Saw Superman Returns last night.

A little disappointing, but its pretty hard to mess up the story of Kal-el.
I think Bryan Singer was so intent on duplicating the Stanley Donner/Christopher Reeve version/vision that the world fell in love with in the late Seventies, that he really held back what could have been a fantastic movie.
As it is, the film is s-l-o-w paced, sluggish and could easily have been an hour shorter. Routh is a brooding, characterless Superman and Bosworth as Lois Lane is a little hard to buy.
The religious metaphor of Superman as both "Savior" and "The Man Who Fell To Earth" is a little heavy-handed. The space shuttle/baseball stadium scene stands out, and there is one scene in particular, involving Superman's eye, that is an indicator of what this movie could have been...but in the end, wasn't.

PHOTO TAKEN IN WASHINGTON, DC

U.S. / Russia have make-up sex

After a protracted, highly politicized struggle between Russia and the United States over Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization, Russian negotiators and two people familiar with the U.S. position said a bilateral agreement could be just weeks away.
"I am willing to bet that the agreement will be signed right before, or during, the Group of Eight summit," said a source familiar with the U.S. negotiating stance. "It would be a victory for both presidents. It will be signed."
Over the weekend of July 15-17, President Vladimir Putin will host U.S. President George W. Bush and other world leaders at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg. From all indications, the Kremlin would like to mark the event by announcing that another major international organization had opened the door to Russian membership.
Bush has also indicated he wants Russia in the WTO sooner rather than later -- a position reiterated by outgoing U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow at a G8 finance ministers' meeting in St. Petersburg earlier this month. Bush still faces stiff resistance, however, from an increasingly rebellious U.S. Congress at a time when his approval ratings are at an all-time low.
A U.S. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a deal could happen sometime in July.
Russian officials expressed similar optimism.
"The negotiations are progressing and we are very optimistic at this point," an Economic Development and Trade Ministry spokeswoman said Thursday.
Sources in the ministry also said the talks had been very intense, with Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and some of his staff regularly traveling abroad for talks with U.S. officials.
Russia appears, at least partially, to be responding without much fuss to key U.S. demands .
Signing a bilateral agreement with the United States remains the last obstacle for Russia before it can begin the formal part of joining the WTO by signing a multilateral agreement with the WTO's 149 member countries.
Russia has been seeking to join the WTO for the last decade.
The United States has long insisted Russia strengthen protection of intellectual property rights, as well as make concessions in the agricultural and financial sectors.
Some results appear to be visible in the first sphere. The government recently adopted a new strict licensing procedure for businesses involved in publishing audio and video products. Further legal changes to the copyright laws are also due to be submitted to the State Duma soon.
"There has certainly been some progress on the IPR front," the U.S. diplomat said.
Progress may also have been made on agriculture, where the dispute between the two sides was revived a few months ago after apparently being resolved.
In a March 29 speech to the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Putin said the United States was "artificially pushing back the negotiating process" by submitting a list of areas for "additional negotiations."
U.S. officials, meanwhile, said the dispute was over agriculture import rules that the United States considered unduly harsh. Over the years, a particularly sensitive issue has been the importation of chickens into Russia, which is the United States' biggest poultry export market.
In an apparent concession, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov recently ruled that Russian food safety officials had the option of applying international standards to agricultural imports rather than use the stricter domestic standards.
"That was something the Americans had been pressing the Russians to do for months, and they finally did it three or four weeks ago," said Andrew Somers, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia.
Though it remains unclear which standards Russian inspectors will ultimately use, "the fact is it shows movement by the government" toward addressing U.S. concerns, Somers said.
The financial sector, however, appears to be an area in which Russia has no desire to back down. The United States is demanding Russia drop protective measures that bar foreign banks and insurance companies from operating wholly owned branches. Russia maintains its still young and fragile financial sector would be devastated if foreign competitors were allowed into the country without barriers.
"There are certainly some concrete issues that are yet to be resolved," Arkady Dvorkovich, an economic adviser to Putin, said on the sidelines of an investors conference in Moscow last week. "The American side is insisting on direct access to the Russian market for banks and insurance companies through [wholly owned] branches. We are against it, strictly against it."
"At least the overwhelming majority of American banks say they don't need it either," Dvorkovich added.
Sources familiar with the mood of American financial institutions confirmed this.
Dvorkovich dismissed media speculation that bilateral negotiations had been soured by a scandal involving Russian customs officials' confiscation of a large shipment of Motorola cell phones, which later turned up on the black market.
The scandal "is not connected to the WTO," Dvorkovich said. "In general we try to separate the routine issues from the strategic ones that are related to the WTO agenda."
It may be that both sides have now managed to put behind them some of the flashpoints that soured the atmosphere in recent months in the interests of concluding the WTO deal.
Two such notable incidents were when a senior Russian official drew a link between the WTO deal and U.S. companies' participation in the Shtokman gas project, and when U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney strongly criticized Russia over democracy at a summit in Lithuania.
U.S. domestic politics, however, remain a significant stumbling block -- regardless of Bush's attitude toward Russia joining the WTO.
Though Congress has no direct legal control over the U.S. government's decision to sign a bilateral agreement with Russia, its vote will become crucial following Bush's signing, when it would have to vote on the removal of the Jackson-Vannik amendment, a key irritant in Russian-U.S. relations.
The amendment was enacted in 1975 as a tool to soften the Soviet Union's tough emigration policies, particularly toward Jewish dissidents, with the threat of trade sanctions. Since 1992, the amendment has been suspended annually after a review conducted at the request of the U.S. president. The existence of the amendment, however, is incompatible with WTO rules, which oblige member nations to extend permanent normal trade relations, or PNTR, to all other members.
The problem is that Russia "has no friends in the Congress or Senate," said Viktor Kremenyuk, assistant director of the USA and Canada Institute, a Moscow think tank.
"There are those who at best don't care, and then there are enemies," Kremenyuk said. "We don't have any lobbying power there."
Anti-Russian sentiments in the U.S. Congress have left Bush -- whose previously unshakable Republican base is softening in the run-up to Congressional elections in November -- with a dilemma.
"If Jackson-Vannik stays, the United States itself would be in violation of the WTO rules" if it signed off on Russia's WTO bid, then refused it PNTR status, one source familiar with the situation said.
"The position of the U.S. government depends on the position of the Congress," Dvorkovich said. "As [mid-term] elections approach, [Russia's WTO bid] is being brought into play. It may be that it's not exactly popular to display too much sympathy toward Russia right now."
The reasons for the anti-Russian sentiment in Congress go well beyond trade, said Wilson Center scholar and former U.S. Associate Deputy Treasury Secretary Kent Hughes.
When Congress next considers lifting Jackson-Vannik, "you can expect that there will be discussion of freedom of the press, religious rights and movement toward democracy in Russia," as well as the ongoing dispute between Russia and Ukraine over gas prices, Hughes said. "All that's bound to come up."
Still, AmCham's Somers said he thought Bush had a strong incentive to forge ahead.
"I think Bush will take some risk with Congress, and it's motivated in part because at these summit meetings, presidents want to be able to deliver something," Somers said.
"From a presidential point of view," signing off on the bilateral agreement may also help speed up a major Russian deal with Boeing and clear the way for Chevron and ConocoPhillips to participate in Shtokman, Somers said.
"WTO could be a double win for Bush by releasing some of these mega-deals that have been on hold," he said. "The Russians are basically saying, 'Before we go ahead with these deals, are we part of the club?'"

