Zwichenzug Holding Zone

Rocket fuel, human waste and uranium tailings make the Colorado River the nation’s most threatened river, the conservation group American Rivers said Tuesday.

Although ultrasound is one of the most frequently prescribed treatments for one of the most common sport and athletic injuries – skeletal muscle contusions – there's really no good scientific evidence showing that it treats injured muscles effectively, said Steven Devor, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of sport and exercise sciences at Ohio State University.

At least 80 foreign mercenaries - security guards recruited from the United States, Europe and South Africa and working for American companies - have been killed in the past eight days in Iraq...At least 18 000 mercenaries, many of them tasked to protect US troops and personnel, are now believed to be in Iraq, some of them earning $1 000 (about R6 300) a day...The presence of such large numbers of mercenaries, first publicised in The Independent two weeks ago, was bound to lead to further casualties. But although many of the heavily armed Western security men are working for the US Department of Defence - and most of them are former Special Forces soldiers - they are not listed as serving military personnel. Their losses can therefore be hidden from public view. The US authorities in Iraq, however, are aware that more Western mercenaries lost their lives in the past week than occupation soldiers over the past 14 days.

The threat of disenrollment is a grave insult, contend the aggrieved: It's an insult to old family traditions, to ancient heritage, and to Pechanga pride. It's also a major hit to the pocketbook. The members in question stand to lose more than $120,000 each a year in casino profits and bonuses, as well as health insurance and other benefits.

The fall season for 'The Simpsons,' normally 22 episodes, will be cut short because of the contract impasse, the Fox executive said. 'We can't saddle the show with costs that make it uneconomical to produce,' he added.

Two hundred workers at H&M’s distribution centers in Secaucus, N.J., and Cheshire, Conn., won union representation April 7 with UNITE through a majority-verification or card-check process, in which an employer agrees to honor the workers’ choice after a majority indi­cates the desire to form a union by signing authorizations. Workers began to organize in July 2003, but H&M refused to accept the card-check results. After large protests at U.S. and European H&M stores, the company signed an agreement March 2 to honor card-checks and a majority of the workers again signed authorization cards. But H&M refused to recognize the results and forced the issue to an arbitrator, who ruled in favor of the workers.

Experts say it will take a crystal ball to determine just where that threshold is. Last week, gas prices hit a new average high of $1.80 a gallon. Some analysts believe the magic number will be $2 a gallon. Others don't think Americans will change their habits until it hits $3 a gallon - which could come as soon as the Memorial Day weekend.

The problem is not the total amount paid to teachers but the fact that basing teacher pay on experience and credentials rather than performance means that pay isn’t necessarily going to those teachers who deserve it. Highly paid teachers earn their salaries not because they are exceptional educators or have tackled tough assignments but because they have accumulated seniority in wealthy school systems where pay is based on longevity. Providing raises in such a system is enormously expensive because so much of the spending is soaked up by the undeserving.

It's not as if Japan can send in a "hit team'' of SDF members to kill the terrorists and free the captives. GSDF members in Iraq must operate under strict rules about how they fire their weapons. In a nutshell, Japanese forces are not equipped to be in a war zone. As the hours ticked by, experts offered various scenarios of the crisis, unquestionably the toughest since Koizumi, 62, took office in 2001.

It might be thought that liberals would look kindly on Riley's ill-fated Campaign for Tax Justice; however, there is an influential trend in contemporary liberal political theory that requires us to regard Riley's biblically inspired case for tax reform with suspicion. Following the late Harvard philosopher John Rawls, many liberal thinkers argue that political discourse generally, or at least the language of politics spoken by public officials in their official capacity, must not invoke reasons for state action derived from what Rawls called "more or less comprehensive" religious or moral doctrines.

Meanwhile at the Capitol, in debate about the omnibus transportation funding bill, House Republicans voted in favor of an amendment that would turn the transit system over to private business. The bill is scheduled to be voted on Wednesday.

Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: 'My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are.'

Did the Ruy Lopez exist before its 16th-century namesake started playing it? A Platonist might say it did, as part of an abstract set of all possible chess openings. But chess itself has a finite history. The game originated around the seventh century A.D., and its modern rules became standard in the 15th century, not long before Ruy Lopez de Segura was playing. Platonic ideals are normally defined as timeless, yet in this case they seem also to be historically grounded. The world of abstractions seems to depend on our world.

