Soldier tells how he threw back Taliban grenade

LONDON (Reuters) – A soldier serving with the British Army inAfghanistan has told of the moment he threw back a Taliban hand grenade, telling himself: "I've really only got one chance to do this."

Rifleman James McKie from Recce Platoon, 3rd Battalion The Rifleswas under fire from three directions on a roof when the grenade hit his platoon commander and landed at his feet.

"My first thought was I hope this doesn't hurt too much," the New Zealander said. "That, and I've really only got one chance to do this.

"If it fails, either way, doing nothing, I'm going to get the same amount of hurt. So I picked it up and threw it off the roof."

It exploded in mid-air just seconds later, sending shrapnel flying.

A media statement from The Rifles at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, which carried McKie's account, said his actions helped to save the lives of his commander and one other soldier who were involved in a fire-fight in the Sangin area of Helmand province, where six British soldiers have been killed in the last week. "We were in a high position on a compound roof," McKie went on. "There was no way you could throw yourself off and not get injured, so I made a decision to pick up the grenade and throw it off the roof.

"I tried to throw it properly, to clear the roof. I didn't want to do it half-arsed and have them throw it back at us or anything like that.

"I remember thinking that if I didn't pull this off, it was going to hurt. But at that stage I was pretty much committed."

McKie sustained fragmentation injuries to his right arm and face as the grenade exploded mid air, close to where he stood.

Fragmentation also hit his Platoon commander Captain Graeme Kerr who received leg injuries and who is recovering at Selly Oak Hospital in Britain.

"In retrospect, people keep telling me how brave I am, which I'm slightly embarrassed about," said McKie, who previously served in the New Zealand army.

"I'd like to think that anyone in that situation would have done the same or something similar because you can't just sit there and let yourself or other people get hurt.

"I don't feel particularly brave. I thought: I have to do this to survive."

Obama pushing on health care end game

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has chosen a suburban St. Louis high school to make his closing argument for a health care overhaul, pushing a new anti-fraud plan as he cranks up the pressure on skittish Democratic lawmakers to act fast.

Obama is to speak Wednesday at St. Charles High School, his second health care address in three days. His speech comes as congressional Democrats stand on the brink of delivering the president a dramatic success with passage of his sweeping overhaul legislation — or a colossal failure if they can't get it done.

Business groups that oppose the legislation are also stepping it up, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announcing a coordinated campaign to spend as much as $10 million on ads, starting Wednesday, saying, "Stop this health care bill we can't afford."

Leaders in the House and Senate are waiting for a final cost analysis from the Congressional Budget Office in the next day or so that will allow them to start counting votes — and twisting arms — in earnest.In the House, in particular, getting the needed majority will be touch and go.

The two-step approach now being pursued calls for the House to approve a Senate-passed bill from last year, despite House Democrats' opposition to several of its provisions. Both chambers then would follow by approving a companion measure to make changes in that first bill.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has said he expects the House to act by March 18, the day Obama leaves for an overseas trip. That timetable would be tough to meet, and congressional leaders toldWhite House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that they don't need deadlines handed down from the White House, according to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee.

"He was certainly informed that we don't feel that we want any deadline assigned to us," Waxman said.

Republicans are playing on House Democrats' suspicions of their Senate colleagues, arguing that Senate Democrats may not hold up their end of the bargain and the votes will be damaging politically for Democrats in November.

"They will be voting, when they pass the Senate bill, to endorse the Cornhusker kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the Gator-aid, the closed-door deal," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said, citing controversial elements of the Senate bill.

An Associated Press-GfK Poll released Tuesday found a widespread hunger for improvements to the health care system, but also found that Americans don't like the way the debate is playing out in Washington.

About four in five Americans say it's important that any health care plan have support from both parties. And more than three in five say the president and congressional Democrats should keep trying to cut a deal with Republicans rather than pass a bill with no GOP support.