Transvestites terrorize shopkeepers

NEW ORLEANS — Robyn Lewis, owner of Dark Charm fashion and accessories for women, represents the first line of defense for the Magazine Street shop owners. She is the first to see them come strutting in their pumps down St. Andrew Street, the bewigged pack of transvestite thieves who have plagued the Lower Garden District since May.
Like an SOS flare, Lewis grabs her emergency phone list and starts calling.
“They’re coming,” she warns Eric Ogle a salesman at Vegas, a block down Magazine Street. Ogle, who was terrorized by the brazen crew two months earlier, alerts neighboring Winky’s where manager Kendra Bonga braces for the onslaught.
Soon every shop owner in the 2000 block of Magazine Street has been alerted.
Sarah Celino at Trashy Diva eyes the door, ready to flip the lock at the first sight of the ringleader’s pink jumpsuit and fluorescent red wig.
Down at Turncoats, where the fashion-happy gang once made off with more than $2,000 in merchandise, store manager Wes Davis stands ready.
Davis said it wasn’t supposed to be like this. They survived Hurricane Katrina’s Category 3 winds and the ensuing looters. They reopened despite the long odds of doing business in a devastated city. The last thing the Magazine Street shop owners expected to threaten their survival was a crime ring of transvestites.
“They’re fearless,” said Ogle. “Once they see something they like they won’t stop until they have it. They don’t care, they’ll go to jail. It’s really gotten bad. You know it’s ridiculous when everyone on the block knows who they are.”
Expensive tastes
The transvestites first appeared in March when they raided Magazine Street like a marauding army of kleptomaniacal showgirls, said Davis, using clockwork precision and brute force to satisfy high-end boutique needs.
They first hit Vegas March 31 while Ogle was working.
“They come in groups of three or four. One tries to distract you while the others get the stuff and run out the door. It’s very simple,” Ogle said.
Next door at Winky’s, Bonga heard people screaming inside Vegas, then saw a blur of cheap wigs and masculine legs in designer shoes streak past her door.
“All of a sudden our UPS guy dove out of the store and tried to tackle them and there’s little Eric from next door on the sidewalk with a bunch of stuff he managed to grab from one of the guys,” Bonga said. “The other two guys took off down the street and jumped into a car driven by a real girl.”
Ogle gave police a description of the perpetrators — African-American males ranging in height from 6 feet to 6-5. They all wore the same midriff shirts and wigs with twisted, dreadnaught hair.
“They’re all very skinny and very flamboyant,” Ogle said.
Two hours after the police left, the transvestites returned to Magazine Street to storm Turncoats just a block away from Vegas, and made off with more than $2,000 in merchandise.
“They move like clockwork,” Davis said. “Two thousand dollars is a lot for our store to lose, especially being in the slow summer season. It makes it so I can’t even mark my stuff down as much as I want to because I’m trying to make up for what I lost.”
In the ensuing weeks, the gang of transvestites continued their reign of terror. Sometimes they come dressed as men, though Bonga said it is obvious who they are based on their delicately plucked eyebrows. Sometimes they bring 2-year-old children to add to the level of distraction. They once returned to Vegas holding an “infant” that really was a Cabbage Patch doll wrapped in a blanket.
“They’ll make themselves scarce for a few weeks and then one day you’ll be busy with a customer and all of a sudden there’s a whole slew of them in your store and there’s nothing you can do because you’re there by yourself,” Lewis said.
Scarce evidence
The New Orleans Police Department investigated the Turncoats robbery but unless police catch a shoplifter in the act or in possession of stolen property there is little they can do besides take a report, said NOPD spokeswoman Bambi Hall.
“If store security states that someone took something, and then by the time we apprehend them they don’t have the property, then there’s really nothing we can do because it’s their word against the (suspect),” Hall said.
Lewis said she understands the understaffed NOPD has bigger priorities than to “catch a drag queen running down the street with an armful of clothing.” So the store owners created their own watchdog system unofficially known as the “Drag Queen Alert List,” a comprehensive phone roster of every business on the block with stars next to those who carry guns.
When one shop owner spots a gang member, they immediately warn everyone on the block and raise their defenses in unison.
When they enter Turncoats, Davis said he locks them inside the store, which “freaks them out,” and they leave.
Celino said she doesn’t even wait for them to enter the store.
“A couple weeks ago, a group of them was outside and one looked like the guy who came in here and ripped us off so I locked the door on them,” Celino said. “I know maybe that’s rude, if they really were innocent people, but there’s nothing else we can do. You look like the queens who ripped us off so I’m sorry but I have to lock the door.”
Ogle and Bonga say they regret being forced to resort to such profiling but they feel they have no other choice. The transvestites, Ogle said, appear to be drug-addicted and fearless in their lust for designer shoes, jackets and jewelry.
“The city’s not functioning the way it was and I’m sure a lot of them were getting some kind of government aid, which they probably aren’t getting any more so they’re incredibly desperate,” Ogle said.
And sometimes violent.
When Lewis co-owned Trashy Diva, they attacked one of her partners in the French Quarter location, throwing her to the ground and tossing a heavy mannequin on top of her.
“They’re kind of confused because they think they’re women so they don’t mind hitting women, but they’re dudes. If you get hit by one it’s like getting hit by a dude. ... Because the police are so poorly staffed, we’re kind of on our own but the system we have seems to be working. I haven’t seen them in at least a week but they’ll be back. They’re never gone for long.”•

