hey all - thanks for your interest in the stories. no commentary today cuz i'm on my way out the door.
but i know how i am when i'm jonesing for the info ... so i wanted to get these up ASAP.
i'm putting shortened versions of the washington post articles at the bottom, after the odd news, because they're VERY long...



US ' Iran attack plans' revealed
US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.
It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres.
The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment.
The UN has urged Iran to stop the programme or face economic sanctions.
But diplomatic sources have told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran .
That list includes Iran 's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan , Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list, the sources say.
Two triggers
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.
Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran .
Long range B2 stealth bombers would drop so-called "bunker-busting" bombs in an effort to penetrate the Natanz site, which is buried some 25m (27 yards) underground.
The BBC's Tehran correspondent Frances Harrison says the news that there are now two possible triggers for an attack is a concern to Iranians.
Authorities insist there is no cause for alarm but ordinary people are now becoming a little worried, she says.
Deadline
Earlier this month US officers in Iraq said they had evidence Iran was providing weapons to Iraqi Shia militias. However the most senior US military officer later cast doubt on this, saying that they only had proof that weapons "made in Iran " were being used in Iraq .
Gen Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said he did not know that the Iranian government "clearly knows or is complicit" in this.
At the time, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the accusations were "excuses to prolong the stay" of US forces in Iraq .
Middle East analysts have recently voiced their fears of catastrophic consequences for any such US attack on Iran .
Britain's previous ambassador to Tehran , Sir Richard Dalton, told the BBC it would backfire badly by probably encouraging the Iranian government to develop a nuclear weapon in the long term.
Last year Iran resumed uranium enrichment - a process that can make fuel for power stations or, if greatly enriched, material for a nuclear bomb.
Tehran insists its programme is for civil use only, but Western countries suspect Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons.
The UN Security Council has called on Iran to suspend its enrichment of uranium by 21 February.
If it does not, and if the International Atomic Energy Agency confirms this, the resolution says that further economic sanctions will be considered.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6376639.stm


Draft Law on Oil Money Moves to Iraqi Cabinet
By JAMES GLANZ
KARABILA, Iraq, Feb. 18 — A draft version of the long-awaited law that would govern the development of Iraqi oil fields and the distribution of oil revenues has been submitted to Iraq’s cabinet, the first step toward approving the legislation, two members of a senior negotiating committee said this weekend.
The move seemed to signal that negotiators had arrived at the outlines of a compromise that would satisfy the Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni members of the committee and break a deadlock that has held up approval of the law for months. Because the Iraqi budget depends almost entirely on oil revenues, the law is considered an essential element of creating a stable and functioning government.
Earlier drafts of the law described to The New York Times indicate that Iraq’s central government in Baghdad would retain substantial control over oil revenues and the right to review the contracts that regional governments sign with Iraqi and international companies to develop the fields and to pump oil.
Negotiations had snagged because of the insistence by the Kurds that they maintain a degree of autonomy in managing their northern fields. But two members of the negotiating committee confirmed that a draft had been sent to the cabinet, indicating that a compromise might be in sight.
Neither of those negotiators — Hussain al-Shahristani, the current oil minister, and Thamir Ghadban, a former oil minister — provided details of the compromise. But a senior official in the Kurdish regional government also said that a deal was near and hinted that the Kurds had received concessions on how the law would affect existing contracts with oil companies that agreed to work in the north.
If the cabinet approves the draft law, it would then be sent to Parliament for ratification. Parliament for the most part automatically passes laws that have been approved by leaders of the main political parties, which run along ethnic and sectarian lines.
Qais Mizher contributed reporting from Baghdad and Yerevan Adham from Iraqi Kurdistan .
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/world/middleeast/19law.html?ref=world

