Mozambique Is Reporting Big Victory for President - NYTimes.com

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By BARRY BEARAK

JOHANNESBURG — A partial count in Mozambique’s elections on Friday shows President Armando E. Guebuza of the Frelimo Party far ahead of his two opponents and likely to finish with around 75 percent of the votes.

If the pattern holds up, and political analysts predict it will, it will be the most decisive victory in the nation’s four presidential elections.

Frelimo, with much superior financing and a tightly run organization, is also expected to win overwhelmingly in the race for seats in Parliament and provincial legislatures.

Frelimo insiders had predicted a landslide. “We are really just competing with ourselves; our aim is to win by a margin greater than in the past,” a party spokesman, Edson Macuácua, said recently.

Mr. Guebuza, 66, is one of the nation’s wealthiest businessmen. Among his main campaign slogans was “With Guebuza we will win the battle against poverty.” The fight has quite a way to go. The country, with 21 million people, has per capita income of only $454, according to the World Bank.

Mozambique was once a Portuguese colony, and after independence in 1975 it became the battleground for one of Africa’s most devastating civil wars. Peace finally came in 1992, and the two warring armies — Frelimo and Renamo — were transformed into competing political parties.

Frelimo, a one-time Marxist organization that now eagerly shakes the marketplace’s guiding hand, has managed to stay on top. Renamo has fallen ever further behind, and Wednesday’s election could prove a backbreaker.

The official results may not be announced by the nation’s election commission until Nov. 12. But for now, Afonso Dhlakama, Renamo’s longtime leader, finds himself in a tight race for second place with Daviz Simango, a relative newcomer who started his party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement, only last March.

Experts say the Renamo candidate is likely to pull ahead for the runner-up spot when more returns come in from the northern parts of the nation. Yet Mr. Dhlakama, who has headed Renamo for 25 years, is unlikely to make another try. In 1999, he narrowly lost the presidential election. In 2004, he was defeated by 32 percentage points. This time, the margin will be much larger.

Under Frelimo, Mozambique has managed to attract foreign investors eager to exploit the nation’s mineral wealth. It also has become a darling of foreign donors, whose annual contributions come to an estimated $2 billion.

Many of those donors, however, have expressed their disapproval with the way the election has been run.

The election commission, widely believed to be dominated by Frelimo, refused to allow the Mozambique Democratic Movement to compete for parliamentary seats in 9 of the 13 voting constituencies. It cited procedural grounds.

Mr. Simango, the mayor of the country’s second-largest city, Beira, may not even manage 10 percent of the presidential vote. “But even if he gets 9 percent, it’s a good start for someone who first appeared on the national stage less than a year ago,” said Miguel de Brito, the country director for EISA, a group that works for democratic reforms in Africa. “It may be less of a start than Simango wanted, but it shows he has some base.”

On Friday, in a meeting with reporters, election observers from the European Union praised the voting as “well-managed” and “calm.” But they too criticized the election commission for excluding so many candidates on technicalities, calling it a “restriction of voter choice at the local level.”

French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality - NYTimes.com

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By STEVEN ERLANGER and MAÏA DE LA BAUME

PARIS — Just as Le Corbusier’s white cruciform towers once excited visions of the industrial-age city of the future, so Vélib’, Paris’s bicycle rental system, inspired a new urban ethos for the era of climate change.

Residents here can rent a sturdy bicycle from hundreds of public stations and pedal to their destinations, an inexpensive, healthy and low-carbon alternative to hopping in a car or bus.

But this latest French utopia has met a prosaic reality: Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each, are showing up on black markets in Eastern Europe and northern Africa. Many others are being spirited away for urban joy rides, then ditched by roadsides, their wheels bent and tires stripped.

With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.

“The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality,” Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. “The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities.”

The heavy, sandy-bronze Vélib’ bicycles are seen as an accoutrement of the “bobos,” or “bourgeois-bohèmes,” the trendy urban middle class, and they stir resentment and covetousness. They are often being vandalized in a socially divided Paris by resentful, angry or anarchic youth, the police and sociologists say.

Bruno Marzloff, a sociologist who specializes in transportation, said, “One must relate this to other incivilities, and especially the burning of cars,” referring to gangs of immigrant youths burning cars during riots in the suburbs in 2005.

He said he believed there was social revolt behind Vélib’ vandalism, especially for suburban residents, many of them poor immigrants who feel excluded from the glamorous side of Paris.

“It is an outcry, a form of rebellion; this violence is not gratuitous,” Mr. Marzloff said. “There is an element of negligence that means, ‘We don’t have the right to mobility like other people, to get to Paris it’s a huge pain, we don’t have cars, and when we do, it’s too expensive and too far.’ ”

Used mainly for commuting in the urban core of the city, the Vélib’ program is by many measures a success. After swiping a credit card for a deposit at an electronic docking station, a rider pays one euro per day, or 29 euros (about $43) for an annual pass, for unlimited access to the bikes for 30-minute periods that can be extended for a small fee.

Daily use averages 50,000 to 150,000 trips, depending on the season, and the bicycles have proved to be a hit with tourists, who help power the economy.

But the extra-solid construction and electronic docks mean the bikes, made in Hungary, are expensive, and not everyone shares the spirit of joint public property promoted by Paris’s Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë.

“We miscalculated the damage and the theft,” said Albert Asséraf, director of strategy, research and marketing at JCDecaux, the outdoor-advertising company that is a major financer and organizer of the project. “But we had no reference point in the world for this kind of initiative.”

At least 8,000 bikes have been stolen and 8,000 damaged so badly that they had to be replaced — nearly 80 percent of the initial stock, Mr. Asséraf said.

JCDecaux must repair some 1,500 bicycles a day. The company maintains 10 repair shops and a workshop on a boat that moves up and down the Seine.

JCDecaux reinforced the bicycles’ chains and baskets and added better theft protection, strengthening the mechanisms that attach them to the electronic parking docks, since an incompletely secured bike is much easier to steal. But the damage and theft continued.

“We made the bike stronger, ran ad campaigns against vandalism and tried to better inform people on the Web,” Mr. Asséraf said. But “the real solution is just individual respect.”

In 2008 , the number of infractions related to Vélib’ vandalism rose 54 percent, according to the Paris police.

“We found many stolen Vélib’s in Paris’s troubled neighborhoods,” said Marie Lajus, a spokeswoman for the police. “It’s not profit-making delinquency, but rather young boys, especially from the suburbs, consider the Vélib’ an object that has no value.”

