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust dealt with history, not current politics. Instead of the usual suspects—deputy ministers and the like—the invitees seem to have included David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader; Georges Thiel, a Frenchman who has called the Holocaust "an enormous lie"; and Fredrick Töben, a German-born Australian whose specialty is the denial of Nazi gas chambers. The guest list was selective: No one with any academic eminence, or indeed any scholarly credentials, was invited. One Palestinian scholar, Khaled Ksab Mahamid, was asked to come but was then barred because he holds an Israeli passport—and also perhaps because he, unlike other guests, believes that the Holocaust really did happen.
In response, the United States, Europe, and Israel expressed official outrage. The German government, to its credit, organized a counterconference. Still, many have kept their distance, refusing to be shocked or even especially interested. After all, the Holocaust ended more than six decades ago. Since then, the victims of the Holocaust have written hundreds of books, and the scholarship on the Holocaust has run into billions of words. There are films, photographs, documents, indeed whole archives dedicated to the history of the Nazi regime: We all know what happened. Surely Iran's denial cannot be serious.
Unfortunately, Iran is serious—or at least Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is deadly serious. Holocaust denial is his personal passion, not just a way of taunting Israel, and it's based in his personal interpretation of history. Earlier this year, in a distinctly eerie open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he lauded the great achievements of German culture and assaulted "the propaganda machinery after World War II that has been so colossal that [it] has caused some people to believe that they are the guilty party." Such views hearken back to the 1930s, when the then-Shah of Iran was an admirer of Hitler's notion of the "Aryan master race," to which Persians were meant to belong. Ahmadinejad himself counts as a mentor an early revolutionary who was heavily influenced by wartime Nazi propaganda. It shows.

Of course, Holocaust denial also has broader roots and many more adherents in the Middle East, which may be part of the point: Questioning the reality of the Holocaust has long been another means of questioning the legitimacy of the state of Israel, which was indeed created by the United Nations in response to the Holocaust, and which has indeed incorporated Holocaust history into its national identity. If the Shiite Iranians are looking for friends, particularly among Sunni Arabs, Holocaust denial isn't a bad way to find them.
And yet—this week's event has some new elements, too. This is, after all, an international conference, with foreign participants, formal themes ("How did the Zionists collaborate with Hitler?" for example), and a purpose that goes well beyond a mere denunciation of Israel. Because some former Nazi countries have postwar laws prohibiting Holocaust denial, Iran has declared this "an opportunity for thinkers who cannot express their views freely in Europe about the Holocaust." If the West is going to shelter Iranian dissidents, then Iran will shelter David Duke. If the West is going to pretend to support freedom of speech, then so will Iran. Heckled for the first time in many months by demonstrators at a rally yesterday, Ahmadinejad responded by calling the hecklers paid American agents: "Today, the worst type of dictatorship in the world is the American dictatorship, clothed in human rights." The American dictatorship, clothed in human rights spouting falsified history: It's the kind of argument you can hear quite often nowadays, in Iran as well as Russia and Venezuela, not to mention the United States.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that this particular brand of historical revisionism is no joke, and we shouldn't be tempted to treat it that way. Yes, we think we know this story already; we think we've institutionalized this memory; we think this particular European horror has been put to rest, and it is time to move on. I've sometimes thought that myself. There is so much other history to learn, after all. The 20th century was not lacking in tragedy.
And yet—the near-destruction of the European Jews in a very brief span of time by a sophisticated European nation using the best technology available was, it seems, an event that requires constant re-explanation, not least because it really did shape subsequent European and world history in untold ways. For that reason alone, the archives, the photographs, and the endless rebuttals will go on being necessary, long beyond the lifetime of the last survivor.

CNET Editor Dies In Snow

MERLIN, Ore. - A San Francisco man who got stranded in the snowy wilderness with his family nearly two weeks ago was found dead Wednesday in a mountain creek, authorities said.
James Kim’s body was discovered in Oregon’s snowy Klamath Mountains two days after his wife and two daughters were rescued from their car, stuck on a remote road. Kim had set out on foot over the weekend to find help for his family.
Ground crews and helicopters had been searching the area for Kim for days.
A tearful Undersheriff Brian Anderson announced the discovery of the body, his voice breaking at one point. He gave no details on the cause of death or how far from the family’s car Kim was found.
Earlier in the day, searchers said they had uncovered clues that suggested Kim had shed clothing and arranged it to give searchers clues to his whereabouts. They had also made plans to drop rescue packages for Kim with clothing, emergency gear and provisions.
Kim, 35, was a senior editor for the technology media company CNET Networks Inc. He and his family had been missing since Nov. 25. They were heading home to San Francisco after a family vacation in the Pacific Northwest.
Pants foundA pair of pants Kim had been wearing was found in the wilderness on Tuesday, raising fears that he had become delirious from the cold.

Kim’s wife, Kati, told officers that the couple made a wrong turn and became stuck in the snow. They used their car heater until they ran out of gas, then burned tires to stay warm and attract attention. With only a few jars of baby food and limited supplies, Kati Kim nursed her children.
Roads in the area are often not plowed in the winter and can become impassable.
About 100 rescue workers and four helicopters searched for Kim, following his footprints down the creek, which leads to the Rogue River.
Searchers told NBC News that at one point they were able to make direct contact with Kim on the ground and that they had explored ways to lower a medic to the site. It was not immediately clear whether that attempt was aborted or was undertaken too late to save Kim.
Missing after ThanksgivingThe Kims had been missing since Nov. 25, when they left Portland and headed home after a holiday trip to the Pacific Northwest.
Kati Kim told officers they were traveling south from Portland on Interstate 5 and missed the turnoff to a state highway, Oregon 42, that leads through the Coast Range to Gold Beach, where they planned to stay at a resort.
Officers said the couple used a map to choose the road they were on. “They got the map out — a regular highway map — that showed the route,” Anderson said.

Which map was used?However, it wasn’t clear whose map the couple used. The 2005-2007 state highway map distributed by the Oregon Department of Transportation has a warning in red print, inside a red box: “This route closed in winter.” A Rand McNally map did not have a similar warning.
On Monday, searchers in a private helicopter hired by the family spotted Kati Kim, 30, and the two girls. They were released from a hospital in Grants Pass on Tuesday.
Stuck, the family used their car heater until it ran out of gas, then burned tires to stay warm and attract attention. With only a few jars of baby food and limited supplies, Kati Kim nursed her children.
Employer tributeKim's employer, CNET, headquartered in San Francisco, remade the front page of its Web site in his memory Wednesday. The Web site documented Kim's professional passions.
Kim, a senior editor specializing in MP3 and digital audio, considered digital audio and writing his "passions." Kim wrote more than 400 product reviews covering a broad range of technology, the CNet Web site said.