Tabloid Editor Got Free Horse from UK Police Force

By Jill Lawless and Meera Selva

London - British police gave former News of the World tabloid editor Rebekah Brooks a retired police steed to look after, the force confirmed Tuesday — but they insisted it was not a gift horse.

The Metropolitan Police said the horse was loaned to Brooks — former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers — in 2008 under a program that allows people to care for retired service animals and ride them.

Brooks' spokesman, David Wilson, confirmed that Brooks had been a "foster carer" for the animal and paid for the upkeep of the horse while it was stabled at her rural home.

"This is just a charitable thing Rebekah did," he said.

Brooks is married to horse trainer Charlie Brooks and has a country home near Chipping Norton, northwest of London, a posh rural enclave whose residents include Prime Minister David Cameron. Wilson said the couple "share a passion for horses."

The force said when the horse — which was not identified by name — got too old it was rehoused with a police officer in 2010. It has since died of natural causes, police said.

Britain's media ethics inquiry is currently looking into claims of crooked relations between the press and police.

Brooks is one of several current and former Murdoch executives who have been arrested and questioned over wrongdoing by the News of the World, whose journalists routinely intercepted the voicemails of people in the public eye in a quest for scoops.

Murdoch closed the paper in July amid public revulsion over the revelations.

On Tuesday the inquiry published a written statement from Canadian singer Bryan Adams, who said he was shocked when The Sun, another Murdoch tabloid, ran a story about him being stalked at his London home in 2008.

Adams, 52, said he had reported to police that a man and his mother were harassing him by waiting outside his home and ringing his doorbell incessantly. He said he had not discussed the incident with others and believed that police had leaked the information to the newspaper.

"I had not consented to this information being made public and I was very annoyed that what I saw as a private issue was being reported without my knowledge or consent," he wrote. "Although I have no proof, and therefore it is of course speculation, I do not believe that there could be any other explanation than the fact that the source must have been someone related to my call to the police."

Also Tuesday, former police detective Jacqui Hames told the inquiry that she believed the News of the World had placed her and her police officer husband under surveillance to intimidate them over a murder inquiry her husband was working on.

Hames' husband David Cook had led an investigation into the 1987 death of private investigator Daniel Morgan, an unsolved murder that has been blighted by police corruption. The most recent attempt to prosecute the case collapsed in March 2011, and the Guardian newspaper later reported alleged corrupt links between the suspects involved and the News of the World.

Hames said she had asked Brooks in 2003 why they had spied on her and her husband and said she did not receive a satisfactory answer.

"I believe that the real reason for the News of the World placing us under surveillance was that suspects in the Daniel Morgan murder inquiry were using their association with a powerful and well-resourced newspaper to try to intimidate us and so attempt to subvert the investigation," Hames testified to the inquiry.

Supreme Court Rejects Emergency Carp Measures

By John Flesher

Traverse City, Michigan - The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to order emergency measures that might prevent Asian carp from reaching the Great Lakes, despite a warning that the exotic fish pose a "dire threat" to the region's environment and economy.

Michigan and four neighboring states wanted the Army Corps of Engineers to install nets in two 

Chicago-area rivers and to expedite a study of permanent steps to head off an invasion by bighead and silver carp, which have advanced up the Mississippi River and its tributaries to within 55 miles of Lake Michigan. Scientists say if the large, prolific carp spread widely in the lakes, they could starve out native species and devastate the $7 billion fishing industry.

The justices' ruling, which was issued without comment, was their fourth rejection of pleas by the states for interim steps — including closure of navigational locks in the Chicago waterways — while their lawsuit against the corps is pending in a federal district court.

"It is our duty to aggressively fight to protect the Great Lakes from invasive species," Michigan Attorney Bill Schuette said. "So while I'm disappointed, we will continue forward on all fronts."

Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania have joined Michigan in demanding faster action against the carp, which eat vast amounts of tiny plants and animals at the base of the food chain.