Ex-envoy says Iraq rebuilding plan won't work
By Sue Pleming
Reuters
WASHINGTON - Kiki Munshi was showcased by the media in September as a seasoned U.S. diplomat who came out of retirement to lead a rebuilding group in Iraq.
Now she is back home, angry, and convinced that President George W. Bush's new strategy of doubling the number of such groups to 20 along with a troop surge of 21,500 will not help stabilize Iraq.
A diplomat for 22 years, she quit her job last month as leader of a Provincial Reconstruction Team -- groups made up of about 50 civilian and military experts that try to help Iraqi communities build their own government while strengthening moderates.
"In spite of the magnificent and often heroic work being done out there by a lot of truly wonderful people, the PRTs themselves aren't succeeding. The obstacles are too great," Munshi said this week in Washington, where she was pressing her view at the State Department and to Congress.
"Once again we are proceeding to lay people's lives on a line drawn with faulty information. Once again the fantasies of the 'policy-makers' drive decisions without much link to the realities on the ground," said Munshi, who retired from the foreign service in 2002 .
Her postings included Romania, India and Sierra Leone before Iraq, where Munshi said he had felt a "moral obligation to sort out the mess we have made there."
An audit by the special inspector general for Iraq last October found similar problems with the PRTs to those listed by Munshi, including an "ever-changing security situation, the difficulty of integrating civilian and military personnel, the lack of a finalized agreement on PRT operational requirements and responsibilities."
REJECTION
Members of Congress have also been critical of the program, which suffered early on from not being able to attract enough civilian staff and a dispute between the State and Defense departments over who would provide security for the teams.
The Bush administration rejects Munshi's views and the State Department said the expanded PRT plan was more focused, requiring team members to do pre-deployment training and with a clear goal of bolstering moderates and sidelining militants.
"We have been very mindful of the problems our PRT leaders have reported to us. We have worked very hard to streamline it," said Barbara Stephenson, the deputy coordinator for Iraq at the State Department, which oversees the PRT plan.
Munshi said the PRT plan was ill-conceived, under-funded and poorly staffed.
She said security was so bad that the council in the town in Diyala province where she was based had not had a quorum since last October and that death squads were rife.
PRT members found it hard to meet with Iraqis because of intimidation, she said, giving the example of training sessions that had been canceled because of poor security.
The PRTs are embedded with the military, a tactic Munshi says has varying results depending on the ability of the unit.
"All the PRTs embedded with the military are subject to the vicissitudes of military fortune, for good or ill," she said.
But the State Department countered that Munshi's experiences were not repeated in all the provinces and set up interviews with two PRT leaders who said while there were difficulties, they believed their work was making an impact.
Stephanie Miley, a PRT leader in the Iraqi town of Tikrit, said her teams managed to get out to see Iraqi officials five or six times a week but security issues meant they could not stay for long.
"I just hope that people will recognize that this is not something we will achieve overnight," she said.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/print?id=2883702

Scalia's daughter charged with DUI
Wed Feb 14, 12:28 PM ET
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's daughter was arrested this week and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and child endangerment, officials said Wednesday.
Ann S. Banaszewski, 45, of Wheaton , was arrested Monday evening while driving away from a fast-food restaurant in the suburb 20 miles west of Chicago , police said. Three children were inside Banaszewski's van when someone called police to report a suspected intoxicated driver, said Deputy Chief Tom Meloni.
Meloni would not release Banaszewski's blood-alcohol level. He also declined to give the children's ages or say whether Banaszewski had a previous record.
She was released on a personal recognizance bond. The DuPage County Circuit Court had no information Wednesday about a whether a court appearance had been scheduled.
A message left at Banaszewski's home was not immediately returned and Meloni did not know whether she had an attorney.
Scalia, who began serving on the Supreme Court in 1986, has nine children.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070214/ap_on_re_us/scalia_daughter_dui;_ylt=AhOom6eVW9qE854A8ZnBygWyFz4D

here are the odd stories:
N.M. orders 500 talking urinal cakes
By TIM KORTE, Associated Press WriterSat Feb 17, 4:24 AM ET
New Mexico is hoping to keep drunks off the road by lecturing them at the last place they usually stop before getting behind the wheel: the urinal.
The state recently paid $21 each for about 500 talking urinal-deodorizer cakes and has put them in men's rooms in bars and restaurants across the state.
When a man steps up, the motion-sensitive plastic device says, in a woman's voice that is flirty, then stern: "Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think you had one too many? Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home."
The recorded message ends: "Remember, your future is in your hand."
The talking urinal represents just the latest effort to fight drunken driving in New Mexico, which has long had one of the highest rates of alcohol-related traffic deaths in the nation. (The new tactic is aimed only at men, since they account for 78 percent of all driving-under-the-influence-related convictions in New Mexico.)
"It startled me the first time I heard it, but it sure got my attention," said Ben Miller, a patron at the Turtle Mountain Brewing Co. bar and restaurant. "It's a fantastic idea."
Jim Swatek, who was drinking a beer nearby, said: "You think, `Maybe I should call the wife to come get me.'"
Turtle Mountain Brewing owner Niko Ortiz commended the New Mexico Transportation Department for "thinking way outside the box."
Department spokesman S.U. Mahesh said the bathroom is a perfect place to get the message across. In the restroom, "guys don't chitchat with other guys," he said. "It's all business. We've got their total attention for 10 to 15 seconds"
Similar urinal cakes have been used for anti-drug campaigns in Colorado, Pennsylvania and Australia, and for anti-DWI efforts on New York's Long Island, said Richard Deutsch of New York-based Healthquest Technologies Inc., which manufactures the devices.
But Deutsch said he believes New Mexico is the only state to buy the devices.
New Mexico had 143 alcohol-related deaths in 2005, for the nation's eighth-highest rate per miles driven. The problem is blamed in part on the wide-open spaces that make it necessary to drive to get anywhere, and the poverty and isolation that can lead people to drink to relieve their boredom or misery.
Also, some have complained that the state has only recently begun to emerge from years of lax enforcement.
Gov. Bill Richardson led a successful push two years ago to require ignition locking devices for anyone convicted of DWI — a first in the nation — and each year the Legislature has agreed on tougher penalties for repeat offenders.
New Mexico also has started a toll-free "drunk buster" hot line, boosted DWI enforcement in problem areas and increased police checkpoints. The state also has a DWI czar.
In November, a wrong-way drunken driver slammed into a car near Santa Fe, killing five family members, authorities said. The governor has since directed state regulators to issue cease-and-desist orders against three airlines to stop serving alcohol on flights to and from New Mexico. The culprit in the fatal wreck had been seen drinking on a flight into Albuquerque hours before the accident.
At the Turtle Mountain, the urinal cakes have proved so intriguing that three have been swiped already.
"I'm mystified why someone would stick their hand into one of our urinals," Ortiz said. "But I'm sure we'll see them on eBay. Hopefully, the seller will advertise it as, `Stolen from Turtle Mountain.'"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070217/ap_on_fe_st/dwi_urinals;_ylt=AgdS1CcoVJUtzUh.qBLOqkjtiBIF

