Next, there were more damaging reports that this contamination was known earlier but was repressed by Chinese authorities to ensure that the Beijing Olympics were not disturbed (a truly diabolical choice, and possible only in a dictatorship such as China where the press cannot report on such things if the censors don’t pass it). However, this is not the end. Imagine the case where this melamine was also added to animal feed (and China exports a large amount of animal products):

Chinese regulators are widening their investigation into contaminated food amid growing signs that the toxic industrial chemical melamine has leached into the nation’s animal feed supplies, posing health risks to consumers. The announcement came after food safety tests earlier this week found that eggs produced in three different provinces in China were contaminated with melamine, which is blamed for causing kidney stones and renal failure in infants. The tests have led to recalls of eggs and consumer warnings.
The cases are fueling global concerns about Chinese food. In Hong Kong, food safety officials announced this week that they would begin testing a wider variety of foods for melamine, including vegetables, flour and meat products. On the mainland, Shanghai and other cities are moving aggressively to test a wide variety of food products for melamine, including fish and livestock feed, according to the state-run news media, which has in recent days carried multiple reports on melamine in animal feed. In the United States, worried consumers frantically e-mailed one another on Thursday and Friday about the possibility of melamine-tainted Halloween treats following a spate of news reports that some candies and chocolates made in China or with ingredients sourced in China had tested positive for high levels of melamine or been destroyed in recent weeks as a cautionary measure.

In the spate of a worldwide slow down in economies, such scandals about food can cause immense problems for China’s reputation with it getting a reputation as a place where quality can be compromised. Given that this relates to food stuffs, consumers would be even more worried, and if this relates to food stuff that children need and consume, parents would rather not take the risk. There are already news reports about large scale culling of chicken after it was discovered that eggs were contaminated with melamine.
In the past, China has already come under pressure to due to contamination / quality problems with children’s toys, pet food, seafood exports. In this particular case, a lot of the consumers are also perplexed as to what manner of manufacturer would contaminate food items with an industrial chemical, and there are increasing calls for greater restraint (in previous cases, politicians in the consuming countries have also got involved, with some bringing in the issue of Chinese products, that are contaminated, also causing the decimation of such manufacturing facilities in the respective countries).

British chocolate maker Cadbury on Monday became the latest foreign company to be hit by China’s tainted milk scandal, ordering a recall of its Chinese-made products after saying tests “cast doubt” on their safety. Two U.S. food makers were meanwhile investigating Indonesian claims that high traces of the industrial chemical melamine had been found in Chinese-made Oreos, M&Ms and Snickers, but stressed the same goods had tested negative in other Asian countries.

U.S. companies Kraft Foods Inc. and Mars Inc. said they would adhere to a recall order of Chinese-made Oreo wafers, M&Ms and Snickers in Indonesia, but said they wanted to conduct their own tests with outside experts. So far only a local agency has checked the products for melamine, but the levels found were considered very high.

Even now different companies are being strangely hesitant on taking actions that could impact their bottomline, after all, if these companies really cared for consumers, they would have carried out a voluntary inspection on their own and if their products carry melamine, withdraw them from the shelves. Instead, it seems that even though there is a high risk due to the milk products having been manufactured in China, the companies are hesitating in complying with Government orders to remove their products. They must be worried about the public perception if they carry out such a move, but it becomes far worse if they are seen to be dragging their feet in this respect.

Shop shelves in China and elsewhere are being cleared of popular dairy products after tests found contamination in regular milk as well as baby formula. Inspectors found that 10% of liquid milk from three of China’s dairies was tainted with melamine.
The scandal first came to light in milk powder that killed four infants and sickened more than 6,000 others. Suppliers are suspected of diluting milk to cut costs, then adding melamine to make it appear higher in protein. Melamine is an industrial chemical normally used in plastics, and is banned from food stuffs.

This is yet another problem over the quality levels of products made in China, and something that the Chinese Government would do well to repel with some fast action.

The four-hour stay of former Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif on home soil was a saga of humiliation during which low-ranking police personnel repeatedly shoved and jeered at him, according to a Pakistani journalist, who travelled with the PML-N leader from London. Sharif, who had arrived very confident was soon depressed and bewildered at the shabby treatment accorded to him and virtually broke down at one point.
Sharif was treated with total contempt at the Islamabad airport when low-ranking police officers were sent to talk to him. A visibly depressed and unaided Nawaz was aggressively pushed inside an old bus parked outside the VIP Rawal Lounge and shifted to the plane and sent into exile. As the bus headed towards the PIA plane, about 100 commandos also started running after the bus laughing and cracking jokes, and returned only when the plane had taken off.

Not something that would gladden the heart of any supported of the Sharif faction of the Pakistani Muslim League. Of course, as news of this treatment spreads, it could create problems for Gen Musharraf with more public resentment.
However, the Saudi royal family now believes that Nawaz Sharif broke an agreement that he had made with Musharraf (with the Saudi’s being one part of the deal). The deal was that Nawaz Sharif would stay away from Pakistan until he had completed 10 years in exile, something that he obviously has not completed (7 years is the count). And from all public accounts, it seems that the Saudi royals had actually tried to convince Nawaz to stick to the deal, and he refused to listen to them.