The Corps of Engineers says it will complete in 2015 a study of ways to prevent migration of fish and other species between the Great Lakes and Mississippi watersheds. The five states and environmental groups say that's not quick enough, because it could take many additional years to carry out the study's recommendations.

They advocate placing barriers in Chicago-area waterways to cut a link between the watersheds created more than a century ago when engineers reversed the flow of the Chicago River to flush the city's sewage toward the Mississippi. A recent report by groups representing Great Lakes states and cities proposed three methods for doing so, with estimated costs as high as $9.5 billion.

Because permanent separation could take nearly two decades to complete, the states are suing for short-term actions. Their petition to the high court requested installation of block nets in the Little Calumet and Grand Calumet rivers along with quicker completion of the corps study.

Federal officials say the nets would do more harm than good and the study timetable is necessary because of its complexity.

The Obama administration has devoted more than $100 million to shielding the lakes from the carp and recently announced plans to spend $51.5 million this year. Plans include operating and monitoring an electric fish barrier near Chicago, stepped-up commercial fishing in the area, and field testing new strategies such as high-pressure underwater guns and pheromones that could lure carp into lethal traps.

Chicago business interests oppose separating the watersheds and closing the locks, which they say would disrupt commercial barge and pleasure boat traffic.

"Thankfully, the Supreme Court came down on the right side of this issue," said Mark Biel, spokesman for a group called UnLock Our Jobs. "Suitable and effective steps are being taken to ensure we protect the lakes. Unfortunately, those who have used this issue for their own political agendas will continue to push for devastating actions that prevent the Great Lakes region from working together on a comprehensive solution."

Joel Brammeier, president of the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes, said the court ruling was "not so much a setback as a way station on the road to separation. We've got to keep our eye on a long-term outcome."

Google's New Privacy Policy May Violate EU Rules

By  Gabriele Steinhauser

Brussels - Google's new privacy policy appears to violate the European Union's data protection rules, France's regulator said Tuesday, just two days before the new guidelines are set to come into force.

Google announced its new privacy policy with much fanfare last month. The rules, which are set to come into force on Thursday, regulate how the Web giant uses the enormous amounts of personal data its collects through its search engine, email and other services.

However, the EU's data protection authorities are concerned about the privacy effects of the policy and earlier this month asked French regulator CNIL to investigate them.

"Our preliminary analysis shows that Google's new policy does not meet the requirements of the European Directive on Data Protection," CNIL said in a letter to Google Chief Executive Larry Page. The letter was sent Monday and posted on CNIL's website Tuesday.

The agency said Google's explanation of how it will use the data was too vague and difficult to understand "even for trained privacy professionals."

The new policy makes it easier for Google to combine the data of one person using different services such as the search engine, YouTube or Gmail if he is logged into his Google account. That allows Google to create a broader profile of that user and target advertising based on that person's interests and search history more accurately. Advertising is the main way Google makes its money.

However, CNIL said data protection authorities in the EU "are deeply concerned about the combination of personal data across services," adding they had "strong doubts about the lawfulness and fairness of such processing."

Vivian Reding, the EU's Justice Commissioner who oversees the bloc's data protection rules, said she welcomed CNIL's letter and called on Google to delay its new policy.

Google argues that combining the data into one profile makes search results more relevant and allows a user to cross-navigate between different services more easily. It says the main purpose of the new policy is to combine the more than 70 different rules for Google's wide-ranging services into one that is simpler and more readable.

"We are confident that our new simple, clear and transparent privacy policy respects all European data protection laws and principles," Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, wrote in response to CNIL's original letter, adding that users had more than a month to get familiar with the new rules.

Fleischer also rejected CNIL's reiterated request to delay the rollout of the privacy policy until all concerns have been cleared up.

"We have notified over 350 million authenticated Google users and provided highly visible notifications on our home page and in search results for our non-authenticated users," he wrote. "To pause now would cause a great deal of confusion for users."

The probe of the privacy policy is one of several battle lines between Google and the European Commission, the executive arms of the 27-country EU.