PELICANS ON ACID WREAK HAVOC

LAGUNA BEACH, California -- The driver was sober. The bird he hit may have been on acid.
A California brown pelican flew through the windshield of a car on the Pacific Coast Highway on Thursday, and wildlife officials said the bird was probably intoxicated by a psychotropic-like chemical in the water, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Though toxicology tests take several weeks, the odd bird behavior was likely the result of intoxication from domoic acid, which has been found in the ocean in the area, Lisa Birkle, assistant wildlife director at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, told the Times. Birds can become very disoriented through eating algae tainted by the pscillocybic acid.
The driver was not hurt. The pelican needed surgery for a broken foot, and also had a gash on its pouch.
"She's hanging in there," Birkle told the paper.
The Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center has received 16 calls of strange bird behavior in the past week, and was holding three other birds found disoriented and wandering through yards and in streets, the newspaper reported.
Domoic acid intoxication was the most likely cause of a 1961 invasion of thousands of frantic seabirds in Northern California that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds."
Those birds flew into buildings and pecked several humans.
Pelicans have excellent eyesight and they are unlikely to have flown into a car without some kind of intoxication, Birkle said.

ROVE PEGGED AS PIMP WASHINGTON (June 25) - Wanted: Face time with President Bush or top adviser Karl Rove. Suggested donation: $100,000. The middleman: lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Blunt e-mails that connect money and access in Washington show that prominent Republican activist Grover Norquist facilitated some administration contacts for Abramoff's clients while the lobbyist simultaneously solicited those clients for large donations to Norquist's tax-exempt group.
Those who were solicited or landed administration introductions included foreign figures and American Indian tribes, according to e-mails gathered by Senate investigators and federal prosecutors or obtained independently by The Associated Press.
"Can the tribes contribute $100,000 for the effort to bring state legislatures and those tribal leaders who have passed Bush resolutions to Washington?" Norquist wrote Abramoff in one such e-mail in July 2002.
"When I have funding, I will ask Karl Rove for a date with the president. Karl has already said 'yes' in principle and knows you organized this last time and hope to this year," Norquist wrote in the e-mail.
A Senate committee that investigated Abramoff previously aired evidence showing Bush met briefly in 2001 at the White House with some of Abramoff's tribal clients after they donated money to Norquist's group.
The 2002 e-mail about a second White House meeting and donations, however, was not disclosed. The AP obtained the text from people with access to the document.
The tribes got to meet Bush at the White House in 2002 again and then donated to Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, or ATR.
Though Norquist's own e-mail connects the $100,000 donation and the White House visit, ATR spokesman John Kartch said Norquist never offered to arrange meetings in exchange for money.
Instead, Norquist simply wanted Abramoff's tribes to help pay for a conference where lawmakers and tribal leaders passed resolutions supporting the Bush agenda, ultimately securing a brief encounter with Bush, Kartch said.
"No one from Americans for Tax Reform ever assisted Jack Abramoff in getting meetings or introductions with the White House or congressional leaders in exchange for contributions," Kartch said, suggesting some of the e-mails might be misleading.
"If you look at some of Abramoff's e-mails to third parties, they might be misread to suggest that he was misrepresenting or confusing support for a project with a specific meeting," Kartch said. "This could have been deliberate or just unclear."
Kartch said: "People were invited to ATR's conference and to the White House only if they worked on pro-tax-cut resolutions. Nobody was invited because they made a contribution to ATR."
Lawyers for Abramoff declined comment.
The White House said Rove was unaware that Norquist solicited any money in connection with ATR events in both 2001 and 2002 that brought Abramoff's tribal clients and others to the White House.
"We do not solicit donations in exchange for meetings or events at the White House, and we don't have any knowledge of this activity taking place," said a White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy.
After the tribes' 2002 event with Bush, Norquist pressed Abramoff anew for tribal donations _ this time for a political action committee. "Jack, a few months ago you said you could get each of your Indian tribes to make a contribution. ... Is this still possible?" Norquist asked in an October 2002 e-mail.
Abramoff responded that "everyone is tapped out having given directly to the campaigns. After the election, we'll be able to get this moving."
The e-mails show Abramoff delivered on his original promise to get tribal money for the event that included the Bush visit, sending one check from the Mississippi Choctaw tribe in October and one in November from the Saginaw Chippewa of Michigan. Kartch said Abramoff didn't deliver on PAC contributions.
Norquist and Abramoff were longtime associates who went back decades to their days in the Young Republicans movement. Norquist founded ATR to advocate lower taxes and less government. He built it into a major force in the Republican Party as the GOP seized control of Congress and the White House.
Abramoff became one of Washington's rainmaker lobbyists before allegations that he defrauded Indian tribes led to his downfall and a prison sentence. He is cooperating with prosecutors.
At the time ATR dealt with Abramoff, Kartch said, "he was a longtime and respected Republican activist in Washington. There was no reason to suspect any of the problems that later came up."
The e-mails show Abramoff, on multiple occasions, asked clients for large donations to Norquist's group while Norquist invited them to ATR events that brought them face to face with top administration officials.
For instance, several months after donating $25,000 to Norquist's group, Saginaw officials attended a reception in the summer of 2003 at Norquist's home. They posed for a photo with Norquist and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.
A few weeks earlier, then-Saginaw tribal chief Maynard Kahgegab Jr. had been appointed by Chao to a federal commission, according Labor Department and tribal documents obtained by the AP.
The Saginaw used the Chao photo, the commission appointment and photos they took with Bush at the White House to boast on their internal Web site about the high-level Washington access that Abramoff's team had won.
Labor officials confirmed that Chao attended the reception at Norquist's home. But they said they do not know who recommended Kahgegab to be appointed in May 2003 to the U.S. Native American Employment and Training Council. The department sought to remove the chief a year later after he lost a tribal election, documents show.
"This is one of hundreds of advisory appointments that are sent forward by agencies within the department for front office signoff," said a department spokesman, David James.
ATR's Kartch suggested Chao's contact with the Saginaw at Norquist's home was incidental. "ATR does many receptions for supporters. There were dozens of people in attendance that evening. This event was not organized specifically for any person, but was rather a widely attended general event," he said.
Norquist did make a special effort -- at Abramoff's request -- to introduce a British businessman and an African dignitary to Rove at another ATR event in summer 2002.
Abramoff bluntly told Norquist he was asking the African dignitary for a $100,000 donation to ATR and suggested the introduction to Rove might help secure the money.
"I have asked them for $100K for ATR," Abramoff wrote Norquist in July 2002. "If they come I'll think we'll get it. If he is there, please go up to him (he'll be African) and welcome him."
Norquist obliged.
"I am assuming this is very important and therefore we are making it happen," the GOP activist wrote back, promising to introduce the two foreigners as well as a Saginaw tribal official to Rove that night.
A day later, an ecstatic Abramoff sent an e-mail thanking Norquist for "accommodating" the introductions. "I spoke with the ambassador today and he is moving my ATR request forward," the lobbyist wrote, referring to the donation.
Kartch confirmed Norquist invited the foreigners to the ATR event, but Kartch said the group never asked for, expected or received the $100,000.
It was not the first time that Abramoff sought ATR donations in connection with lobbying business. E-mails dating to 1995 show Abramoff solicited donations from clients to Norquist's group as part of lobbying efforts.
"I spoke this evening with Grover," Abramoff wrote in an October 1995 e-mail outlining how Norquist and his group could help a client on a matter before Congress.
Abramoff wrote that the lobbying help he was seeking from Norquist's group was "perfectly consistent" with ATR's position but that Norquist nonetheless wanted a donation to be made.
"He said that if they want the taxpayer movement, including him, involved on this issue and anything else which will come over the course of the year or so, they need to become a major player with ATR. He recommended that they make a $50,000 contribution to ATR," the lobbyist wrote.
Abramoff cautioned one of his colleagues that the donation needed to be "kept discreet."
"We don't want opponents to think that we are trying buy the taxpayer movement," he said.
Kartch denied that anyone at ATR asked Abramoff for the money. "ATR is not responsible for comments by Jack Abramoff to third parties," he said.

