Morning News Roundup (14 August)

Top Story

• In an article for the New Yorker, renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh states that the Bush administration was closely involved in last month's invasion of Lebanon by Israel.
  [...]
  Hersh's intelligence and diplomatic sources tell him that the reason for this hands-off reaction was that George Bush and Dick Cheney already knew about Israeli plans for a bombing campaign against Hezbollah's underground missile complexes and were convinced that it could both increase Israel's security and serve as a prelude to a American pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear installations.
  
  The White House also wanted Hezbollah stripped of the ability to retailiate against Israel in the wake of an American attack on Iran. As one U.S. government consultant told Hersh, "The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits. Why oppose it? We’ll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."
  
  The White House and National Security Council have denied knowing in advance about Israel's plans. However, Hersh's sources made it clear that Israel shared its plans with the Americans this past spring and received strong encouragement. [Raw Story]
  
  
• Here's Hersh appearing on CNN yesterday with Wolf Blitzer, who was pushing Hersh to prove that he wasn't just offering up some moonbat crazy conspiracy theory:

Middle East Sturm und Drang

• Thousands of displaced Lebanese have begun travelling home hours after a UN ceasefire to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah came into force. Fighting ended at 0500 GMT, although in one later clash, Israeli soldiers fired on a group they said were militants. [BBC; also check out this review of skeptical Middle Eastern press]
  
  
• Multiple explosions rocked a predominantly Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Baghdad on Sunday night, killing at least 47 people and wounding about 150 in one of the deadliest attacks to target the capital in recent weeks, authorities said. The blasts tore through the Zafraniya neighborhood of southern Baghdad at a time when U.S. and Iraqi forces are attempting to crack down on the rising sectarian violence that officials see as the gravest threat to the country's stability.
  [...]
  Iraqi television reported that as bystanders ran toward the scene to rescue victims from the rubble of the partly collapsed apartment complex, the second and third bombs exploded, killing dozens more. [WaPo]
  
  
• Just checked in with Riverbend at the Baghdad Burning blog, and she's got a post from last week about wearing the hijab in today's Iraq:
  

  There are no laws that say we have to wear a hijab (yet), but there are the men in head-to-toe black and the turbans, the extremists and fanatics who were liberated by the occupation, and at some point, you tire of the defiance. You no longer want to be seen. I feel like the black or white scarf I fling haphazardly on my head as I walk out the door makes me invisible to a certain degree- it’s easier to blend in with the masses shrouded in black. If you’re a female, you don’t want the attention- you don’t want it from Iraqi police, you don’t want it from the black-clad militia man, you don’t want it from the American soldier. You don’t want to be noticed or seen.
  
  I have nothing against the hijab, of course, as long as it is being worn by choice. Many of my relatives and friends wear a headscarf. Most of them began wearing it after the war. It started out as a way to avoid trouble and undue attention, and now they just keep it on because it makes no sense to take it off. What is happening to the country?
  
  I realized how common it had become only in mid-July when M., a childhood friend, came to say goodbye before leaving the country. She walked into the house, complaining of the heat and the roads, her brother following closely behind. It took me to the end of the visit for the peculiarity of the situation to hit me. She was getting ready to leave before the sun set, and she picked up the beige headscarf folded neatly by her side. As she told me about one of her neighbors being shot, she opened up the scarf with a flourish, set it on her head like a pro, and pinned it snuggly under her chin with the precision of a seasoned hijab-wearer. All this without a mirror- like she had done it a hundred times over… Which would be fine, except that M. is Christian.

Climate Crisis

• On the right track: Recently, 22 states and the District of Columbia have set standards demanding that utilities generate a specific amount of energy -- in some cases, as high as 33 percent -- from renewable sources by 2020. And 11 states have set goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
  
  California also has passed legislation mandating that automakers reduce their vehicles' carbon dioxide emissions 30 percent by 2016, and 10 other states have committed to adopt the same standards if the law survives a court challenge.
  
  In addition, as many as 10 states in the Northeast are working to establish state-by-state ceilings for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and allow industries such as power plants to trade pollution credits for carbon emissions while cutting greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent by 2019. California, Oregon and Washington are negotiating a similar pact. [WaPo]
  
  
• Global warming is contributing to an unusually harsh typhoon season in China that started around a month early and has left thousands dead or missing, government officials and experts say. "The natural disasters caused by typhoons in our country have been many this year," the head of the China Meteorological Administration, Qin Dahe, said in recent comments on his organization's website. "The strength of typhoons are increasing, the destructiveness of typhoons that have made landfall is greater and the scope in which they are travelling is farther than normal." [TerraDaily]
  
  
• It's not just the heat that's going to be troublesome -- it's also our infrastructure and social network that will determine the health and survival of vulnerable portions of our populace in the face of heat waves and other natural disasters. Sightline's Daily Score points us to this Western Washington University press release about a new case study on the 1995 Chicago heat wave:
  

  The researchers found that elderly people are more likely to die during a heat wave when they live in neighborhoods with few businesses to draw them out of their homes. During the 1995 heat wave in Chicago, mortality rates were higher than average in neighborhoods with run-down businesses that were dominated by liquor stores and bars.
  
  Other studies have shown elderly people in low-income neighborhoods were more at risk of dying in a heat wave, but this research shows why they are more vulnerable in some disadvantaged areas.

  
  
• An "affordable" hybrid is on the way, but you'll have to wait until 2009. American Honda Senior Vice President John Mendel, summed up the company's engine strategy by stating that hybrid motors are appropriate for smaller vehicles, while a new diesel engine will be installed in larger Honda vehicles. Honda wants to sell 100,000 of its new small hybrids starting in 2009, and promises to make the vehicle affordable to the masses. Although no price target was announced, does $15,000 sound about right? Unfortunately, no mention of a possible diesel hybrid. [Wired's Autotopia]

Domestic Potpourri

• Hooray! Illinois has dropped a referendum to ban gay marriage from its November ballot. State officials say supporters say failed to gather enough valid signatures. [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• The alleged London bomb plot has somewhat brightened US President George W. Bush's political fortunes ahead of critical November 7 legislative elections, experts said. "In terms of any impact it may have on the midterm elections, it's something of throwing him a life preserver when he's not being held up by anything else," said Stephen Hess, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
  
  "What this does is, it makes it marginally more likely that the Republicans retain control" of the Senate and the House of Representatives," said Eric Davis, a political science professor at Middlebury College in Vermont. [Agence France Presse]

Big Blue Marble

• “Rich countries have largely failed to back their voluble lip service to combating global poverty by doing more to help,” according to the Center for Global Development. The U.S. ranked 13 of out 21 countries “according to how their policies on overseas aid, trade, security, the environment, migration, technology and investment help poor nations.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]

Misc.

• A comparison of peoples’ views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution. Only Turkey ranked lower.” One major factor: politics. “Major political parties in the United States are more willing to make opposition to evolution a prominent part of their campaigns to garner conservative votes—something that does not happen in Europe or Japan. [LiveScience via ThinkProgress]
  
  
• Taking your laptop out of its case may not be enough for airport security some day soon—the Journal reports on the front page that federal regulators are looking at the risk to airplanes posed by spontaneously combusting computer batteries. The feds have documented "339 cases of lithium and lithium-ion batteries for portable electronics overheating, emitting smoke and fumes or exploding since 2003." [Slate's Today's Papers]