Sometimes the bikes are also victims of good old adolescent anarchic fun. These attitudes are expressed by the “freeriders,” and a bicycle forum, where a mock poll asks riders whether the Vélib’ can do wheelies, go down stairs and make decent skid marks.

It is commonplace now to see the bikes at docking stations in Paris with flat tires, punctured wheels or missing baskets. Some Vélib’s have been found hanging from lampposts, dumped in the Seine, used on the streets of Bucharest or resting in shipping containers on their way to North Africa. Some are simply appropriated and repainted.

Finding a decent one is now something of an urban treasure hunt. Géraldine Bernard, 31, of Paris rides a Vélib’ to work every day but admits having difficulties lately finding functioning bikes.

“It’s a very clever initiative to improve people’s lives, but it’s not a complete success,” she said.

“For a regular user like me, it generates a lot of frustration,” she said. “It’s a reflection of the violence of our society and it’s outrageous: the Vélib’ is a public good but there is no civic feeling related to it.”

Still, with more than 63 million rentals since the program was begun in mid-2007, the Vélib’ is an established part of Parisian life, and the program has been extended to provide 4,000 Vélib’s in 29 towns on the city’s edges.

So despite the increasing costs, Paris and JCDecaux are pressing on. The company invested about $140 million to set up the system and provides a yearly fee of about $5.5 million to Paris, which also gets rental fees for the bikes. In return, the company’s 10-year contract allows it to put up 1,628 billboards that it can rent.

Although JCDecaux will not discuss money figures, the expected date for profitability has been set back. But the City of Paris has agreed to pay JCDecaux about $600 for each stolen or irreparably damaged bike if the number exceeds 4 percent of the fleet, which it clearly does.

In an unsuccessful effort to stop vandalism, Paris began an advertising campaign this summer. Posters showed a cartoon Vélib’ being roughed up by a thug. The caption read: “It’s easy to beat up a Vélib’, it can’t defend itself. Vélib’ belongs to you, protect it!”

Maoist Rebels Widen Deadly Reach Across India - NYTimes.com

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By JIM YARDLEY

BARSUR, India — At the edge of the Indravati River, hundreds of miles from the nearest international border, India effectively ends. Indian paramilitary officers point machine guns across the water. The dense jungles and mountains on the other side belong to Maoist rebels dedicated to overthrowing the government.

“That is their liberated zone,” said P. Bhojak, one of the officers stationed at the river’s edge in this town in the eastern state of Chattisgarh.

Or one piece of it. India’s Maoist rebels are now present in 20 states and have evolved into a potent and lethal insurgency. In the last four years, the Maoists have killed more than 900 Indian security officers, a figure almost as high as the more than 1,100 members of the coalition forces killed in Afghanistan during the same period.

If the Maoists were once dismissed as a ragtag band of outdated ideologues, Indian leaders are now preparing to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers for a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign to hunt down the guerrillas in some of the country’s most rugged, isolated terrain.

For India, the widening Maoist insurgency is a moment of reckoning for the country’s democracy and has ignited a sharp debate about where it has failed. In the past, India has tamed some secessionist movements by coaxing rebel groups into the country’s big-tent political process. The Maoists, however, do not want to secede or be absorbed. Their goal is to topple the system.

Once considered Robin Hood figures, the Maoists claim to represent the dispossessed of Indian society, particularly the indigenous tribal groups, who suffer some of the country’s highest rates of poverty, illiteracy and infant mortality. Many intellectuals and even some politicians once sympathized with their cause, but the growing Maoist violence has forced a wrenching reconsideration of whether they can still be tolerated.

“The root of this is dispossession and deprivation,” said Ramachandra Guha, a prominent historian based in Bangalore. “The Maoists are an ugly manifestation of this. This is a serious problem that is not going to disappear.”

India’s rapid economic growth has made it an emerging global power but also deepened stark inequalities in society. Maoists accuse the government of trying to push tribal groups off their land to gain access to raw materials and have sabotaged roads, bridges and even an energy pipeline.

If the Maoists’ political goals seem unattainable, analysts warn they will not be easy to uproot, either.

Here in the state of Chattisgarh, Maoists dominate thousands of square miles of territory and have pushed into neighboring states of Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, part of a so-called Red Corridor stretching across central and eastern India.

Violence erupts almost daily. In the past five years, Maoists have detonated more than 1,000 improvised explosive devices in Chattisgarh. Within the past two weeks, Maoists have burned two schools in Jharkhand, hijacked and later released a passenger train in West Bengal while also carrying out a raid against a West Bengal police station.

Efforts are under way to open peace negotiations, but as yet remain stalemated. With the government offensive drawing closer, the people who feel most at risk are the tribal villagers who live in the forests of Chattisgarh, where the police and Maoists, sometimes called Naxalites, are already skirmishing.

“Earlier,” said one villager, “we used to fear the tigers and wild boars. Now we fear the guns of the Naxalites and the police.”

The counterinsurgency campaign, called Operation Green Hunt, calls for sending police and paramilitary forces into the jungles to confront the Maoists and drive them out of newer footholds toward remote forest areas where they can be contained.

“It may take one year, two years, three years or four,” predicted Vishwa Ranjan, chief of the state police in Chattisgarh, adding that casualties would be inevitable. “There is no zero casualty doctrine,” he said.

Once an area is cleared, the plan also calls for introducing development projects such as roads, bridges and schools in hopes of winning support of the tribal people. Also known as adivasis, they have faced decades of exploitation from local officials, moneylenders and private contractors, numerous government reports have found.

“The adivasis are the group least incorporated into India’s political economy,” said Ashutosh Varshney, an India specialist at Brown University, calling their plight one of the “unfinished quests of Indian democracy.”

The Maoist movement first coalesced after a violent 1967 uprising by local Communists over a land dispute in a West Bengal village known as Naxalbari, hence the name Naxalites.

Some Communists would enter the political system; today, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is an influential political force that holds power in West Bengal. But others went underground, and by the 1980s, many found sanctuary in Chattisgarh, especially in the region across from the Indravati River known as Abhujmad. From here, the Maoists recruited and trained disgruntled tribal villagers and slowly spread out. For years, the central government regarded them as mostly a nuisance. But in 2004, the movement radicalized, authorities say, when its two dominant wings merged with the more violent Communist Party of India (Maoist).

Authorities in Chattisgarh then deputized and armed civilian posses, which have been accused by human rights groups of terrorizing innocent villagers and committing atrocities of their own in the name of hunting Maoists. Now, violence is frequent, if unpredictable, like the ambush near the village of Laheri, in Maharashtra State, carried out by the Maoists on Oct. 8.

