Preliminary reports link Chinese drywall, corrosion in U.S. homes

(CNN) -- The suspected link between Chinese drywall and toxic effects reported by thousands of U.S. homeowners was strengthened Monday by three preliminary reports issued by the federal government.

The strongest link came from an analysis of air sampled inside dozens of homes containing drywall made in China.

"While the study of 51 homes detected hydrogen sulfide and formaldehyde ... at concentrations below irritant levels, it is possible that the additive or synergistic effects of these and other compounds in the subject homes could cause irritant effects," the Consumer Product Safety Commission said in its executive summary of the study.

Two other preliminary studies found copper sulfide corrosion in metal components taken from homes containing the Chinese drywall.

The drywall in question was imported from 2005 through 2007, when a housing boom and two active hurricane seasons created a shortage of building materials in the southern United States.

Since then, the product safety agency has received nearly 2,100 reports from 32 states -- but mostly from Florida, Louisiana and Virginia -- of homeowners complaining of a rotten-egg smell, sickness, failed appliances, and corroded wires and pipes. Many have moved out of their homes. In some cases, insurers have refused to reimburse them.

The air study tested 41 houses containing Chinese drywall and compared those findings with air from inside 10 homes in the same geographical areas whose homeowners had not complained, said Jack McCarthy, president of Environmental Health & Engineering Inc., which carried out the work.
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The investigators also examined materials such as copper pipes and wiring for corrosion, and looked at indoor air humidity, temperature and air exchange, he said. Copper and silver strips were left in the homes for two weeks and then examined for corrosion, he said.

The result: in the 41 homes containing the problem drywall, there was a "strong association" between the high levels of hydrogen sulfide and the corrosion of the metals, he said.

"Temperature, humidity and air-exchange rates also appear to be contributing factors," McCarthy told reporters on a conference call, noting that higher moisture and temperature levels and lower air-exchange rates were connected with more corrosion.

Formaldehyde, also a potential source of irritation, was found in both complaint and noncomplaint homes, he said.

Though McCarthy cautioned that the study was not intended to examine health effects, "we can say that the levels of the pollutants we found, particularly the hydrogen sulfide and formaldehyde, could possibly contribute to some of the health problems that have been reported to the CPSC."

McCarthy also said that not all Chinese drywall may be alike. Its risk "depends on what it is made of, not necessarily what country it's from," he said.

The next step is to determine how to identify homes with the corrosive materials and how to fix them, said Scott Wolfson, the product safety agency's director of information and public affairs, who noted that the investigation is the largest in the agency's history.

He said none of the tainted drywall entered the United States this year. Hundreds of thousands of suspect boards have been stockpiled in warehouses; their owners have been told it will not be sold, he added.

Several weeks ago, agency representatives traveled to China, where they visited mines, factories and government officials to determine the scope of the problem, which is still not clear, Wolfson said. "The CPSC is working hard to determine how many homes in how many states are affected," he said, adding that the data do not support the widely reported figure of 100,000 homes.

Wolfson said the Chinese helped investigate. "They're committed to helping us with the technical side of this investigation," he said.

Though the study raises suspicions that the drywall is responsible for the health effects reported by some families, Wolfson said a causal association has not been proved. "The work continues," he said. "The work toward an exact nexus between drywall and effects is still ongoing."

Wolfson called on the news media to help alert homeowners in affected houses to report the problem. Some may be hesitant to report because they are afraid their insurers will drop their coverage, he said, but he pointed out that the reports can be made confidentially.

"We will make sure that you are not harmed in any way by reporting to the government," he said.

Monday's report did not surprise Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, who said the product safety commission's chairwoman, Inez Tenenbaum, told him Monday she did not know when further testing would be completed.

"I am very disappointed with the whole process, and especially that the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] can't say whether drywall is harmful to people's health," he told CNN. "Common sense says otherwise, but we still lack definitive answers."

Joan Glickman, who moved out of her townhouse in Pompano Beach, Florida, after her wiring and air conditioning failed, said Monday's report told her nothing new.

"It was a huge letdown because it still didn't tell me how to fix it, who's going to fix it, how do we go about fixing it, where the money comes from," said Glickman, who moved in with her mother. "This has left us in such a mess."

