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Obama tells daughters he ran for president for them, all children
WASHINGTON (AFP) – In an open letter to his young daughters, US president-elect Barack Obama said Thursday that he entered the race for the White House "because of what I want for you and for every child in this nation." "When I was a young man, I thought life was all about me -- about how I'd make my way in the world, become successful, and get the things I want. But then the two of you came into my world," Obama said in the letter published in Parade magazine, a weekend newspaper color supplement. "I realized that my own life wouldn't count for much unless I was able to ensure that you had every opportunity for happiness and fulfilment in yours. In the end, girls, that's why I ran for President: because of what I want for you and for every child in this nation," wrote the soon-to-be Dad-in-chief. Obama's wish-list for children includes challenging and inspirational schools; equal opportunity to go to university, regardless of their family's financial standing; and well-paid jobs with benefits such as health care and a pension plan that will allow them to "retire with dignity." The 47-year-old father of Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, said he wants to "push the boundaries" of discovery to encourage the development of new technology and inventions that improve lives and protect the environment. And he spoke of his vision of a United States that has reached And he spoke of his vision of a United States that has reached "beyond the divides of race and region, gender and religion that keep us from seeing the best in each other." He would strive to send young Americans to war "only for a very good reason", trying first to settle differences with other nations peacefully. "These are the things I want for you -- to grow up in a world with no limits on your dreams and no achievements beyond your reach, and to grow into compassionate, committed women who will help build that world," wrote Obama. "And I want every child to have the same chances to learn and dream and grow and thrive that you girls have. That's why I've taken our family on this great adventure," wrote Obama, who on Tuesday will move into the White House with his two daughters and wife, MichelleStorm may leave thousands in darkness for days
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Utility companies and road crews prepared for the worst Wednesday as a winter storm barreled into the Northeast, while officials in areas already hit hard by the blast warned it may be days before some shivering communities have electricity again. The storm has been blamed for at least 19 deaths, shuttered government offices and kept kids home from dozens of schools from the Southern plains to the East Coast. With more than a foot of snow forecast for New Hampshire, the Legislature canceled Wednesday's sessions. In Louisville, Ky., the mayor delayed opening government offices until 10 a.m. and urged businesses to follow suit. Tree limbs encased in ice tumbled onto roads and crashed onto power lines in hard-hit Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma, keeping thousands without power. In Arkansas — where ice in some places was 3 inches thick — people huddled next to portable heaters and wood-burning fires as utilities warned electricity may be out for days. "We fully expect this to be one of the largest outages we've ever had," said Mel Coleman, CEO of the North Arkansas Electric Cooperative in Salem. "Right now, we're just hoping it's days and not weeks." Ice storms overnight in West Virginia knocked out power to thousands more. American Electric Power reported more than 40,000 outages early Wednesday. Many other utilities struggled to keep up as ice accumulated on power lines and tree branches. "Lines are still breaking," said John Campbell, the operations chief for Missouri's State Emergency Management Agency. "All the reports we are getting is they are losing the battle right now just because precipitation is still falling." In Kentucky, transportation cabinet workers struggled throughout the night to clear debris from impassable roads as rain and freezing rain continued to fall across the state. Widespread outages continued into the morning. Duke Energy called for reinforcements to keep up with power demands in Ohio, where some parts of the state were expected to receive anywhere from 6 inches to a foot of snow. Southern Ohio could get three-quarters of an inch of freezing rain that could solidify. Winter storm warnings were posted for Wednesday from Arkansas to Maine, while ice storm warnings continued for parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. Philadelphia could be coated in up to a half-inch of ice. Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry declared a statewide emergency Monday. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear did the same Tuesday in his state, where ice up to 1.5 inches thick weighed down tree limbs Tuesday and caused them to crash onto roadways. "You hear the popping — it sounded like gunfire — and it's limbs from trees breaking," said Hopkins County, Ky., Judge-Executive Donald Carroll, who was among those with no power. On Tuesday, West Virginia state offices shut down early after a 6-inch snowfall and forecasts of freezing rain and sleet, Arkansas state government offices opened two hours late, and all but essential state workers in Oklahoma were told to stay home. Road crews in some states had a hard time keeping up with the pace of falling snow. "The Division of Highways is knocking their socks off trying to keep the roads sort of clear," said Paul Howard, director of operations for the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Hundreds of public schools, colleges and universities in several states had called off classes Tuesday. Students were to be kept home again Wednesday in parts of West Virginia, a day after all 55 counties closed schools. "Playing in the snow is pretty much the thing to do today," said Sarah Bonham, a student at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. Since the storm began building on Monday, the weather had been blamed for five deaths in Texas, three in Arkansas, three in Virginia, five in Missouri, two in Oklahoma and one in Indiana. In Charleston, the Postal Service asked residents to remove snow and ice around their mailboxes out of safety concerns for mail carriers. In Oklahoma City, a postal worker fell on a patch of ice and hit her head while delivering mail Monday and was hospitalized in critical condition.
