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Victims of police computers launch informational website
San Jose, USA: Charles Carreon, an attorney for two men suing Identix, the Department of Homeland Security's supplier for "Livescan" biometric scanning machines, says his clients were "literally slandered by a machine, a computer that spit out perfect forgeries of real criminal histories, and convinced police that my clients were convicted felons."

An informational website at www.benson-vs-identix.com explains how Carreon's client Roger Benson won a verdict against the Oregon State Police in a Portland trial during 2002. Benson said: "The problem originated with a Livescan machine in the Eugene jail, where I was fingerprinted. Livescan machines replace paper fingerprint cards with an electronic fingerprint card that mixed up my criminal history with this other guy's, who had three felonies on his record. The cops believed the computers, not me, and I spent 43 days in jail for being innocent, while the other guy's convictions disappeared off his record."

Miguel Espinoza became Carreon's second client after his thriving Mexican restaurant business in Medford, Oregon was destroyed when the local newspaper reported he'd been sent to prison for homicide. Mrs. Espinoza said, "Business just died."

Carreon filed suit in Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose, California. Carreon explained: "On May 11th, at 9 a.m., in open court in Department 7 at 191 North First Street in San Jose, California, we will explain: (1) that Mr. Benson's suit was filed soon after he discovered Livescan had caused his arrest, (2) that the Oregon police concealed Identix's involvement, and (3) that Mr. Benson's computerized criminal history still reports false information. They know about the problem and are concealing it. This could cause an epidemic of false convictions. Identix can't just wait until there's a pile of bodies in front of their door." Benson added his final thought: "It's scarier than that Tom Cruise movie [Minority Report], because it's real. Miguel and I are not the only victims."
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U.S. Retailers: Anti-dumping petitions not about saving jobs but greed
Washington, USA: The Furniture Retailers of America (FRA) today called the announcement by L.& J.G. Stickley Inc., to open a furniture plant in Vietnam yet more evidence that the trade case is not about 'saving jobs' but about greed. L.& J.G. Stickley Inc. is one of 26 domestic furniture manufacturers that have filed an antidumping petition to cut off access to Chinese wooden bedroom furniture imports.

"Stickley's announcement of its new furniture factory in Vietnam, which will begin producing furniture lines next year, is just one example confirming how absolutely baseless the petitioners claims are to protect and return jobs to the U.S. through the antidumping petition, when these same domestic manufacturers have already moved their imports from China to other countries such as Vietnam, Brazil, Chile and Indonesia," said Mike Veitenheimer, FRA spokesperson and Vice President and Counsel of The Bombay Company.

"Companies such as Stickley's that are setting up plants outside of the U.S. to be, so-called 'globally minded,' while at the same time claiming that the petition they filed against China will 'save American jobs,' are not fooling anyone. If the petitioners win, no jobs will be saved, but U.S. retailer jobs will be lost." he said.

Members of FRA include both national and small retail companies throughout the U.S., such as Rooms To Go, JC Penney's, Havertys, Crate & Barrel, The Bombay Company, City Furniture and Rhodes Furniture, among others. In a span of a few months, FRA has rapidly grown in membership because of the need to protect retail customers from possible restrictions on affordable high quality wooden bedroom furniture and the threat of short-term price volatility should duties, as high as 440%, be enacted by the ITC. FRA now represents well over 3,500 retail outlets and 200,000 associates/employees nationwide.

According to William Silverman, FRA counsel and an attorney with Hunton & Williams. "Domestic manufacturers helped create the Chinese bedroom furniture industry years ago and now they are seeking duties only because many of them no longer serve as middlemen earning spreads of up to 40 per cent on sales to U.S. retailers."

In testimony before the ITC in January, retailers, importers and trade experts testified that Chinese bedroom furniture imports have benefited domestic furniture manufacturers, retailers and consumers. Products from China have brought purchasers into the market by offering a broader range of furniture styles at affordable prices, and domestic furniture producers have themselves adopted blended production strategies (using both domestically produced and Chinese-made furniture in bedroom suites) to maximize profits.
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Biobased Products: With the tools of Industrial Ecology
New Haven, USA: The use of agricultural products and wastes for energy and industrial materials is a topic of growing importance throughout the world. A new issue of the prestigious Journal of Industrial Ecology (and available free in full text at mitpress.mit.edu/jie/bio-based ) examines the environmental implications - good and bad - of increased use of bio-based materials and fuels using the concepts and tools of industrial ecology.

The Journal is a peer-reviewed international quarterly published by MIT Press, owned by Yale University and headquartered at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

The research published in this issue suggests:

• Using ethanol fuel made from corn stover, the residues left over in corn fields after the grain is harvested, to produce a mixture of ethanol and gasoline (known as "E85"), can yield important benefits. For each kilometre fuelled by the ethanol, a car uses 95% less petroleum, greenhouse gas emissions are lower, but air quality impacts are mixed.
• Surprisingly, making composite materials and plastics from biobased resources is superior to energy production from energy crops in terms of energy savings and greenhouse gas emissions, when these impacts are computed per unit of agricultural land rather than per unit of product.
• New analysis methods can, without detailed product-specific
  information, predict the environmental performance of bioproduction strategies such as capacity to displace fossil fuel use. These tools can rapidly screen new processes and identify promising opportunities.
  

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