Courtesy The New York Times:

BEIJING — China announced that it intended to spend $123 billion by 2011 to establish universal health care for the country’s 1.3 billion people.

The plan was passed Wednesday at a session of the State Council, the Chinese cabinet. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao presided.

Xinhua, the state news agency, said the authorities would “take measures within three years to provide basic medical security to all Chinese in urban and rural areas, improve the quality of medical services and make medical services more accessible and affordable for ordinary people.”

Providing universal health care is seen by some economists as a way to stimulate domestic spending during the current economic downturn. The Chinese have a high savings rate, and one of the reasons usually cited is their concern about possible medical expenses.

-Article continued @ Source.

Courtesy The Guardian (UK):

 

Iranian riot police used batons and teargas today to break up defiant protests after prayers in Tehran, where Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the country’s most powerful clerics, warned that the regime was “in crisis” and urged a release of prisoners detained in post-election unrest.

Rafsanjani, a bitter rival of the supreme leader,Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, broke his month-long silence to issue a stark warning that the Islamic Republic had lost popular support. His carefully crafted address stopped short of directly attacking Khamenei or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose victory in June’s presidential poll has been widely denounced as a fraud. But its message was still strong.

“Today is a bitter day,” Rafsanjani declared from the pulpit at Tehran University’s sprawling prayer ground. “People have lost their faith in the regime and their trust is damaged. It’s necessary to regain people’s consent and restore their trust in the regime. Everyone has lost.”

-Article continues @ Source.

By Robert Fisk, The Independent:

It was Iran’s day of destiny and day of courage. A million of its people marched from Engelob Square to Azadi Square – from the Square of Revolution to the Square of Freedom – beneath the eyes of Tehran’s brutal riot police. The crowds were singing and shouting and laughing and abusing their “President” as “dust”.

Mirhossein Mousavi was among them, riding atop a car amid the exhaust smoke and heat, unsmiling, stunned, unaware that so epic a demonstration could blossom amid the hopelessness of Iran’s post-election bloodshed. He may have officially lost last Friday’s election, but yesterday was his electoral victory parade through the streets of his capital. It ended, inevitably, in gunfire and blood.

Not since the 1979 Iranian Revolution have massed protesters gathered in such numbers, or with such overwhelming popularity, through the boulevards of this torrid, despairing city. They jostled and pushed and crowded through narrow lanes to reach the main highway and then found riot police in steel helmets and batons lined on each side. The people ignored them all. And the cops, horribly outnumbered by these tens of thousands, smiled sheepishly and – to our astonishment – nodded their heads towards the men and women demanding freedom. Who would have believed the government had banned this march?

-Article continued here.

By Robert Fisk, The Independent:

First the cop screamed abuse at Mir Hossein Mousavi’s supporter, a white-shirted youth with a straggling beard and unkempt hair. Then he smashed his baton into the young man’s face. Then he kicked him viciously in the testicles. It was the same all the way down to Vali Asr Square. Riot police in black rubber body armour and black helmets and black riot sticks, most on foot but followed by a flying column of security men, all on brand new, bright red Honda motorcycles, tearing into the shrieking youths – hundreds of them, running for their lives. They did not accept the results of Iran’s presidential elections. They did not believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 62.6 per cent of the votes. And they paid the price.

“Death to the dictator,” they were crying on Dr Fatimi Street, now thousands of them shouting abuse at the police. Were they to endure another four years of the smiling, avuncular, ever-so-humble President who swears by democracy while steadily thinning out human freedoms in the Islamic Republic? They were wrong, of course. Ahmadinejad really does love democracy. But he also loves dictatorial order. He is not a dictator. He is a Democrator.

Yesterday wasn’t the time for the finer points of Iranian politics. That Mir Hossein Mousavi had been awarded a mere 33 per cent of the votes – by midday, the figure was humiliatingly brought down to 32.26 per cent – brought forth the inevitable claims of massive electoral fraud and vote-rigging. Or, as the crowd round Fatimi Square chorused as they danced in a circle in the street: “Zionist Ahmadinejad – cheating at exams.” That’s when I noticed that the police always treated the protesters in the same way. Head and testicles. It was an easy message to understand. A smash in the face, a kick in the balls and Long Live the Democrator.

Many of the protesters – some of them now wearing scarves over their faces, all coloured green, the colour of Mousavi’s campaign – were trying to reach the Interior Ministry where the government’s electoral council were busy counting (or miscounting, depending on your point of view) Friday’s huge popular national vote. I descended into the basement of this fiercely ugly edifice – fittingly, it was once the headquarters of the Shah’s party, complete with helipad on the roof – where cold chocolate lattes and strawberry fruitcake were on offer to journalists, and where were displayed the very latest poll results, put up at 10.56am Iranian time.

Eighty per cent of the votes had been counted and the results came up as Ahmadinejad 64.78 per cent; Mousavi 32.26 per cent; Mohsen Rezai (a former Revolutionary Guard commander) 2.08 per cent; and Mehdi Karoubi (a former parliament speaker) a miserable 0.89 per cent. How could this be, a man asked me on a scorching, dangerous street an hour later. Karoubi’s party has at least 400,000 members. Were they all sleeping on Friday?

There were a few, sparse demonstrators out for the Democrator, all men, of course, and many of them draped in the Iranian flag because the Democrator – devout Muslim as he always displays himself – wrapped his election campaign in the national flag. Each of these burly individuals handed out free copies of the execrable four-page news-sheet Iran.

