WORLD IN BRIEF (1/24/07)

Crackdown hasn’t stopped illegal downloads By Eric Stern, McClatchy Newspapers… Crackdown hasn’t stopped illegal downloads By Eric Stern, McClatchy Newspapers

College students who illegally download music and movies have been sued. They’ve had Internet access shut off or threatened, and they’ve been warned to never do it again.

But the threat of a letter in a permanent file doesn’t hold as much sway as it used to. Complaints of copyright violations remain steady at campuses across California, even going up in some cases.

“As far as illegal goes, it’s not really a concern for most people. It’s like buckling up or not buckling up,” Meghan Moyle, 20, a UC Davis student from Reno, Nev., said.

The culture of downloading music without paying for it is so pervasive that two-thirds of college students say they don’t care if the music is copyrighted, according to a 2006 study by the University of Richmond law school. The study concludes that the “confrontational approach” is not working.

“You don’t know who got it first,” added Rex Pham, 21, a UC Davis student from San Jose, Calif., who estimates 70 percent of his music was passed along by friends or online forums.

For now, the kids may have a leg up on the adults. But the media industry takes copyrights seriously.

Record companies, movie studios and video game companies routinely scan the Internet for their stolen wares and send complaints of alleged copyright violations to universities. Federal law requires universities to cut off Internet access of students who get caught for repeatedly downloading and passing along copyrighted material.

NATO struggles with Afghan insurgency By Kim Barker, Chicago Tribune

In the spring, NATO will face one of the toughest challenges in its 58-year history: holding together an already stretched alliance in Afghanistan while battling an increasingly savvy Taliban-led insurgency.

Privately, some U.S. officials complained that the United States is being asked to meet unfair demands in Afghanistan. “That’s what’s disappointing,” said one U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “Do we have to save the day here because NATO won’t at least meet its obligation?”

In its most ambitious military undertaking so far, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization assumed control of all of Afghanistan from the U.S. military last year. The plan was for NATO to take over responsibility for Afghanistan and for the U.S. military to gradually scale back its commitment.

That has not happened. About 11,000 of the 31,000 NATO troops are from the U.S. As many as 13,000 other U.S. troops are also in the country, training the Afghan army, building roads or hunting for terrorists. The U.S. troop level in Afghanistan is at its highest level since the Taliban was driven out in late 2001.

Israeli army faces criticism over internal investigations By Joel Greenberg, Chicago Tribune

Wahib a-Dik, a 27-year-old plasterer and father of four, was killed last month, shot in the house where he worked, by an Israeli soldier during a stone-throwing clash.

The death received scant notice on a day dominated by Palestinian factional fighting in the Gaza Strip. But the circumstances of the shooting, along with a number of other recent army killings of Palestinian civilians, have raised questions about discipline and accountability in the Israeli military as the violent conflict grinds on in the West Bank and Gaza.

The army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, resigned after internal inquiries found serious flaws in the military’s performance in last summer’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The inquiries followed an outcry by demobilized reservists who said that they went into combat unprepared, ill-equipped and with unclear orders.

Army killings of hundreds of civilians in more than six years of fighting with the Palestinians have provoked international condemnations and criticism from human rights groups that say the military has failed to properly investigate and prosecute soldiers involved in unwarranted shootings.

The military judge advocate general’s office is considering whether to open a criminal investigation into the Dec. 14 shooting at Kafr a-Dik after reviewing an operational debriefing. There are questions about the army’s initial version of events, which is strongly at odds with descriptions of what happened by Palestinian witnesses.

Wahib a-Dik was struck by three bullets, two in the chest, according to a hospital report, and fell about 15 feet into the building courtyard. His father, Muslih a-Dik, who was also working at the site, recalled that he rushed out and shouted at the soldier, “You killed my son!”

Drug improves chances of quitting smoking, group says By Frank Greve, McClatchy Newspapers

A new anti-smoking drug improves the odds of success threefold for people who want to quit, an independent research group reported Tuesday.

The drug, called Chantix by its maker, Pfizer Inc., outperformed the antidepressants that helped some quitters in clinical trials that the British-based Cochrane Collaborative reviewed.

In the trials, the antidepressants outperformed the placebos used to measure Chantix’s effectiveness by 2 to 1, while Chantix showed a 3-to-1 advantage over the control group.

A third drug-based approach, nicotine replacement therapy, at best only doubled the odds of quitting successfully, according to a 2004 review by Cochrane.

Cochrane’s panels of volunteer physicians and health researchers appraise the quality of all known studies and the findings of the most solid ones. Health professionals and insurers study Cochrane’s evaluations, published online as the Cochrane Library and available by subscription, for the efficiency they add to health-care spending.

Cochrane’s findings on Chantix reinforce the Food and Drug Administration’s decision last May to approve the drug on an expedited basis “because of its significant potential benefit to public health.” The findings also bolster the reputability of Chantix’s six clinical trials, all sponsored by Pfizer.

While Cochrane’s reviewers deem those findings solid, they call for more independent research on the grounds that industry-funded trials “are more likely to have outcomes favorable to the product sponsor.” None of the panelists reported receiving support of any kind from Pfizer.