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Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

Family members of Japanese employees in parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Russia, former Soviet states and Latin America will fly back to Japan by the end of September, Panasonic spokesman Akira Kadota said.

The firm decided to take the rare measure “well ahead of possible confusion at the outbreak of a global pandemic,” he said.

Eight people have contracted the H5N1 bird flu virus in China alone this year — five of whom died.

“The bird flu cases reported so far are infections from bird to human, but once an infection between human beings is reported, things can get chaotic with many other companies trying to bring back their employees,” Kadota said.

“We wanted to take action early before it gets difficult to book flight tickets,” he said.

The company did not say how many family members would return to Japan. Employees and their families in North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore will not be affected.

The H5N1 strain of the virus that is most dangerous to humans first emerged in Asia in 2003 and has since caused nearly 250 deaths, according to World Health Organisation figures.

Bird flu, or avian influenza, kills mainly birds but scientists fear it could mutate to jump from human to human, sparking a global pandemic.

“You’re next, bastard … We’re going to get you,” an unidentified drug gang member said over the police radio in the city of Tijuana after naming a policeman.

The man also threatened a second cop by name and played foot-stomping “narcocorrido” music, popular with drug cartels, over the airwaves.

“No one can help them,” an officer named Jorge said of his threatened colleagues as he heard the threats in his patrol car.

Sure enough, two hours later the dead bodies of the two named policemen were found dumped on the edge of the city, their hands tied and bullet wounds in their heads.

Cartels killed some 530 police in Mexico last year, some of them corrupt officers who were working for rival gangs. Others were killed in shoot-outs or murdered for working against the gangs or refusing to turn a blind eye to drug shipments.

Violence has hit shocking levels in Tijuana, over the border from San Diego, since President Felipe Calderon launched an army crackdown on traffickers in late 2006, stirring up new wars between rival cartels over smuggling routes.

The drug war is scaring tourists and investors away from northern Mexico, forcing some businesses to shutter just as the country heads into recession this year.

Badly-paid Tijuana municipal police, often accused of collaborating with rival wings of the local Arellano Felix cartel, are badly demoralized, senior officers say.

“These death threats are part of the psychological warfare that organized crime is using against officers,” said Tijuana police chief Gustavo Huerta.

As many as 57,000 could be let go if the current population were cut by the maximum percentage considered by a three-judge panel. Judges said the move could be done without threatening public safety — and might improve a public safety hazard.

The state immediately said it would appeal the final ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Pentagon auditors concede that is a remote possibility because of discrepancies in records between how much chemical weapons agent was initially stored and how much of it was later destroyed at Utah’s Deseret Chemical Depot and other bases nationwide.

But officials believe all the nerve agent in question was destroyed, according to a partially censored U.S. Army Audit Agency report obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Auditors list in it several reasons that could have caused apparent-but-unreal variances in those records.

But auditors concluded, “The (Army Chemical Materials) Agency didn’t have complete assurance that amounts recorded in the system were accurate, which increased its chances for heightened levels of program scrutiny by federal, state and international organizations that have a vested interest in the elimination of chemical weapons.”

Such words can cause shivers among Utahns who remember such things as the death of thousands of sheep in Skull Valley in 1968 that were blamed on nerve gas tests that went awry at nearby Dugway Proving Ground, and Skull Valley residents who have blamed mysterious illnesses on exposure to tiny amounts of nerve agent from such tests.

Auditors reviewed Army Chemical Materials Agency (CMA) records of arms destruction at seven bases nationwide, including at the Deseret base near Tooele, “to determine whether the agency accounted for destroyed chemical agents.” A international treaty requires destruction of all such arms by April 2012.

While the Aug. 26 report said a good job was done recording the amounts of most types of chemical munitions destroyed, auditors found discrepancies between how much nerve agent had been recorded as stored in one-ton containers, and how much was actually destroyed.

“They did not have effective procedures in place to ensure amounts destroyed were accurately recorded in the (electronic recording) system. Consequently, CMA didn’t have complete assurance that amounts recorded in the system were accurate,” the report said.

For example, it said a random sample of such records found “20 CODs (certificates of destruction) were overstated by 4,026 pounds.” Also, another “nine CODs were understated by 1,093 pounds.” A drop of some types of nerve agent can cause death.

