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Acne vulgaris, or acne, is a skin trouble too starts when oil and dead skin cells clog up your pores. Some folks employ it blackheads, blemishes, whiteheads, pimples, or zits. When you experience recently a few red spots, or pimples, you experience a mild order of acne. Severe acne can make for over a hundred dollars of pimples this can smother the face, neck, chest, and back. Or, it can be bigger, solid, red lumps the present are painful (cysts).
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What makes acne?
Acne starts when oil and dead skin cells clog the skin’s pores. If germs get to the pores, the result can be swelling, redness, and pus. See a picture of how pimples craft .
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What are the symptoms?
Symptoms of acne add whiteheads, blackheads , and pimples . These can happen on the face, neck, shoulders, back, or chest. Pimples the are substantial and deep are identified cystic lesions . These can be painful if properties get infected. They in addition can scar the skin.
How is acne treated?
To benefits control acne, still be your skin clean. Avoid skin packages so clog your pores. Look for offerings this say “noncomedogenic” on the label. Wash your skin in the wake of or twice a day surrounded by a flowing soap or acne wash. Try not to scrub or choose at your pimples. This can compose them worse and can lead to scars.
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It can take bit to get acne underneath control. Keep paying for the same attention for 6 to 8 weeks. You may that much come to find which it becomes worse before it becomes better. If your skin is not even better following 8 weeks, try an extra product.
If your pimples are in reality putting themselves out you or are scarring your skin, see your doctor. A prescription gel or cream for your skin may be all you need. Your doctor may in addition condition antibiotic pills. A mix of treatments may endeavor best. If you are female, producing assured birth control pills may help.
If you own acne cysts, jargon to your doctor something like sounder medicine. Isotretinoin (such as Accutane) runs outstandingly well, but it can mean birth defects. And paying for Accutane may be associated amongst depression. Let your doctor can make out if you hold had depression before rendering that medicine. And if you are female, you ought to cover against pregnancy by making the most of two forms of birth control. Even one dose of presently medicine can rationale birth defects if a woman takes it additonally she is pregnant. You cannot take isotretinoin if you are breast-feeding.
What can be finished roughly acne scars?
There are skin treatments such a can allow acne scars appear bigger and feel smoother. Ask your doctor in regards to them. The smartest attention for you depends on how serious the scarring is. You can undergo scar tissue removed or own a try of collagen. Collagen smoothes a pitted scar by plumping up the skin underneath. You may get the smartest possible results among a combination of treatments.

WASHINGTON - In an air-conditioned room in the Chinese Embassy, a vice minister from Beijing chastises Americans for their “very limited” understanding of violent anti-government protests in Tibet.

of the banned-in-China Falun Gong spiritual movement kneel in the hot sun near the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers and activists rail against what they say are Chinese atrocities.

The Olympic Games begin in Beijing on Aug. 8, but already the competition to sway public opinion in the United States is heating up between anti-China activists and Chinese authorities. It is transforming the run-up to the global sports gathering into a public relations marathon in which China’s national pride is pitted against claims that Beijing abuses its citizens and unquestioningly supports nefarious governments.

Once slow to address criticism, China has responded aggressively to what it sees as unjust condemnation by Western media, rights groups and officials that could tarnish the Olympics. An increasingly media-savvy Chinese Embassy has held briefings meant to provide China’s point of view on contentious issues in the news. Ministers and academics have been flown in from China for news conferences and to meet with U.S. officials and lawmakers.

Meanwhile, China’s opponents have been relentless. Uighurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, activists for Darfur and Myanmar, and groups championing religious freedom and human rights are all delighted that the Olympics might shine a spotlight on a country they say has failed to follow through on pledges to improve human rights that were included with its bid to host the games.

They have gathered at rallies in Capitol Hill parks and at congressional hearings, where powerful lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and celebrities like actor Richard Gere have faulted Chinese rights abuses. At the Falun Gong rally, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a warning to Beijing that has become a popular refrain by China critics in Washington: “The world will be watching.”

For all the celebrity and congressional attention, however, it is unclear how much of a difference the efforts will make.

Ralph A. Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS think tank, says what will matter more is how China handles any protests at home during the Olympics, when reporters will be searching for signs of dissent. Some sort of protest, he says, “seems inevitable, and this will give China a black eye internationally if it overreacts, as it almost always does.”

In Washington, the Chinese Embassy is working hard to counter criticism ahead of the games.

Spokesman Wang Baodong said it is the embassy’s duty “to try to reach out to various circles of this country, to let them know the whole picture and to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the situation in China.” Wang said that if Americans base their judgment of China only on the criticism of vocal opponents, “they will be misled, because it does not reflect the whole picture.” He added, “The mainstream opinion of the international community is wishing good for the Beijing Olympic Games.”

