Around the nation

storm water violations

SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has fined Coulter Forge Technologies $36,000 for storm water violations at its Emeryville facility.

Storm water from the facility runs off into a city collection system, which then flows into the San Francisco Bay.

During an inspection in December, the EPA found drums containing waste fluids and hazardous materials were stored outdoors. The agency also discovered that outdoor storage items were not placed on pallets or under cover.

Homes saved by building

and landscaping standards

RANCHO SANTA FE, Calif. — Dr. Jorge Llorente became irritated recently when the fire department kept rejecting his plans to landscape his hacienda-style home with jacarandas and avocado trees. But he is grateful now. Those restrictions may well have saved his multimillion-dollar home when a wildfire passed through last week. "Now that we have a chance to see how it works we are tickled pink,” the retired surgeon said.

US spent $43.5 billion

on intelligence in 2007

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government spent $43.5 billion on intelligence in 2007, according to the first official disclosure under a new law implementing recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell released the newly declassified figure Tuesday. In a statement, the DNI said there would be no additional disclosures of classified budget information beyond the overall spending figure because "such disclosures could harm national security.”

ney is divided among the 16 intelligence agencies and exactly what it is spent on is classified. It includes salaries for about 100,000 people, multibillion dollar secret satellite programs, aircraft, weapons, electronic sensors, intelligence analysts, spies, computers and software.

Much of the intelligence budget goes to contractors for the procurement of technology and services including analysis, according to a May 2007 chart from the DNI’s office.

Intelligence spending has increased by a third over 10 years ago, in inflation adjusted dollars, according to Steve Kosiak at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

In 1997 and 1998, the CIA voluntarily disclosed the intelligence budget at $26.6 billion and $26.7 billion. That revelation came in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C.

Aftergood said he was somewhat surprised that the 2007 budget is not higher. He had conservatively estimated it at $45 billion. The national intelligence budget does not include at least $10 billion spent by military intelligence operations.

The intelligence budget itself increased sharply after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to heavily censored U.S. government charts.

The intelligence agencies have fought multiple legal attempts to disclose their budgets, including the CIA, the National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the agencies inside the State, Treasury and Homeland Security departments, among others. They have argued that adversaries can divine secrets about intelligence activities if they can track budget fluctuations year to year.

According to a law signed by President Bush in August, overall intelligence spending must be disclosed 30 days after the close of the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. The government must also disclose the figure for 2008. Beginning in 2009, the president may waive the disclosure requirement if he can make the case to Congress it would harm national security.

The requirement was a provision of a broad security measure carrying out recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission in 2004. The panel argued that overclassification does not contribute to good government, and that revealing the overall spending for intelligence activities would help Congress in its oversight duties.

A top intelligence official inadvertently disclosed the overall intelligence spending figure two years ago at a conference in San Antonio, Texas, that was open to the public. She said it was $44 billion.

National security analysts outside the government usually estimate the annual budget at about 10 percent of the total U.S. defense budget, which in 2007 was about $430 billion plus nearly $200 billion in war spending. These analysts believe around 80 percent of the intelligence budget is consumed by the NRO, NSA, DIA and NGA, the national military intelligence agencies.

Supreme Court blocks Mississippi execution

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court halted an execution in Mississippi Tuesday, less than an hour before a convicted killer was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection.

The last-minute reprieve for Earl Wesley Berry is the third granted by the justices since they agreed late last month to decide a challenge to Kentucky’s lethal injection procedures. Tuesday’s order was the latest indication that most, if not all, executions by lethal execution will be halted at least until the justices decide the Kentucky case.

Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia would have allowed the execution to go forward.

Study: Rising number

of veterans are uninsured

WASHINGTON — About one of every eight veterans under the age of 65 is uninsured, a finding that contradicts the assumption many have that all vets qualify for free health care through the Veterans Affairs Department, says a new study.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School projected that about 1.8 million veterans overall lack health coverage. That’s an increase of 290,000 since 2000. The researchers said most uninsured veterans are in the middle class and are ineligible for VA care because of their incomes. Still others cannot afford their copayments, or lack VA facilities in their community.

"Like other uninsured Americans, most uninsured vets are working people — too poor to afford private coverage but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA care,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, an associate professor and a physician at the Cambridge Health Alliance.

The study is based on an analysis of government surveys released between 1988 and 2005. Veterans do fare better than the overall population when it comes to obtaining health insurance. Still, the Harvard researchers said the rising number of uninsured vets points to the need for more funding for the VA. The best solution, they said, would be for universal health coverage in the United States.

"Only the government can put men and women into military service and only the government can guarantee that they are covered after they serve,” said Dr. Jeffrey Scavron.

The study notes that the VA in January 2003 ordered a halt to the enrollment of most veterans who are not poor. The move was designed to reduce the backlog of patients waiting for care.