Your bank records spied on

The Bush administration, relying on a presidential declaration of emergency, has secretly been tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years, according to U.S. government and industry officials.
Initiated shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, the surveillance program has used a broad new interpretation of the Treasury Department's administrative powers to bypass traditional banking privacy protections. It has swept in large volumes of international money transfers, including many made by U.S. citizens and residents, in an effort to track the locations, identities and activities of suspected terrorists.
Current and former counterterrorism officials said the program works in parallel with the previously reported surveillance of international telephone calls, faxes and e-mails by the National Security Agency, which has eavesdropped without warrants on more than 5,000 Americans suspected of terrorist links. Together with a hundredfold expansion of the FBI's use of "national security letters" to obtain communications and banking records, the secret NSA and Treasury programs have built unprecedented government databases of private transactions, most of them involving people who prove irrelevant to terrorism investigators.
Stuart Levey, undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in an interview last night that the newly disclosed program -- the existence of which the government sought to conceal -- has used the agency's powers of administrative subpoena to compel an international banking consortium to open its records. The Brussels-based cooperative, known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, links about 7,800 banks and brokerages and handles billions of transactions a year.
Terrorism investigators had sought access to SWIFT's database since the 1990s, but other government and industry authorities balked at the potential blow to confidence in the banking system. After the 2001 attacks, President Bush overrode those objections and invoked his powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to "investigate, regulate or prohibit" any foreign financial transaction linked to "an unusual and extraordinary threat."
Levey and other officials emphasized that the government has confined its financial surveillance to legitimate terrorism investigations and tightly targeted searches.
After identifying a suspect, Levey said, "you can do a search, and you can determine whom he sent money to, and who sent money to him."
"The way the SWIFT data works, you would have all kinds of concrete information -- addresses, phone numbers, real names, account numbers, a lot of stuff we can really work with, the kind of actionable information that government officials can really follow up on," Levey said.
He spoke about the program after it became clear the New York Times was planning to publish an article about it. The Times and other news organizations posted articles online last night.
Levey maintained that the government has "put into place very robust controls to make sure we are only using this information for anti-terrorism purposes."
He added: "We can only search the data we receive in furtherance of a terrorism lead. In fact, the analysts who have access to the data can't even access the database unless they type in the search they want to do and articulate why it's connected to terrorism."
The program is "on rock-solid legal ground," Levey said, and is based on the IEEPA, which he said "specifically gives us the authority to conduct this type of investigation if there is an emergency declared by the president."
In addition, the administration informed major central banks, including the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, of the program. "They were all briefed so they could exercise appropriate oversight," Levey said. "We have kept it confidential but made sure the appropriate people knew about it," including members of Congress involved in intelligence matters, he said.
The White House complained last night that the disclosure could hurt anti-terrorism activities.
"We are disappointed that once again the New York Times has chosen to expose a classified program that is working to protect Americans," spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "We know that al-Qaeda watches for any clue as to how we are fighting the war on terrorism and then they adapt, which increases the challenge to our intelligence and law enforcement officials."
Levey said it was no secret that investigators tried to follow terrorist money flows, but had been "trying to keep confidential . . . precisely how we do that." Because SWIFT is not a well-known source of financial information, "we're very disappointed that this source has now been revealed, because it will make our job much more difficult."
Levey's boss, outgoing Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, underlined those arguments in a statement the department issued late yesterday. Treasury's Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, he said, is an essential tool in the war on terror that has helped government officials "locate operatives and their financiers, chart terrorist networks, help bring them to justice, and save lives."
"It is not 'data mining,' or trolling through the private financial records of Americans. It is not a 'fishing expedition,' but rather a sharp harpoon aimed at the heart of terrorist activity," he said.
Levey declined to discuss instances in which the data gleaned from SWIFT had aided the crackdown on terrorism. He said that information is classified but added he could confirm that the information has been used to "confirm the identity of a major Iraqi terrorist facilitator."
Asked whether any high-ranking administration officials had expressed reservations about the program, Levey said: "Not that I've ever heard. This is a program which, to my knowledge, has been universally embraced and praised."
Intelligence analysts from the CIA and the FBI, working with Levey's office, have been poring over the financial transactions for the past several years in search of more links to al-Qaeda operatives. Officials said investigators now seek financial data on individuals and companies whose names first appear in documents, intercepted communications and other evidence gathered by intelligence agencies around the world.
"You can't type in a random name of someone" and search his data, said one intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The program only works for names already within the intelligence system that were collected elsewhere and are identified as being part of an open investigation."
That was not the case when the program began in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, when Bush signed Executive Order 13224 going after al-Qaeda's finances. Officials said far more information was collected early on, often on people who had nothing to do with al-Qaeda but whose Muslim names or businesses were similar to those used by suspected members of al-Qaeda. That method flooded the intelligence community with reams of material that was laborious to go through and repeatedly misled investigators.
"It has narrowed over time as our expertise has increased," one official said in describing a "higher bar" for searches that now depend on intelligence collected elsewhere.
Intelligence officials were eager to distance this program from the NSA's eavesdropping operation, saying repeatedly that the technology employed does not allow for the broad sweeps the NSA can conduct.
In a statement, SWIFT said it "responded to compulsory subpoenas for limited sets of data from the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Department of the Treasury. Our fundamental principle has been to preserve the confidentiality of our users' data while complying with the lawful obligations in countries where we operate. Striking that balance has guided SWIFT through this process with the United States Department of the Treasury."