US doctors face challenges in crippled Gaza
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Doctors from the United States who rushed to the Gaza Strip to help the war wounded quickly learned that their challenge went beyond treating shrapnel injuries. The eight American specialists found themselves operating on patients who had fallen victim to the 20-month-border closure that had crippled Gaza's health care system even before Israel's offensive against Hamas. On Tuesday, the team removed a kidney tumor the size of a honey melon from a 4-year-old boy, Abdullah Shawwa, in a five-hour emergency surgery at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital. The tumor was advanced and without quick intervention Abdullah would likely have died, said Dr. Ismail Mehr, an anesthesiologist from Hornell, N.Y. Doctors in Gaza didn't have the expertise to operate on him and Abdullah's father had been unable to get him transferred quickly to Israel or Egypt. Even after the surgery, Abdullah's prognosis is uncertain. He'll need followup treatment, including advanced chemotherapy or radiation, which are not available in Gaza. But it's been difficult for Gaza patients to get out, ever since Israel and Egypt closed the borders in response to the violent Hamas takeover of the territory in June 2007. The closure also dealt a further blow to Gaza's underdeveloped health care system, which lacks sophisticated equipment and key specialists. Hospitals often operate on generators because of disrupted power supplies, and spare parts for some machines are unavailable. On the eve of the war, Gaza's hospitals had run out of 250 of the basic 1,000 health care items, and were short on 105 of 480 essential drugs, including some cancer medications and anesthetics, said Mahmoud Daher, a representative of the World Health Organization. In this vulnerable condition, disaster struck. On Dec. 27, the first day of the war, Israeli warplanes bombed Hamas security compounds across Gaza, killing about 220 people, most of them Hamas police, and wounding some 300 people, according to Health Ministry officials. Shifa, Gaza's central hospital, was overwhelmed. Its six operating theaters couldn't cope with the waves of seriously wounded. Staff nurse Jihad Ashkar, a 22-year veteran at Shifa, said he had never before seen so many people with multiple injuries that required hours-long surgeries. "The injured people waited for many hours to enter the theater, so we lost many injured people because we haven't the equipment or operating rooms," said Ashkar. More than 1,280 Gazans were killed in the three-week offensive, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. More than 4,000 people were hurt, including about 500 critically. The 600 most difficult cases were allowed passage to Egypt. But the war has also changed the lives of those with lighter injuries. Policeman Sabri Elawa, 25, said he was the only one in his 60-member unit to survive the initial bombing raid. Hit by shrapnel in the right leg, he limps and moves with a walker. On Monday, he stood in an unruly line at Shifa for several hours, waiting to pick up a proof-of-injury document. With paper in hand, he went to two charities in a failed search for the office that would pay the 500 euros promised to each wounded person by the Hamas government. Two of his relatives, Maisa and Sami Elawa, accompanied him, seeking emergency payment for their 3-year-old son, Zaher, who suffered a broken hip and burns on the face and chest in a shelling attack near their home. The couple has no income, except for handouts from relatives. They said they can't afford the medication for