Like the South Africans, thousands of ex-military men from around the world are flocking to Iraq to find jobs that they cannot get in their home countries. Derek William Adgey, a Royal Marine from Belfast, who was jailed for four years for helping the Ulster Freedom Fighters, was hired by Armor Group, a British company, to guard Bechtel employees. (He was subsequently suspended when the Belfast Telegraph published details of his past.)

"From the beginnings of the labor movement in the South, there was the question of whether you could organize black and white workers and whether the work force could become truly integrated," said Peter Applebome, author of the book 'Dixie Rising' and deputy metropolitan editor for The New York Times.

But while some managers interviewed by Federal Times say they welcome seeing some union powers rolled back, many warn that the effort could backfire. Workers could be left feeling they have no voice, they say, and relationships between labor and management could sour and undermine productivity. Managers say that despite some disagreements, they largely work well with unions and do not want to see those partnerships spoiled.

More than 600 Iraqis have been killed in Fallujah since Marines began a siege against Sunni insurgents in the city a week ago, most of them women, children and the elderly, the head of the city's hospital said Sunday.

Several American and Iraqi officials now regard Bremer's move to close the newspaper as a profound miscalculation based on poor intelligence and inaccurate assumptions. Foremost among the errors, the officials said, was the lack of a military strategy to deal with Sadr if he chose to fight back, as he did.

Two things about that failure are clear to me at this point in our investigation. The first is that 9/11 could have been prevented, and the second is that our current strategy against terrorism is deeply flawed. In particular, our military and political tactics in Iraq are creating the conditions for civil war there and giving Al Qaeda a powerful rationale to recruit young people to declare jihad on the United States.

The tribal money is 'filling a gap or a vacuum' by fostering new courses in areas such as tribal law and projects in such areas as native language renewal, Goldberg said. 'It's not as if those topics are taught now and the tribes want them taught differently. It's more like they are not taught at all.' To ensure scholarly integrity, academic studies undertaken by the San Manuel-funded program will be peer-reviewed within UCLA, Goldberg said, and other elements of the program also will be reviewed regularly by UCLA scholars.

Among the key observations in the report:

•  'After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Laden told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington.'

•  'A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Laden cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.'

•  Al Qaeda had members inside the United States 'and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.'

•  The FBI was conducting 'approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers' related to Bin Laden.

•  The FBI and CIA were investigating a call to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May 2001 'saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.'

Most dramatic was the sentence saying the FBI saw 'patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.'

More than 90 workers have sought medical care for exposure at Hanford nuclear site tank farms in the past two years, according to data gathered by the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit watchdog group. Few workers will speak publicly. Symptoms of exposure to chemical vapors include headaches, nosebleeds and a metallic taste.

Lecturers and other nontenure-track faculty at the University of Michigan held a one-day strike and picketed across campus Thursday, canceling scores of classes and stopping construction at two work sites.

Simply put, last best offer arbitration calls for an appointed impartial party to make a final economic determination in those instances in which management and labor reach a bargaining impasse. The arbitrator's sole charge is to choose either side's last best offer. Because the arbitrator lacks discretion to make an independent determination or reach a compromise, common sense suggests that the sides will avoid outrageous positions, and offer reasonable settlement figures.

Earlier this week, Gov. Tim Pawlenty met secretly with members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 and Metropolitan Council members. The talks lasted for seven hours.

But the portrait of Bush and his closest aides that emerged from her testimony, while acquitting them of ignoring the warnings, left an image of leaders detached from the practical challenges of mounting a defense. In a sense, it came down to two concepts of how a president should operate: the Bush team's view that the chief executive should delegate authority, and the view espoused by Clarke and others that the White House should actively work to ensure that effective action is taken — including "shaking the trees" to move sometimes-hidebound government agencies.

This new war on Wal-Mart is more than just a skirmish over store sites or union-organizing efforts. It is an attack on a company that embodies the dynamic, productivity-driven, customer-oriented U.S. economy that emerged in the 1990s by opponents who advocate a different economics.