That morning, following a tip, a police patrol chased two Maoist fighters and stumbled into a trap. Two hundred Maoists with rifles and machine guns lay waiting and opened fire when the officers came into an exposed area of rice paddies. Seventeen officers died, fighting for hours until they ran out of ammunition.

“They surrounded us from every side,” said Ajay Bhushari, 31, who survived the ambush and is now the commanding officer in Laheri. “They were just stronger. They had more people.”

The Maoists felled trees across the only road leading to the village. The police, already wary of using roads because of improvised explosive devices, marched their reinforcements 10 miles through the jungle, arriving too late at the scene.

Officer Bhushari said violence in the area had risen so sharply that the police now left the fortified defenses of their outpost only in large groups, even for social outings. The Maoists also killed 31 police officers from other nearby outposts in attacks in February and May.

“It’s an open jail for us,” he said. “Either we are sitting here, or we are on patrol. There is nothing else.”

About 40 miles from Laheri, a processing plant owned by Essar Steel has been closed for five months. Maoists sabotaged Essar’s 166-mile underground pipeline, which transfers slurry from one of India’s most coveted iron ore deposits to the Bay of Bengal. “I’ve told my management that I’ll take a team and do the repairs,” said S. Ramesh, the project manager for Essar. “But I can’t promise how long it will last.”

The Essar plant is part of broader undertaking by the government and several private mining companies to extract the resources beneath land teeming with guerrillas. Mr. Ramesh said 70 percent of India’s iron ore lay in states infiltrated by Maoists; production in this area is stalled at 16 million tons a year even though the area has the potential to produce 100 million tons.

Mr. Ramesh fretted that India’s growth would be stunted if the country could not exploit its own natural resources. Yet he also cautioned that the counterinsurgency operation was no cure-all. “That alone is not going to help,” he said. “We are not fighting an enemy here. We are fighting citizens.”

With police officers dying in large numbers and Maoists carrying out bolder attacks, the debate around the insurgency has sharpened in India’s intellectual salons and on the opinion pages and talk shows.

The writer Arundhati Roy recently called for unconditional talks and told CNN-IBN that the Maoists were justified in taking up arms because of government oppression. Others who are sympathetic to the plight of the adivasis say the Maoist violence has become intolerable.

“You can’t defend the tactics,” said Mr. Varshney, the Brown University professor. “No modern state can accept attacks on state institutions, even when the state is wrong.”

Local people are caught in the middle. On a recent market day in the village of Palnar, women balancing urns of water on their heads and bare-footed, emaciated men came out of the forests to shop for vegetables, nuts or a rotting fruit fermented to produce local liquor. As peddlers spread their wares over blankets, the nearby government office was locked behind a closed gate.

“It’s a bad situation,” said one villager who asked not to be identified, fearing retribution from both sides. “The Naxalite activities have increased. They have their meetings in the village. They tell the people they have to fight. The people here do not vote out of fear.”

Another man arrived on a motorcycle from a more distant village. Several months ago, the police raided his village and arrested more than a dozen people after accusing them of being collaborators. A few were Maoist sympathizers, the man on the motorcycle said, but most were wrongly swept up in the raid. Now, Operation Green Hunt portends more confrontation.

“Life is very difficult,” the man said. “The Naxalites think we are helping the police. The police think we are helping the Naxalites. We are living in fear over who will kill us first.”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

Abdullah widely expected to boycott Afghan run-off election - washingtonpost.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 31, 2009 11:51 AM

KABUL -- A presidential run-off election planned for Nov. 7 was thrown into turmoil Saturday, with the main challenger to President Hamid Karzai, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, widely expected to pull out of the race.

Campaign spokesmen for Abdullah said he had not made a final decision but would announce it here Sunday at a gathering of his top supporters from around the country. Some analysts suggested the boycott threat was an eleventh-hour ploy to win a power-sharing agreement with Karzai.

However, several sources close to Abdullah said he had no option but to boycott the contest. They said Karzai had refused to meet Abdullah's demands to fire the nation's top election official and take other measures to prevent the fraud that marred the original presidential election in August.

"We don't want to boycott, but Mr. Karzai has not accepted any conditions, so he left us with no other choice," said one member of Abdullah's political team, speaking on the condition of anonymity because Abdullah has not yet announced his plans. "There is no guarantee that a second round would be free and fair. It would only create more problems than it solves."

The prospect of Abdullah's withdrawal could plunge Afghanistan into an even deeper political crisis after weeks of mounting tension and uncertainty over how to form a new government. Karzai's victory in the Aug. 20 presidential election was found invalid because of widespread fraud, leading to plans for the runoff.

A canceled or marred election would further complicate matters for the Obama administration, which is nearing a decision on whether to significantly expand its military commitment to the war against Afghan and al-Qaeda insurgents. Washington has been counting on the election to produce a credible administration and partner in the war effort.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who arrived in Abu Dhabi early Saturday for a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, played down the importance of a possible Abdullah withdrawal, however, saying that his decision was a "personal choice which may or may not be made."

Asked whether a run-off would be legitimate with only one candidate running, Clinton said that "other countries" had faced similar situations. "We see that happen in our own country where, for whatever combination of reasons, one of the candidates decides no to go forward. I don't think it has anything to do with the legitimacy of the election," Clinton said.

U.S. officials had pressed Karzai hard to accept the run-off and he reluctantly agreed, although there was widespread concern among Afghans that the second round would not only be marred by fraud but would be even more vulnerable to insurgent attacks than the first poll. This week, the Taliban killed six U.N. workers and threatened to violently sabotage the Nov. 7 vote.

Aides to Karzai said Saturday that Abdullah has no right to boycott the election and that if he does, it will be up to the Afghan election commission to decide what to do. However, they also said he is legally allowed to simply resign from the race, in which case Karzai would automatically win.

"He can resign, but he cannot boycott, because he already accepted the election the first time," Moinuddin Manastial, a legislator and campaign aide to Karzai, said late Saturday. "He is making excuses to do something that is not in the constitution, while we are ready to go for the elections 100 percent."

Election officials said that they are still preparing to hold the vote, that Afghan security forces are ready to protect the voters at more than 6,000 polling stations across the country, and that neither candidate has the right to withdraw at this late date. Whether Abdullah boycotts the vote or not, his name will remain on the ballot.