Google's search engine has a market share of more than 90 percent in the EU, with rival services like Microsoft's Bing gaining little traction.

The Commission is already examining whether Google uses this dominance to stop other search engines from entering the market. It is also investigating complaints from Microsoft and Apple into whether Motorola, which Google is in the process of taking over, is breaking EU competition rules in its aggressive enforcement of standard-essential patents.

Spanish Authorities Arrest Anonymous Activists

Madrid - Police say they have arrested four suspected hackers allied to the loose-knit Anonymous movement in connection with attacks on Spanish political party websites.

A National Police statement said two servers used by the group in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have been blocked.

It said the four included the alleged manager of Anonymous' computer operations in Spain and Latin America, who was identified only by his initials and the aliases "Thunder" and "Pacotron."

The four are suspected of defacing websites, carrying out denial-of-service attacks and publishing data on police assigned to the royal palace and the premier's office online.

Tuesday's statement said the arrests were part of an Interpol operation.

Quadruple Transplant a Failure

Ankara, Turkey - A Turkish hospital says world's first quadruple limb transplant has failed.

Hacettepe University says doctors had to remove two arms and two legs that were transplanted on 27-year-old Sevket Cavdar because of tissue incompatibility.

Doctors attached the limbs on Cavdar on Friday night. He had lost his arms and legs in 1998 when he was accidentally electrocuted.

The operation followed a failed triple limb transplant two months ago at another hospital in the southern city of Antalya. The doctors there were forced to remove a leg from a patient also due to tissue incompatibility. The same patient also received two arms.

Monsanto Agrees to Pay Victims of Dioxin in West Virginia…But Not Much

By Matt Bewig

 

United States - Giant chemical corporation Monsanto has agreed to a tentative settlement requiring it to pay nearly $100 million to settle claims that its factory in Nitro, West Virginia, contaminated the small town and its residents with the toxic chemical dioxin, a cancer-causing waste byproduct of the manufacture of the herbicide 2,4,5-T.

 

For about 75 years, between 1929 and 2004, the Monsanto plant churned out herbicides, rubber products and other chemicals, although it made 2,4,5-T only from 1949 to 1971. Monsanto sold 2,4,5-T (later found to be contaminated with dioxin) to the Army for use in making Agent Orange, which it sprayed on Vietnamese jungles and farms. The dioxin is estimated to have killed and maimed an estimated 400,000 people and caused 500,000 birth defects in Vietnam, but federal courts dismissed a case brought by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange.

 

Shortly after the Monsanto plant closed in 2004, a class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of tens of thousands of people who lived, worked and went to school in Nitro after 1949. The suit alleged that Monsanto spread toxic substances, including dioxins, all over the town, exposing residents to dioxin levels 100,000 times higher than acceptable. The lawsuit demands medical monitoring for at least 5,000—and as many as 80,000—current and former Nitro residents. Under the tentative agreement announced on February 24, 2012, Monsanto will pay for a 30-year medical monitoring program with a primary fund of $21 million for testing, and up to $63 million in additional funding, if needed; $9 million to clean the homes of class members of dioxin; and court-approved legal fees incurred during seven years of litigation.

 

Before the agreement is finalized, however, a fairness hearing must be held to give class members a chance to object to its terms. That hearing is scheduled for June 18, when expert testimony must be presented to prove the settlement is appropriate. Already Charleston, West Virginia, lawyer Thomas Urban, who represents some Nitro residents, has filed a motion objecting to the $9 million cap on cleanup costs, (an expert for the residents estimated the cost at between $945 million and $3.8 billion), and also the fact that only 3,000 to 5,000 class members would receive any medical monitoring, when there are potentially 80,000 class members.

 

Despite the seemingly large dollar amount of the settlement, Monsanto, which in 2010 earned a profit of $1.1 billion on revenues of $10.5 billion, announced that the settlement would not affect ongoing earnings per share, but that the one-time expense would reduce previously reported earnings per share by .05 percent.