PORTSMOUTH NAVAL SHIPYARD - The National Security Personnel System must be modified, or else all 4,597 workers at the shipyard will be forced to silence their voices and surrender their rights, because the unions who protect employees will no longer exist, says Paul O’Connor, president of the Metal Trades Council.

On the streets of Baghdad neighborhoods long defined by differences of faith and politics, signs are emerging that resistance to the U.S. occupation may be growing from a sporadic, underground effort to a broader insurrection by militiamen who claim to be fighting in the name of their common faith, Islam.

Ford Motor Co. chairman and chief executive Bill Ford Jr. reiterated his support Wednesday for government incentives and a larger tax on fuel to spur consumer interest in gas-electric hybrid vehicles, in which his company is investing heavily.

Among American corporations, an average of 6 in 10 reported no tax liabilities on their United States income tax returns filed for the five years from 1996 through 2000, the study found. The percentage of American companies saying they owed nothing increased steadily but slightly in the period, to 63 percent in 2000 from 60.3 percent in 1996.

The Bush Administration has consistently invoked Afghanistan as a success story—an example of the President’s determination. However, it is making this claim in the face of renewed warnings, from international organizations, from allies, and from within its own military—notably a Pentagon-commissioned report that was left in bureaucratic limbo when its conclusions proved negative—that the situation there is deteriorating rapidly.

The Defense Agency has apologized for scheduling a fake news conference to provide cover for a secret visit to Iraq by the chief of staff of the Ground Self-Defense Force. Newspaper and television reporters stationed at the agency's press club were sharply critical of the ruse, prompting the apology.

New Mexico's environment secretary is threatening to block permission for a key expansion of operations at the federal government's nuclear waste dump in Carlsbad. That's if the Department of Energy continues its campaign to try to send new types of radioactive sludge there. The expansion would allow highly radioactive remote-handled waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for the first time. But it requires a state permit.

With Inglewood voters set to decide Tuesday whether Wal-Mart can build a Supercenter in town, the battle over the chain's expansion throughout California may soon shift to Los Angeles, where officials are laying plans to effectively ban the megastores in much of the nation's second-largest city.

Nearly 90 percent of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization voted yesterday in favor of authorizing a walkout on Thursday. The walkout would also include members of the Graduate Employees’ Organization and students and professors who support the LEO platform.

Contrary to most reports, the Sunni town of Fallujah has never been a stronghold of Saddam Hussein despite the fact that his iron-fisted regime relied mainly on a close circle of Sunni followers. The town was deprived under the ousted regime. Fallujah and the rest of Al-Anbar province are ruled by Sunni conservative tribes who have traditionally resisted submission to foreign occupiers or government forces seeking to control the area by force. Under Saddam, imams across the town refused to abide by his orders to praise him personally during daily prayers.

The White House position, made in a March 31 statement to Federal Times, appears to contradict recent statements by President Bush’s appointee to the office that handles such discrimination claims...The government has advised employees since 1980 that discrimination based on sexual orientation is covered as a prohibited personnel practice under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act and should be appealed to the Office of Special Counsel. ...Special Counsel Scott Bloch, whose office is responsible for ensuring employees are not discriminated against based on matters unrelated to their work, has questioned publicly whether the law actually protects federal employees from discrimination based solely on their sexual orientation. He removed all materials referencing sexual orientation discrimination from OSC’s Web site shortly after beginning a 5-year term in January and said he is reviewing his agency’s obligation to enforce such cases.

Critics make three faulty assumptions: that Beijing would ultimately permit Taiwanese independence rather than confront the United States; that an expression of democratic self-determination is sufficient to establish territorial sovereignty and that democracy is incompatible with any political arrangement short of formal independence; and that it is immoral, as well as fundamentally contrary to U.S. interests, to oppose any manifestation of democracy in Taiwan. Once these assumptions are debunked, the prudence of maintaining the status quo becomes apparent.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Authorities shut down a tribal-owned casino in the city's downtown Friday morning and started to remove more than 150 gambling machines...On March 24, the National Indian Gaming Commission said the casino, which opened last fall in narrow trailers attached to a renovated Masonic Lodge building across the street from city hall, was operating illegally.