The Treasury Department today mounted a staunch defense of a previously secret program to search a global financial database for terrorism-related transactions, saying the effort has been an effective weapon and that its disclosure can only help the world's terrorists.
In a news conference, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and Stuart Levey, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, insisted that the program has strong safeguards to protect the privacy of ordinary Americans' financial transactions. They said subpoenas of records from the global database are strictly limited to those of suspected terrorists.
They also said the program has led to the apprehension of terrorists and thus saved lives, but they declined to provide any examples, saying that information remains classified.
The program has continued to be effective despite a trend toward the use by terrorists of informal money-transfer networks and cash couriers instead of banks, Levey said.
"This terrorist tracking program administered through the Treasury Department . . . is really government at its best," Snow said. "This is a program that works. This is a program that makes Americans and the world safer."
The program, launched by the Bush administration shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, uses the Treasury Department's administrative subpoena powers to obtain records from a Brussels-based international banking consortium known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT. The consortium links about 7,800 banks and brokerages in 200 countries and handles billions of transactions a year, accounting for more than 80 percent of the international messaging traffic on funds transfers.
After the 2001 attacks, President Bush invoked his powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to "investigate, regulate or prohibit" any foreign financial transaction linked to "an unusual and extraordinary threat." His order for Treasury to gain access to SWIFT's database overrode objections from other government and banking industry authorities who worried that sharing the information would erode public confidence in the banking system.
According to current and former counterterrorism officials, the "terrorist finance tracking program," as Snow called it, works in tandem with another previously secret surveillance program in which the National Security Agency monitors international telephone calls, faxes and e-mails, The Washington Post reported today. Under the NSA program, the agency has eavesdropped on more than 5,000 Americans suspected of terrorist links without obtaining warrants. In a related effort, the NSA has also built a massive database of foreign and domestic telephone calls with the aim of tracking calling patterns to detect terrorist activity.
Combined with a huge expansion of the FBI's use of "national security letters" to obtain communications and banking records, the secret NSA and Treasury programs have built unprecedented government databases of private transactions, most of them involving people who prove irrelevant to terrorism investigators, Post staff writers Barton Gellman, Paul Blustein and Dafna Linzer reported.
The money flows revealed in the SWIFT records "don't lie," Snow told reporters today. "They tell a story," and ultimately "they lead to the terrorists themselves."
The program is "part of an overall governmental effort to map the terrorist networks, to apprehend the terrorists both here and around the world," Snow said. "By following the money, we've been able to locate operatives, we've been able to locate their financiers, we've been able to chart the terrorist networks, and we've been able to bring the terrorists to justice," he said. "There is no doubt that the program is an effective weapon in the larger war on terrorism."
Although the department has "been open and above-board" about the fact that it follows terrorist-related financial flows, the disclosure of the surveillance program involving SWIFT is "different," Snow said. "These disclosures go to the sources and the methods that are used. That can only help the terrorists. That can only make our job more difficult."
Treasury officials first spoke publicly about the program last night as the New York Times was preparing to publish a story about it in today's editions. The Times and other news organizations, including The Washington Post, posted articles about the program on their Web sites last night.
Snow said it was a "great disappointment" and "regrettable" that the program was revealed despite Treasury's efforts to keep it secret. "What the disclosures do is fundamentally . . . undermine and degrade an important source of information, make that source of information less useful." He added, "If people are sending money to help al-Qaeda, we want to know about it."
Snow said that "very significant protocols and safeguards" govern the cooperation between SWIFT and the Treasury Department, ensuring that all the data are kept "in an extremely secure environment," with access limited only to "people with appropriate security clearances." He said all inquiries go through a process that ensures they are "tied to a terrorist lead" and that all are "subject to review by SWIFT itself." The consortium has representatives, called "scrutineers," who observe the entire process and have the right to intervene to stop any improper inquiry, the Treasury secretary said.
As Snow and Levey described the program, it began with narrow subpoenas that SWIFT was not able to comply with because it lacked the ability to extract the specific information from its broad database. So SWIFT gave Treasury access to all of its data, and the two sides worked together to extract the limited records on the individuals or entities under investigation.
"The SWIFT subpoena is powerful but narrow, as it allows us access only to that information that is related to terrorism investigations," Levey said. "We are not permitted to browse through this data, nor can we search it for any non-terrorism investigation. In practice, this means that we have access to only a minute fraction of the data we obtain from SWIFT."