Idealismo Asesino

by Paul Hollander

Paul Hollander is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of the study Reflections on communism 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall published by the Cato Institute.

The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago this month was the very symbol of communism. It represented an unprecedented historic effort aimed at preventing people "vote with their feet" and leave a society that rejected them. The wall was only the most visible segment of an extensive system of obstacles and fortifications: the Iron Curtain, which stretched for thousands of kilometers along the border of the "Socialist Commonwealth." I was one of those who managed to cross these obstacles in November 1956 when they were temporarily dismantled along the Austrian-Hungarian border. My experiences in communist Hungary, where I lived until age 24, had a lasting impact on my life and my work.

Although they were very interested in communism in the late forties and early fifties, the American-hostile or sympathetic, actually knew very little about the system, and little is said today about the collapse of the Soviet empire. The fleeting media attention to the important events of the late eighties and early nineties matched his previous indifference to communist systems. There is little public awareness of large-scale atrocities, assassinations and human rights violations that occurred in communist states, especially when compared with public knowledge of the Holocaust and Nazism (which resulted in many fewer deaths ). The number of documentaries, films or television programs about communist societies is minuscule compared to those of Nazi Germany and / or the Holocaust, and few universities offer courses about those remaining communist states or missing. For much of the West, communism and its various incarnations, remains an abstraction.

Different moral responses to Nazism and communism in the West can be interpreted as the result of communist atrocities are seen as side effects of noble intentions, which had difficulties to materialize without resorting to drastic measures. In contrast, the atrocities of the Nazis are seen as pure evil and no justification, and are not backed by an attractive ideology. There is much more physical evidence and information about the Nazi genocide and the extermination of these methods were highly premeditated and nasty, while many victims of communist systems were killed by lethal living conditions in their places of detention. Most of the victims of Communism were killed with modern manufacturing techniques.

Communist systems ranging from small Albania to the giant China, from the highly industrialized eastern European countries to underdeveloped countries in Africa. Although they were different in many ways, they all had in common the confidence in Marxism-Leninism as its source of legitimacy, the party system, control over the economy and the press, and the presence of a huge police force policy. They also shared an alleged commitment to the creation of a morally superior human being-man socialist or communist.

Political violence under communism had an origin and an objective idealist purifier. Those persecuted and killed were defined as politically and morally corrupt and a danger to a superior social system. The Marxist doctrine of class struggle gave ideological support for genocide. People were persecuted not for what they were doing but because they belong to social groups that made them suspicious.

After the fall of Soviet communism, many Western intellectuals continue to believe that capitalism is the root of all evil. There has been a long history of rancor among Western intellectuals that they gave him the benefit of the doubt or openly sympathized with political systems that denounced the pursuit of money and proclaimed their commitment to creating a more humane and egalitarian society, and humans they were not selfish. The collapse of communist systems to improve human nature means that any attempt to do so is doomed, but rather that such improvements will be modest and unlikely to be achieved through coercion.

Soviet communism collapsed for many reasons, including economic inefficiencies that resulted in chronic shortages of food and consumer products, and dominant and false propaganda, which was equivalent to the routine distortion of reality by highlighting the gap between theory and practice, between promise and fulfillment of this. The political will of the leaders behind the Iron Curtain fell over time, due in part to the 1956 revelations of Nikita Kruhchev about Joseph Stalin's crimes but also the product of their own experiences with the system failures . They no longer had the will to destroy those who dissented. In the eighties, Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the new revelations were made public about the errors and evils of communism, further undermining the legitimacy of Communist rule.

The failure of Soviet communism confirms that humans are motivated by noble ideals capable of inflicting terrible suffering with a clean conscience. But the collapse of communism also suggests that under certain conditions people can differentiate between good and evil. The grip and the rejection of communism correspond to the spectrum of attitudes ranging from deceptive and destructive idealism to the understanding of human nature that excludes the utopian social arrangements and that the careful balance of ends and means is the essential precondition for create and preserve a decent society.

OFAC to Hold Financial Sector Symposium in New York City

The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced today that it will be holding its first-ever Financial Sector Symposium in New York City on Tuesday, December 1, 2009.