Some analysts said they thought the door might still be open to a last-minute compromise between Karzai and Abdullah. They said Abdullah's threats to quit were aimed at undermining Karzai's electoral legitimacy and at pressing him for a power-sharing deal. But there was no hint from either camp that an agreement is still being explored.

Independent election experts said it is not clear what will happen if Abdullah does quit the race. They said most of the possible options -- canceling the vote and having Karzai declared president; having him run alone; or postponing the race until spring and replacing Abdullah with the third-highest vote-getter -- would either leave the country in political limbo or Karzai as head of a weak and illegitimate new administration.

"The situation is both depressing and complicated," said Ahmad Nader Nadery, chairman of the private Free and Fair Elections Foundation. "The law is silent on what to do in this situation, and whatever happens is likely to bring us more deeply into trouble, because we will probably end up with a president who did not get the minimum number of votes in a fair election."

Local analysts and Kabul residents glued to TV news stations Saturday expressed concern that violence could erupt in the capital and other cities if Abdullah quits the race amid angry recriminations and Karzai remains in office. Some of Abdullah's powerful supporters who command regional or private militias have vowed not to recognize or obey a new Karzai administration.

Abdullah, who abruptly canceled a scheduled trip to India on Saturday, has delayed announcing his decision for the past several days amid a flurry of private negotiations and meetings involving Karzai, Abdullah and their political aides and allies, as well as several foreign diplomats.

But sources close to the discussions told various media outlets late Friday and Saturday that talks between the two rival leaders collapsed Friday after Karzai had already announced he would not meet Abdullah's demands to fire the election commission chairman and other officials.

Since then, several sources said, Abdullah has leaned toward boycotting the contest, which Karzai has been widely expected to win. In the first round, even after hundreds of thousands of votes for Karzai were found invalid and discounted, the president won more than 49 percent of the vote, while Abdullah won less than 30 per cent.

Although Abdullah's public manner has been polite and his demands have sounded reasonable, there is widespread public skepticism about his sincerity. Some analysts say he wants to remain in the race but is surrounded by ambitious allies who have been pressing him to make a deal with Karzai.

Diplomatic sources said earlier this week that Karzai was open to forming a "government of unity" after the elections that would include Abdullah and his allies, but that he would not make any deal in advance.

Some experts and diplomats have suggested that if the country's political crisis deepens or there is an eruption of violence, the wisest solution would be to establish an interim or caretaker government and hold a new election in the spring, when the winter snows have melted and voters can go to the polls again.

But U.S. officials already appear to be preparing to accept Karzai's extended presidency as a fait accompli. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who personally persuaded Karzai to accept the run-off during a visit to Kabul, told a TV interviewer in Washington on Friday that he has confidence in Karzai's political resilience and that the Afghan president is "prepared to embrace reforms" in a new term.

Staff writer Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

Rob Pegoraro - New Google Maps GPS for smartphones spooks competitors - washingtonpost.com

Image via CrunchBase

By Rob Pegoraro
Sunday, November 1, 2009

Wednesday morning, Google notified manufacturers of GPS navigation units that their services would no longer be needed. It didn't say so explicitly -- the news came in a corporate blog post about an improved Google Maps smartphone program offering turn-by-turn directions -- but the company didn't have to.

The imminent arrival of a no-charge navigation service, complete with real-time traffic data and satellite and street-level views of a route, on phones running Google's latest Android software, made standalone GPS devices look suddenly redundant. GPS manufacturers' share prices promptly fell off a cliff; Garmin's dropped about 16 percent and TomTom's plunged by 21 percent Wednesday.

Wednesday was a not-atypical day for the Mountain View, Calif., Internet giant. Perhaps more so than any other company since Microsoft at its peak, Google can spook competitors and enthrall users just by introducing a product.

You could see the same dynamic in late September, when Google introduced a Web-based fusion of e-mail, instant messaging and collaborative editing called Google Wave-- and hype-intoxicated Web users who weren't necessarily sure what Wave did began groveling for invitations to try it out.

Somewhat like the late '90s incarnation of Microsoft, Google also now provides an extraordinarily wide range of services. Many are subisidized by the torrent of cash thrown off by its Web advertising business -- but if these new offerings keep you online longer and, therefore, within sight of Google's ads, the company still comes out ahead.

You can easily spend a full day on the Web without leaving its sites or applications: checking email at Gmail, uploading pictures at Picasa, updating your schedule at Google Calendar, looking up an address on Google Maps, watching goofy video clips at YouTube, skimming the headlines at Google News, writing in Google Docs -- and that doesn't count all the Google-hosted ads at many other sites. You could do all this in Google's Chrome browser, then get up to make a call on a phone running Google's Android software.

That is not to say that Google is some reincarnation of the dot-com-era Microsoft. It has yet to engage in such hubristic excesses as co-founding a TV news network, and it hasn't trampled over the antitrust laws. Google avoids locking in users with proprietary data formats or protocols; last month, it set up a site (http://dataliberation.org) to document and promote ways for users to take their data out of (and into) Google services.

As the second person to mention Google in The Post, I can attest that this company has achieved its success honestly--with help from the errors and apathy of competitors.

Gmail, for example, wouldn't have had such a fast start if Microsoft and Yahoo hadn't spent years steadily cutting the features of their free e-mail services. The same goes for Google Maps: Had MapQuest not degenerated into mediocrity under AOL's inept stewardship, users might have not jumped so quickly to a new source of online cartography.

It's also important to remember that Google's ventures don't succeed as much as people think. Google Maps may now be the number-one mapping source, according to ComScore's latest figures, but Gmail still trails Microsoft and Yahoo's Web-mail sites.

Google's Picasa may be a fine photo-editing application, but its corresponding photo-sharing site is dwared by rivals in ComScore's data. The Google Checkout payment service has drawn less support from Web retailers than PayPal or BillMeLater.

Some Google ventures rank as outright failures. Google Base, an ambitious attempt to set up a marketplace where individual users could buy and sell goods and services, didn't lure the masses away from Craiglist, despite that site's relative technological backwardness. Its Orkut social-networking site's audience isn't even a rounding error in the United States.

In other words, the wizards of Mountain View can't flick other companies off the map with their fingertips. What they can do is leap far enough ahead of competitors in a single product launch to shock them into attention. When those firms draw the appropriate "get better or get lost" conclusion and redouble their efforts, customers should benefit.

This effect may break down when Google steps into markets dominated by firms selling devices instead of software. In the time it takes a manufacturer to usher an improved gadget from whiteboard to circuit board, Google can push out three or four rounds of updates to a Web application.

