By Gary Stoller,
USA TODAY

Motor vehicle crashes - not crime or terrorism - are the No. 1 killer of healthy Americans in foreign countries. And the threat to travelers is poised to increase dramatically as worldwide economic growth gives more people access to motor vehicles.

Corporate employers, including energy giant Chevron, (CVX) are teaming with safety advocates to combat what they view as a rapidly worsening epidemic of highway deaths and injuries, particularly in developing countries.

“The road’safety problem worldwide for travelers and locals constitutes a growing public health crisis,” says Tony Bliss, lead road safety specialist for the World Bank. He says it’s “a far greater problem than many more widely acknowledged diseases.”

Much of the growth in motor vehicle usage is in developing countries, where roads are sub’standard, signage deficient, traffic regulations lax and enforcement spotty. While local residents bear most of the risk of death and injury, travelers can be particularly vulnerable because of their lack of familiarity with surroundings and with local customs.

Frequent business travelers Mian Chin and Richard Hadden are two of many Americans involved in separate accidents abroad who say they’re lucky to be alive.

Chin, 52, an atmospheric scientist from Maryland, was in a bus accident last August during a business trip from western China to Tibet. The bus driver said, ” ‘We’re finished,’ ” she says. “We thought we were going to die.”

See a chart of the World’s Most Dangerous Roads HERE

read more HERE

By NICHOLAS CASEY and NICHOLAS ZAMISKA
from The Wall Street Journal

Latest Incident From China Involves Cars, Magnet Toys; More Pressure on Factories

Mattel Inc. is close to announcing its second big recall of Chinese-made toys in as many weeks, according to people familiar with the matter, expanding a mounting crisis for the toy maker that could grow even more problematic as the holiday shopping season approaches.

Mattel earlier recalled more than a million toys — including ones based on characters from Sesame Street and Nickelodeon — that may have been tainted with lead paint. Now, people briefed on the matter say, it will recall possibly hundreds of thousands of more items. One of the recalled items is a die-cast car that may contain lead paint. Other items involve toys with magnets that can be harmful to children if swallowed. The items involved in the new recall may come from different factories than the plant that made toys involved in the first recall, according to these people. The magnet-related recall is expected to involve several years worth of the affected toy, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mattel didn’t return calls seeking comment. The Consumer Product Safety Commission had no comment.

Magnet issues surfaced recently in another toy recall. In 2006, the CPSC issued a similar recall for 3.8 million “Magnetix” sets, a toy produced by Rose Art Industries Inc. of Livingston, N.J. The sets consisted of tiny magnets that, if swallowed by an infant, bonded together in the stomach and caused fatal intestinal perforation in at least one instance. The CPSC documented 34 incidents involving the magnets, including one death and four serious injuries. A 20-month-old boy died after he swallowed pieces that twisted his small intestine and created a blockage.

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from The New York Times

Karl Rove, the architect of so much that has gone so wrong with the Bush administration, announced yesterday that he is leaving the White House to spend more time with his family. What he didn-t say is that by getting out of town he is also hoping to avoid spending any time at all with Congressional investigators.

Congress should not oblige.

The American public needs to understand the full story of how this White House - with Mr. Rove pulling many of the strings - has spent the last six and a half years improperly and dangerously politicizing the federal government. Mr. Rove is already defying one Congressional subpoena to testify about the United States attorneys scandal. He should be made to respond to that one, and should also be subpoenaed to explain his role in several other cases of crass politicization.

President Bush took a risk when he put someone so focused on politics as blood sport at the center of his White House. Once he did, he had an obligation to ensure that Mr. Rove understood that his job was to promote the interests of the American people - not solely the Republican Party. Instead, Mr. Rove used his position and power to relentlessly pursue his declared goal of a permanent Republican majority.

Mr. Rove appears to have been deeply involved in the decision to fire nine top federal prosecutors, apparently for either bringing cases that hurt Republicans or refusing to bring cases to punish Democrats. There is also mounting evidence that he turned nonpartisan agencies into campaign boosters, quite possibly violating federal law. Earlier this month, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted that Justice Department officials attended political briefings at the White House, some led by Mr. Rove. Officials at the General Services Administration and Peace Corps, and even six American ambassadors, among others, were also given briefings.

Mr. Rove has stonewalled Congress’s legitimate efforts to investigate. Some of his key e-mail messages on the United States attorneys matter appear to have mysteriously disappeared, while others are being withheld with baseless claims of executive privilege. As for defying that Senate subpoena, some subjects might have been protected by privilege, but Mr. Rove’s refusal to show up at all is outrageous - although totally in keeping with his and his boss’s disdain for the separation of powers.

read more HERE