Richest colleges get most federal aid
The federal government typically gives the wealthiest private universities, which often serve the smallest percentage of low-income students, significantly more financial aid money than their struggling counterparts with much greater shares of poor students. Brown, for example, got $169.23 for every student who merely applied for financial aid in order to run its low-interest Perkins loan program in the 2000-1 academic year. Dartmouth got $174.88; Stanford, $211.80. But most universities did not get nearly that much: the median for the nation’s colleges was $14.38, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data on the more than 4,000 colleges and universities that receive some form of federal aid.
Nearly 200 colleges received less than $3 per applicant for financial aid. The University of Wisconsin at Madison got 21 cents.
Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and all the other members of the Ivy League, were also given 5 to 8 times the median to pay their students in work-study jobs. That is money the institutions got directly, to be spent on behalf of needy students.
And they got 5 to 20 times the median amount of grant money to look after the everyday needs of their poor students, despite having some of the largest endowments in the nation, if not the world. (New York Times)

FBI to website owner: ‘we are watching you’
Cryptome is a website dedicated to investigating and publishing accounts of government improprieties. On November 4, FBI agents visited the website’s New York City office and met with site owner John Young.
Both agents said that they had information that Cryptome was a source of information that could be used to “harm the United States.” One agent said that visits like these are increasingly common as the government seeks out information on threats to the US.
Cryptome has a host of documents on its website, most are government documents obtained from various sources. The site says it will not remove any document without a valid court order, and no order has ever been served on them.(Counter Punch)

A majority of Americans favor universal healthcare
With an estimated 43 million Americans without health insurance and sharply rising costs each year, there is a new openness to undertake fundamental changes in the nation’s healthcare system. In September, 10,000 doctors publicly endorsed the creation of a government-run, single-payer health care program in the pages of the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. And in a Washington Post-ABC News poll released in October , a majority of Americans, by a 2 to 1 margin, now prefer the establishment of a new universal national health insurance system over the current privatized healthcare structure.
The US is the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn’t provide its citizens universal healthcare coverage. (Between the Lines)

US launches crackdown on Cuba travel
The Bush administration for the first time is beginning judicial proceedings against dozens of people accused of illegally visiting Cuba, even as Republicans and Democrats in Congress move to end enforcement of the four-decade-old US travel ban to the island.
Last month, unauthorized travelers to Cuba started receiving notices from the Treasury Department that they would be required to appear before a judge. The notices went out about the same time the Senate voted to prohibit enforcement of the travel ban.
Under the existing travel ban, Americans who do not qualify for one of a limited number of licenses allowing them to legally fly directly from the United States to Cuba usually travel via Canada, Mexico or the Bahamas. If they are caught when they return to the United States, American travelers are often questioned in writing about their trips. Many are later told to pay a hefty fine, often about $7,500. (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

Mentally ill man executed in GA
A mentally ill US prisoner was executed by lethal injection in Georgia, prison officials announced.
James Willie Brown, 55, sentenced for the 1975 rape and murder of Brenda Watson, was declared dead at 8:32 pm October 29, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Corrections said.
Brown had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia 17 times, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. A judge determined in 1981, nonetheless, that he was eligible to die for his crimes.
In North Carolina, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty said Joseph Keel, another mentally ill prisoner, is scheduled for execution on November 7. He was sentenced to death in 1990 for the murder of his father-in-law.
Keel suffers from a personality disorder stemming from multiple brain injuries, ranging from pre-natal to a workplace accident, when he was struck on the head with a 1,600-pound steel beam. (Agence France Presse)

Rumsfeld denies he ever made several pre-war statements
In the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said US forces would be welcomed by the Iraqi citizenry and that Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
Now, after both statements have been shown to be either incorrect or vastly exaggerated, Rumsfeld is denying that he ever made such assertions.
On Sept. 25 -- a particularly bloody day in which one US soldier was killed in an ambush, eight Iraqi civilians died in a mortar strike, and a member of the US-appointed governing council died after an assassination attempt five days earlier - - Rumsfeld was asked about the surging resistance.
“Before the war in Iraq, you stated the case very eloquently and you said . . . they would welcome us with open arms,” Sinclair Broadcasting anchor Morris Jones said to Rumsfeld as the prelude to a question.
The defense chief quickly cut him off.
“Never said that,” he said. “Never did. You may remember it well, but you’re thinking of somebody else. You can’t find, anywhere, me saying anything like either of those two things you just said I said.”(Hearst Newspapers)

Iraq bill includes millions for Miami meeting
Buried in a bill that provides money for the war in Iraq is an $8.5 million federal boost for Miami to host the Free Trade Area of the Americas conference later this month.
Passed in the House last week and the Senate Monday, the FTAA money is a single line within the massive Iraq bill. Between 20,000 and 100,000 protesters are expected to flood downtown Miami during the conference set for Nov. 17-21.
“The money enables the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County in particular to go the extra mile in security,” said Charles Cobb, chairman of the nonprofit Florida FTAA Inc. “It gives them much more comfort to do whatever is necessary to provide good security, and do it in a friendly, positive way.”(Palm Beach Post)

US lifts ban on low-yield nukes research
A record 400 billion dollar military spending bill approved by the lower house of US Congress allows the United States to renew research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons. The 2004 defense authorization bill, passed by the House of Representatives by a vote of 362-40 on Friday, is expected to be approved by the Republican-led Senate next week, then go to President George W. Bush to be signed into law.
The bill lifts a decade-old ban prohibiting research and development of nuclear warheads with explosive forces of less than five kilotons, which administration officials say will assist the United States in destroying buried bunkers and stockpiles of chemical or nuclear weapons. (AFP)