FURTHERMORE. . .

RANDEEP RAMESH, GUARDIAN, UK - Sitting on the edge of the water in the
Gulf of Kutch on India's western shore is one of America's dirty
secrets. A mass of steel pipes and concrete boxes stretches across 13
square miles - a third of the area of Manhattan - which will eventually
become the world's largest petrochemical refinery. The products from the
Jamnagar complex are for foreign consumption. When complete, the
facility will be able to refine 1.24m barrels of crude a day. Two-fifths
of this gasoline will be sent 9,000 miles (15,000km) by sea to America.
. . In the dizzy days of the 90s internet boom, distilling crude into
diesel, gasoline, home-heating oil and aviation fuel was considered a
dinosaur business, with low margins and large outlays. Oil refining was
yesterday's business, not tomorrow's. But Reliance says it gambled on a
"paradigm shift" in the economics of the refinery business. The company,
which began as a textile trader but moved into producing polyester, had
noticed that India was importing millions of tons of refined
hydrocarbons a year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,1892584,00.html

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NEW SCIENTIST - Swab a clear liquid onto a gaping wound and watch the
bleeding stop in seconds. An international team of researchers has
accomplished just that in animals, using a solution of protein molecules
that self-organize on the nanoscale into a biodegradable gel that stops
bleeding. If the material works as well in humans, it could save
thousands of lives and make surgery far easier in many cases, surgeons
say. . . "In rodents it works in all the blood vessels and arteries,
including the femoral artery, the portal vein, and in the liver," says
MIT neuroscientist Rutledge Ellis-Behnke.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10265-selfassembling-gel-stops-
bleeding-in-seconds.html

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UPI - A survey indicates U.S. companies average 305 pending
international lawsuits per year. That number balloons for U.S. companies
with $1 billion or more in gross annual revenue to 556 cases, with an
average of 50 new disputes filed for nearly half of them, international
law firm Fulbright and Jaworski said. . . Responding U.S. companies
reported spending 71 percent of their overall estimated legal budgets on
disputes.

http://washtimes.com/upi/20061011-040733-8984r.htm

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AP - The head of the U.N. nuclear agency warned Monday that as many as
about 30 additional countries could soon have technology that would let
them produce atomic weapons "in a very short time," joining the nine
states known or suspected to have such arms. Speaking at a conference on
tightening controls against nuclear proliferation, International Atomic
Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said more nations were "hedging
their bets" by developing technology that is at the core of peaceful
nuclear energy programs but could be switched to making weapons.

http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/nationworld/world/~3/38070307/
la-fg-nukes17oct17,1,242959.story

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AP - Syracuse University launched a new center for free speech on Oct.
13 . . . The center will educate students and the public about the
importance of free speech through research and educational programming,
and contribute to the national and international discussion on
free-speech and media law. . . Floyd Abrams, regarded as the nation's
pre-eminent First Amendment attorney, delivered the keynote address at
the Tully Center opening.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=17540

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ASSOCIATED PRESS - Hippos in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
face extinction and could be wiped out in many parts of Virunga National
Park by year's end because of intense poaching by rebels, the Zoological
Society of London said Saturday. In the first two weeks of October, more
than 400 hippos were slaughtered in the park, once home to one of
Central Africa's greatest hippopotamus populations, the group said.

http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/nationworld/world/~3/40037209/
la-fg-hippo22oct22,1,837370.story

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MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, AP - Abdul Rahim insists he's an apolitical student
who fled a strict father. But he's fallen into a black hole in the war
on terror in which first the Taliban and then the United States
imprisoned him as an enemy of the state. Arrested by the Taliban in
Afghanistan in January 2000, Rahim says al-Qaida leaders burned him with
cigarettes, smashed his right hand, deprived him of sleep, nearly
drowned him and hanged him from the ceiling until he "confessed" to
spying for the United States. U.S. forces took the young Kurd from Syria
into custody in January 2002 after the Taliban fled his prison. Accusing
him of being an al-Qaida terrorist, U.S. interrogators deprived him of
sleep, threatened him with police dogs and kept him in stress positions
for hours, he says. He's been held ever since as an enemy combatant.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2593695

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