Zaher, who was lying on a sofa in the modest living room Monday, alternating between crying and smiling. "He cried for a whole week," Maisa, 22, said of her son. She said she's not sure the relief money will ever materialize. "All of them have forgotten us. We are the victims and every government just looks for their" jobs, she said. With many of the wounded either sent home or to hospitals abroad, Shifa has largely settled into its prewar routine. Some of the exhausted Palestinian doctors have been given relief by foreign medical teams that have arrived in Gaza since a cease-fire took hold Jan. 18. Doctors Without Borders set up a white tent clinic on an empty lot in downtown Gaza City and Jordanian specialists are to stay for several months, operating a 44-bed field hospital. The eight Americans, including a plastic surgeon and a radiologist, performed more than 15 procedures since arriving Sunday, including skin grafts and cancer surgery. The group, which also carried cartons of medical equipment, is to stay through Friday. Dr. Saeed Akther, a Pakistan-based urologist originally from Lubbock, Texas, performed the surgery on Abdullah, the 4-year-old with the kidney tumor. Palestinian doctors crowded around to watch, one even bringing a portable step so he could peek over the heads of the others. "The (local) surgeons could not have done it here," said Mehr. "I am not knocking their ability. You could tell when we were doing it, they had lots of questions. They just would not have been able to handle a tumor this size." Abdullah's father, Mussalam, a butcher in Gaza City's outdoor market, said the boy was diagnosed only a month ago, after his belly kept swelling. He said his request for treatment outside Gaza was still hung up in bureaucracy when the foreign doctors arrived. For followup treatment, Abdullah would have to go to Israel. Even during the 20-month closure, Israel has permitted several hundred patients a month — some 900 at its peak — to reach Israeli hospitals for treatment not available in Gaza. Each trip across the heavily fortified Erez crossing into Israel requires a complicated series of permits from officials in Gaza, the West Bank and finally Israel's Shin Bet security service. In recent months, the number of rejections on security grounds has increased, said Miri Weingarten, of the Physicians for Human Rights in Israel, which helps Gaza patients. She said about 1,000 referrals a month are needed, but that in the period before the war, only about half that number were reaching Israel. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Aviv Shiron said Gaza's Hamas rulers are responsible for any hardship in Gaza but that Israel has gone out of its way to ensure ongoing medical care. "Israel has answered every request made by the Red Cross, the U.N. and other humanitarian organizations, regarding health care in Gaza," he said, adding that "any claims that Israeli policy is harming the health care system in Gaza are false, completely untrue." However, international aid groups say the pre-war trickle of aid shipments is not sufficient to deal with Gaza's growing humanitarian crisis. Rebuilding homes, factories and several health care centers is estimated to cost about $2 billion. Many of the wounded will need rehabiliation. The American doctors were careful to stay away from politics — the lifting of the closure is linked to complex negotiations between Israel, Hamas, Egypt and others. But Dr. Ahmed Colwell, an emergency room physician from Sioux City, Iowa, said at least the sick should be given relief. "It's inhumane ... to not allow them to even have basic medical care," he said.
