House Republicans have temporarily blocked legislation to feed school meals to thousands more hungry children.

Republicans used a procedural maneuver Wednesday to try to amend the $4.5 billion bill, which would give more needy children the opportunity to eat free lunches at school and make those lunches healthier. First lady Michelle Obama has lobbied for the bill as part of her "Let's Move" campaign to combat childhood obesity.

House Democrats said the GOP amendment, which would have required background checks for child care workers, was an effort to kill the bill and delayed a final vote on the legislation rather than vote on the amendment.

Because the nutrition bill is identical to legislation passed by the Senate in August, passage would send it to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature. If the bill were amended, it would be sent back to the Senate with little time left in the legislative session.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. said the House would hold separate votes on Thursday on the amendment and the bill.

Republicans say the nutrition bill is too costly and an example of government overreach.

"It's not about making our children healthy and active," said Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee. "We all want to see our children healthy and active. This is about spending and the role of government and the size of government — a debate about whether we're listening to our constituents or not."

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has also taken a swipe at the first lady's campaign, bringing cookies to a speech at a Pennsylvania school last month and calling the campaign a "school cookie ban debate" and "nanny state run amok" on her Twitter feed.

The legislation would give the government the power to decide what kinds of foods could be sold and what ingredients may be limited in school lunch lines and vending machines.

The Agriculture Department would create the standards, which would likely keep popular foods like hamburgers and pizza in school cafeterias but make them healthier, using leaner meat or whole wheat crust, for example. Vending machines could be stocked with less candy and fewer high-calorie drinks.

The bill would provide money to serve more than 20 million additional after-school meals annually to children in all 50 states. Many of those children now only receive after-school snacks. It would also increase the number of children eligible for school meals programs by at least 115,000, using Medicaid and census data to identify them.

The legislation would increase the amount of money schools are reimbursed by 6 cents a meal, a priority for schools that say they don't have the dollars to feed needy kids.

Source: AP News

Student Facing 3 Years In Prison for Modifying Xbox 360

In the first case of its kind, a man from Southern California is set to go on trial Tuesday on criminal charges of circumventing digital rights management (DRM) by modifying Microsoft's Xbox 360 console.

Twenty-eight-year old Matthew Crippen faces two counts of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and could face a maximum of three years in prison if convicted.

The Cal State Fullerton liberal arts student is accused of installing chips on Xbox 360 consoles that allowed people to run pirated DVDs and other unofficial content.

In a potentially devastating decision, a federal judge ruled last week that Crippen could not claim "fair use" as a defense for modifying a gaming console.

Crippen's attorneys had hoped to claim that installing a mod chip in a gaming console was no different than "jailbreaking" an iPhone, since both devices share many of the same basic functions.

In July, the US Copyright Office announced that jailbreaking an iPhone, a process that allows non-Apple approved software to be added to the device, including pirated software, was not a DMCA violation.

"While a copyright owner might try to restrict the programs that can be run on a particular operating system, copyright law is not the vehicle for imposition of such restrictions," the office said. "The activity of an iPhone owner who modifies his or her iPhone’s firmware/operating system in order to make it interoperable with an application that Apple has not approved, but that the iPhone owner wishes to run on the iPhone, fits comfortably within the four corners of fair use."

But US District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez said "fair use" laws were irrelevant to the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, under which Crippen is charged, because the Copyright Office's iPhone jailbreaking exemption didn't extend to gaming consoles.

"The DMCA only requires a showing that the technological measure was related to a valid copyright interest, not that any infringement actually occurred," Gutierrez said. "Moreover, although the government will have to establish that the technological measure that Mr. Crippen allegedly circumvented was used to control access to copyrighted work, the government need not show that the modified Xbox's were actually used for infringing purposes."

Crippen reportedly made a business out of modifying Xbox 360 consoles. Last year, he was indicted for circumventing "a technological measure that effectively controlled access to a copyrighted work" after modifying a console for an undercover security investigator and then an undercover federal agent.

He told Wired that the purpose of modifying the Xbox consoles was to allow people to use decrypted backup copies of their own gaming software, noting that "it's a given that any game will be scratched in that system."

Customers have complained that the Xbox 360 console scratches their discs, eventually making them unusable.

When Microsoft's Kinect gaming device was released, the company threatened legal action against those modifying its product, but later backed off and embraced "product tampering."

"Anytime there is engagement and excitement around our technology, we see that as a good thing," Craig Davidson, senior director for Xbox Live at Microsoft told the New York Times. "It's naive to think that any new technology that comes out won’t have a group that tinkers with it."

"It’s a trend that is undeniable, using public resources to improve on products, whether it be the Kinect or anything else," he added.