Leaders of both parties in Congress say that's not how it's going to work out. After a year of off-and-on negotiations, Republicans adamantly oppose Obama's plans. The White House and Democratic leaders say it's now-or-never for a health care overhaul, which would cover an additional 30 million Americans, require almost everyone to buy health insurance and impose new restrictions on insurance companies.

The president is applying pressure from the outside. In a speech Monday in Pennsylvania, he railed against insurance companies. The message for his Wednesday afternoon speech is aimed directly at the political middle. The plan he's touting would bring in high-tech bounty hunters to help root out health care fraud, a populist idea with bipartisan backing.

Waste and fraud are pervasive problems for Medicare and Medicaid, the giant government health insuranceprograms for seniors and low-income people. Improper payments totaled an estimated $54 billion in 2009. They range from simple errors such as duplicate billing to elaborate schemes operated by fraudsters peddling everything from wheelchairs to hospice care.

The bounty hunters in this case would be private auditors armed with sophisticated computer programs to scan Medicare and Medicaid billing data for patterns of bogus claims. The auditors would get to keep part of any funds they recover. The White House said a Medicare pilot program recouped $900 million for taxpayers from 2005-08.

A presidential memorandum Obama will sign Wednesday directs Cabinet secretaries and agency heads to intensify their use of private auditors under current legal authority.

The White House estimates that expanded use of private audits throughout the government could recoup at least $2 billion for taxpayers over three years.

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Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Charles Babington and Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

Bank of America ends overdraft fees on debit cards

NEW YORK – Bank of America customers will soon be unable to spend more than they have in the accounts linked to their debit cards. It's a step that may become a common move ahead of new regulations limiting overdraft fees.

Rules set by the Federal Reserve that will ban banks from charging such fees, without first getting permission from the customer, are set to take effect July 1.

But Bank of America is going a step further than the regulations require. It will simply no longer allow debit card purchases to go through if there isn't enough money in the account.

For ATM transactions, customers who try to withdraw more than their balance will have to agree to pay a $35 overdraft fee before they can get the money.

"The majority of our customers who overdraw their account do so with everyday debit purchases," said Susan Faulkner, senior vice president of consumer banking for Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America. "They're doing this unknowingly, because they aren't aware that they are about to overdraft."

Since the bank doesn't have the ability to notify the customer when they're at the register and give them the chance to agree to a fee, it will simply reject such transactions.

Consumers have demonstrated a willingness to pay overdrafts for covering the mortgage and the car payment, said Greg McBride, who follows the banking industry for Bankrate.com. "But not if it's things like covering a latte and a scone."

The bank's new policy will kick in on June 19 for new accounts, and in early August for existing accounts. It will replace the bank's current terms, which allow overdrafts to go through but only charge a fee if the deficit is greater than $10.

Bank of America likely won't be the last to make the change. That's because while the new rules will save consumers from surprising dings on their accounts, they will also cut deeply into the more than $1.77 billion annual revenue overdraft fees generate for the banking industry.

Faulkner would not estimate how much such fees pulled in for Bank of America in the past.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. estimates about 41 percent of that total is from point-of-sale debit transactions. About 8 percent was from ATM transactions. The rest were from bad checks and online bill payments, which are not addressed in the regulation.

What's more, 93 percent of overdraft fees are generated by just 14 percent of customers.

Because most of the fees were paid by what Robert Meara, a banking analyst with the consultant Celent, called "serial overdrafters," the rules may not save the average consumer much money. In fact, because banks will look to make up that lost revenue, it may actually cost most individuals more.

"What this may do really is produce the unintended consequence of creating the demise of free checking," said Meara. Banks jumped into free checking in the last decade because of competition, but at the same time started allowing overdrafts that generated huge sums. If they can't charge those fees, it's likely they won't offer the free products anymore either.

Or, he suggested, consumers might start seeing deals advertised where free checking kicks in after a certain number of transactions, or if a customer has several accounts linked together.

"I think banks will use this as an opportunity to be creative and differentiate themselves in ways that was really hard to do when everybody had a free checking account," Meara said. "There's a way this can be a win-win for everybody, but in the short term I think it's going to be challenging for banks to make up for that lost revenue."