Russia offers Obama olive branch on missiles: report
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia has halted a plan to retaliate against a proposed U.S. missile defense shield by stationing its own missiles near Europe's borders, a Russian news agency quoted the military as saying on Wednesday. The suspension of plans to deploy tactical missiles in the Western outpost of Kaliningrad, if confirmed, would show Russia is extending an olive branch to President Barack Obama after rocky relations under his predecessor. "If true, this would of course be a very positive step," a spokeswoman quoted the U.S. envoy to NATO, Kurt Volker, as saying in reference to the Russian report. Obama spoke to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev by telephone on Monday, their first contact since the U.S. inauguration, and the two men agreed to stop the "drift" in their countries' relations, the White House said on Tuesday. Medvedev had said in November he was ordering the deployment of Iskander missile systems to Kaliningrad, which borders European Union members Poland and Lithuania, in response to Washington's plan for a missile shield in Europe. "The implementation of these plans has been halted in connection with the fact that the new U.S. administration is not rushing through plans to deploy" elements of its missile defense shield in eastern Europe, Interfax quoted an unnamed official in the Russian military's general staff as saying. There was no immediate confirmation from the Russian military that the Iskander deployment was being suspended. The issue is likely to be on the agenda if, as expected, Medvedev and Obama meet on April 2 on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in London. "It (the suspension of missile deployment) is a signal to Obama of Moscow's goodwill," Yevgeny Volk, an analyst in Moscow with the Heritage Foundation think tank, told Reuters. "In response they want a decision not to deploy the missile defense shield in eastern Europe." Some observers believe the Kremlin may be softening its assertive foreign policy style because the economic slowdown -- which has seen the rouble lose about a quarter of its value since July -- has dented its confidence. U.S. POLICY SHIFT? The administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush angered the Kremlin with its push to deploy interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic. It said the system was needed to protect from potential missile strikes by what it called "rogue states" -- specifically Iran and North Korea. The White House has not announced any change of policy on the missile shield, but a nominee for a top Pentagon post in the Obama administration said this month the plan would be reviewed as part of a regular broad look at policy. Russia has argued that the proposed system would threaten its own national security and was further evidence -- along with the eastward expansion of the NATO alliance -- of Western military influence encroaching near its borders. The threat of deploying the Iskander missiles was largely symbolic because, military analysts said, Russia does not have enough operational missile systems to station in Kaliningrad. The row over the shield has helped drive diplomatic ties between Moscow and Washington to their lowest level since the end of the Cold War. But Russian officials have said they are encouraged by early signals from the Obama administration and hopeful of a fresh start in their relations. Since taking office, Obama has sent strong signals that he will try to repair foreign ties that were damaged under the Bush presidency. In an acknowledgement of Washington's rocky relations with the Muslim world, Obama gave his first formal television interview as president to the Dubai-based Al Arabiya station and said the United States was willing to talk to Iran. (Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Brussels; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Peter Millership)US roads, water and basic systems earn 'D' grade
WASHINGTON – America's roads, public transit and aviation have gotten worse in the past four years. Water and sewage systems are dreadful. The basic physical backbone of American society is barely above failing, a report by top engineers says. It'll cost $2.2 trillion to fix America's ailing infrastructure, according to highlights of a report being released early, just as the House of Representatives readies its first vote on President Barack Obama's call for a massive economic stimulus spending package. The country's roads, dumps, dams, bridges, schools and rail systems need lots of that money, say the engineers, who would get a piece of the pie in working on the repairs. Government officials are already aiming billions of dollars at those physical needs as part of what at the moment is a $825 billion economic stimulus package. But the engineers say that's not enough. Overall, the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the U.S. physical backbone for everything from schools and parks to dams and levees a D. That's the same overall grade as the last time the group gave a report, in 2005, but it really is slipping from a "high D" to a "low D," said report chairman Andrew Herrmann. Herrmann, an engineer with the New York firm Hardesty & Hanover, said his group is issuing the highlights of the report — the full document won't be out until late March — "to be relevant ... investing in our infrastructure will create jobs." Of the 15 areas the engineers looked at, three