Blackwater’s dark heart

New revelations about an American private-security contractor

THE “war on terror” has left many blots on America’s reputation—weapons of mass destruction, Abu Ghraib prison, Guantánamo Bay—and one stain continues to darken with time. This week the New York Times reported that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had once hired Blackwater, a private-security contractor, in connection with a plots to assassinate al-Qaeda operatives. It was the latest in a string of controversial news. This month Erik Prince, Blackwater’s founder and chairman, was accused of facilitating or committing murder. Blackwater released a statement calling the allegations “unsubstantiated and offensive”.
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Fugitive Jenkins found dead in B.C. motel

Fugitive reality-TV star Ryan Jenkins has been found dead of an apparent suicide in a Hope, B.C., motel, RCMP said Sunday.

The Calgary native faced murder charges in the death of his ex-wife, model Jasmine Fiore, whose mutilated body was found in a Los Angeles dumpster last Saturday.

Police responded to a call about a dead person in Hope, east of Vancouver, and then called investigators who were part of the massive manhunt for Jenkins, said Sgt. Duncan Pound with the RCMP’s border integrity unit.

They don’t yet know how long the 32-year-old real estate developer was at the motel before his body was discovered, he said.
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Sources: Report to detail alleged abuse inside CIA secret prisons

WASHINGTON (CNN) — CIA interrogators threatened an al Qaeda prisoner with a gun and an electric drill to try to scare him into giving up information, according to a long-concealed inspector-general’s report due to be made public on Monday, sources familiar with the report confirmed to CNN.

The gun and drill were used in two separate interrogation sessions against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, one of the sources said. Al-Nashiri is accused of plotting the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, which left 17 U.S. sailors dead.

The sources did not want to be identified because the report, completed by the CIA’s inspector general in 2004, has not yet been made public. A federal judge in New York has ordered a redacted version of the report released Monday as part of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU.
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Athens locals flee as fires rage

Several thousand residents of Athens’ northern suburbs have evacuated their homes as several wildfires continue to blaze around the Greek capital.

Almost the entire population of Agios Stefanos, 23km (14 miles) north-east of Athens, fled by vehicle or on foot.

Multiple fires have been burning across an area some 50km wide, fanned by strong and unpredictable winds.

The fires – the worst since those in 2007 which killed about 70 people – are being called an environmental disaster.

Firefighting efforts were suspended as darkness fell on Sunday, with several major blazes still burning into the night, although no casualties have been reported.
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Why Racial Profiling Persists in Medical Research

While the rest of the country wrangled over the behavior of police officers in the wake of the Henry Louis Gates arrest last month, some scientists were pulling out their hair over racial profiling of a different kind: that perpetrated by medical researchers. Experts within the research community say a small but stubborn streak of racial profiling has long persisted in the medical literature, borne out in studies that attribute health disparities between blacks and whites not to socioeconomics or access to health care alone but also to genetic differences between the races — a concept that implies that a biological category of race exists.

The controversy resurfaced in July with the publication of a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) in which researchers analyzed more than 19,000 patients who participated in clinical trials involving treatments for a variety of cancers. The paper found that all other factors being equal, black patients had on average a significantly lower cancer survival rate than whites. Given that all patients were participating in the same clinical trials, the authors said, there was no difference in terms of access to care. Researchers said also that even after adjusting for patients’ socioeconomic status, the survival gap between black and white patients remained for three of the cancers studied: breast, ovarian and prostate. “There is a considerable difference in the statistics. Something big is going on among people who are getting equal care,” says lead author Kathy Albain, a breast and lung cancer specialist at Loyola University’s cancer center. That something, the authors concluded, must be some unknown biological or genetic factor that differs by race.
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America’s Fatal Flaw

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen the twin personalities of the U.S. government come out: one is impressive, the other deeply worrying. Good news first: we now have increasing evidence that Washington’s response to the global financial collapse was effective. Recall the fall of 2008. The financial markets seized up, credit froze, the economy went into a nosedive. Almost every metric by which we judge the economy moved into its darkest territory since the 1930s. And this was happening at the worst possible time. A lame-duck U.S. president faced an opposition party in charge of both houses of Congress. It was a recipe for paralysis, bickering, and inaction.