A large rallying point for protesters in the United States has been China’s tight grip on Tibet, which China has governed since communist troops invaded in the 1950s. China says 22 people died in March anti-government violence; foreign Tibet supporters say many times that number were killed during demonstrations and a subsequent government crackdown.

China also has been criticized for not using its economic leverage to apply more pressure on the Sudanese government to stop violence in Darfur, where more than 300,000 people are said to have died over the past five years.

While some lawmakers are quick to blast China over these and other issues, the Bush administration has been careful not to anger Beijing ahead of the Olympics, wary about running the risk of hindering a host of international efforts the U.S. needs China’s help to solve.

Still, a swirl of activity continues in Washington. On Wednesday, at a House hearing focusing on China “on the eve of the Olympics,” Beijing was criticized for suppressing dissidents and activists. Then, on Thursday, lawmakers on the House foreign affairs panel passed a resolution that calls on China to immediately stop abusing minority rights and to end its support for Myanmar and Sudan so that the games will “take place in an atmosphere that honors the Olympic traditions of freedom and openness.”

Cossa says that, with the protests and the scrutiny it is facing as the Olympics approach, “one wonders if there is not a certain amount of ‘buyer’s remorse’ in China right now.”

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LONDON – Barack Obama’s campaign has received roughly 10 times more money from declared U.S. donors living in Germany, France and Britain than his Republican rival, reflecting his popularity in Europe as he makes his first tour of the continent as the presumed Democratic nominee.

Federal Election Commission reports show Obama has raised at least $1 million from donors who identify themselves as Americans living in Great Britain, Germany and France, while John McCain has taken in at least $150,000.

Some donors say the huge disparity, which also exists in overall funding raising in which Obama has raked in $338 million to $126.3 million for McCain, is more about disliking Bush and the prospect of another Republican succeeding him than it is an affection for Obama.

“I contributed because of the absolutely appalling performance of the Bush administration during the last eight years,” said Eileen Taylor, a chief operating officer for Deutsche Bank in London.

She made two $2,300 donations, the maximum allowed, and is also working on a voter registration drive to make it easier for Americans abroad to cast ballots in the November election.

“We’re actively signing people up to vote,” she said. “Democrats Abroad is working with a lot of companies to set up voter registration and absentee ballots. The key message is that it’s not about the money. A lot of people are putting emotional energy into this campaign.”

Only U.S. citizens are permitted to contribute to presidential campaigns. The European totals include contributions of $200 or more from each individual as election laws do not require campaigns to itemize lesser amounts. So it’s possible Obama has received additional money from smaller donors. McCain, however, publishes all contributions, even amounts smaller than $200.

While Bush is unpopular at home, hostility to the outgoing president appears to be much deeper among expatriate donors than the general population in the United States. Obama’s many backers in Europe say they are motivated by a yearning for America to once again be viewed with respect by the rest of the world.

Gerald Wood, an American living in Germany, said he contributed $1,000 to Obama because he wants to see America’s reputation restored after it “worsened” during the Bush years.

“For me Barack Obama is the one who can improve America’s image,” he said, comparing the youthful candidate to John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. “I want more bipartisanship, to give the land a vision.”

The amounts raised in Europe are not terribly significant in the costly White House race, but the disparity between the two candidates underscores the Democratic candidate’s appeal on a continent where Obamamania seems to have taken hold of expatriates and Europeans alike.

It also may reflect the Obama campaign’s adroit use of the Internet as a prime fundraising tool while the McCain camp was for a long time saddled with a Web site that made it difficult for Americans abroad to contribute.

Patricia Toner, a retired IBM employee who lives in southern France, said she gave a total of $2,000 to Obama’s campaign after receiving a mass e-mail from a friend during the primary season that contained a link to the candidate’s Web site.

“I’m a retired information technology professional and I found their Web site so well crafted,” she said.

Mary Jo Jacobi, a Republican who was an adviser to President Reagan and the first President Bush, conceded that Obama had a big advantage over McCain in Internet campaigning.

“A lot of McCain backers were saying it was very hard or impossible to donate over the Web site,” she said. “Obama made it easy. Obama has been much more sophisticated about Internet usage, and when you live overseas that’s the easiest way to contribute.”

She also acknowledged Obama’s message of change had drawn a positive response among Americans abroad, pointing out that people who uproot themselves to work overseas are by nature receptive to change. An estimated quarter of a million Americans live in Britain alone.

In London, many of Obama’s donors are members of London’s high-flying financial and legal elite, and also include information technology executives, architects and a celebrity restaurateur.

It has become fashionable to support him ever since Elisabeth Murdoch, the daughter of newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch, hosted a high profile fundraiser for Obama in April.

The occupations listed on the FEC reports are impressive: lawyers, corporate vice presidents and chief executives are common.