U.S. Sitting on Mother Lode of Rare Tech-Crucial Minerals

China supplies most of the rare earth minerals found in technologies such as hybrid cars, wind turbines, computer hard drives and cell phones, but the U.S. has its own largely untapped reserves that could safeguard future tech innovation.

Those reserves include deposits of both "light" and "heavy" rare earths - families of minerals that help make everything from TV displays to magnets in hybrid electric motors. A company called U.S. Rare Earths holds the only known U.S. deposit of heavy rare earths with a concentration worth mining, according to a recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Light rare earths include the minerals ranging from lanthanum to gadolinium on the periodic table of elements, while heavy rare earths range from terbium to lutetium.

Averting disaster

If developed, such deposits could help the U.S. avoid a possibly crippling rare earth shortage in the next decade. China has warned that its own industrial demands could compel it to stop exporting rare earths within the next five or 10 years.

"There is already a shortage, because there are companies that already can't get enough material," said Jim Hedrick, a former USGS rare earth specialist who recently retired. "No one's trying to expand their use of rare earths because they know there's not more available."

U.S. Rare Earths practically stumbled upon its first rare earth deposit at Lehmi Pass, on the border between Idaho and Montana, about 15 years ago. The company founders coveted the area's reserves of thorium - an alternative nuclear fuel - and took little interest in the rare earths that were only used, at the time, in lighter flints and tracer bullets for the military.

Their view changed over the years as rare earths became practically irreplaceable in high-tech products used by millions of people today. The company only recently changed its name to U.S. Rare Earths after staking out another deposit at Diamond Creek, Idaho.

"The fact is, the Diamond Creek property is today, the most accessible, undeveloped rare earth resource with significant [heavy rare earths] that there is in North America," said Jack Lifton, an independent consultant who works with U.S. Rare Earths.

Recent USGS figures estimate that the U.S. holds rare earth ore reserves of up to 13 million metric tons. By contrast, the entire world produced just 124,000 metric tons in 2009 - but it would take both time and money for the U.S. to become self-sufficient in producing rare earths.

Deposits near civilization

The Diamond Creek location has the added advantages of being in mining-friendly Idaho and having access to nearby highways and power lines - factors that would make opening a mine much easier.

"We have power, light and roads, so we're not in the middle of the wilderness," said Ed Cowle, CEO of U.S. Rare Earths.

Cowle hopes to attract enough funding over the next six months to do some exploratory drilling at his company's deposits. He also pointed to growing interest from national legislators in prodding the federal government to take action.

"Many times opening a mine takes a certain period of time, but if there's a strategic need for material from government, that time period can be lessened," Cowle told TechNewsDaily. "We're hopeful of that because of the nature of what's in the ground."

An expensive proposition

Another company, Molycorp Minerals, has already begun processing "light" rare earths, such as lanthanum and neodymium, from a stockpile it accumulated at its mine in Mountain Pass, California. But it still has to ship its rare earths to China for final processing, because only China currently has the equipment needed for the job.

"No one [in the U.S.] wants to be first to jump into the market because of the cost of building a separation plant," Hedrick explained. The former USGS specialist said that such a plant requires thousands of stainless steel tanks holding different chemical solutions to separate out all the individual rare earths.

The upfront costs seem daunting. Hedrick estimated that opening just one mine and building a new separation plant might cost anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion and would require a minimum of eight years.

Lifton has also suggested that many U.S. companies have not jumped into the market because China's state-owned mines keep rare earth prices artificially low. But if U.S. companies do not begin mining American rare earth deposits soon, they may be left scrambling if China does one day stop exporting rare earths.

But Cowle, the CEO of U.S. Rare Earths, seems hopeful that momentum has already begun building for the U.S. government to encourage development of its own rare earth deposits.

"From what I see, security of supply is going to be more important than the prices," Cowle said.