Sex in fast lane halts traffic on Israeli road
Sun Feb 18, 10:54 AM ET
Israeli police investigating why a car was blocking traffic in the fast lane of a major highway on Sunday found a couple inside having sex.
A police spokesman said the female driver and her male passenger gave in to their passions without pulling over to the side of the road, causing congestion and leaving other motorists having to swerve to dodge their stationary vehicle.
A patrolman gave the woman a ticket for holding up traffic
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070218/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_israel_sex;_ylt=ArLXS8rr6NbQf_nlETt8lsHtiBIF


Vodka-fuelled fisherman wrestles with shark
Fri Feb 16, 2:16 AM ET
A fisherman fuelled by vodka caught a 1.3-metre (4-foot) shark and wrestled it onto a jetty on Australia's south coast, suffering only small tear marks in his trousers, media reports said on Friday.
Phillip Kerkhof, 41, caught the bronze whaler shark by hand on Monday after he spotted it chasing squid lures near the jetty at the tiny seaside town of Louth Bay in the South Australia state.
"I just snuck up behind him and eventually I went for the big grab and I fluked it and got him," Kerkhof told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
The area near Louth Bay, around the southern tip of South Australia's Eyre Peninsula, is well known for sharks, and live shark action for the 1975 movie Jaws was filmed nearby.
Kerkhof, who said he had "a fair few vodkas" before he went fishing, said he only realised the danger of his actions the following day.
"It's not something I'd recommend to do," he said. "When I sobered up I thought about it and I said, 'I'm a bit of an idiot doing it'."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070216/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_australia_shark;_ylt=Ar8jhC.f6GjrOtjjncUSDVHtiBIF

Mummified body found in front of blaring TV
2 hours, 50 minutes ago
Police called to a Long Island man's house discovered the mummified remains of the resident, dead for more than a year, sitting in front of a blaring television set.
The 70-year-old Hampton Bays, New York, resident, identified as Vincenzo Ricardo, appeared to have died of natural causes. Police said Saturday his body was discovered Thursday when they were called to the house over a burst water pipe.
"You could see his face. He still had hair on his head," Newsday quoted morgue assistant Jeff Bacchus as saying. The home's low humidity had preserved the body.
Officials could not explain why the electricity had not been turned off, considering Ricardo had not been heard from since December 2005.
Neighbors said when they had not seen Ricardo, who was diabetic and had been blind for years, they assumed he was in the hospital or a long-term care facility.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/death_television_dc;_ylt=AsFhgsjn3OJQ8i2tZSUEPwXtiBIF

Math anxiety saps working memory needed to do math
By Julie SteenhuysenMon Feb 19, 9:03 AM ET
Worrying about how you'll perform on a math test may actually contribute to a lower test score, U.S. researchers said on Saturday.
Math anxiety -- feelings of dread and fear and avoiding math -- can sap the brain's limited amount of working capacity, a resource needed to compute difficult math problems, said Mark Ashcroft, a psychologist at the University of Nevada Los Vegas who studies the problem.
"It turns out that math anxiety occupies a person's working memory," said Ashcroft, who spoke on a panel at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.
Ashcroft said while easy math tasks such as addition require only a small fraction of a person's working memory, harder computations require much more.
Worrying about math takes up a large chunk of a person's working memory stores as well, spelling disaster for the anxious student who is taking a high-stakes test.
Stress about how one does on tests like college entrance exams can make even good math students choke. "All of a sudden they start looking for the short cuts," said University of Chicago researcher Sian Beilock.
Although test preparation classes can help students overcome this anxiety, they are limited to students whose families can afford them.
Ultimately, she said, "It may not be wise to rely completely on scores to predict who will succeed."
While the causes of math anxiety are unknown, Ashcroft said people who manage to overcome math anxiety have completely normal math proficiency.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/math_anxiety_dc;_ylt=AieON58SfSXAU8hYLRHe0bLtiBIF