The Obama list includes corporate luminaries like Joanna Shields, the chief executive officer of the popular Bebo social networking site; Ruth Rogers, co-founder of the exclusive River Cafe and wife of celebrated architect Richard Rogers; David Giampaolo, chief executive officer of the private equity investment company Pi Capital; John Graham, a director of the investment firm Rogge Global Partners; and Cheryl Solomon, general counsel for The Gucci Group.

Each donor is permitted to give a maximum of $2,300 for each election, but since the primaries are regarded as a separate election, a person can make two separate donations of $2,300 before the general election in November. While some gave the maximum, others made contributions in the $10 and $25 range.

McCain also enjoyed support from a number of investment bankers and international banking executives, but he received donations from only 63 individuals in Britain while Obama has about 600 donors.

McCain did receive money from Charles Thompson, with Saudi Petroleum Overseas, and Tom Fenton, a former CBS News correspondent who has long been a fixture on the London journalistic scene.

Thompson refused to discuss his contribution. Fenton, an independent, paid $1,000 to attend a McCain lunch in London so he could sit with the candidate and judge him up close. He said he may also contribute to the Obama campaign as well.

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WASHINGTON - The State Department urgently needs to overhaul the way it handles passport applications to avoid a repeat of the massive backlogs last summer that frustrated countless travelers, congressional investigators concluded.

They said the department must develop a “comprehensive, long-term strategy” to meet rising demand for the identity documents. The Associated Press obtained a draft copy Thursday of the report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, ahead of its expected release Friday.

Lawmakers asked for an investigation into the backlog that swamped passport offices last spring and summer, the result of a record 18 million applications.

“The 2007 surge in passport demand exposed serious deficiencies in State’s passport issuance process. Passport wait times reached record highs, leading to inconvenience and frustration for many thousands of Americans,” the report found.

The department “needs to rethink its entire end-to-end passport issuance process, including each of the entities involved in issuing a passport, and develop a formal strategy for prioritizing and implementing improvements to this process,” according to the investigators.

The need for such a strategy is urgent, they said, because the demand for passports is expected to keep soaring in the coming years.

Investigators also recommended creating a a system to track individual passport applications as they are handled. That would make it easier for applicants and government workers to track their progress.

Department officials have acknowledged underestimating the high demand for passports last year, but said it was a historic change in behavior by Americans that was not predicted.

The report found a number of crucial missteps or misjudgments that led to the passport mess:

_A department study used to estimate future passport demand failed to account for a large group of likely travelers.

_When the backup began in early 2007, officials did not realize how large it was. They were unaware that many applications were piling up at the offices of a private contractor handling the initial paperwork.

_As the typical four-week wait for a passport turned into 12 weeks or more, officials could not quickly locate specific applications.

The delays led to long lines at government buildings. Lawmakers held hearings after their offices were swamped by requests from constituents desperate to make a long-planned family trip or holiday.

Under intense criticism, the department ordered mandatory overtime, brought some employees home from foreign posts to help, and sped up hiring.

The GAO found those measures worked well to alleviate the backlog. But they said the department took a “day-to-day” approach to the problem rather than overhauling and re-examining the entire process.

By last October, the wait times had come back down to normal levels, and this summer’s batch of applications has gone smoothly. The department’s Web site says people can expect a passport application to be processed in about four weeks.

Some of the demand for new passports resulted from new travel rules that required U.S. citizens to have a passport when returning from trips within the Western Hemisphere, including Canada and Mexico.

Lawmakers fear another round of travel headaches next year, when passports will be required of every American citizen driving back across the northern or southern U.S. border.

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HARLINGEN, Texas – Business at reopened restaurants was humming, grocery store parking lots were packed and residents of south Texas were venturing out on the newly dry roads again as the remnants of Hurricane Dolly moved well away from the Rio Grande Valley.

But thousands were still without power Thursday and cleanup was ongoing following the Category 2 storm. Officials also warned that Dolly’s aftereffects were not necessarily gone for good.

Downed power lines remained the greatest danger. One person in Matamoros, Mexico, died from electrocution after walking past a power line on the ground.

Fallen billboards and business signs still littered the streets, but residents were out and about after hunkering down for most of Wednesday. As the sun peeked through dark clouds, people began cleaning up and expressed relief that the storm didn’t take many lives.

“We’re all OK,” said Hilario Cruz as he chopped up a felled tree that just missed his pickup truck in Harlingen. “We covered the windows. The water was up to our knees yesterday.”

There will be substantial cleanup: President Bush declared 15 counties in south Texas a disaster area to release federal funding to them, and insurance estimators put the losses at $750 million.

By Thursday afternoon, forecasters downgraded Dolly to a tropical depression. The storm, which brought 100 mph winds, was expected to break up by Friday. It left behind more than a foot of rain in some areas and broke all-time July rainfall records in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

But with Dolly long gone, 159,000 people in the region were still without power at 10 p.m. EDT Thursday, according to Gov. Rick Perry’s office. The figure was down from 228,000 earlier in the day.