But Peter Gaytan, who monitors veterans’ issues for the American Legion, said veterans now make as little as about $24,000 a year in some regions and still do not qualify for health coverage from the VA.

"That decision created a large number of veterans who have served in the U.S. military who are denied access,” Gaytan said.

Gaytan said the number of uninsured vets could rise in coming years if soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq have trouble getting back their old jobs.

"It will be an increasing issue that needs to be dealt with,” Gaytan predicted.

Kucinich: Bush’s World War III comment shows instability

PHILADELPHIA — Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich questioned President Bush’s mental health in light of comments he made about a nuclear Iran precipitating World War III.

"I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about his mental health,” Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, said in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board on Tuesday. "There’s something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact.”

Kucinich, known for his liberal views, trails far behind the leading candidates in most Democratic polls. He was in Philadelphia for a debate at Drexel University.

Bush made the remarks at a news conference earlier this month.

Retired Army Gen. nominated to head Veterans Affairs

WASHINGTON — President Bush said that retired Army Lt. Gen. James Peake, chosen on Tuesday to head the embattled Veterans Affairs Department, will work to end months-long delays facing hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops trying to get treatment and benefits.

The nomination comes as the administration and Congress struggle to resolve some of the worst problems afflicting wounded warriors, such as getting adequate mental health care and disability checks on time.

Peake, 63, a medical doctor who has spent 40 years in military medicine, retired from the Army in 2004 after being at the helm in several medical posts, including four years as the U.S. Army surgeon general.

"He will be the first physician and the first general to serve as secretary,” Bush said, standing next to Peake in the Roosevelt Room.

"He will apply his decades of expertise in combat medicine and health care management to improve the veterans health system.”

In February, reports surfaced of shoddy outpatient treatment, poor living conditions and bureaucratic delays at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

Soon afterward, Bush set up a presidential commission chaired by former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., and Donna Shalala, former Health and Human Services secretary during the Clinton administration.

The panel urged broad changes to veterans’ care that would boost benefits to family members caring for the wounded, establish an easy-to-use Web site for medical records and overhaul the way disability pay is awarded. It also recommended stronger partnerships between the Pentagon and the private sector to boost treatment for traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

If confirmed by the Senate, Peake’s first task will be to continue carrying out the commission’s recommendations either through executive or legislative action.

"The disability system is largely a 1945 product, 1945 processes around a 1945 family unit,” Peake said. "About everybody that has studied it recently said it is time to do some revisions.”

The VA’s backlog is between 400,000 and 600,000 claims, with delays of about 180 days.

Veterans Affairs Secretary James Nicholson, who announced his resignation in July, effective Oct. 1, pledged to cut that time to 145 days. But he has made little headway with thousands of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan returning home.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats sent Bush a letter on Monday, complaining about delays in naming Nicholson’s successor.

They said the VA system was stretched beyond capacity even before the current military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, and cited questions recently raised about the manner in which the VA screens, hires and monitors physicians and other health care professionals who work at VA facilities.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said that during his confirmation hearing, Peake will have to prove he is up to the task of reforming the government’s second-largest agency with 235,000 employees. Senators likely will ask Peake what he knew about the problems of poor care at Walter Reed when he was Army surgeon general from 2000 to 2004.

"Given Dr. Peake’s past posts running the Army health care system, he will have serious and significant questions to answer about failed preparations for our returning wounded warriors,” Murray said.

Anthony Principi, a former veterans affairs secretary, said Peake should not be expected to oversee reforms of an outdated veterans benefits system all by himself. "Clearly, it does need to be reformed,” Principi told White House reporters after Bush announced his pick. "It’s going to take a lot of consensus building among the veterans groups and the Congress.”

Peake currently is chief medical director and chief operating officer of QTC Management Inc., which provides government-outsourced occupational health, injury and disability examination services.

He is the son of a medical services officer and an Army nurse and he graduated in 1966 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He served in Vietnam as a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division and was awarded the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts.

Peake was wounded twice in battle and received his acceptance letter to Cornell University Medical College while he was recovering in a hospital. As a medical officer and combat veteran who was wounded in action, Peake understands the view from "both sides of the hospital bed — the doctor’s and the patient’s,” Bush said.

During his decades-long career in military medicine, Peake was surgeon general of the U.S. Army, commanding 50,000 medical personnel and 187 army medical facilities across the world. He also was commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School.

From 2004 to 2006, Peake was executive vice president and chief operating officer of Project HOPE, a nonprofit international health foundation. While at HOPE, he helped organize civilian volunteers aboard the Navy hospital ship Mercy as it responded to the tsunami in Indonesia and aboard the hospital ship Comfort during its response to Hurricane Katrina.

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Associated Press Writer Hope Yen contributed to this story.