He noted that if suspected terrorist sends or receives money from someone, "you know that there's a real link between those two people." And anyone who wires money through a bank "needs to provide a name, address, account numbers and the like, exactly the kind of concrete information" that facilitates an investigation.
Levey said the records involve predominantly "overseas transfers" -- including those to or from the United States -- and do not contain "information on ordinary transactions within the United States," such as deposits, withdrawals, checks and electronic bill payments. Most domestic U.S. financial transactions are not handled by SWIFT, Levey said.
He said the program does not amount to data mining because it is limited to "targeted searches on individual targets," who are cited in the subpoenas by name along with a specific connection to an ongoing investigation.
"This is a very targeted search capability," Levey said.
He said he cannot say how many Americans have been affected by the program because SWIFT does not organize its information in a way to provide that information. But he said the number of searches carried out so far was in the "tens, maybe hundreds of thousands."
To date, auditors have "found consistently that the government is not abusing this data," Levey said. He said that in one instance, an audit found that a search was "inappropriate" and that as a result, the person who conducted it "was no longer allowed to work on this program." The information from the search was never disseminated, he added. He did not provide any other details.
Although "we have seen a trend toward informal transfers of money as well as cash couriers" to finance terrorist networks, Levey said, "this program remained powerful and valuable" because terrorists also have continued to use banks and may not have been aware of the role of SWIFT in tracking transactions.
"Just because there's a trend toward one way of moving money doesn't mean they don't move money in other ways," he said.

These are Anus-Clenching Times

The United States and Japan warned North Korea on Monday against a missile launch that experts say could reach as far as Alaska and threatened harsh action if the test flight goes ahead.
The warning coincided with the assessment by some officials that Pyongyang may have finished fueling for the launch of its long-range Taepodong-2 missile.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said a missile launch by North Korea would be viewed as a very serious matter and "provocative act" that would further isolate Pyongyang.
"We will obviously consult on next steps but I can assure everyone that it would be taken with utmost seriousness," said Rice at a news conference.
In Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who has twice met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il since taking office in 2001, said Tokyo, Washington and Seoul were all urging Pyongyang to act rationally and with restraint.
"Even now, we hope that they will not do this," Koizumi told a news conference. "But if they ignore our views and launch a missile, then the Japanese government, consulting with the United States, would have to respond harshly."
Koizumi declined to specify what steps Japan would take. The United States is consulting fellow members of the U.N. Security Council, said Washington's ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.
Bolton said Washington did not know what North Korea's intentions were.
The United States has found itself blocked by veto-wielding council members China and Russia in past attempts to raise North Korea's nuclear-weapons program in the Security Council.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the United States had a limited missile-defense system. Asked if the U.S. military would try to shoot down a North Korean missile, he would not discuss details about the capabilities or potential use of the system.
"I will not get into or discuss any specific alert status or capabilities," Whitman told reporters.
South Korean broadcaster YTN cited officials in Seoul as saying a launch of the North's Taepodong-2 missile was imminent.
However, speculation that the missile would be fired over the weekend came to nothing, and forecasts of cloud and rain over North Korea until Wednesday could delay it even further.
Tension over North Korea added to downward pressure on the Japanese yen, Korean won and Taiwan dollar on Monday, although currency markets were more focused on rising U.S. interest rates.
North Korea shocked the world in 1998 when it fired a missile, part of which flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean. Pyongyang said it had launched a satellite. Since 1999, it has adhered to a moratorium on ballistic missile launches.
U.S. officials said Washington had warned Pyongyang against a missile launch through a message passed to North Korean diplomats at the United Nations, but it had had no response.
Australia, one of the few Western countries with diplomatic ties to North Korea, said it had summoned Pyongyang's ambassador in Canberra to express its concerns.
Reports of test preparations coincide with a stalemate in six-party talks on unwinding Pyongyang's nuclear arms programs.
In Seoul, across the heavily fortified border dividing the two Koreas, the daily Dong-A Ilbo quoted a South Korean government official as saying the launch could be imminent.
"We think North Korea has poured liquid fuel into the missile propellant built in the missile launching pad. It is at the finishing stage before launching," the official said.
Any test would be expected to involve a Taepodong-2 missile with an estimated range of 2,175 to 2,670 miles. At that range, parts of Alaska in the United States would be within reach as would Asia and Russia.
U.S. officials said Pyongyang could still decide to scrap the launch, but that was unlikely given the complexity of siphoning fuel back out of a missile prepared for launch.
Some experts say that if there is no launch within 48 hours of fueling, the fuel will break down and damage the missile.
But Cho Min, an expert on the North at Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification, said fuel could stay for up to a month in the missile without causing major problems.

