Chris Botti, Lee Ritenour
Papa Was A Rolling Stone

WASHINGTON - The federal government has fined the American Red Cross $5.7 million for violating blood’safety laws and the terms of a 2003 consent decree.

The fine covers quality assurance, inventory management, control of non-conforming blood products, donor screening and blood component manufacturing issues turned up during a 2005 inspection of a Red Cross facility in West Henrietta, N.Y., the Food and Drug Administration said in a Nov. 21 letter.

The letter, to Red Cross interim president and CEO Jack McGuire, was posted Monday on the FDA Web site.

The fine appears to be the largest single penalty ever assessed under terms of a 2003 court settlement that allows the large fines when the Red Cross violates FDA rules. Previously, the FDA had fined the Red Cross a total of nearly $10 million.

Read more at MSNBC.com

(CBS/AP) Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday the Pentagon is reviewing its practice of paying to plant favorable stories in the Iraqi news media, withdrawing his earlier claim that it had been stopped.

Rumsfeld told reporters he was mistaken in the earlier assertion.

“I don’t have knowledge as to whether it’s been stopped. I do have knowledge it was put under review. I was correctly informed, and I just misstated the facts,” Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing.

Rumsfeld had said in a speech in New York last Friday and in a television interview the same day that the contentious practice had been stopped.

More at CBSNews.com

Speaking of oil, where’s Condi??? Where’s the Secretary of State during this time of diplomatic travel for Bush and Cheney? Just wondering……. Oh wait……Black Friday……shoe shopping!!!

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Insurgents Monday targeted key oil sites in Iraq, firing mortar rounds into an oil distribution center in northern Iraq and bombing a pipeline in a southern suburb of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.

The attack on the oil distribution center triggered a massive fire that halted the flow of crude oil to Iraq’s largest refinery, a Kirkuk police official said.

The attack happened around 6:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. ET) in Baiji, which is about 15 miles (25 km) northwest of Kirkuk, the police official said.

Iraqi army and civil defense personnel were still on the scene hours later trying to put out the fire.

Smoke from the blaze could been seen from miles away.

The refinery in Baiji has a daily production level of about 8.5 million liters of gasoline, 7.5 million liters of diesel and 6.5 million liters of white oil.

More at CNN.com

Barney Frank gives Chris Wallace the smack he deserves. Wouldn’t you like to see someone just bitch slap this guy on the air?

As usual, Michael Ware tells it like it is.

Neighborhood on neighborhood, ethnic cleansing, family on family……

The debate about whether there’s a civil war is fueled either by the luxury of distance for those not living here on the ground or fueled by the spin of those with a political agenda to deny its existence.

By Ted Bridis, Associated Press Writer | November 27, 2006

WASHINGTON –A Dubai-owned company will accept final bids within two weeks for the sale of all $700 million worth of its U.S. port operations to an American buyer, a plan forced by concerns over terrorism security.

The U.S. subsidiary for DP World, the world’s third-largest ports company, disclosed its new sales timetable Monday in letters to U.S. lawmakers. It did not identify the expected bidders but said they were finalizing financial arrangements.

“Bidders have already been provided with a draft of the sales contract for their review, which will speed up the final contract negotiations,” the company said in its letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.

More at Boston.com

Update: One leaves, one stays

Amid a growing barrage of front-page headlines, U.S. embassy officials “strongly suggested” President Bush’s twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara Bush, cut short their trip to Buenos Aires because of security issues, U.S. diplomatic and security sources tell ABC News.

But the girls have stayed on, celebrating their 25th birthday over the weekend and producing even more headlines about their activities.

Officials say the media coverage upstaged publicity plans for the new U.S. Ambassador Anthony Wayne, who had only recently arrived in the country.

More at ABCNews

The Supreme Court on Monday sided with Philip Morris USA, refusing to disturb a court ruling that threw out a $10.1 billion verdict over the company’s “light” cigarettes.
The court issued its order without comment.
Last year, the Illinois Supreme Court threw out the massive fraud judgment against Philip Morris, a unit of the Altria Group Inc., in a class-action lawsuit involving “light” cigarettes. Because the Federal Trade Commission allowed companies to characterize their cigarettes as “light” and “low tar,” Philip Morris could not be held liable under state law even if the terms it used could be found false or misleading, the state court said.
The case involved 1.1 million people who bought “light” cigarettes in Illinois. They claimed Philip Morris knew when it introduced such cigarettes in 1971 that they were no healthier than regular cigarettes, but hid that information and the fact that light cigarettes actually had a more toxic form of tar.
An Illinois judge ruled in favor of the smokers in March 2003, saying the company misled customers into believing they were buying a less harmful cigarette.
A separate case involving Philip Morris is pending before the Supreme Court. Justices are considering whether to allow a $79.5 million punitive damages award to the widow of a longtime smoker from Oregon.

source

Columbus, Ga.
November 19, 2006

Thousands of demonstrators paraded, chanted and raised white crosses Sunday outside the Army’s Fort Benning as they continued a 17-year-long effort to close a military school they blame for human rights abuses in Latin America.

“This is about men with guns,” said the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest who spent five years as a missionary in Bolivia and founded the group SOA Watch in 1990 in the effort to close the school.

“People of these countries are hungry,” said Bourgeois, a naval officer during the Vietnam War. “You can’t eat guns. You can’t eat bullets. They want food … medicine. They need schools for their children.”

The Army’s School of the Americas moved to Fort Benning from Panama in 1984 and was replaced in 2001 by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), under the Defense Department. The school trains Latin American soldiers, police and government officials.

video and the rest of the article are here

additional coverage is here
more about School of the Americas here

“If… the machine of government… is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.” - Henry David Thoreau