Luxury Chinese Hotel Survives Massive Fire

Flames engulfed a luxury hotel that forms part of the landmark new headquarters of Chinese state television yesterday after sparks from fireworks set off to celebrate the biggest holiday of the year showered the capital.

The wail of police sirens from hundreds of vehicles racing to the building was almost drowned by the constant eruptions from firecrackers and fireworks being lit to mark the Lantern Festival, which is the final day of the Chinese New Year holiday.

The flames shooting up the side of the 44-storey building sent off plumes of black smoke and showered the ground with embers. At least seven fire crews fought to bring the fire under control.

The Television Cultural Centre was to have housed the 241-room Mandarin Oriental Hotel as well as a theatre and recording studios. It formed the smaller of two huge buildings that make up the China Central Television complex due to be completed towards the end of this year at a cost of about $730 million (£490 million).

NJ to fluoridate more drinking water

An extra 6 million people in New Jersey would get water treated with fluoride under a bill that cleared an Assembly committee yesterday.

The measure, approved by the Assembly Health Committee, was strongly pushed by medical professionals but opposed by environmentalists and water companies.

Committee chairman and bill sponsor Herb Conaway (D-Burlington) made it clear from the outset the bill would be approved by the panel, saying it was "appalling" that only Hawaii has lower percentage of people who have access to teeth-strengthening fluoride in their water.

"We need to do something to change that," he said.

Nationwide, about 184 million people -- nearly 70 percent -- drink fluoridated water. In New Jersey, where municipalities are free to decide whether to mandate water fluoridation, 1.7 million people -- only 22.6 percent -- have fluoridated water, according to state and federal reports. They live in 78 towns, mostly in Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth and Somerset counties.

Three officials for the New Jersey Dental Association urged the committee to support the bill, noting tooth decay is the most prevalent chronic disease among children.

"This will not only improve oral health," said Arthur Meisel, the group's executive director. "We're not asking you to spend money. We're coming to you to ask you to save money," noting there would be fewer dental claims submitted to the state health benefits plan.

Environmental advocates unsuccessfully tried to persuade the committee it was rushing the bill (A3709) Conaway introduced Feb. 5. They wanted to delay action until they reviewed research about the impact of fluoride and other potentially dangerous additives on riverbeds, as well as overexposure in humans.

"The sponsors' goal to reduce tooth decay is laudable but there are safer, cheaper ways to do it than mass medication," said Sharon Finlayson, chairwoman of the New Jersey Environmental Federation.

Finlayson brought food items she said contain enough fluoride, like some baked potato chips, cereals and sweetened iced tea. "We already are getting fluoride from many sources," she said.

Jeff Tittel, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, said he worried residents may be exposed to cheap "industrial-grade" fluoride, laced with arsenic, lead and mercury. "Our concern is to make sure it's a pure form of fluoride," he said.

Karen Alexander, president of the New Jersey Utilities Association, said the federal Drinking Water Act regulates fluoride as a "water contaminant" and could affect "more sensitive populations."

Utility operators "should not have the responsibility for ensuring the appropriate dosage of fluoride, Alexander said.

Conaway, a physician, declined to postpone the vote. He said the state departments of health and environmental protection would set and enforce safety standards.

Noting the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has strongly endorsed adding fluoride to drinking water, he said: "I guess the CDC must be nuts and not know what they are doing."

The bill was approved 10-0. Assemblyman Vincent Polistina (R-Atlantic) abstained, saying he wants to do more research. The measure moves to the full Assembly.

Ellen Gulbinesky of the Association Environmental Authorities, representing 110 waste water and solid waste authorities, said the recommended dose of fluoride is 1 part per million, and it is difficult to maintain that level.

"They make it sound like all they have to do is wheel in a tank of fluoride and add it, but there is a lot of science involved in it," she said.

James Schulz, the dental association's lobbyist, said communities are already passing that test.

"This is not new territory," he said. It's monitored on a regular basis in communities across the country, including 20 percent of the population in New Jersey."



For a list of New Jersey communities already receiving fluoridated water, go to http://www.nj.gov/dep/watersupply/FluorideAS_9_3_03.pdf.

Israel to probe phosphorus claims

The Israeli army is to investigate claims it used white phosphorus illegally during its three-week offensive in Gaza.