Episcopals choose female leader

COLUMBUS, Ohio (June 18) - Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori became the first woman elected to lead a church in the global Anglican Communion when she was picked Sunday to be the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. It was another groundbreaking and controversial move for a denomination that consecrated Anglicanism's first openly gay bishop just three years ago.
Standing before cheering delegates to Episcopal General Convention, Jefferts Schori said she was "awed and honored and deeply privileged to be elected." Outgoing Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold was at her side as she was introduced after closed-door balloting.
The choice of Jefferts Schori may worsen - and could even splinter - the already difficult relations between the American denomination and its fellow Anglicans. Episcopalians have been sparring with many in the other 37 Anglican provinces over homosexuality, but a female leader adds a new layer of complexity to the already troubled relationship.
Only two other Anglican provinces - New Zealand and Canada - have female bishops, although a handful of other provinces allow women to serve in the post. Still, there are many Anglican leaders who believe women should not even be priests.
At the General Convention where Jefferts Schori was elected, delegates have been debating whether to appease Anglican leaders by agreeing to temporarily stop ordaining gay bishops.
In 2003, the Americans shocked the Anglican world by electing the first openly gay bishop - V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Placing a female bishop at the head of the denomination could further anger conservatives worldwide and even within the U.S. church. And Jefferts Schori voted to confirm Robinson.
Andrew Carey, a British-based commentator on Anglican affairs and son of the Rev. George Carey, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, called Jefferts Schori "the most liberal of the lot" of candidates."I think this fully shows a noncompliance of spirit with rest of the communion," he said in a telephone interview.
Episcopal bishops elected Jefferts Schori on the fifth ballot in a 95-93 vote from a field including six other male candidates; other General Convention delegates confirmed the choice.
Gasps could be heard throughout the vast convention hall when Jefferts Schori's name was announced. The Rev. Jennifer Adams from Western Michigan, speaking from the floor, called Schori "a woman of integrity, consistency and faith. I have no doubt her election as presiding bishop will be a gift to our church."
Yet several delegates said they feared the global consequences.
"I can't help but consider the peculiar genius our church has for roiling the waters," said the Rev. Eddie Blue of Maryland. "I am shocked, dismayed and saddened by the choice."
The presiding bishop represents the Episcopal Church in meetings with other Anglican leaders and with leaders of other religious groups. But the presiding bishop's power is limited because of the democratic nature of the church. The General Convention is the top Episcopal policy-making body and dioceses elect their own bishops.
Jefferts Schori will be installed to her nine-year term at a ceremony Nov. 4 in Washington National Cathedral.
She will inherit a fractured church. The Pittsburgh-based Anglican Communion Network, which represents 10 U.S. conservative dioceses and more than 900 parishes within the Episcopal Church, is deciding whether to break from the denomination. The House of Bishops recently started a defense fund that will help fight legal battles against parishes that want to leave and take their property with them.
Membership in the Episcopal Church, as in other mainline Protestant groups, has been declining for years and has remained predominantly white. More than a quarter of the 2.3 million parishioners are age 65 or older.

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IRAN OFFERED ENTICING 'GIFTS'

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday Iran would consider incentives from six world powers to persuade it to abandon plans to make nuclear fuel, but insisted the crux of the package was still unacceptable.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana will soon deliver the proposals agreed by the U.S., Russian, British, German, French and Chinese foreign ministers in Vienna on Thursday.
"We will not pass judgment on the proposals hastily," Ahmadinejad told a crowd at the tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual father of the 1979 Islamic revolution, saying the package would receive due consideration.
"But using nuclear technology for production of nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes is part of our legal and certain rights and we will never negotiate on that with anybody," he added.
The West has demanded that Tehran give up uranium enrichment as proof that it is not developing nuclear weapons.
The incentives being offered by the six powers were still not known, but diplomats have been working on themes ranging from offering nuclear reactors to giving security guarantees.
No date has been announced for Solana to present the incentives to Iranian officials, but he plans to be in the Middle East on Sunday and Monday.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on state television: "We believe if ... there's goodwill then there's a possibility that our ideas may complete the proposal and give them (Westerners) a way out of the situation they have created for themselves."
However, he added: "The main pillar of the talks is that they should be free from preconditions."
Iranian politicians habitually use the word "precondition" for demands that Iran end its fuel work. Mottaki and Ahmadinejad have said there is no question of this, insisting on a right to make fuel for power generation.
Ahmadinejad on Friday told U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that Iran was willing to negotiate on nuclear issues as long as talks had no "preconditions of threats", state media reported.
Washington says this must not be seen as a final rejection, and that Iran could be staking out a negotiating position.
Iran has a labyrinthine command structure and comments from the president and the foreign minister may not be the last word on political matters.
Iran's main authority is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Supreme National Security Council, headed by chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, is directly charged with handling the nuclear dispute.
Analysts see the proposals from the world powers and a rare U.S. offer to enter into direct talks with Iran as attempts to build a united diplomatic front for possible later action in the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions.
In a statement, the Vatican said on Saturday diplomacy was the only way to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme.
"The Holy See is firmly convinced that even the present difficulties can and must be overcome through diplomatic contacts, using all the means diplomacy has at its disposal," it said.