You shouldn't feel obliged to avoid Google altogether because of this power to upend markets. But you should remind yourself not to discount worthy alternatives just because they're Not Google. There's also much to be said for keeping a part of your online identity -- maybe your photos, maybe your e-mail -- outside of Google. Spread your business around, and one company can't get too comfortable with it.

Living with technology, or trying to? Read more at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward.

Iran counters U.N. on uranium plan - washingtonpost.com

Image by Hamed Saber via Flickr

Russia, France and U.S. likely to find offer unacceptable

By Glenn Kessler and Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 30, 2009

Iran on Thursday appeared to reject a key element of a U.N.-backed proposal aimed at quickly reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium, offering an informal oral counteroffer that diplomats said fell far short of a tentative deal reached earlier this month.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the Iranian ambassador to the U.N. agency that the counteroffer, as structured, would not be acceptable to Russia, France and the United States -- the other parties to the arrangement -- and urged him to get more clarification from his government. Diplomats said they hope a formal, written answer from Iran will be delivered as early as Friday.

The long-awaited Iranian answer appeared to dash hopes that Tehran would be willing to quickly embrace engagement with the West on its nuclear program. Not only did Iran appear to reject a central element of the proposed agreement but it also has refused to commit to another high-level diplomatic meeting to discuss the program.

Obama administration officials will now need to assess whether the engagement gambit has begun to run its course -- and whether to shift toward pressing for tougher sanctions against the Islamic republic.

In a statement, the IAEA said that ElBaradei "has received an initial response from the Iranian authorities" and that he "is engaged in consultations with the government of Iran as well as all relevant parties, with the hope that agreement on his proposal can be reached soon." The agency provided no other details.

Stockpile would remain steady

In talks in Geneva on Oct. 1, Iran tentatively agreed to the arrangement, under which nearly 80 percent of its stockpile would go to Russia and France to be fashioned into fuel for a research reactor that produces isotopes that detect and treat diseases. As part of the deal, the United States would support the IAEA in an effort to help Iran ensure the safe operation of the reactor, built by the United States in the 1960s.

Iran has enough low-enriched uranium, in theory, to produce one nuclear weapon. If it agreed to the deal, most analysts estimate, it would be nine to 12 months before Iran would again have enough uranium to be able to enrich it to weapons grade.

Further talks were held last week in Vienna, with ElBaradei presenting a draft agreement that was embraced by the other countries, but Iran missed a Friday deadline to respond.

A central element of the plan, conceived by the Obama administration, is that Iran must ship the enriched uranium out of the country in one batch by the end of the year. Instead, the presentation by Iranian Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh suggested that Iran would ship out its uranium in batches, swapping it for new material on a continuous basis, diplomats said. That would negate the main attraction of the proposal for the major powers dealing with Iran, because it would mean its stockpile of enriched uranium would not be significantly reduced.

The United States, France and Russia had no official response to the counteroffer, but they were consulting behind the scenes about how to respond if the formal offer differed little from the ambassador's apparent trial balloon. One U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described Iran's answers as "a response of sorts" but said the three other countries remain united in support of the plan.

"We need further clarification," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters. "And I think it's also fair to say that we need to have a formal response from Iran at this point. We've been given some details of it, but we're still talking to the Iranians about it."

Internal disagreement

The proposal appears to have generated fierce debate within the Iranian government.

In a speech in the northeastern city of Mashhad on Thursday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defied harsh criticism from domestic opponents who accused him of giving away too much in the negotiations. He said the West has been forced to alter its confrontational stance toward Iran, state television reported.

"Nuclear fuel supply for the Tehran reactor is an opportunity to evaluate the honesty of the powers and the [IAEA]," Ahmadinejad said.

"We shake any hand that is honestly stretched toward us," he said. "However, if someone pursues plots and wants to be dishonest, the Iranian nation's response to him will be similar to the response we gave to Mr. Bush and his predecessors," a reference to former president George W. Bush.

Domestic opponents, including the parliament speaker, lawmakers and the leader of the political opposition, have spoken out against the proposed deal, arguing that the other partners in the arrangement might not return Iran's uranium after it has been sent abroad.

The strongest criticism has come from Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading opposition presidential candidate in Iran's June 12 election. Even though the two-term government of his political partner, former president Mohammad Khatami, tried several times to reach a compromise with the West over Iran's nuclear program, Mousavi charged that the current proposal would lead to disaster.

"The discussions in Geneva were really surprising, and if the promises given [to the West] are realized, then the hard work of thousands of scientists would be ruined," the Kaleme Web site quoted Mousavi as saying in reference to the nuclear fuel plan.

Judge considers time served in sentencing al-Qaeda aide - washingtonpost.com

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Qatari spent 6 years on Navy brig, gets half of maximum penalty

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 30, 2009

In a decision that could carry implications for the masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks, a judge on Thursday sentenced an al-Qaeda sleeper agent with ties to the group's senior leaders to eight years and four months in prison.

The sentence sliced away nearly half of the 15-year maximum available penalty against Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who entered the country as a graduate student on Sept. 10, 2001, under instructions from al-Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mihm essentially gave Marri credit for spending more than six years on a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. Marri was held in isolation without criminal charges as one of only three enemy combatants on American soil.

Over the course of the two-day sentencing hearing in Peoria, Ill., attorneys for Marri presented evidence of his often-bleak detention conditions, arguing that he was held in a dark and chilly cell without a blanket, a mattress and his prescription eyeglasses for long stretches, and that his mouth sometimes was covered with duct tape. The judge said he pared nine months from the prison term because of the harsh conditions.

Justice Department lawyers had exhorted the judge to ignore Marri's indefinite detention, ordered in 2003 by President George W. Bush, and to focus instead on the alleged danger he posed. They pointed to evidence uncovered in an FBI search that Marri had performed research on hazardous chemicals and had bookmarked possible U.S. targets such as dams and reservoirs.

The Obama administration moved Marri out of the military brig and into a federal court in February. He eventually pleaded guilty there to a single charge of conspiring to provide support to terrorists. That felony charge, used often by prosecutors in national security cases because of its relatively low burden of proof, carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

Experts on terrorism and advocacy groups for victims had been closely watching Marri's case for clues about what it could mean for the architects of the Sept. 11 attacks, who may soon be moved onto U.S. soil for trial in federal courts in New York and Virginia.

Given the years Marri has already served, he will spend about five more years behind bars, with the possibility of returning to his native Qatar, his attorneys said.