Steve McCraw, the state’s homeland security director, said about 1,500 workers were on hand to help restore power and seven stations were distributing water, ice, food and hygiene kits.

An aerial view of the Rio Grande Valley showed fields forming a checkerboard pattern, some inundated with water, others spared. Traffic was moving again in most places, but some residential areas were surrounded by floodwaters and debris was strewn across lawns.

Perry, who flew over the area Thursday with U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, cautioned residents not to rest easy just yet.

“It appears that we have handled it as well as it can be handled. But it is far from over,” Perry said, noting possible flooding over the next five days from runoff as the storm moves northward.

Sen. Cornyn said Dolly should remind the federal government that it needs to fund levee improvements along the Rio Grande.

“We’re lucky Mother Nature didn’t deal us a harsher blow,” Cornyn said.

After crashing ashore on South Padre Island midday Wednesday, Dolly meandered north, leaving towns on the northern tip of the Rio Grande Valley with a surprise. Officials had feared the Rio Grande levees would breach, but the storm veered from its predicted path and they held strong.

“We’re glad it didn’t make a direct hit but it just refocuses on the issues we have,” said Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos. “The levees are suspect. Nothing’s changed in my opinion.”

While the area near the border that expected the bulk of the storm was counting its blessings, residents a little farther north were wondering what hit them.

In the La Quinta section of San Benito, flooding is routine as rain normally drives torrents of water off a nearby expressway and pool around raised railroad beds.

But they said Thursday they’d never seen anything like this.

One subsidized housing project will likely have to be torn down, having just barely survived three or four other floods, said Arnold Padilla, the city’s housing director.

“If it was salvageable at all, it would be three or four months before it was livable,” Padilla said.

The raised railroad tracks that define the neighborhood became the vantage point, boat launch and the only dry ground around.

Residents waded through waist-deep brown water with a few belongings wrapped in plastic bags held high in a sad caravan of Dolly’s displaced.

A bit farther northwest in Harlingen, Joanna Nunez was considering how to fix the new hole in her roof. She said that not long after the storm had torn away the chunk, a neighbor boy staying at her house asked if he could go outside to see Dolly.

“I told him, ‘We are outside,’” she said, smiling and looking at the hole.

Rain and wind from Dolly probably doomed much of the cotton crop in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. About 92,000 acres of cotton in the region were awaiting harvest but driving rains and high winds knocked bolls to the ground, making them unsalvageable, Texas Agri Life Extension agent Rod Santa Ana said. Sorghum acres damaged by rain in early July also could be doomed, he said.

A remnant of the storm on Thursday blew several roofs off houses and businesses on San Antonio’s south side, about 300 miles northwest of where the storm made landfall. There were no immediate reports of injuries and the National Weather Service sent a storm survey team to determine whether it was a tornado or strong winds.

On South Padre Island, which endured the worst of Dolly’s wrath, power could be out for another day, said town spokeswoman Melissa Zamora. A 9 p.m. curfew was set for the second night in row Thursday, and the National Guard and FEMA were distributing ice, water and food.

South Padre Island officials said no buildings were in danger of collapse, but damage was widespread to hotels and other businesses. There were no dollar estimates on damage yet.

Avi Fima was mourning the damage to “my baby” – his Surf Stop store on Padre Boulevard. Windows were blown out, half the roof was torn away and water bubbled up the carpeting inside.

“This is going to hit us good,” Fima said. “We actually started summer really good. … To rebuild it – the season will be over. We have a month left.”

Across the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, power was restored to large parts of Brownsville’s sister city, and Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernandez said he hoped the lights would be on by the end of the day.

Gas stations and factories reopened as about 2,500 police and soldiers patrolled to prevent looting while many of the 13,000 people who had taken shelter returned home.

The last hurricane to hit the U.S. was the fast-forming Humberto, which came ashore in southeast Texas last September.

The busiest part of the Atlantic hurricane season is usually in August and September. So far this year, there have been four named storms, two of which became hurricanes. Federal forecasters predict a total of 12 to 16 named storms and six to nine hurricanes this season.

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WASHINGTON – One of the worst outbreaks of foodborne illness in the U.S. is teaching the food industry the truth of the adage, “Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.”

The industry pressured the Bush administration years ago to limit the paperwork companies would have to keep to help U.S. health investigators quickly trace produce that sickens consumers, according to interviews and government reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

The White House also killed a plan to require the industry to maintain electronic tracking records that could be reviewed easily during a crisis to search for an outbreak’s source. Companies complained the proposals were too burdensome and costly, and warned they could disrupt the availability of consumers’ favorite foods.

The apparent but unintended consequences of the lobbying success: a paper record-keeping system that has slowed investigators, with estimated business losses of $250 million. So far, nearly 1,300 people in 43 states, the District of Columbia and Canada have been sickened by salmonella since April.