Insurers Gave U.S. Chamber $86 Million Used to Oppose Obama's Health Law

Health insurers last year gave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce $86.2 million that was used to oppose the health-care overhaul law, according to tax records and people familiar with the donation.

The insurance lobby, whose members include Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Philadelphia-based Cigna Corp., gave the money to the Chamber in 2009 as Democrats were increasing their criticism of the industry, according to one person who requested anonymity because laws don’t require identifying funding sources. The Chamber of Commerce received the money from the Washington-based America’s Health Insurance Plans when the industry was urging Congress to drop a plan to create a competing public insurance option.

The spending exceeded the insurer group’s entire budget from a year earlier and accounted for 40 percent of the Chamber’s $214.6 million in 2009 spending. The expenditures reflect the insurers’ attempts to influence the bill after Democrats in Congress and the White House put more focus on regulation of the insurance industry.

The $86.2 million paid for advertisements, polling and grass roots events to drum up opposition to the bill that’s projected to provide coverage to 32 million previously uninsured Americans, according to Tom Collamore, a Chamber of Commerce spokesman. The Chamber used the funds to “advance a market- based health-care system and advocate for fundamental reform that would improve access to quality care while lowering costs,” it said in a statement.

U.S. Disclosure Law

The organizations disclosed the funding yesterday in annual tax records required under U.S. law. The Chamber’s records show it received $86.2 million from a single group, which a second person briefed on the transaction by those involved identified as America’s Health Insurance Plans, also called AHIP. More...

Texas executed man in 2000 based on someone else’s DNA, test reveals

A Texas man was condemned to death and executed in 2000 on the basis of hair that did not belong to him, according to the results of a recent DNA test.

A test by Mitotyping Technologies published by the Texas Observer magazine -- which fought a three-year legal battle to gain access to the evidence -- showed that Claude Howard Jones was "excluded as the contributor of this questioned hair."

Jones - who had a long criminal record - had insisted that he was waiting in the car when his accomplice killed Allen Hilzendager during a liquor store robbery.

He was convicted of the 1989 murder, and denied several appeals, largely on the basis of that single strand of hair which police found at the scene.

Forensic science was limited at the time to examining the hair under a microscope, where it appeared to belong to Jones. More...

David Corn and Tom DeFrank joined Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball to discuss George W. Bush's recent sit-downs with Matt Lauer and Oprah Winfrey and his persistent lies about Saddam Hussein's ability to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.

Daily Mail Online - CIA Paid Liverpool Buyout Tycoon Millions to Use his Jet for Torture Flights

A jet owned by a senior executive in the US firm which has bought Liverpool Football Club was chartered by the CIA and used in flights allegedly linked to the rendition of terror suspects.

The plane is owned by Phillip Morse, 69, the vice-chairman of New England Sports Ventures, which bought the club on Friday for £300million.

An investigation has established that between 2002 and 2005 the CIA chartered the plane from Mr Morse for millions of pounds and made extensive use of it.

Paid by the CIA: Philip Morse, above right, with ex-U.S. president George Bush Snr

Inquiries by the European Parliament and human rights groups have linked the plane to alleged extraordinary rendition operations which took place during the same period.

A European Parliament report linked the jet directly to the abduction of Abu Omar, an Islamic preacher, who was snatched from a Milan street by the CIA in 2003 before being taken to Cairo.

Extraordinary rendition entails the abduction and transfer of a terrorist suspect from one country to another. People have been taken to states such as Egypt, Syria, Morocco and Uzbekistan which are suspected of practising torture in violation of a United Nations Convention.

The disclosure that such a senior figure in New England Sports Ventures (NESV) has been paid millions by the CIA is likely to alarm football fans already concerned that one of the country’s most prestigious clubs is still in American hands.

Snatched: Abu Omar was apprehended by the CIA while in Italy

Mr Omar was snatched by the CIA in 2003 despite having been granted political asylum by the Italian government. He was moved to an American air force base at Aviano near Venice before being transported to a NATO base in Ramstein in Germany. He was then flown from Germany to Cairo.

The European Parliament report reproduced flight documents for Mr Morse’s jet, which carries the logo of the Boston Red Sox baseball team, also owned by NESV, on its tail fin. The 19-seater Gulfstream IV, with the registration N85VM, flew from Washington to Ramstein on February 4, 2003.

On February 17, the day of Mr Omar’s abduction and rendition, the plane left Ramstein at 6.52pm and arrived in Cairo at 10.30pm. The following day the plane made the return journey to Washington via Shannon in Ireland.

MEPs and European rights campaigners believe the plane may have been used in other rendition operations. They point out that its travel destinations, which are detailed in flight logs, are totally at odds with those expected of a normal private charter jet.