Kirk S. Lippold, commander of the USS Cole when it was targeted by Islamist terrorists while the vessel docked in Yemen in 2000, called the sentence "appalling" and "grossly inadequate." Lippold said that if prosecutors move other defendants from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for trials in regular U.S. federal courts, it could "create an era of unacceptable compromise to our national security."

Robert M. Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies sentencing in terrorism cases, said the Marri sentence "probably comes with the territory in switching somebody out of military detention and into the criminal justice system."

The case is one of the few concrete examples, Chesney said, of an ongoing debate over whether the U.S. criminal justice system is "up to the task" of trying and convicting terrorism suspects.

An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because a government task force is still reviewing the cases of Guantanamo detainees, said possible criminal charges against them could be far more serious and could carry much longer prison terms than Marri received.

For instance, the Justice Department this year moved detainee Ahmed Ghailani from Guantanamo to a federal courthouse in New York, where he will stand trial on murder charges relating to the deaths of 224 people in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. decided not to seek the death penalty against Ghailani, but he faces multiple life sentences.

The government's record on sentencing among terrorism suspects has been mixed, even in cases decided by military commissions, which are sometimes touted as tougher venues.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a driver for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was convicted in a military trial of providing material support for terrorism and sentenced to 66 months, but he was given credit by the presiding judge for the 61 months he had spent at Guantanamo.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said, "This administration is committed to bringing terrorists to justice for their crimes."

Marri cried in the courtroom when he told the judge about the years he spent without any word from his wife and five children. His attorneys said they were "very pleased" with the resolution of the case.

Lawrence Lustberg, Marri's attorney, said in a telephone interview that his client's case "shows our system can handle [terrorism cases] in an evenhanded way, consistent with our ideals of justice."

Clinton rebukes Pakistan on hunt for al-Qaeda leaders - washingtonpost.com

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By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 30, 2009

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed doubt Thursday over Pakistan's failure to locate top al-Qaeda leaders in the eight years since they escaped over the border from Afghanistan, telling a group of Pakistani journalists that she found "it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to."

"So far as we know," she said, "they're in Pakistan."

Clinton's comments, the most direct public statement of a U.S. argument long made in private, came as she tried to balance assurances of strong economic and military support for Pakistan with reminders that the relationship is a "two-way street."

"If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together," she said, "then there are issues that not just the United States, but others have with your government and your military establishment."

Clinton, who made her comments during a day-long trip to the eastern city of Lahore, later met with the country's top military and intelligence officials.

After her three-day visit to Pakistan ends Friday, Clinton plans to travel to the Middle East over the weekend for hastily arranged meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, her second trip to the region as secretary of state.

Special U.S. envoy George J. Mitchell will meet Clinton in Jerusalem on Saturday, officials said, but there is little expectation of a major breakthrough in moving the Israelis and Palestinians toward direct talks by the end of the year. At the very least, the stop may provide some progress to report to Arab leaders at a conference the secretary plans to attend Monday in Morocco.

Speaking to the Pakistani journalists, Clinton was matter-of-fact, offering an example of some of the questions the United States would like more forcefully addressed even as it strives to respond to some of Pakistan's grievances. In a separate meeting with business executives in Lahore, Clinton contrasted the opulent conference room where they had gathered with Pakistan's low ranking on the Human Development Index -- 141 out of more than 180 countries -- and suggested that the widespread failure to pay taxes here may be related to the country's economic problems.

According to U.S. officials, who spoke before Clinton's late evening meeting with the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, and intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the Pakistani military's ongoing offensive in the tribal region of South Waziristan remains focused on air attacks. Meanwhile, 28,000 ground troops are working from the edges to shrink insurgent-dominated territory and encourage divisions among militant groups.

With Clinton's visit focused on "people-to-people" ties, the secretary was said to have resisted meeting with the military. But the military's importance in Pakistan's politics -- and the opportunity for a real-time progress report on the offensive as the administration reaches the final stages of its Afghanistan war strategy review -- was said to have persuaded her.

Officials traveling with Clinton expressed overall satisfaction with the trip, which has been an exercise in message calibration. A powerful explosion in the northwestern city of Peshawar, which killed at least 100 people, coincided with her arrival here Wednesday. In meetings with government officials and in public appearances, she praised the army's ongoing offensive, bemoaned what she called misunderstandings over congressional conditions imposed on U.S. military and economic aid to Pakistan, and pledged American respect for Pakistani culture and traditions.

She began her Lahore trip Thursday morning with a wreath-laying and a tour of the 17th-century Badshahi Mosque, a behemoth of red sandstone and marble.

Clinton held a working lunch with political opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, and his brother Shahbaz, the chief minister of Punjab province, and met with civil society leaders.

At a town hall meeting with university students, she parried critical questions about the aid conditions and U.S. drone missile attacks on insurgent sanctuaries in the western border areas, and said the U.S.-Pakistan relationship was strong -- and growing.

"That is one of the reasons I'm here today," Clinton said. "I do not want anyone, anywhere in the world -- particularly in my own country -- to have any misunderstanding about the people of Pakistan and the abilities, talents and positive contributions of the people of Pakistan."

Seven members of House defense subcommittee scrutinized by ethics investigators - washingtonpost.com

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Separate probes focus on ties to lobbying firm founded by Hill aide

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 30, 2009

Nearly half the members of a powerful House subcommittee in control of Pentagon spending are under scrutiny by ethics investigators in Congress, who have trained their lens on the relationships between seven panel members and an influential lobbying firm founded by a former Capitol Hill aide.

The investigations by two separate ethics offices include an examination of the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on defense, John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), as well as others who helped steer federal funds to clients of the PMA Group. The lawmakers received campaign contributions from the firm and its clients. A document obtained by The Washington Post shows that the subcommittee members under scrutiny also include Peter J. Visclosky (D-Ind.), James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) , C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.).

The document also indicates that the House ethics committee's staff recently interviewed the staff of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) about his allegation that a PMA lobbyist threatened him in 2007 when he resisted steering federal funds to a PMA client. The lobbyist told a Nunes staffer that if the lawmaker didn't help, the defense contractor would move out of Nunes's district and take dozens of jobs with him.

The document obtained by The Post offers the most detailed picture yet of a widening inquiry into the relationships between lawmakers and PMA, a lobbying firm founded by Paul Magliocchetti that has been under criminal investigation by the Justice Department. A year ago, the FBI raided PMA's offices and carted away boxes of records dealing with its political donations and the firm's efforts to win congressionally directed funds, known as "earmarks," for clients.