Investigators initially focused on tomatoes as a culprit. Now they are turning attention to jalapeno peppers.

A former member of Bush’s Cabinet and three former senior officials in the Food and Drug Administration told the AP that government food safety experts did not get the strong record-keeping and trace-back system originally proposed under a bioterrorism law to cope with a major foodborne illness.

“In retrospect, yes, if they (the regulations) had been broader and a bit more far-reaching, it could have helped with this,” said Robert Brackett, senior vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association. “It wouldn’t have hurt, for sure.” Brackett formerly was a top safety official at the FDA.

Under pressure in 2003 and 2004, the White House agreed to dilute record-keeping proposals by FDA safety experts.

“If the FDA had been given the resources and authority years ago that it asked for to solve these kinds of problems, I think we would have solved this already,” said William Hubbard, a former FDA associate commissioner.

Tommy Thompson, who was health secretary during the industry’s lobbying campaign, acknowledged that a more robust food-tracking system – opposed by business groups as too expensive – could have helped stem the current illnesses and business losses.

“We went in with the larger package but knew we had to compromise,” Thompson told the AP. “I was satisfied with this being the first step. It’s always better to be a Monday morning quarterback. We could have ended up with nothing. If we had more, would it help the situation now? Yes.”

According to government records reviewed by the AP, business groups met at least 10 times with the White House between March 2003 and March 2004, as the FDA regulations were under debate. Food industry lobbyists successfully blunted proposals using arguments familiar in other regulatory debates: The government’s plans would saddle business with unnecessary and costly regulations.

“The FDA’s strong proposed bioterrorism rules were significantly watered down before they became final,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest. The private advocacy group obtained the White House meeting records under the Freedom of Information Act and provided them to the AP.

Participants in the meetings included companies and trade groups up and down the food chain, including Altria Group Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc., when Altria was Kraft’s parent; The Kroger Co.; Safeway Inc.; ConAgra Foods Inc.; The Procter & Gamble Co.; the American Forest and Paper Association; the Polystyrene Packaging Council; the Glass Packaging Institute; the Cocoa Merchants’ Association of America; the World Shipping Council; and the Food Marketing Institute.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association spent $2.6 million on lobbing in 2003 and 2004, the period when the FDA rules were under consideration, according to federal lobbying records. The Food Marketing Institute spent $1.7 million during the period. The figures were for all lobbying by the trade groups and on their behalf.

The grocery group complained during the comment period that the FDA was overstepping authority that Congress had granted under the new bioterrorism law. It said the FDA wanted a “cradle-to-grave record-keeping system” to track every morsel of food delivered to every retail grocery shelf and said more tracking information does not always produce a better result.

The marketing institute said a proposed tracking system as envisioned by the FDA “would be exorbitantly costly.”

The food industry now says it will agree to a better tracing system operated by the government, as long as the industry can advise how to design it.

“We support the government requiring industry to have traceability systems that are effective and work,” said Jill Hollingsworth, group vice president for food safety programs at the marketing institute. “But industry has to come up with a system that follows products throughout the food chain.”

The FDA official in charge of the current salmonella investigation, David Acheson, said the agency slowly is reviewing paper records to help trace tainted produce. But Acheson disputed arguments that an electronic records system would necessarily have helped investigators.

“We still haven’t managed to figure out this outbreak,” he said in an interview days before the case’s biggest break – discovery of a tainted Mexican-grown jalapeno in a southern Texas warehouse.

The White House Office of Management and Budget defended its meetings with food industry groups in 2003 and 2004, saying it regularly meets with companies and individuals with a stake in proposed government rules.

“Our door is open for anyone – from non-profits, industry representatives to individual citizens – who request meetings on regulations,” OMB spokeswoman Jane Lee said. “These are listening sessions in conjunction with personnel from the regulating agency.”
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HOUSTON - As giant oil companies like Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips get set to report what will probably be another round of eye-popping quarterly profits, just where is all that money going?

The companies insist they’re trying to find new oil that might help bring down gas prices, but the money they spend on exploration is nothing compared with what they spend on stock buybacks and dividends.

It’s good news for shareholders, including mutual funds and retirement plans for millions of Americans, but no help to drivers already making drastic cutbacks to offset the high cost of fuel.

The five biggest international oil companies plowed about 55 percent of the cash they made from their businesses into stock buybacks and dividends last year, up from 30 percent in 2000 and just 1 percent in 1993, according to Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

The percentage they spend to find new deposits of fossil fuels has remained flat for years, in the mid-single digits.

The issue has become more sensitive as lawmakers and Americans frustrated by high gas prices have balked at gaudy reports of oil industry profits. ConocoPhillips is scheduled to kick off the latest round of Big Oil earnings reports Wednesday.