Auditors wrote, “Key CMA personnel told us they were aware of discrepancies involving ton containers. They also told us they expected variances to occur because of inaccurate initial ton container weights and the hardened heel process” where some nerve agent hardens over time and no longer is in liquid form.

Exactly which bases had such variances was censored from the released version of the report. But some uncensored text shows that the Utah base was one with such problems.

Auditors said officials explained that when the one-ton containers were filled initially years ago, different methods of varying accuracy were used to weigh and record how much agent was in each — and those sometimes inaccurate weights were used when America declared how much it had for treaty purposes.

For example, one site used a scale where “weight could vary by as much as 129 pounds if reweighed on a more accurate scale,” the report said.

So, auditors wrote, “Due to these methodologies it was determined that weights, in some cases, were inaccurate because of the scales used during the time of production,” so it is not surprising they did not match the amounts actually destroyed.

Also, auditors wrote that “some of the chemical agent hardened in the container and remained in this state even after the container was destroyed during the demilitarization process.”

The report added, “At Tooele, the contractor used a waste tracking form to: document the differences; (and) show the approximate amount of agent remaining in the ton container after liquid agent had been destroyed.” Metal parts with hardened agent were then destroyed in a furnace.

The report added, “However, although we found that the tracking forms were signed by the contractor’s custodian, they weren’t signed by a government representative and the differences were reconciled and updated” in the database tracking how much was stored and destroyed.

Auditors also said no reviews into discrepancies — even when some large ones of up to 20 percent for some containers were noticed — were conducted because rules and contracts only required them if records for all ton containers at one site were off by 5 percent after their destruction was completed.

Auditors called for a few changes, including recording the actual amount of agent destroyed in databases and reconciling discrepancies quickly.

In a written response, the Chemical Materials Agency agreed with the report’s conclusions. It said it will determine how often reconciliation should be conducted as one-ton containers and contents are destroyed.

It said, however, it intends to continue listing possibly inaccurate amounts destroyed in its official database because adjusting the weights would require changes to international treaties. Instead of seeking that, it plans to add a report in the data system that “is capable of showing the variances from the declared weight.”

The loss, which was above market expectations, was swollen by a SFr8.10bn loss in the fourth quarter, and came in spite of a surprise SFr1.73bn tax benefit and a reclassification of assets that allowed the bank to avoid recognising a further trading loss of about SFr3bn.

UBS, which has come under severe political pressure in Switzerland after a government bail out last October, said it was slashing bonus payments. Variable compensation in the investment bank, the heart of its problems, will be 95 per cent lower than the previous year, and 80 per cent lower for the group overall. Total bonuses paid will fall to SFr2.2bn.

Separately, the bank announced a limited reorganisation to allow greater focus on its core Swiss and wealth management businesses, with the appointment of a new chief executive for the home market and a strengthening of wealth management’s representation on the group’s executive board.

UBS said it would reduce headcount at its securities business to 15,000 by the end of the year, below a previous target of 17,000. The bank eliminated 1,782 jobs in the fourth quarter, with most of the losses falling in the investment banking business.

However, in spite of the problems at the investment bank, UBS emphasised its commitment to investment banking, again scotching rumours that the unit may be sold.

“The investment bank remains a core business of UBS,” the group said in a statement. Virtually the same comment was used for institutional asset management, once also seen by outsiders as a sale candidate. The shares rose as much as 7.1 per cent before settlling back to stand 4.9 per cent higher at SFr13.53 in afternoon Zurich trading.

Marcel Rohner, chief executive, also played down speculation that the group might sell its US wealth management activities, based on the former PaineWebber brokerage businesses. He said in a conference call that the wealth management Americas business was “an integral part of our business.”

Adair Turner, chairman of the independent Committee on Climate Change that advises UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, made the proposal before Parliament’s Environmental Audit Select Committee on Feb. 5. In remarks widely reported by UK media, Turner said, “We will have to constrain demand in an absolute sense with people not allowed to make as many journeys as they could in an unconstrained manner.”

The proposal was strongly condemned by FlyingMatters, a UK-based coalition of airlines, airports, aerospace manufacturers and other aviation- and tourism-related groups. “One always suspects with these half-baked proposals that the people who put them forward really intend them to apply to ordinary people, many of whom have only recently gained access to air travel, rather than to themselves,” the organization said in a statement.