How Obama Is Making the Same Mistakes as Bush

Who would have thought that one of Barack Obama's biggest missteps as president would be repeating some of the bad habits of George W. Bush? No single factor was more instrumental in Obama's 2008 victory than his pledge to completely reverse the nation's course once in the White House. Instead, over the past year, Obama has mimicked some of Bush's most egregious blunders, leading to much of the political predicament in which the present decider finds himself today.

This is not to say that Obama has maintained Bush's policies, although his administration's continuity on issues ranging fromAfghanistan to Wall Street has alienated the left. And he certainly hasn't done himself any favors by failing to inspire the general public to rally around his agenda. But Obama's stumbles atop the high-wire of running the federal government has created perhaps the greatest danger to his presidency, and they are oddly reminiscent of the misguided practices which tripped up his predecessor. (See pictures of Obama's first year in the White House.)

Consider all the ways in which the current occupant of the Oval Officehas-inadvertently or otherwise - repeated the errors of the recent past:

No chief economic spokesperson
Quick: name all three of George W. Bush's treasury secretaries. Hard to do, isn't it? Like Bush, Obama has failed to install an economic commander-in-chief who can serve as the public face and the in-house honcho of the administration's financial team. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, National Economic Council chief Larry Summers, andCouncil of Economic Advisers chair Christina Romer all bring strengths to their positions, but none is especially effective at conveying either a consistent message or a sufficient urgency, and none stands out symbolically or practically as America's economic czar. It is not practical for the President himself to serve as the daily go-to guy on any one issue, and, given the short-term and long-term consequences of the financial and unemployment crises, he desperately needs a distinct leader to handle this vital job. Bush needed aRobert Rubin figure, and so does Obama.

Failure to integrate policy, politics, and communication
By the end of Bush's two terms, even some of his supporters were disappointed (and, at times, horrified) by how much of the decision-making at the highest levels of the government were more the result of political machinations than rigorous substantive policy-making. From its earliest days, Obama's White House has failed to put in place the necessary procedures and personnel to move strong, serious ideas along the conveyor belt from the minds of wonky experts cloistered in the Old Executive Office Building chambers to the President's lips as he introduces new initiatives at dramatic public events.

Tying the Adminstration's fate too closely to his own party's congressional leadership
Republican leaders in Congress effectively convinced Bush in almost every year of his presidency to marry his fate to theirs, and, all too frequently, to subordinate his own vision of right and wrong to their short-term political demands. This problem was particularly pronounced in the area of spending, from a mammoth farm bill, to an expensive new entitlement in the form of a Medicare prescription drug benefit, to colossal business-as-usual earmark spending. Bush also tarnished his personal image by staying largely silent in the face of ethics flaps involving Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, and other scandal-plagued Republicans. (Obama should take note, as he continues to sidestep meaningful comment on the long-running travails of Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel.) When Bush ran for president, he, like Obama, suggested he would regularly cross his own party's congressional wing when he thought they were dead wrong. And Obama, like Bush, has lashed himself over and over to the political fortunes of the Capitol Hill portion of his party, allowing the agenda and vision of Speaker Pelosi, Leader Reid, and a covey of mostly liberal committee chairs to define the public image of the Democratic Party and determine what his administration can accomplish.

Failing to empower Cabinet members on domestic policy
Obama has put numerous talented people in his Cabinet, from a Nobel Prize winner, to several successful governors, but, like his predecessor, he has no system to get the most out of them. Cabinet members in the domestic policy cluster have less input, and less of a platform, in determining and selling administration policies than their counterparts at State and Defense. Finding the right balance - giving the domestic Cabinet enough influence, but not too much - is tough, but Obama, like Bush, has placed too little weight on the side of the secretaries. Potent and active education secretary Arne Duncan is an exception that illustrates what the President could be doing with the rest of the team.

The good news for Obama is that every one of these errors is fixable, and there are signs that the President and his staff are working to address at least some of them, by, for instance, adding new policy heft to the chief of staff's office. The more cautionary note, however, is that Bush never solved these problems, which plagued him from his earliest months in the White House until the day he left. Candidate Obama's repudiation of Bush's eight-year presidency was focused on his predecessor's ideology. He should have taken stock of Bush's executive process as well.