Oil prices are set on the open market, not by the oil industry. But that hasn’t stopped public protests, a series of congressional grillings for top oil executives, and a failed attempt by lawmakers to slap Big Oil with a windfall profits tax.

In the first three months of this year, Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company, shelled out $8.8 billion on stock buybacks alone, compared with $5.5 billion on exploration and other capital projects.

ConocoPhillips has already told investors that its stock buybacks for April to June of this year will come to about $2.5 billion – nine times what it spent on exploration.

Stock buybacks are common throughout corporate America, not just for Big Oil. They shrink the amount of stock on the open market, essentially increasing its value and giving individual shareholders a bigger stake in the company.

But some critics say Big Oil focuses too much on boosting stock prices, in an industry that sometimes ties executive pay to stock price.

And in focusing on buybacks and dividends over exploring for new oil, some critics say, oil companies jeopardize its already dwindling share of world supply.

“If you’re not spending your money finding and developing new oil, then there’s no new oil,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University who’s studied spending patterns of the major oil companies.

Investor-owned companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron hold less than 10 percent of global oil and gas reserves, way down from past decades. And finding new oil has become harder and more expensive.

State-run oil companies, like those in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, control about 80 percent of oil reserves – and at today’s prices, it’s not surprising they’re keeping a tight grip on what they have. Scarce equipment and hard-to-find labor also pose problems.

No one questions that Big Oil is rolling in cash. The cash the biggest oil companies bring in from running their businesses, or operating cash flow, is four times what it was in the early 1990s.

“It becomes a management decision,” said Howard Silverblatt, a senior index analyst at Standard & Poor’s. “It’s not like they’re going to the board and saying, ‘Well, I can do one or the other or the other.’ The balance sheets are flush with cash.”

So what’s Big Oil to do?

The companies say they are doing what they can to find more fossil fuels around the world, but the easy oil is gone. Exploring these days may mean expensive projects in thousands of feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico or costly ventures pulling petroleum from Canada’s vast oil-sands deposits.

TransCanada Corp. and ConocoPhillips Co. just said they’d spend $7 billion to nearly double the amount of crude flowing through a pipeline from Canada’s tar sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

And analysts point out that because there’s no guarantee oil prices will stay in the stratosphere, oil companies should approach exploration projects with caution.

“There’s only so much money you can throw at it without being ridiculous,” said Joseph Stanislaw, a senior adviser to Deloitte LLP’s Energy & Resources practice. “I think they’re doing what they can.”

It’s also important to remember it can take several years before a company produces the first barrel of oil from a new field.

One example is an oil field in the Gulf of Mexico called Thunder Horse. Operated by BP and partly owned by Exxon Mobil, the platform only last month began producing oil and gas – nine years after the field’s discovery.

At its peak, the multibillion-dollar project is designed to produce 250,000 barrels of oil and 200 million cubic feet of natural gas each day, which would make it the Gulf’s largest producer.

“When you look at the spending that’s going on, the companies are bringing on a lot of long-term discoveries,” said John Parry, a senior analyst with John S. Herold Inc.

At ConocoPhillips, the capital spending budget for 2008, which includes exploration and production, is $15.3 billion, more than double the spending of five years ago.

“Could we spend $20 billion or $25 billion? Absolutely,” spokesman Gary Russell said. “Could we do it effectively, in a way that provides ultimate value to our shareholders? Probably not.”

Exxon Mobil, known for its disciplined approach to investing in energy projects, has drawn criticism for its reluctance to invest in alternative energy sources like wind and solar power.

The company expects to spent $25 billion to $30 billion on capital and exploration projects each of the next five years. Last year, it spent about $32 billion on share buybacks.

“You fund your investments that make sense,” said spokesman Alan Jeffers. “You have criteria, and you have to meet that to be a good investment for the shareholder. And then if you’ve got cash that’s left over, you’re going to return it to the shareholder because it’s theirs.”

Exxon Mobil often touts its $100 million contribution to Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project. By contrast, BP says it plans to spend $8 billion over the next decade developing alternative energy using wind, hydrogen and other means.

Big Oil isn’t alone buying back large amounts of stock, but the companies are certainly some of the biggest indulgers.

A boom in stock buybacks has been under way in corporate America since 2004. In the first quarter of this year, Exxon, ConocoPhillips and Chevron were all among the top 10 companies for share buybacks in the S&P 500.

In Washington, one Democratic proposal would impose a 25 percent tax on “unreasonable” profits of the top five oil companies, which together made more than $120 billion in 2007, and put the money toward a trust fund for investment in alternative energy sources. Republicans say it’s a gimmick that won’t help at the pump and will discourage domestic oil production.

But Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the fervor for stock buybacks is a clear sign Big Oil isn’t interested in new production or alternative energy.
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McALLEN, Texas – Residents along the Texas-Mexico border kept a watchful eye on Tropical Storm Dolly on Monday, stocking up on plywood, generators and flashlights as forecasters predicted the storm would strengthen into a hurricane later this week and make landfall.

The storm was expected to bring high winds and dump 10 to 20 inches of rain in coastal areas near the U.S.-Mexican border. Emergency officials feared major flooding problems and urged coastal residents to prepare.

Shell Oil said it was evacuating workers from oil rigs in the western Gulf Of Mexico, and the federal government was trying to decide whether they could begin construction on a new border fence, which was to be combined with levee improvements along the Rio Grande in Hidalgo County.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami issued a hurricane watch from Brownsville north to Port O’Connor.

Mexico also announced a hurricane watch from Rio San Fernando north to Matamoros and the U.S. border.

Dolly was expected to make landfall Wednesday as a Category 1 storm with sustained winds of 74 mph to 95 mph.

Texas officials said they wouldn’t order evacuations along the coast unless Dolly strengthens to a Category 3, with sustained winds of at least 111 mph.

At 8 p.m. EDT, the center of Tropical Storm Dolly was located about 405 miles east-southeast of Brownsville. Mexico discontinued its tropical storm warning for the Yucatan peninsula, which was battered by strong winds and drenched with rain a day earlier.

Dolly was moving toward the west at 16 mph. The storm was expected to gradually slow in the next couple days but stay on track toward the U.S.-Mexico border. Maximum sustained winds were 50 mph, and tropical storm-force winds extended outward up to 175 miles.

Dolly’s winds were expected to strengthen Tuesday to hurricane force, which would mean at least 74 mph.

Gov. Rick Perry activated 1,200 National Guard troops and other emergency crews. Mindful of the disastrous evacuation before Hurricane Rita hit the Texas Gulf Coast in 2005 – when far more people died from heat-related injuries and auto accidents fleeing the storm than from the severe weather – Perry also ordered 250 buses to be staged in San Antonio. The governor also ordered fuel teams to be ready to keep gas stations supplied and to help stranded motorists.

There are about 2 million people in the Rio Grande Valley, which includes popular summer beach resort South Padre Island. Officials readied to evacuate residents in flood-prone areas and urged RV owners on South Padre to head for higher ground.

“That amount of rain will present a big flooding problem for us,” said Cameron County Emergency Management Coordinator Johnny Cavazos.

At a Home Depot in Brownsville near the border between the two countries, residents bought plywood, generators, batteries and flashlights, said store operations manager John Paul Martinez. He said a lot of people were just learning of Dolly, which became a tropical storm Sunday.

“We’re expecting it to get a lot busier late this afternoon as people get out of work,” Martinez said.

The federal government was to begin this week constructing the first part of the new border fence in Hidalgo County. While project supervisors met with emergency officials about the storm, large cranes unloaded steel beams and other supplies at a staging area near the levee Monday. Concrete walls will be incorporated into the river side of the levees to keep floodwaters, illegal immigrants and smugglers out.

The county is upgrading other levees and informed contractors Monday they should activate plans to prevent flooding, said Godfrey Garza, head of Hidalgo County Drainage District 1.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Cristobal was moving toward the northeast near 13 mph, away from the U.S. Cristobal was located about 265 miles east-northeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C., with maximum sustained winds near 65 mph. Forecasters said the storm, which dumped rain on the coast of the Carolinas, was no longer an immediate threat to the U.S.

In the Pacific, Tropical Storm Genevieve formed off Mexico’s coast, but forecasters said the storm was not expected to threaten land. Tropical Storm Fausto also was weakening and moving out to sea.

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BELGRADE, Serbia – Former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, accused architect of massacres and the politician considered most responsible for the deadly siege of Sarajevo, was arrested Monday evening in a Serbian police raid ending his 13 years as the world’s most-wanted war crimes fugitive.

His alleged partner in the persecution and “cleansing” of tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats, former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, remained at large.

A psychiatrist turned diehard Serbian nationalist politician, Karadzic is the suspected mastermind of mass killings that the U.N. war crimes tribunal described as “scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history.” They include the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, Europe’s worst slaughter since World War II.

“This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade. It is also an important day for international justice because it clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law,” said Serge Brammertz, the tribunal’s head prosecutor.

A Serbian police source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk to the media, said Karadzic was arrested in a Belgrade suburb after weeks of surveillance of his safe house and a tip from a foreign intelligence service.

Serbian President Boris Tadic’s office said Karadzic has been taken before the investigative judge of Serbia’s war crimes court, a legal procedure that indicates he could soon be extradited to the U.N. court at The Hague, Netherlands. Investigative judge Milan Dilparic said early Tuesday that Karadzic was “being questioned.”