Study shows first peck of peppers picked 6,100 years ago
By Jeffrey JonesThu Feb 15, 3:34 PM ET
Here's a hot, new discovery: archaeologists have traced what they believe is evidence of the first home-grown chili peppers, used in South America 6,100 years ago.
And it was people in tropical, lowland areas of what is now western Ecuador who first spiced up their cuisine, not those from higher, drier Mexico and Peru as was previously assumed, said Scott Raymond, a University of Calgary archaeologist.
His team, led by Linda Perry, researcher with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, made the finding by analyzing starch microfossils from grinding stones and charred ceramic cookware recovered from seven sites in the Americas. Their report is published in the journal Science.
"What's very satisfying about this evidence is that it comes from residues on pottery, so the association of these crops with food, with the pots and with the dates is all very tight," he said. "We can, without any kind of reasonable doubt, argue that these plants were there at that time."
The pepper species cultivated in the villages -- the earliest known settlements in the Western Hemisphere -- grew naturally only to the east of the Andes. That means that the people in the villages of the tropical region transported them across the mountains to grow them, Raymond said.
Results from the Canadian-U.S.-Venezuelan project yielded evidence that peppers were farmed in the region more than 1,000 years before the plants were cultivated in Peru or Mexico, Raymond said.
In fact, the work shows that chili peppers are among the oldest domesticated foods in the hemisphere, said Deborah Pearsall, a University of Missouri-Columbia anthropologist.
The team took to analyzing starch grains because chili peppers are not well preserved after being cooked -- most of them get eaten and there are no husks or shells left over, Pearsall said.
It is not known yet if chili peppers were used only as a condiment for the culture's diet of maize, beans and yams, or if they were also grown for medicinal purposes, Raymond said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070215/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_peppers_discovery;_ylt=ArOFXXeGUeIoSjK2l6WMhvKdk3QF

and finally ... the washington post articles on walter reed...

Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701172.html

By Dana Priest and Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 18, 2007; A01

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely -- a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them -- the majority soldiers, with some Marines -- have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.

They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially -- they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 -- that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.

Not all of the quarters are as bleak as Duncan's, but the despair of Building 18 symbolizes a larger problem in Walter Reed's treatment of the wounded, according to dozens of soldiers, family members, veterans aid groups, and current and former Walter Reed staff members interviewed by two Washington Post reporters, who spent more than four months visiting the outpatient world without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials. Many agreed to be quoted by name; others said they feared Army retribution if they complained publicly.

While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.

On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.

Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.
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click for more--
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701172.html
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The Hotel Aftermath
Inside Mologne House, the Survivors of War Wrestle With Military Bureaucracy and Personal Demons
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/18/AR2007021801335.html

By Anne Hull and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, February 19, 2007; A01

The guests of Mologne House have been blown up, shot, crushed and shaken, and now their convalescence takes place among the chandeliers and wingback chairs of the 200-room hotel on the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Oil paintings hang in the lobby of this strange outpost in the war on terrorism, where combat's urgency has been replaced by a trickling fountain in the garden courtyard. The maimed and the newly legless sit in wheelchairs next to a pond, watching goldfish turn lazily through the water.

But the wounded of Mologne House are still soldiers -- Hooah! -- so their lives are ruled by platoon sergeants. Each morning they must rise at dawn for formation, though many are half-snowed on pain meds and sleeping pills.

In Room 323 the alarm goes off at 5 a.m., but Cpl. Dell McLeod slumbers on. His wife, Annette, gets up and fixes him a bowl of instant oatmeal before going over to the massive figure curled in the bed. An Army counselor taught her that a soldier back from war can wake up swinging, so she approaches from behind.

"Dell," Annette says, tapping her husband. "Dell, get in the shower."

"Dell!" she shouts.

Finally, the yawning hulk sits up in bed. "Okay, baby," he says. An American flag T-shirt is stretched over his chest. He reaches for his dog tags, still the devoted soldier of 19 years, though his life as a warrior has become a paradox. One day he's led on stage at a Toby Keith concert with dozens of other wounded Operation Iraqi Freedom troops from Mologne House, and the next he's sitting in a cluttered cubbyhole at Walter Reed, fighting the Army for every penny of his disability.
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click for more-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/18/AR2007021801335.html