got worse and only one got better. The three that worsened were all transportation oriented: aviation dropped from a D+ to a D; so did public transit; and America's intricate roadway system potholed from a D to a D-. Only the energy system improved, from a D to a D+. In 2005, the engineers said it would cost what would be $1.7 trillion in current dollars to fix what's broken. Now the pricetag is up to $2.2 trillion. "That just goes to show that waiting has cost money," Herrmann told The Associated Press on Tuesday evening. "We haven't made any progress in four years. If my kid came home with 11 Ds and 4 Cs, I know I wouldn't be happy." America's solid waste system was the only C+ on the report card. Bridges got a C; parks and rail systems managed C-. The only D+ plus was for energy. Solid Ds went to aviation, dams, hazardous waste, schools and public transit. The worst grades, D-, went to drinking water, inland waterways, roads and sewage systems. "That absolutely makes sense," said Granger Morgan, head of Carnegie Mellon University's engineering and public policy program and an expert who wasn't part of the 28-engineer panel that handed out the grades. Morgan said just traveling the world shows that American infrastructure, especially in transportation, "is certainly not in the same league as parts of the developing world and parts of Europe." But just because the federal government is handing out lots of money and society's physical backbone needs plenty of repairs, that doesn't automatically mean the government should spend most of its dollars on things such as new roads and power plants, Morgan said. Often, building newer roads doesn't fix congestion, yet building better public transit would pay off more, he said. And spending on energy efficiency more than physical power plants makes sense, he added. "One really needs to make these choices on a bit of solid engineering economics as opposed to emotion and rhetoric," Morgan said. "We've got an enormous pent-up need. The only message is: `Let's be careful to the extent that we can in the manner we spend the money.'" And even though the pricetag to fix America's physical needs is $2.2 trillion over five years, it's really only half that bad because $1.1 trillion of that is already being spent or planned, Herrmann said. The biggest "gap" between what's being spent or planned and what's needed is an additional $548.5 billion in roads and bridges, the report said. Second is $189.5 billion for public transit. "Do you realize we're driving on a lot of roads that were built during the Eisenhower Administration," Herrmann said. The report, the first one issued since Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, added America's 100,000 miles of levees as a new area of failing infrastructure. Levees, which hold back floodwaters, get a D minus grade, with the report saying, "The risk to the public health and safety from failure has increased."Movie channel to go live on Web before TV debut (CNET)
A premium movie channel backed by a trio of studios is expected to debut as an on-demand Web site months before its traditional TV launch. The consortium of MGM, Paramount Pictures, and Lions Gate announced Tuesday at the NATPE television conference in Las Vegas that its channel would be called Epix (pronounced like the plural of epic), and feature more than 15,000 movies from the three studios. The new channel is expected to launch as a subscription-only Web site in May that will stream its content on the Internet, five months before its planned TV launch in October. The new channel, which is intended to compete with HBO and Showtime, will feature such hits as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Iron Man, and other movies from the studios' libraries. The channel is also expected to produce original programming and present live concert performances, as other premium channels do. However, as Mark Greenberg, chief executive of the Studio 3 Networks joint venture told The Wall Street Journal, the Web streaming service is "not our primary business model." The venture apparently formed last year after negotiations fell through with CBS' Showtime network. (CBS is the parent company of News.com publisher CBS Interactive.) But perhaps most notable is the fact that the company has yet to land a distribution deal with any cable and satellite TV providers. "Those are coming," The New York Times quoted Greenberg as saying at the conference. Product CategoriesComputers Home Office Wi-Fi & Networking Phones & PDAs Cameras & Camcorders TV & Home Theater Portable Audio Upgrades Desktops Laptops Software Storage Scanners Monitors Printers Home Networking PDAs Cell Phones Camcorders Digital Cameras Home Audio & Speakers Home Video Televisions Games & Gear MP3 Players Car Tech Today On... Consumer Reports Don't Buy Without Them For unbiased ratings and reviews on thousands of products, get expert advice from Consumer Reports. Read More Yahoo! Search Play full songs for free Search for music artists and listen to full songs right on the search page. Try it now. Read More Sponsored Links Dell Official Site Save on Dell Laptops and Notebooks Powered By Intel Technology. www.Dell.com HP Laptop PCs Learn More about Easily Upgradable & Customizable HP Laptop PCs. www.hp.com New Apple? Laptops Redesigned, Reengineered. The next generation of MacBook. www.apple.com/macbook Custom Gaming , Business Computers PC's Tomorrows technology for todays computers.Extreme gaming computers. www.businessprocessesinc.com