However, it was unclear whether Belgrade planned to extradite him to The Hague for trial by the U.N. tribunal, or attempt to try him in Serbia. Many Serbs consider the tribunal to be biased against them, but Serbia would gain international favor by handing Karadzic over to the U.N. court.

If Karadzic is transferred, he would be the 44th Serb suspect extradited to the tribunal. The others include former President Slobodan Milosevic, who was ousted in 2000 and died in 2006 while on trial on war crimes charges.

Serbia braced for a possible reaction from ultra-nationalists who are believed to have helped shelter Karadzic and Mladic over the years.

Heavily armed special forces were deployed around the war-crimes court in Belgrade as dozens of Karadzic supporters gathered nearby. Several were arrested after attacking reporters in front of the courthouse. Karadzic’s brother, Luka, was also seen arriving at the location in central Belgrade.

Serbian police also deployed throughout central Belgrade as well as in front of the U.S. Embassy, which was targeted in nationalist rioting over Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February.

The White House called the arrest “an important demonstration of the Serbian government’s determination to honor its commitment to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal.”

In the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo – a focus of Bosnian Serb attacks during the war – streets were jammed late Monday as Bosnian Muslims celebrated the arrest.

Srebrenica was one of the final chapters of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, which had broken out when ethnic Serbs revolted against a government dominated by Muslims and Croats that declared the republic independent from the disintegrating Serb-dominated Yugoslav foundation. Slovenia and Croatia already had broken away, the latter in another bloody ethnic conflict.

Serbia has been under increasing international pressure to find Karadzic and turn him over.

Still, his arrest came as a surprise to many. His whereabouts had been a mystery to U.N. war crimes prosecutors unlike those of Mladic, who had last been spotted living in Belgrade in 2005 and remains at large.

“He was at large because the Yugoslav army was protecting him. But this guy in my view was worse than Milosevic,” Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador who negotiated an end to the Bosnian War, told CNN. “He was the intellectual leader.”

Holbrooke calculated the Karadzic is responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of 300,000 people, because without him there would have been no war or genocide.

The charges against him, last amended in May 2000, include genocide, extermination, murder, deportation, inhumane acts, and other crimes committed against Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb civilians in Bosnia during the 1992-1995 war.

“These offenses include a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing directed at non-Serbs, organized attacks on places of worship, the operation of concentration camps, and the mass murder of thousands of Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians,” the White House statement added.

As leader of Bosnia’s Serbs, Karadzic hobnobbed with international negotiators and his interviews were top news items during the 3 1/2-year Bosnian war, set off when a government dominated by Slavic Muslims and Croats declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992.

But his life changed by the time the war ended in late 1995 with an estimated 250,000 people dead and another 1.8 million driven from their homes. He was indicted twice by the U.N. tribunal on genocide charges stemming from his alleged crimes against Bosnia’s Muslims and Croats.

Karadzic’s reported hide-outs included Serbian Orthodox monasteries and refurbished mountain caves in remote eastern Bosnia. Some newspaper reports said he had at times disguised himself as a priest by shaving off his trademark silver mane and donning a brown cassock.

The fugitive’s wife, Ljiljana, told The Associated Press by phone from her home in Karadzic’s former stronghold, Pale, near Sarajevo that her daughter Sonja had called her before midnight.

“As the phone rang, I knew something was wrong. I’m shocked. Confused. At least now, we know he is alive,” Ljiljana Karadzic said, declining further comment.

The European Union said the arrest “illustrates the commitment of the new Belgrade government to contributing to peace and stability in the Balkans region.”

A statement from the EU presidency, currently held by France, said the arrest was “an important step on the path to the rapprochement of Serbia with the European Union.”

On Saturday, Serb authorities turned over an ex-Bosnian Serb police chief, Stojan Zupljanin, who was arrested in the town of Pancevo last week after nine years on the run. A Belgrade court on Friday rejected his appeal against extradition and Zupljanin pleaded innocent Monday to 12 charges of murder, torture and persecution of Bosnian Muslims and Croats in 1992.

Zupljanin was charged with war crimes for allegedly overseeing Serb-run prison camps where thousands of Muslims and Croats were killed during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.
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The CDC and USDA import restrictions request to birds and packages derived according to birds (such as eggs) on Afghanistan, Albania, Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Burma (Myanmar), Cameroon, Cambodia, Djibouti, Egypt, Gaza and the West Bank, India, Indonesia, Israel, Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire), Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Laos, Malaysia, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, People’s Republic of China, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and Vietnam. In addition, USDA restricts the importation of birds and offerings based on what i read in defined restricted zones throughout Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The CDC and USDA import restrictions help U.S.-origin pet birds to send back next quarantine at a USDA facility for 30 days. CDC and USDA aide import of processed bird packages such a experience carried on rendered noninfectious. These offerings have to be accompanied by a USDA allow and municipal certification confirming the present the offerings got treated according to USDA requirements.