In fact, the administration and Congress collaborated fast and well, and within two weeks, Congress appropriated a staggering $700 billion to rescue the financial system. As the Bush administration left office, it worked closely with the incoming Obama team, which continued the basic framework of the rescue, modifying some aspects of the Bush programs and adding others. Both groups worked carefully with the Federal Reserve, the lead player in this drama, which acted aggressively and creatively. Democrats like Barney Frank supported the Bush administration. George W. Bush put aside his ideological blinders and massively intervened in the economy.
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What’s Good For IBM… …is as good as it gets for America.

The wreckage of the financial crisis is producing many warnings that globalization is dead, as trade and investment slow. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, global companies have rarely been in a stronger position, and if you want to get a sense of where such businesses are heading, look no further than IBM.

The company was a titan of American industry in the 20th century, an innovator in computer technology, and an icon of efficient sales. Today, it is radically different. No longer primarily a hardware maker, the company, still officially known as International Business Machines, ought to be renamed IBS—International Business Services. Over the past decade, and in the past two years in particular, IBM has become a global services company that helps multinational businesses to focus more on international markets and to depend less on any one country, including the United States.
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Whatever Happened to Buying American?

The cash for clunkers program turbo-boosted auto sales — just not for Detroit.

When Julia Reusch of Blue Bell, Pa., decided to trade in her 1999 Ford Explorer as part of the cash-for-clunkers program, she nixed the idea of purchasing another Ford product. “I didn’t feel compelled to buy American, given my experience with the Ford,” says the 28-year-old who noted that her Explorer was problematic even when it was new. Instead, she opted for a Toyota Prius. After only a week, she’s hooked. “It’s wonderful. I love it,” she says.

That’s great news for Toyota, but it’s hardly the kind of sentiment Detroit’s automakers were banking on when the clunkers program launched at the end of July. The program was originally designed to boost the economy in general and the nation’s auto industry in particular. But the latest Department of Transportation statistics, released last week, show that American cars represented a total of 42 percent of vehicles purchased under the $3 billion U.S. government-funded program. Only two U.S. models–the Ford Focus and Ford Escape–were among the top 10 cars sold; Toyota and Honda together hold six of those spots. Even though final sales data isn’t yet available, those figures are unlikely to change much now that the program is set to end on Monday, Aug. 24.
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Milla Jovovich Exchanges Vows at Sunset

Actress Milla Jovovich married director Paul W.S. Anderson in an intimate outdoor ceremony at their home in Beverly Hills on Saturday, PEOPLE has confirmed.

The bride, 33, wore a ’60′s-style mini dress she designed herself as she walked down the aisle in the backyard of the couple’s Spanish-style house, decorated with red and white floral arrangements.

The couple exchanged matching 18k Neil Lane classic gold wedding bands (photo below), to go with Jovovich’s 19th century vintage gold engagement ring with colored pink, yellow and white diamonds.

Among the 50 guests in attendance was actor Patrick Dempsey and his wife Jillian. The couple’s 20-month-old daughter Ever Gabo was also present.
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Battle on to contain Greece wildfires

ATHENS, Greece (CNN) — Weary but determined, crews battled to save homes as fires tore through suburb after suburb around Athens for a third day Sunday.

More than 600 firefighters and soldiers — aided by residents — used whatever was at their disposal to bring the blaze under control as the flames inched closer to the capital from the northeast edges of the city.

“I have ashes on my desk but I’m not smoking. Penteli mountain is,” said Alexander Liaros, referring to the community in the Athens metropolitan area that was ablaze.

So far, no injuries have been reported. But taking no chances, rescue personnel evacuated two children’s hospitals, summer camps, a monastery and senior-citizen homes early Sunday morning. The government declared a state of emergency.
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