During the same period it was on loan to the CIA the jet flew to Kabul in Afghanistan, Rabat in Morocco, Tripoli in Libya and Baku in Azerbaijan. The jet, which changed its registrations details in December 2004 to N227SV, also made at least 51 trips to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Amnesty International, which produced a report on rendition flights in 2006, believes the aircraft may have notched up 114 separate take offs and landings at the facility.

In a report released exclusively to The Mail on Sunday last week, human rights group Reprieve raises concerns that the plane was used in at least two more rendition flights.

It links a flight from Guantanamo Bay to Morocco on March 27 2004 and a journey from Guantanamo to Romania and Morocco on April 12 2004 to the abduction of al Qaeda operatives Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.

Abduction link: Mr Morse's jet with the Red Sox logo on its tail fin

All four men were reportedly transferred from Guantanamo to foreign prisons in March and April 2004. The CIA subsequently admitted that it has video footage of al-Shibh under interrogation in a Morocco black prison.

The plane’s flight records show it also made a series of visits to RAF Leuchars in Scotland and also landed at Glasgow, Edinburgh and Luton airports.

Located by The Mail on Sunday at his home in Florida on Friday night, Mr Morse confirmed the arrangement with the CIA. He said: ‘Yeah, that’s true.’

But he insisted he had stopped renting the plane to the agency after he became aware of the rendition of Mr Omar.

He said: ‘The plane is still chartered. It’s just not chartered to the CIA.’

He said he became aware of the investigation into Mr Omar’s abduction in early 2005 and at that point he stopped hiring the jet to the CIA.

He said: ‘I didn’t know anything at the time. I don’t know that it’s ever been verified.’

Mr Morse, a partner in NESV, made his fortune from a company he founded which makes tubes used in heart surgery.

In 2002 he bought a ten per cent stake in NESV, which experts believe was valued at £26million at the time.

Mr Morse bought the white Gulfstream IV in 1995.

Clara Gutteridge of Reprieve said: ‘Questions have now been raised about the involvement of Mr Morse’s plane N85VM in three illegal rendition operations, and Reprieve is actively investigating its involvement in a number of further “transfers to torture”.

‘In light of these revelations, I hope very much that Mr Morse’s moral fibre is of the same high calibre as his bank balance.

‘I therefore look forward to Mr Morse’s full co-operation with our investigations into the clandestine activities of this executive jet. If Mr Morse fails to assist in investigations, this would raise serious questions as to his fitness to own Liverpool Football Club.’

Overseas tycoons now own nine of the 20 Premier League clubs. A NESV UK spokesman said: ‘Phillip is a passive investor in NESV and is not involved in our work here in the UK. Phillip addressed these questions publicly back in 2005, and any further inquiries about the use of his private plane are really a matter for Phillip.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1321244/CIA-paid-Liverpool-buyout-tycoons-millions--use-jet-torture-flights.html#ixzz12ewUoPOV

Some women who were raped at the US's Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq were later "honor killed" by their families, says a Jordanian reporter who writes on women's issues.

"In Abu Ghraib, women were tortured by the Americans much more than the men," Lima Nabil told The Independent. "One woman said she witnessed five girls being raped. Most of the women in the prison were raped – some of them left prison pregnant. Families killed some of these women – because of the shame."

Nabil, who has reported extensively on the status of women in the Arab world and runs a home for runaway girls, made the comments to renowned foreign correspondent Robert Fisk in an article on honor killings in Jordan. Nabil did not expand on her comments in the article.

Fisk reported that a "very accurate source in Washington" in close contact with military personnel has confirmed "terrible stories of gang rape" by US forces at the now-notorious prison.

The unnamed source told Fisk that images of women being raped were behind the Obama administration's decision not to release any more pictures of abuses at Abu Ghraib. The original set of images, showing male prisoners being abused, were released in 2004, horrifying and angering the Arab world.

Military and White House officials have repeatedly denied that the Abu Ghraib images still under wraps depict rape.

Allegations that women were raped at the facility have been made for years. In 2004, New Yorker correspondent Seymour Hersh alleged rape at the facility and said the US government has videotape of underage boys being sodomized.

"Some of the worst that happened that you don't know about ... Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib which is 30 miles from Baghdad....

"The women were passing messages saying "Please come and kill me, because of what's happened." Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out."

Lima Nabil's journalistic career has had its share of controversies. She says she has been threatened over her reporting on the abuse of women in Jordan, and has even had stories officially censored.

Nabil came in for criticism from defenders of Israel for writing a treatise entitled Jerusalem: 5,000 Years of Arab History, in which she links the Jebusite population in the area more than 3,000 years ago to the current Palestinian population -- a common claim among Palestinians.

