HOUSE
Mukasey warned in CIA leak probe
A House panel threatened Tuesday to cite Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey with contempt of Congress unless he produces documents from an FBI interview with Vice President Dick Cheney regarding the leak of a CIA agent’s identity.
Even as he issued the warning, Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat, also backed off his demand for a similar report on President Bush.
“The report of the FBI interview with Vice President Cheney needs to be produced, however,” Mr. Waxman wrote in a letter to Mr. Mukasey, noting that the oversight committee is set to vote July 16 on whether to cite Mr. Mukasey with contempt of Congress.
“I strongly urge you to comply with the duly issued subpoena before then,” Mr. Waxman said. “The committee cannot complete its inquiry into this serious matter without the report of the vice president’s FBI interview.”
There was no immediate indication that Mr. Mukasey would comply. He has made the case that any reports of interviews with Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney on the subject would threaten “core executive branch confidentiality interests and fundamental separation of powers principles.”
SENATE
Boxer charges ’cover-up’ at EPA
Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, accused the Bush administration Tuesday of a “cover-up” aimed at stopping the Environmental Protection Agency from tackling greenhouse emissions.
“This cover-up is being directed from the White House and the office of the vice president,” said Mrs. Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
At issue is a preliminary finding by the EPA in December that “greenhouse gases may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public welfare,” according to Jason Burnett, the agency’s former associate deputy administrator who appeared at a news conference with Mrs. Boxer.
Mrs. Boxer said that unless EPA documents were released, it was likely that within the next two weeks her committee would try to subpoena the material.
Mr. Burnett is a longtime Democrat and Barack Obama supporter who has contributed nearly $125,000 to Democratic candidates since 2000, the Associated Press reports.
HOUSE
Vote aims to close shark-fin loophole
The House took steps Tuesday to keep shark fins out of soups served in pricey Asian restaurants.
In a voice vote, the House tightened a 2000 law that bans the practice of shark finning, whereby mainly Pacific Ocean fishermen cut off a shark’s fin and throw the dying fish back into the sea. Shark-fin soup is a delicacy in some Asian countries.
The bill on sharks, whose populations are declining worldwide, prohibits vessels from having custody, control or possession of shark fins without the carcass. It closes a loophole in the 2000 act under which vessels were sailing into international waters to purchase shark fins from fishermen engaged in finning and then bringing them back into U.S. waters.
The provision was in part a response to a March federal appeals court ruling in favor of a vessel engaged in transshipping shark fins from foreign finning ships. The court said the ship, stopped with 65,000 pounds of shark fins worth more than $600,000, did not violate the law because it was not a fishing vessel.
FDA
Tendon ruptures tied to antibiotics
Drug-safety officials Tuesday imposed the government’s most urgent safety warning on Cipro and similar antibiotics, citing evidence they may lead to tendon ruptures, a serious injury that can leave patients incapacitated and needing extensive surgery.
The Food and Drug Administration ordered makers of fluoroquinolone drugs - a potent class of antibacterials - to add a prominent “black box” warning to their products and develop new literature for patients emphasizing the risks.
Tendon ruptures are normally thought of as sports injuries, generally occurring among men in their mid-30s. The link to treatment with the antibiotics is highly unusual, and scientists still don’t fully understand why it happens. However, FDA officials stressed that many of the serious injuries appear to be preventable if patients stop taking the drug at the first sign of pain or swelling in a tendon, call their doctor, and switch to another antibiotic.
The two leading drugs covered by the warning are Cipro, made by Bayer, and Levaquin, which is made by Ortho-McNeil.
NTSB
Jetliner incident leads to probe
The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday it is investigating a near-collision of two airborne jetliners at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York over the weekend.
The NTSB said initial reports indicate Cayman Airways Flight 792, a Boeing 737-300, and LAN Chile Flight 533, a Boeing 767-300, almost collided Saturday at 8:36 p.m. EDT.
Federal Aviation Administration officials said Monday the planes came no closer than 300 feet vertically and no more than a half-mile horizontally. But air-traffic controllers said the planes came within 100 feet vertically and there was no observable distance horizontally between them, sending them scrambling to put the planes on divergent headings.
The FAA defines a near airborne collision as an incident in which aircraft come within less than 500 feet of each other.
At the time, the Cayman flight was executing a routine “go around” - an aborted landing, usually ordered by the control tower during periods of heavy congestion - while the Chilean plane was departing from a nearby runway.
FEMA
Report blames feds for chemicals
Companies that make recreational vehicles should not be blamed for high levels of formaldehyde in FEMA trailers, according to a report by House Republicans.
The partisan analysis instead points the finger at the federal government for not having standards for safe levels of formaldehyde before Hurricane Katrina victims lived in the trailers.
“Blaming trailer manufacturers for doing what was expected of them would be misplaced and ineffective,” according to the report by the Republican staff on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The committee is holding a hearing Wednesday when the heads of four major travel-trailer manufacturers will testify.
Millions spent on fraudulent claims
Sellers of wheelchairs, drugs and other medical supplies collected as much as $93 million in fraudulent Medicare claims based on prescriptions from doctors who actually were dead, some for 10 years or more, a congressional investigation has found.
Millions more dollars will continue to be at risk of waste and fraud each year in the billion-dollar government-run health program for the elderly and disabled unless Medicare officials address flaws that they’ve promised to fix since at least 2001, according to the probe.
The bipartisan report by the Senate Homeland Security investigations subcommittee reviewed millions of reimbursement claims for medical equipment and supplies from 2000 through 2007. It found that Medicare paid out between $60.3 million to $92.8 million to medical suppliers even though they involved claims in which the prescribing doctor listed had been dead for at least 12 months.
From wire dispatches and staff reports
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