The document shows that both the ethics committee and the Office of Congressional Ethics are looking into the matter. The OCE investigates and makes recommendations to the House ethics committee, which has the power to subpoena and sanction lawmakers. Internal ethics investigations of members of Congress are normally confidential, but The Post learned details of their work through the document, which became available on a file-sharing network.

Under the description of the OCE inquiry, the document says investigators are looking at House members who may have been "accepting contributions or other items of value from PMA's PAC in exchange for an official act." A Hill source cautioned that the ethics committee has not gathered a significant amount of material and has not zeroed in on specific lawmakers.

$200 million in earmarks

Together, the seven legislators have personally steered more than $200 million in earmarks to clients of the PMA Group in the past two years, and received more than $6.2 million in campaign contributions from PMA and its clients in the past decade, according to an analysis by Congressional Quarterly and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

The Post reviewed earmark and campaign records and found that the seven had each supported funding for PMA clients and also received donations. Young has recently received very little from PMA.

Under some political pressure, the House ethics committee disclosed in June that it had an ongoing investigation into this matter. The move came days after the FBI subpoenaed Visclosky's office for records relating to PMA and as other House members called for the ethics committee to act. The committee did not disclose the members it was scrutinizing then, and the specific details of the OCE's work have not been publicly known.

While lawmakers received generous contributions, PMA used its growing influence with the panel over the past decade to become one of the top 10 lobby shops in Washington and took in $114 million in lobbying fees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group.

The chairman of the House ethics committee, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), initially declined to verify that the document The Post obtained was generated by the ethics committee. Late Thursday, she issued a statement explaining how it had been accidentally released by a low-level staffer through a file-sharing network. She declined to discuss the PMA probe and said many lawmakers may be under review by the committee at any point in time.

"No inference to any misconduct can be made from the fact that a matter is simply before the Committee," she said in her statement.

The OCE has interviewed some of the lawmakers, including Kaptur last week and Moran a few weeks ago. It has invited others in for interviews, such as Visclosky, and posed numerous questions to the members' staff.

Moran, a senior member of the defense panel whose former top aide went to work for the PMA Group, said he recently sat for a lengthy interview with two aides from the OCE. He said he asked the new ethics office to interview all of his current and former staff members, including his former chief of staff who became a PMA lobbyist, Melissa Koloszar.

"I said they should be interviewed separately, privately and completely," he said. "We wanted them to investigate."

Two investigations

Several Hill staffers said they are confused by what appears to be a dual track, with the OCE and the ethics committee simultaneously pursuing similar questions.

Kaptur's spokesman said her office does not understand the duplication but is happy to answer all questions. "The congresswoman has always emphasized openness and transparency, and it almost goes without saying she will continue to cooperate with the OCE and, if it goes to the [ethics committee], with that committee as well," said Kaptur spokesman Steve Fought. "She has nothing to hide."

Murtha's office declined to comment. The offices and representatives of Dicks, Visclosky, Young and Tiahart did not respond to questions about the scrutiny.

As the ethics committee began gathering evidence this summer about PMA's operating methods on Capitol Hill, it contacted the office of Nunes, who had earlier complained to the committee about a lobbyist's aggressiveness in seeking an earmark. Nunes agreed to comment on the incident when The Post asked him about detailed information it had obtained about his complaint.

"I didn't appreciate being threatened," Nunes said. "To me, it was a symptom of the disease we have in Congress, where a lot of members have simply gotten addicted to contributions from companies that are getting their earmarks."

Don Fleming, the PMA lobbyist who allegedly threatened Nunes, is now at Flagship Government Relations, a firm started by several departed PMA lobbyists. Fleming did not confirm the encounter, but he said in a statement Thursday that "an important responsibility of any government relations professional is to communicate to policymakers the impact that their decisions have on our clients." He added that he has "always adhered to the strictest code of professional ethics."

Moran said he continued to believe that Magliocchetti was a good lobbyist who knew that he had to get Defense Department backing for the earmarks he was seeking from Capitol Hill. Describing him as "the only Democratic defense [lobbyist] for the most part," Moran said Magliocchetti also was someone Democrats naturally turned to for fundraising help from the military contractor community.

"When you needed to raise money for the Democratic campaign committee, he was always the first one you went to," Moran said, adding, "I don't know how he raised his money."

Moran hosted an event for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in his Alexandria home last year, the lawmaker said, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as the guest of honor. Magliocchetti and some of his clients were in attendance, writing checks for $28,500 each, Moran said.

Staff writers Paul Kane and Ellen Nakashima and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Dozens in Congress under ethics inquiry - washingtonpost.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Document was found on file-sharing network

By Ellen Nakashima and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 30, 2009

House ethics investigators have been scrutinizing the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling, according to a confidential House ethics committee report prepared in July.

The report appears to have been inadvertently placed on a publicly accessible computer network, and it was provided to The Washington Post by a source not connected to the congressional investigations. The committee said Thursday night that the document was released by a low-level staffer.

The ethics committee is one of the most secretive panels in Congress, and its members and staff members sign oaths not to disclose any activities related to its past or present investigations. Watchdog groups have accused the committee of not actively pursuing inquiries; the newly disclosed document indicates the panel is conducting far more investigations than it had revealed.

Shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday, the committee chairman, Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), interrupted a series of House votes to alert lawmakers about the breach. She cautioned that some of the panel's activities are preliminary and not a conclusive sign of inappropriate behavior.

"No inference should be made as to any member," she said.

Rep. Jo Bonner (Ala.), the committee's ranking Republican, said the breach was an isolated incident.

The 22-page "Committee on Standards Weekly Summary Report" gives brief summaries of ethics panel investigations of the conduct of 19 lawmakers and a few staff members. It also outlines the work of the new Office of Congressional Ethics, a quasi-independent body that initiates investigations and provides recommendations to the ethics committee. The document indicated that the office was reviewing the activities of 14 other lawmakers. Some were under review by both ethics bodies.

A broader inquiry

Ethics committee investigations are not uncommon. Most result in private letters that either exonerate or reprimand a member. In some rare instances, the censure is more severe.

Many of the broad outlines of the cases cited in the July document are known -- the committee announced over the summer that it was reviewing lawmakers with connections to the now-closed PMA Group, a lobbying firm. But the document indicates that the inquiry was broader than initially believed. It included a review of seven lawmakers on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee who have steered federal money to the firm's clients and have also received large campaign contributions.