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif received a “cold” reception from the Saudi government when he reached Jeddah and has apparently been barred from taking part in any political activity for the remaining period of his exile. It now appears that Sharif might have to spend next three years in Jeddah where he may be held incommunicado, the reports said. Saudi King Abdullah was livid with Sharif for his move to go Pakistan flouting the deal and strong requests from Saudi government, they said.
Till 2006, the Sharifs virtually enjoyed royal status in Saudi Arabia and he was even allowed to meet opposition leaders from Pakistan like PPP chief Benazir Bhutto and Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmad of MMA even though the deal barred him from carrying on any political activity. All that could be a thing of past from now on. Saudi royals were so angry with Sharif that the King in a letter expressed surprise over Sharif’s defiance saying that no Muslim would violate his word or agreement, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q chief Shujaat Hussain told Geo TV.

Well, if these are true, it looks like Nawaz Sharif took a gamble, and appears to have initially lost, but may have actually won. He is currently right back where he started, but in the meantime he has made sure that his determination to come back to Pakistan when the regime was actually threatening him is now the source of a great deal of public resentment against Musharraf. He has also ensured that Benazir Bhutto will not be able to grab all the attention. If General Musharraf faces much more heat, Nawaz will benefit; but if Gen Musharraf can ride this out, then Nawaz Sharif is in a deep political sleep for atleast 3 years more.

Embattled Republican Sen. Larry Craig resigned his seat Saturday after a weeklong political maelstrom triggered by revelations he was convicted of soliciting sex in an airport bathroom stall. Amid unceasing pressure from his party’s leaders, the 62-year-old Idaho senator said he feared fallout from the scandal would not allow him to “devote 100 per cent of the time and effort” to his job.

Political analysts say the scandal involving Craig was magnified because he was convicted of a crime and kept silent about the incident. “It is a truly remarkable thing that politicians get in trouble this way all the time — thinking they can keep quiet negative information about themselves,” said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
“But with so much scrutiny on top level politicians, it was bound to come out … It’s fairly clear to people that he did enough that he thought he needed to plead guilty.”

The last line is the important part. There is so much politics and so much focus on the politicians that any indiscretions, however small, gets magnified. Politicians are supposed to be clean, but they also come from society; there would hardly be anyone in society who is as lily-white as a politician is supposed to be. After all, American society has a fair amount of second and more marriage, there are high divorce rates and people living alone, and there are a number of children being born outside marriage. When these are accepted among society, it seems scary that politicians are supposed to come into politics and stay there keeping totally clean all the time.
With these kind of expectations, it would seem normal that there would be a large number of prospective politicians who do not have such a clean family life, but are otherwise good administrators and would be good for the country; but who will stay out of politics because of these very reasons. The hounding a determined media can give to a person accused will be enough to shake the convictions of even a determined person. It would be far better if the media focuses on effective administrative policies; the amount of pork-barrel and corruption in Congress would be a far better judge of how good a politician is.

The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn’t a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city’s defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks.
The real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city’s man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government’s response, but they still haven’t come to grips with the government’s responsibility for the catastrophe.
Many of the same coastal scientists and engineers who sounded alarms about the vulnerability of New Orleans long before Katrina are warning that the Army Corps is poised to repeat its mistakes—and extend them along the entire Louisiana coast. If you liked Katrina, they say, you’ll love what’s coming next.

A lot of this discussion just does not get heard. With a presidential election in full swing (albeit very early), most of the discussion is about the swinging fortunes of the candidates, or about the latest act of famous starlets, or about the genuineness of the record home run baseball hitter. All this time, a lot of scientists are screaming about what the reconstruction of New Orleans is not doing.
The basic thrust of the article is: New Orleans is on a place where river sediment carried by the Mississippi would create some elevated areas, and at the same time, there would be a barrier of wetlands, mangroves and swamps that would reduce the thrust of a hurricane. However, since the Corps over a period of time carried out a series of steps to regulate the river, sedimentation was reduced; further activities had a major impact on causing a slow destruction of the wetlands and also let the Gulf expand way inwards. And in an ominous conclusion, the claim is that the further plans of construction of a large number of leeves all along the coast will cause further destruction of the wetlands. And the elected representatives are more interested in pork, or diverting money to electorally appealing projects. Such an article should be debated, if only for the sake of the number of people who dies in the flooding after the storm.

A Pakistani high court ordered authorities to withdraw a request to Interpol to issue arrest warrants for exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, her lawyer said. Last year, the government had asked Interpol to issue arrest warrants for Bhutto after the government filed a complaint with a lower court that she had misreported her assets to election authorities in 1996.
Farooq Naik, Bhutto’s lawyer, said he had petitioned the High Court in Karachi that the government’s request for arrest warrants be declared unlawful because the lower court had already thrown out the government’s complaint. Musharraf, who is passing through the most weakest phase of his eight-year rule after the Supreme Court reinstated country’s chief justice he had tried to sack four months ago, met secretly with Bhutto this month in Abu Dhabi. Bhutto has said she could work with Musharraf but insisted that he should resign from the military.

Such things normally would not happen unless the arrangement has been sanctioned by the army. This would make a major come-back for Benazir, bringing her back within striking distance of gaining power in the country. Just a short while back, it seemed like that she was on permanent exile, with frequent talk of how her corruption proceeds are being uncovered, and she would be arrested on sight; but in politics, nothing is as it appears to be.

The FBI broke the law when it searched Rep. William Jefferson’s Rayburn office in May 2006 and viewed legislative documents, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today. The court ordered the Justice Department to return any legislative materials taken as part of a corruption investigation of the Louisiana congressman, but allowed it to hold on to documents unrelated to legislative matters.
While the search itself was constitutional, the court said, the FBI overstepped its bounds in taking privileged legislative materials.

A split decision, which nonetheless allows the FBI to raid the office in pursuit of a criminal investigation, but at the same time asking the FBI to return legislative material. This is actually a decision worthy of being made by a politician, since it tries to keep everyone happy except for Rep. William Jefferson.