According to OFAC, the Financial Sector Symposium is designed to provide the financial sector with insight and perspective from top OFAC officials on banking, securities and OFAC's enforcement guidelines and will feature speakers from OFAC and state and federal regulators.

For more information and to register for OFAC's Financial Sector Symposium, see the following link (PDF file).

OFAC held a very successful International Trade Symposium in Washington, DC earlier this year.

Tropical Storm Patricia nears mexico

CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico (AP) — Officials closed schools and readied emergency shelters as Tropical Storm Patricia neared Mexico's Los Cabos resorts on Tuesday.
The storm's winds weakened to 50 mph on Tuesday afternoon, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. Further weakening was expected during the next 24 hours.

In Cabo San Lucas, tourists awoke to cloudy skies and intermittent rain Tuesday as hotel workers began putting away beach furniture and shutting down all open-air activities.

"The beach is empty and there is little activity at our pool area because tourists are staying in their rooms," said Casa Dorada Hotel general manager Victor Gomez. "Unfortunately for the tourist, the entertainment options have been limited but we hope to be back to normal by tomorrow or Thursday."

Cabo San Lucas Civil Protection Director Franciso Cota said authorities are ready to evacuate people living in areas at risk of flooding.

Baja California Sur's state government announced that all schools at all levels were closed on Tuesday and it said officials were preparing 159 shelters in case of evacuations.

Mexico's government declared a tropical storm warning for the southern portion of the desert peninsula, including Cabo San Lucas.

Forecasters said it could dump 1 to 3 inches of rain on the region.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Mexico: Tax Poverty

by Sergio Sarmiento.

In Mexico is a constant, politicians make mistakes but people pay for them.

President Calderon has launched a budget for 2010 that was characterized by a widespread rise in taxes and creating new taxes. If the initiative was passed by Congress, would be a new excise tax of 2 percent above the current 15 percent IVA (Value Added Tax) and that would also apply to food and medicine. The top rate of income tax would increase from 28 to 30 percent. It would raise the excise duty currently charged on beer, cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. Would also apply a new tax of 4 percent to telecommunications such as the internet, pay television and telephony, plus the 2 percent consumer and 15 percent IVA would tax burden in this sector over 21 percent.

The reaction of raising taxes in times of crisis has been typical of the Mexican governments in times of difficulty. In the last major crisis in 1995, Ernesto Zedillo regime raised the VAT from 10 to 15 percent. The government has found at times of economic problems the opportunity to increase their income regardless of whether they leave the national economy prostrate.

These new tax increases are proposed only two years after the republic's government pushed through a "tax reform" was supposed to be final and relieve the public from dependence on oil prices. The reform of 2007, which included a new income tax IETU called, was a failure. So today the government again raising taxes and creating new ones.

To align the IVA on all goods and services at a reasonable rate of, say, 10 percent, it might be beneficial. But the new excise tax of 2 percent above the 15 percent VAT, further complicates the payment of taxes and does not eliminate the technical problems of the zero rate of IVA on food and medicine.

The maximum rate increase of the ISR (Income Tax) becomes a new blow to investment and to work at a time that Mexico needs investment and just work out of the crisis. The special tax increases have distorting effects on markets. The new tax on telecommunications is a brutal blow to the only segment of the economy that is growing. With a tax burden of more than 21 percent will be impossible to increase the spread of the Internet, which is indispensable to have a more competitive economy.

President Calderon said that these taxes are meant to combat poverty. Experience tells us, however, that the only poverty that attacks government spending in Mexico is the bureaucrats and officials and contractors working for the public sector. Meanwhile, the economic impact of this tax increase in times of crisis will be a general impoverishment of the Mexicans.

Girls school attacked in Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Suspected Islamist militants blew up a girls school close to the main city in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, police said. The school was empty at the time of the blast and no one was injured.
A timed explosive device is believed to have caused the explosion that badly damaged the school on the outskirts of Peshawar, police officer Hamdullah Khan said.

al-Qaeda and Taliban militants hold sway across much of northwest Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan and have often targeted girls schools in both countries because they believe that women should not be educated.