The move follows numerous allegations by rights groups and in media reports that the army fired phosphorus shells where they could harm civilians.

The UN said its headquarters were hit by three such shells causing a fire destroying much of its aid supplies.

The Israeli army says all its weapons in the Gaza offensive were entirely legal, but until now has refused to specify which weapons it used.

White phosphorus sticks to human skin and will burn right through to the bone, causing death or leaving survivors with painful wounds which are slow to heal. Its ingestion or inhalation can also be fatal.

Is Ehud’s Poodle Acting Up?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

As Israel entered the third week of its Gaza blitz, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert regaled a crowd in Ashkelon with an astonishing tale.

He had, said Olmert, whistled up George Bush, interrupted him in the middle of a speech and told him to instruct Condi Rice not to vote for a U.N. resolution Condi herself had written. Bush did as told, said Olmert.

The crowd loved it. Here is the background.

After intense negotiations with Britain and France, Secretary of State Rice had persuaded the Security Council to agree on a resolution calling for a cease-fire. But Olmert wanted more time to kill Hamas.

So, here, in Olmert’s words, is what happened next.

“In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a cease-fire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favor.

“I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone.’ They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk to him now.’ He got off the podium and spoke to me.

According to Olmert, Bush was clueless.

“He said: ‘Listen. I don’t know about it. I didn’t see it. I’m not familiar with the phrasing.”

“I told him the United States could not vote in favor. It cannot vote in favor of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favor. …

“She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favor.”

The U.N. diplomatic corps was astonished when the United States abstained on the 14-0 resolution Rice had crafted and claimed her country supported. Arab diplomats say Rice promised them she would vote for it.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, with Rice at the United Nations during the debate on the resolution, said Olmert’s remarks were “just 100 percent, totally, completely untrue.”

But the White House cut Rice off at the knees, saying only that there were “inaccuracies” in the Olmert story. The video does not show Bush interrupting his speech to take any call.

Yet, the substance rings true and is widely believed, and Olmert is happily describing the egg on Rice’s face:

“He (Bush) gave an order to the secretary of state, and she did not vote in favor of it — a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organized and maneuvered for. She was left pretty shamed. …”

With Bush and Rice leaving office in hours, and Olmert in weeks, the story may seem to lack significance.

Yet, public gloating by an Israeli prime minister that he can order a U.S. president off a podium and instruct him to reverse and humiliate his secretary of state may cause even Ehud’s poodle to rise up on its hind legs one day and bite its master.

Taking such liberties with a superpower that, for Israel’s benefit, has shoveled out $150 billion and subordinated its own interests in the Arab and Islamic world would seem a hubristic and stupid thing to do.

And there are straws in the wind that, despite congressional resolutions giving full-throated approval to all that Israel is doing in Gaza, this is becoming a troubled relationship.

Two weeks ago, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in opposing any truce, assured the world there “is no humanitarian crisis in the (Gaza) Strip,” and the humanitarian situation there “is completely as it should be.”

Not so to Hillary Clinton. In her confirmation hearings, the secretary of state-designate, reports The New York Times, “struck a sharper tone toward Israel on violence in the Middle East.”

Clinton “seemed to part from the tone set by the Bush administration in calling attention to what she described as the ‘tragic humanitarian costs’ borne by Palestinians, as well as Israelis.”

More dramatic was a weekend report by the Times’ David Sanger that the White House had rebuffed Olmert’s request for new U.S. bunker-buster bombs and denied Israel permission to overfly Iraq in any strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz.

Sanger described these U.S.-Israeli talks as “tense.”

Repeatedly, Israel has warned that Iran is close to a bomb and threatened to attack unilaterally. Indeed, Israel simulated such an attack in an air exercise of 100 planes that went as far as Greece.

Bush both blocked and vetoed that attack, says Sanger. But he did assure Olmert that America is engaged in the sabotage of Iran’s nuclear program by helping provide Tehran with defective parts.

This would seem a stunning breach of security secrets, but no outrage has been heard from the White House, nor has any charge come that the Times compromised national security.

With Olmert, Rice and Bush departing, and Obama and Hillary taking charge committed to talking to Iran, can the old intimacy survive the new friction and colliding agendas?