“Ahmadinejad,” the headline read, “24 million votes. People vote for Success, Honesty and the Battle against Corruption.” Not the obvious headline that comes to mind. But Mousavi’s Green Word newspaper allegedly had its own headline dictated to it by the authorities – before they shut it down yesterday: “Happy Victory to the People.” And you can’t get more neutral than that.

-Article Continues @ Source.

YouTube Link

Video by Max Blumenthal in Jerusalem.

Related article here.

Car giant General Motors (GM) has filed for bankruptcy protection, marking the biggest failure of an industrial company in US history.

The widely expected move comes after GM had seen its losses widen following a steep fall in sales in recent years. The move into bankruptcy protection has been backed by the US government, which is now expected to take a 60% stake in the company. The White House is also going to put another $30bn (£18.5bn) into GM. President Barack Obama described the move as “tough” but said it was “also fair” and added it would “give this iconic American company a chance to rise again”.

He said that the US government, which will own 60% of the carmaker, would be a “reluctant shareholder” and that he had no interest in running it.

-Article continues with video, courtesy BBC News.

(AP) Workers at a Sony factory in southwestern France freed two company executives Friday whom they had held to protest the severance package offered for when the plant shuts for good.

Serge Foucher, CEO of Sony France, and Roland Bentz, the head of human resources, had been prevented from leaving the plant since Thursday afternoon.

The Workers’ Council representing Sony employees agreed to let the executives out of the plant and to restart talks with management on the severance package. Regional authorities had persuaded the two sides to sit down and negotiate outside the plant.

Talks were under way early Friday afternoon, according to the Workers’ Council of the factory.

Patrick Achaguer, a CGT union member at the plant, said the workers want professional training to help them find new jobs and financial help with relocation if they have to move to find work.

“We are all going to be fired. We want to be treated in a dignified manner,” he said.

-Article continued here.

Courtesy El Paso Times:

EL PASO – Mexico is one of two countries that “bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse,” according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.

The command’s “Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)” report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. “In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.

“The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.”

-Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Courtesy The LATimes:

Reporting from Los Angeles and Shanghai — Melamine in Chinese-produced milk powder has sickened hundreds of thousands of children and added to a growing list of made-in-China foods banned across the globe. Now, some scientists and consumer advocates are raising concerns that fish from China may also be contaminated with the industrial chemical.

China is the world’s largest producer of farm-raised seafood, exporting billions of dollars worth of shrimp, catfish, tilapia, salmon and other fish. The U.S. imported about $2 billion of seafood products from China in 2007, almost double the volume of four years earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

 

But industry experts and businesspeople in China say that melamine has been routinely added to fish and animal feed to artificially boost protein readings. And new research suggests that, unlike in cows and pigs, the edible flesh in fish that have been fed melamine contains residues of the nitrogen-rich substance. 

Melamine, commonly used in plastics and dishware, can lead to urinary problems such as kidney stones and even renal failure.

Last year, pet foods made with melamine-laced ingredients from China sickened or killed thousands of dogs and cats in the U.S. This year, infant formula tainted with the chemical has been linked to illness in 294,000 small children and six deaths in China, according to China’s Ministry of Health.

In the U.S., fish from China can be found in the frozen food aisle in supermarkets and is served in posh restaurants. 

“China’s a big place, and it does a lot of processing, and cheaply too,” said Brian Dedmon, purchasing manager for the Fish King distribution plant in Burbank.

Fish King, which supplies hundreds of Southern California restaurants and has a store in Glendale, says it buys processed snow crab meat, squid and other seafood from China to meet market demand and because the price is competitive. Dedmon says the company relies on government inspections, its importers and its own experience to ensure the fish it buys is safe.

“We’re definitely concerned about melamine, but by the time the fish gets to us, health issues should’ve been taken care of by the government agencies and brokers that we go through,” he said.

Not on the checklist

But even though some U.S. fish importers are voluntarily testing for melamine, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for ensuring the safety of imported fish, currently doesn’t require seafood products to be screened for melamine. Yet research from its own scientists has raised a warning flag.

Laboratory studies of melamine-fed catfish, trout, tilapia and salmon by the FDA’s Animal Drugs Research Center found that fish tissues had melamine concentrations of up to 200 parts per million. That’s 80 times the maximum “tolerable” amount set by the FDA for safe consumption.

 

Courtesy Associated Content:

…Hot Chocolate Recall Items

The Hot Chocolate recall affects the following items, according to the FDA and Dorsey Marketing, Inc.

There are three hot chocolate products being recalled.

G&J Hot Cocoa Stuffer Item 120144 is packaged in blue and green boxes, according to Dorsey Marketing, Inc. The small package contains the hot chocolate, marshmallows and a candy cane. The UPC number being recalled is UPC 061361201444.

Two flavors of G&J Cocoa item 120126 are also being recalled. The G&J French Vanilla Cocoa with a UPC #061361201260 is on the recall list. Identify it by the attached whisk and the green bag. Also with a whisk, but in a pink bag, is the G&J Double Chocolate Cocoa with a UPC # 061361201260. Both should be discarded or returned for a refund.

The last hot chocolate recall is the G&J His and Hers Hot Cocoa Set Item 120129. This may have been a gift you bought as a White Elephant Christmas gift, or for a favorite couple. The UPC # of the recalled hot chocolate product is 489702201296.

-Complete Article @ Sourced Site.