But supporters of Israel have criticized the piece as an attempt to deny Jewish links to Jerusalem.

WASHINGTON — With a war chest rivaling that of the Republican Party itself, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has emerged in the last year as perhaps the Obama administration’s most-well-financed rival on signature policy debates like health care and financial regulation.

Critics on the left have long complained about the chamber’s outsize influence. But now they are taking on the business association directly, charging in a complaint filed Friday with the Internal Revenue Service that it violated tax codes by laundering millions of dollars meant for charitable work from a group with ties to the insurance giant A.I.G.

The complaint was brought by a group called U.S. Chamber Watch, which was created four months ago — with the strong financial backing of labor unions — to scrutinize the Chamber of Commerce’s growing influence and provide a counterbalance.

But chamber officials said they had complied with all tax laws and dismissed the complaint as a political ploy.

A chamber spokeswoman, Tita Freeman, said its opponents “are desperately looking for opportunities to undermine the chamber’s efforts to promote free markets and economic growth.”

The I.R.S. refused to comment on the complaint, citing the confidentiality of taxpayer records.

I.R.S. regulators have often been wary of wading into political grievances, particularly after evidence emerged during the Watergate scandal that the Nixon White House had sought to use the agency for political purposes.

But in recent years the agency has occasionally gotten involved in politically tinged controversies. In one high-profile case in 2004, Republican complaints led it to open an investigation into the N.A.A.C.P.’s tax-exempt status after the group’s leader criticized President George W. Bush in a speech. The I.R.S. concluded two years later that the remarks did not violate the group’s nonprofit restrictions on political activity.

At issue in the complaint against the Chamber of Commerce is whether the group mixed funds for charitable and noncharitable political purposes in violation of tax codes.

The chamber, often using expensive mass-market radio and TV spots, has weighed in on many major public policy debates in recent months, including the Obama administration’s health care policy, business regulations, campaign finance laws and Internet rules, as well as job creation and the threat of tax hikes. On many issues, it has pushed for less government regulation in favor of free-market incentives.

Now the chamber’s political arm is turning to the November elections, and it expects to spend $50 million or more to push pro-business candidates, usually Republicans. As part of a wave of new commercials broadcast this week, the chamber’s California affiliate attacked Senator Barbara Boxer — a Democrat running for re-election against Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard — and accused Ms. Boxer of “destroying jobs” by voting against business.

Cyrus Mehri, a Washington lawyer who brought the I.R.S. complaint on behalf of U.S. Chamber Watch, said in an interview that the chamber’s current political activities were, in effect, being underwritten with money intended for charitable work.

The complaint focuses on loans and grants totaling about $18 million that were made beginning in 2003 to a nonprofit affiliate, the National Chamber Foundation, by the Starr Foundation, a charity started by the founder of A.I.G. and now led by Maurice R. Greenberg, the insurer’s former chairman.

Lawyers for Chamber Watch said their research, based largely on public tax filings, found that none of the principal on some $12 million in loans had been paid back and that the money appeared to have been given to the chamber’s foundation for unrestricted use.

The lawyers said that the money, in violation of nonprofit restrictions, was ultimately funneled to the chamber itself and used to finance broader political causes, including support for legal tort reform to shield companies like A.I.G. from liability. Mr. Greenberg himself had worked to promote restrictions on lawsuits, the complaint notes.

“You have millions of dollars improperly going to the chamber,” said Mr. Mehri, who drafted the complaint with Gail M. Harmon, a Washington lawyer specializing in tax law. “This is not a technical violation.”

But Stan Harrell, chief financial officer for the Chamber of Commerce, said in an interview Friday that the chamber’s lawyers and its accountants at Ernst & Young had reviewed the Starr Foundation funding and found that it complied with all relevant tax law.

“We’ve never had an issue, period,” Mr. Harrell said. He said that Chamber Watch, which was created by a federation of five unions called Change to Win, was simply trying to create trouble for the chamber because of its opposing political views.

“That’s democracy. From time to time, people make allegations,” he said. “If their real interest was proper accounting, they’d be talking to us. This is political.”

Mr. Harrell said that the funding from the Starr Foundation was listed in tax documents as a loan only in the most technical sense and that it was never intended to be paid back. Instead, he said, the money was restricted for long-term use on educational and research projects as part of the chamber’s capital plan and was invested by the chamber to ensure the Starr Foundation a set rate of return.

“We wanted to make sure we guaranteed the investment return,” he said. “Legally, that has to be represented as a loan. This was all done very scrupulously. If anything, we overdisclosed the transaction” in the group’s federal tax returns, he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on September 11, 2010, on page A11 of the New York edition.