Drop me mommy, one more time
With questions being asked about her parenting skills, and reports circulating that her husband has walked out on her, Britney Spears could definitely use a man about the house right now.
So it is perhaps no surprise to find this newest staff member - a male nanny - on Miss Spears' payroll.
The 24-year-old pop star has hired the male nanny, or "manny" as American showbusiness observers are calling him, to carry out such tasks as lugging around her eight-month-old baby Sean Preston, unload the shopping and wheeling the pram. He is also a trained bodyguard and more than capable of fending off Britney's ever-present following of photographers.
In fact, the new recruit, who is named Perry, looks to have been drafted in to do all the things her husband Kevin Federline did before he reportedly flew the coup recently.
Miss Spears took Perry on amid intense speculation over her ability to be a good mother. Two weeks ago she almost dropped Sean Preston on the pavement when she tripped up in platform shoes.
Britney had been holding the baby in one hand - and a tumbler of drink in the other - when her flared jeans caught under her shoes making her stumble on a pavement in New York.
The child was thankfully caught by her bodyguards as he fell towards the pavement head first.
As they caught him, his head jerked violently back and his orange baseball cap fell off onto the street.
A week before that she was photographed driving with the baby apparently not properly restrained in his car seat.
In February, the US Department of Children and Family Services visited the star's Californian mansion after she was photographed driving a black jeep with him on her lap wearing no seatbelt.
The singer initially said she was frightened of photographers who were trying to take the baby's picture.
"I made a mistake, and so it is what it is, I guess," she said afterwards.
Then Miss Spears had a second visit from child services after Sean Preston was found to have a skull fracture.
His was reportedly sustained when the child fell from a high-chair under the supervision of the couple's nanny.
Following the visit Miss Spears, who announced she was pregnant again last month, issued a statement through her lawyer saying that the visit had been routine and that the department had "determined there was no problem and no reason to open a formal investigation".

That kid deserves a Lamborghini

When a 16-year-old boy rolled into his driveway with a Mercedes-Benz no one had ever seen before, his mother got suspicious.After some questioning, the teenager told his mother that the car was a gift from Lisa Frodella, 39. Police said their investigation revealed the married mother had two sexual encounters with the youth at Long Island hotels in March and April.
Frodella surrendered to police Wednesday on charges of rape and a criminal sexual act. A judge set bail at $40,000 cash, or $120,000 bond.
"We believe that 90 percent of what comes out of this young man's mouth is not true," said Frodella's lawyer, Michael DerGarabedian.
The boy is now 17, but police said the encounters occurred when he was 16 -- one year younger than the age of legal sexual consent with an adult at least 21 years old.
Nassau County police spokesman Detective Lt. Kevin Smith said Frodella, of Carle Place, became acquainted with the teenager because he knew her daughters.
"She started to groom him, giving him special attention and text-messaging him," Smith said.
The 2002 Mercedes was returned to Frodella, who sold it.

AC/DC COMICS?

Years after she first emerged from the Batcave, Batwoman is coming out of the closet. DC Comics is resurrecting the classic comic book character as a lesbian, unveiling the new Batwoman in July as part of an ongoing weekly series that began this year.
The 5-foot-10 superhero comes with flowing red hair, knee-high red boots with spiked heels, and a form-fitting black outfit.
"We decided to give her a different point of view," explained Dan DiDio, vice president and executive editor at DC. "We wanted to make her a more unique personality than others in the Bat-family. That's one of the reasons we went in this direction."
The original Batwoman was started in 1956, and killed off in 1979. The new character will share the same name as her original alter ego, Kathy Kane. And the new Batwoman arrives with ties to others in the Gotham City world.
"She's a socialite from Gotham high society," DiDio said. "She has some past connection with Bruce Wayne. And she's also had a past love affair with one of our lead characters, Renee Montoya."
Montoya, in the "52" comic book series, is a former police detective. Wayne, of course, is Batman's true identity - but he has disappeared, along with Superman and Wonder Woman, leaving Gotham a more dangerous place.
The "52" series is a collaboration of four acclaimed writers, with one episode per week for one year. The comics will introduce other diverse characters as the story plays out.
"This is not just about having a gay character," DiDio said. "We're trying for overall diversity in the DC universe. We have strong African-American, Hispanic and Asian characters. We're trying to get a better cross-section of our readership and the world."
The outing of Batwoman created a furor of opinions on Web sites devoted to DC Comics. Opinions ranged from outrage to approval. Others took a more tongue-in-cheek approach to the announcement.
"Wouldn't ugly people as heroes be more groundbreaking?" asked one poster. "You know, 200-pound woman, man with horseshoe hair loss pattern, people with cold sores, etc.?"
DiDio asked that people wait until the new Batwoman's appearance in the series before they pass judgment.
"You know what? Judge us by the story and character we create," he said. "We are confident that we are telling a great story with a strong, complex character."
DiDio spent most of the morning fielding phone calls from media intrigued by the Batwoman reinvention.
"Sorry Batman, that's not the kind of "cod" piece I dig," she purred.