Alston & Bird Lobbyist Daschle to become Health and Human Services Secretary
Another notable name is joining Barack Obama's Cabinet - former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle will be Health and Human Services secretary pending Senate confirmation, FOX News reported today.
Daschle accepted the offer, according to two Democratic sources close to Daschle and with intimate knowledge of the decision. Daschle had been a longtime adviser on Obama's campaign and served as a frequent surrogate on the campaign trail and in media interviews.
The appointment has not been announced, but these officials said the job is Daschle's, barring an unforeseen problem as Obama's team reviews the background of the South Dakota Democrat.
As Health and Human Services chief, Daschle will be responsible for helping set health care policy. He supports a government-funded insurance program for the nation's uninsured.
Daschle has also been the head of the health care working group in the Obama transition team. Democratic officials shied away from a term some are throwing around - "health care czar" - but say Daschle "is likely to play a leading role in the passage of health care reform and the strategy to implement it."
The former South Dakota senator led the Senate Democrats from 1994 until he lost his re-election bid in 2004. He was minority leader for most of that time, serving as majority leader from May 2001 until January 2003, when Democrats returned to the minority after losing seats in the November 2002 midterm elections.
Organizations seeking to expand socialized health coverage were quick to praise the selection.
After losing re-election to the Senate in 2004, Daschle became a public policy adviser and member of the legislative and public policy group at the law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird. Daschle advises clients on issues including health care, financial services and taxes and trade, according to the firm's Web site.
Indian Navy Destroys Pirate 'Mother Ship' in Battle, While Bureaucratic U.S. Decides What To DoAn Indian naval vessel sank a suspected pirate "mother ship" Wednesday in the Gulf of Aden and chased two attack boats into the night, officials said, yet more violence in the lawless seas where brigands are becoming bolder and more violent.
Separate bands of pirates also seized a Thai ship with 16 crew members and an Iranian cargo vessel with a crew of 25 in the Gulf of Aden, where Somalia-based pirates appear to be attacking ships at will, said Noel Choong of the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Malaysia.
"It's getting out of control," Choong said.
A multicoalition naval force has increased patrols in the region, and scored a rare success Tuesday when the Indian warship, operating off the coast of Oman, stopped a ship similar to a pirate vessel mentioned in numerous piracy bulletins. The Indian navy said the pirates fired on the INS Tabar after the officers asked it to stop to be searched.
"Pirates were seen roaming on the upper deck of this vessel with guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers," said a statement from the Indian navy. Indian forces fired back, sparking fires and a series of onboard blasts -- possibly due to exploding ammunition -- and destroying the ship.
They chased one of two speedboats that had been shadowing the larger ship, and which fled when it sank. One was later found abandoned. The other escaped, according to the statement. Larger "mother ships" are often used to take gangs of pirates and smaller attack boats into deep water, and can be used as mobile bases to attack merchant vessels.
Last week, Indian navy commandos operating from a warship foiled a pirate attempt to hijack a ship in the Gulf of Aden. The navy said an armed helicopter with marine commandos prevented the pirates from boarding and hijacking the Indian merchant vessel. Tuesday incidents raised to eight the number of ships hijacked this week alone, he said. Since the beginning of the year, 39 ships have been hijacked in the Gulf of Aden, out of 95 attacked.
"There is no firm deterrent, that's why the pirate attacks are continuing," Choong said. "The criminal activities are flourishing because the risks are low and the rewards are extremely high."
The pirates used to mainly roam the waters off the Somali coast, but now they have spread in every direction and are targeting ships further at sea, according to Choong. He said 17 vessels remain in the hands of pirates along with more than 300 crew members, including a Ukrainian ship loaded with weapons and a Saudi Arabian supertanker carrying $100 million in crude.
Despite the stepped-up patrols, the attacks have continued unabated off Somalia, which is caught up in an Islamic insurgency and has had no functioning government since 1991. Pirates have generally released ships they have seized after ransoms are paid.
NATO has three warships in the Gulf of Aden and the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet also has ships in the region. But U.S. Navy Commander Jane Campbell of the 5th Fleet said naval patrols simply cannot prevent attacks given the vastness of the sea and the 21,000 vessels passing through the Gulf of Aden every year.
"Given the size of the area and given the fact that we do not have naval assets -- either ships or airplanes - to be everywhere with every single ship" it would be virtually impossible to prevent every attack, she said.
The Gulf of Aden connects to the Red Sea, which in turn is linked to the Mediterranean by the Suez Canal. The route is thousands of miles and many days shorter than going around the Cape of Good Hope off the southern tip of Africa. The Thai boat, which was flying a flag from the tiny Pacific nation of Kiribati but operated out of Thailand, made a distress call as it was being chased by pirates in two speedboats but the phone connection was cut off midway.
Wicharn Sirichaiekawat, manager of Sirichai Fisheries Co., Ltd. told The Associated Press that the ship, the "Ekawat Nava 5," was headed from Oman to Yemen to deliver fishing equipment.
Of the 16 crew members, Wicharn said 15 are Thai and one is Cambodian. The Iranian carrier was flying a Hong Kong flag but operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines. On Tuesday, a major Norwegian shipping group, Odfjell SE, ordered its more than 90 tankers to sail around Africa rather than use the Suez Canal after the seizure of the Saudi tanker Saturday.
Saudi Arabia, the world's leading oil producer, has condemned the hijacking and said it will join the international fight against piracy. Despite the fact that its government barely works, Somali officials vowed to try to rescue the ship by force if necessary. The supertanker, the MV Sirius Star, was anchored Tuesday close to Harardhere, the main pirates' den on the Somali coast, with a full load of 2 million barrels of oil and 25 crew members.