The document also disclosed that:

-- Ethics committee staff members have interviewed House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) about one element of the complex investigation of his personal finances, as well as the lawmaker's top aide and his son. Rangel said he spoke with ethics committee staff members regarding a conference that he and four other members of the Congressional Black Caucus attended last November in St. Martin. The trip initially was said to be sponsored by a nonprofit foundation run by a newspaper. But the three-day event, at a luxury resort, was underwritten by major corporations such as Citigroup, Pfizer and AT&T. Rules passed in 2007, shortly after Democrats reclaimed the majority following a wave of corruption cases against Republicans, bar private companies from paying for congressional travel.

Rangel said he has not discussed other parts of the investigation of his finances with the committee. "I'm waiting for that, anxiously," he said.

-- The Justice Department has told the ethics panel to suspend a probe of Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), whose personal finances federal investigators began reviewing in early 2006 after complaints from a conservative group that he was not fully revealing his real estate holdings. There has been no public action on that inquiry for several years. But the department's request in early July to the committee suggests that the case continues to draw the attention of federal investigators, who often ask that the House and Senate ethics panels refrain from taking action against members whom the department is already investigating.

Mollohan said that he was not aware of any ongoing interest by the Justice Department in his case and that he and his attorneys have not heard from federal investigators. "The answer is no," he said.

-- The committee on June 9 authorized issuance of subpoenas to the Justice Department, the National Security Agency and the FBI for "certain intercepted communications" regarding Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). As was reported earlier this year, Harman was heard in a 2005 conversation agreeing to an Israeli operative's request to try to obtain leniency for two pro-Israel lobbyists in exchange for the agent's help in lobbying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to name her chairman of the intelligence committee. The department, a former U.S. official said, declined to respond to the subpoena.

Harman said that the ethics committee has not contacted her and that she has no knowledge that the subpoena was ever issued. "I don't believe that's true," she said. "As far as I'm concerned, this smear has been over for three years."

In June 2009, a Justice Department official wrote in a letter to an attorney for Harman that she was "neither a subject nor a target" of a criminal investigation.

Because of the secretive nature of the ethics committee, it was difficult to assess the current status of the investigations cited in the July document. The panel said Thursday, however, that it is ending a probe of Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) after finding no ethical violations, and that it is investigating the financial connections of two California Democrats.

The committee did not detail the two newly disclosed investigations. However, according to the July document, Rep. Maxine Waters, a high-ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, came under scrutiny because of activities involving OneUnited Bank of Massachusetts, in which her husband owns at least $250,000 in stock.

Waters arranged a September 2008 meeting at the Treasury Department where OneUnited executives asked for government money. In December, Treasury selected OneUnited as an early participant in the bank bailout program, injecting $12.1 million.

The other, Rep. Laura Richardson, may have failed to mention property, income and liabilities on financial disclosure forms.

File-sharing

The committee's review of investigations became available on file-sharing networks because of a junior staff member's use of the software while working from home, Lofgren and Bonner said in a statement issued Thursday night. The staffer was fired, a congressional aide said.

The committee "is taking all appropriate steps to deal with this issue," they said, noting that neither the committee nor the House's information systems were breached in any way.

"Peer-to-peer" technology has previously caused inadvertent breaches of sensitive financial, defense-related and personal data from government and commercial networks, and it is prohibited on House networks.

House administration rules require that if a lawmaker or staff member takes work home, "all users of House sensitive information must protect the confidentiality of sensitive information" from unauthorized disclosure.

Leo Wise, chief counsel for the Office of Congressional Ethics, declined to comment, citing office policy against confirming or denying the existence of investigations. A Justice Department spokeswoman also declined to comment, citing a similar policy.

Staff writers Carol D. Leonnig and Joby Warrick and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Eastern Burma: another Darfur? - Mizzima

by Mungpi

Friday, 30 October 2009 20:43

New Delhi (Mizzima) –At least 75,000 people became refugees and more than half a million were internally displaced in eastern Burma in the past year, following increased militarisation, which strongly indicates crime against humanity comparable to the situation in Darfur, said a consortium of humanitarian assistance groups. Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), an alliance of 12 aid organizations, in a new report titled "Protracted Displacement and Militarisation in Eastern Burma" released on Thursday said, threat to human security has been mounting as Burma’s ruling junta continues militarisation in areas of ethnic minorities. “The process of militarisation has been on in Burma for decades, and this is the continuation of the tactics of controlling the population by moving the Burmese Army into these [ethnic] areas and taking control by moving people to relocation sites,” Sally Thompson, deputy director of the TBBC told Mizzima on Friday. Thompson said, militarisation in ethnic areas have been continuing and is likely to further increase in the run up to the junta’s elections in 2010, as the regime pressurises ethnic armed rebels to transform into the Border Guard Force (BGF). Since 1996, the TBBC said, over 3,500 villages, including 120 communities between August 2008 and July 2009, in eastern Burma have been destroyed and forcibly relocated. The highest rates of recent displacement were reported in northern Karen areas and southern Shan State with almost 60,000 Karen villagers hiding in the mountains of Kyaukgyi, Thandaung and Papun Townships, and a third of these civilians fleeing from artillery attacks or the threat of Burmese Army patrols during the past year, the TBBC said in a statement. In Shan state, a similar situation prevails with nearly 20,000 civilians from 30 Shan villages forcibly relocated by the Burmese Army in retaliation against Shan State Army-South (SSA-S), an ethnic Shan armed rebel group, in operations in Laikha, Mong Kung and Keh Si Townships. In late August, conflict between Burmese Army troops and Kokang rebels in Northern Shan State forced over 30,000 Burmese refugees to flee to China. Thompson said in July, a joint military campaign launched by the Burmese Army and its ally the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), against the Karen National Union (KNU), an ethnic Karen armed group, forced up to 4,000 people to flee to Thailand. “We expect to see this pattern continuing in the ethnic and border areas as we approach the [2010] elections,” Thompson said. The TBBC, which has been helping Burmese refugees since 1984, is currently providing food and shelter to more than 150,000 Burmese refugees living in nine camps along the Thai-Burma border. With increasing conflicts in Burma and the arrival of more refugees, Thompson said these refugees will have no place to return until Burma has national reconciliation through dialogue. Thompson added that the junta’s planned elections is unlikely to bring stability as it will have no credibility without the release of political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi and allow their participation. But until there is any significant political change that can ensure the return of refugees and internally displaced people, the international community, particularly neighbouring Thailand should continue providing assistance including shelter and food. The TBBC, which currently is supported by 15 donor countries, also urged the international community to increase their support as with the number of refugees arriving on the Thai-Burma border, and increasing prices, it is facing difficulties in consistently supporting the refugees.