The military has launched large offensives across parts of the region in an attempt to rein the militants in, but they remain strong in much of the mountainous, lawless zone.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said Tuesday that the global fight against terrorism requires not just a military solution but also gaining the trust of civilians in regions where insurgents operate.

"No war against terrorism can be won without the support of the people," Gilani told a crowd in the eastern city of Multan as part of Eid al-Fitr celebrations at the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.

Winning over the hearts and minds of the civilian population was crucial in assisting the military offensive in the northwestern Swat Valley that ousted Taliban militants from power in July, Gilani noted.

The army launched the Swat offensive in April after local Taliban leaders, who had imposed their harsh interpretation of Islam on residents there, violated a peace deal with the government and expanded into Buner, a district within 60 miles of the capital, Islamabad.

Gilani also said Pakistan will not allow terrorists to plot attacks on its soil against other countries, including archrival India.

The comment came a day after the leader of a banned Pakistani Islamist group that India accuses of carrying out attacks on its financial capital late last year was placed under house arrest again.

Pakistani police prevented Hafiz Muhammad Saeed from leaving his home Monday. Saeed is a founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which New Delhi says masterminded the commando-style assault that killed 166 people in Mumbai last November.

Yahya Mujhaid, a spokesman for Saeed, condemned the arrest as illegal and unconstitutional.

Pakistan detained Saeed in December, but a Pakistani court freed him from house arrest in June saying there was not enough evidence to hold him.

The prime minister said Tuesday that more evidence tying Saeed to the Mumbai attacks was needed for a criminal case to proceed.

"The government has taken Hafiz Saeed in custody, but further action against him depends on proof available," Gilani later told reporters.

In the northwest, police acting on a tip recovered arms, ammunition and explosives Tuesday hidden near Kohat town — the scene of a suicide bombing Friday that killed more than 30 people, police chief Dilawar Bangash told The Associated Press.

IFE

Mexico: A very expensive electoral system.

By Sergio Sarmiento

Even when in 2010, there will not be federal elections, the Electoral Federal Institute (IFE, by its initials in spanish), its asking for a budget of 9.239 millions of pesos for this year. Of these gigantic quantity, 6.215 millions will be spent by the IFE, while three thousand millions will be separated between the political partys.

The IFE says that this budget is a reduction of their expenditure of more than 12.800 millions of pesos of 2009. But they omit in showing that in 2009 there was federal elections and in 2010, there will not be anyone. The fact is that we have created a burocratic and political monster that lives of bleeding a poor country that should use this resources for something more productive.

This costs are only the oficial. Besides there’s a lot of money that enters in the campaings in a suspicious way, and honestly sometimes illegal. The goverments give money to the parties they have risen, but they don’t recognize this. Besides, there’s the enormous real cost of the 32 millions TV and radio spots that were transmitted during the campaing. The IFE functionaries and the politicians say to us that these spots are free. But there’s nothing free in this world. The real cost of these spots easily duplicates the formal cost of the elections.

So we have expensive elections that costs more to the taxpayers that in anyother place in the world. There are elections more expensive, of course, like the ones in the US, but the costs are paid by the people involved in the campaing by private contributions. There are others that are paid with the money of the public treasury, like in many countries of Europe, but their costs are infinitely inferior than ours. Our politicians have gaved us the worst of the worlds. A electoral system paid by the taxpayers, but with similar costs of the countries with a private system.

The IFE has defended their expenditure in the past stating that an important part of this is dedicated to the maintainance of the electoral roll and the electoral ID Cards, which are the most expensive ones in the world. With the rising of a new oficial indentification for the mexicans, which is in the law since 4 decades ago but just now has been approved by the federal government, the electoral ID card will be unnecessary, such ID Card has filled the necessity or requiement to count with an official ID card recognized in the whole country.

The IFE is opossing that the Secretary of Government turn alive this proyect of the new identity card because they don’t want to lose the enourmous quantity of money that has managed for the actual ID Card, which has the disadvantage as national identity, because it stops being emitted during electoral and campaing times.

Not even the wealthier nations of the world will have the luxury of having an electoral system so expensive and inefficient such as the mexican. The fact that we have it, that we are able to spend 9 thousand million of pesos, much more than any other country in campaing times, reveals us that there’s something fundamentally evil in the mexican political system.