A Texas judge has set an arraignment for Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other officials accused of involvement in prisoner abuse. Presiding Judge Manuel Banales said Wednesday he will allow them to waive arraignment or have attorneys present rather than appear in person Friday.
Banales also said he would issue summonses, not warrants. That allows them to avoid arrest and the need to post bond. Willacy County District Attorney Juan Guerra accuses Cheney, Gonzales, a state senator and others of involvement in prisoner abuse at a federal detention center in south Texas. Defense attorney Tony Canales accuses Guerra of "prosecutorial vindictiveness" and not following procedure.
Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites.
The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a change in U.S. policies. Ayman al-Zawahiri said in the message, which appeared on militant Web sites, that Obama is "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X, the 1960s African-American rights leader.
In Al Qaeda's first response to Obama's victory, al-Zawahiri also called the president-elect - along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice- "house Negroes."
Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahiri uses the term "abeed al-beit," which literally translates as "house slaves." But Al Qaeda supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as "house Negroes."
The message also includes old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white masters' house were more servile than those who worked in the fields. Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not standing up to whites. In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the latest message was just "more despicable comments from a terrorist."
The 11-minute 23-second video features the audio message by al-Zawahiri, who appears only in a still image, along with other images, including one of Obama wearing a Jewish skullcap as he meets with Jewish leaders. In his speech, al-Zawahiri refers to a Nov. 5 U.S. airstrike attack in Afghanistan, meaning the video was made after that date.
Al-Zawahiri did not threaten specific attacks, but warned Obama that he was "facing a Jihadi (holy war) awakening and renaissance which is shaking the pillars of the entire Islamic world; and this is the fact which you and your government and country refuse to recognize and pretend not to see." He said Obama's victory showed Americans acknowledged that President George W. Bush's policies were a failure and that the result was an "admission of defeat in Iraq."
But Obama's professions of support for Israel during the election campaign "confirmed to the Ummah (Islamic world) that you have chosen a stance of hostility to Islam and Muslims," al-Zawahiri said.
War Song Was Right: Hitler Had Only One Testicle
An extraordinary account from a German army medic has finally confirmed what the world long suspected: Hitler only had one testicle. War veteran Johan Jambor made the revelation to a priest in the 1960s, who wrote it down. The priest's document has now come to light - 23 years after Jambor's death. The war tyrant's medical condition has been mocked for years in a British song.
The lyrics are:
"Hitler has only got one ball, Göring has two but very small, Himmler is somewhat sim'lar, But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.
Hitler has only got one ball, The other is on the kitchen wall, His mother, the dirty b----r, Chopped it off when he was small."
Until now there has never been complete proof Hitler was monorchic -- the medical term for having one testicle. But the document tells how Jambor saw the proof with his own eyes. In the account, he relives the horror of serving as an army medic in World War I.
He died aged 94 in 1985, but had told his secret to priest Franciszek Pawlar, who kept a note of their conversation. Johan's friend Blassius Hanczuch confirmed the priest's account of how the medic saved Hitler's life. He said: In 1916 they had their hardest fight in the Battle of the Somme. For several hours, Johan and his friends picked up injured soldiers. He remembers Hitler. They called him the 'Screamer.' He was very noisy. Hitler was screaming 'help, help.'
His abdomen and legs were all in blood. Hitler was injured in the abdomen and lost one testicle. His first question to the doctor was: 'Will I be able to have children?'"
Hitler's genitals have long caused controversy. Some historians dismissed the one ball song as propaganda. But an alleged Soviet autopsy on Hitler backed it up. Records show Hitler did suffer a groin injury in the Somme.
A North Carolina sheriff's official is apologizing for disturbing a funeral where undercover agents tried to serve an arrest warrant on the dead man's son -- and used a Taser to do so.
The Star-News of Wilmington reports that the incident happened Saturday afternoon as the coffin was being loaded into a hearse. The officers planned to quietly arrest Gladwyn Taft Russ III, but it turned into a scuffle.
The 42-year-old Russ was charged with communicating threats against his ex-wife who lives in another state. Officials said he failed to turn himself in as promised.
New Hanover County sheriff's chief deputy Ed McMahon said the officers' move backfired in the emotional environment. McMahon said the officers should have waited until after the cemetery service.
Police are looking for an irate pet lover so intent on liberating his lost cat that he wielded a bat to fend off animal shelter employees.
Dallas Animal Shelter manager Kent Robertson says the man found his missing gray and blue short-haired cat at the shelter, where it had been brought by someone who thought it was a stray. He blew his stack when told he had to pay a $132 fee to take his cat.
Police say the man returned Monday, loaded his cat into a carrier without paying the fee, and threatened the staff with the baseball bat. No one was injured.
Most people thank shelter workers. Says Robertson: "This was pretty extreme."
The man could be charged with aggravated robbery and aggravated assault. Police Senior Cpl. Kevin Janse says police have a clue - the man signed the shelter guest book before fleeing.
A 27-year-old woman has been arrested on charges of distributing harmful material to a minor after a 14-year-old's parents found a topless photo of her on his cell phone.
Victoria Ann Chacon, a former middle school teacher, allegedly met the boy at their church, where she was a Sunday school teacher. Authorities at Somerset Independent School District said they found no evidence of any inappropriate relationships with students; the 14-year-old attended school elsewhere.
The boy's parents called police in March after finding racy letters in which Chacon professed her love. The boy initially refused to give a statement about the relationship, the arrest warrant says. Several months later, the parents found a cell phone with a topless photo of Chacon. The phone was owned by Chacon and the two had been calling on another, according to court documents.
The woman was arrested Tuesday. Jail records had no attorney listed for her.
Lisa
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