The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

I'm Jim Lara. Today's news, the Palestinian elections pushing drugs. The rover never stops. China versus Google at the next president of Chile. Tonight, on the news hour. Good evening, I'm Jim Lara.

On the news hour tonight, the news of this Wednesday, then the latest on the Palestinian elections from Margaret Warner in Ramallah. A debate over whether free samples from drug companies influence patient care. A science unit report on the rover robots that keep rolling across Mars, a look at how Google is grappling with government controls in China, and an Elizabeth Farnsworth conversation with the new president of Chile. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lara has been provided by. Each person has a unique way of seeing the world. That's why, for over 135 years, Pacific Life is offered at the power of choice. Pacific Life provides a full power of financial and estate planning solutions to help you achieve your vision of your future.

Pacific Life, the power to help you succeed. Sometimes success needs to be nurtured. Sometimes it wants to be pushed. Sometimes success takes everything we can give, and then demands more. And sometimes all it takes is someone who sees what you see. At CIT, we're in the business of financing great ideas, so you can take yours all the way to the top. And by the Archer Daniels Midland Company, this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. Palestinians voted in large numbers today. Turnout was nearly 78 percent in their first parliamentary election in a decade.

Early exit polling results indicated the ruling Fata Party, one more than 40 percent of the vote. Islamic militant group Hamas was running second with more than a third of the vote. A former cabinet minister, Hanan Ashrawi, warned Hamas must make some accommodations if it joins a governing coalition. I do not see myself entering into a coalition with divergent views, or with people whose ideologies I do not share. I belong to those who believe in a multi-party pluralistic democracy based on enlightenment, rule of law, openness, and not based on religion or creating a theocratic system. Hamas leaders repeated today they will not disarm or renounce their cause for Israel's destruction. We'll have more on the election story right after this news summary. Iraq Shiites confirmed today they've opened new talks with Sunnis on forming a government. The Shiites religious alliance won the most seats in parliament last month.

The alliance said today it will choose a prime minister by the weekend. The largest Sunni bloc said it wants a Sunni named president. In incumbent president, Talabani is occurred and Kurds want him kept in that post. Elsewhere in Iraq, U.S. forces battled insurgents in Romani, at least seven insurgents were killed. A Baghdad TV station said one of its journalists also died. The U.S. military reported a U.S. marine died yesterday in that same area. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld today rejected claims the strain of war is wearing out the U.S. military. That followed reports of an unreleased study done for the Pentagon. It said the army cannot sustain deployments in Iraq long enough to break the insurgency. But Rumsfeld said U.S. forces have shown their up to the challenge. The message from that is not that this armed force is broken, but that this armed force is enormously capable. Second, I would say that it is not only capable of functioning in a very effective way,

and therefore ought to increase the deterrent rather than weaken it. In addition, it's battle hardened. Democrats released their own assessment today claiming U.S. forces are under severe stress. One of the authors was former Defense Secretary William Perry, who served in the Clinton administration, he said if the strain is not relieved, it will have highly corrosive and long-term effects on the military. President Bush made an unusual public visit to the National Security Agency today. It's been running his program of domestic surveillance. Mr. Bush praised workers at the highly secret agency in Fort Mead, Maryland. He said their job is to learn al-Qaeda's plans before an attack, and he insisted again he has acted within the law. Democrats rejected that argument, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York called it far-fetched. The Senate began debating the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito today.

It was already clear a majority of senators support him, but it could be almost entirely down-party lines. The Republican Art Inspector of Pennsylvania said that is a bad sign for the Senate. We need to move away from the kind of partisanship, which has ripped this body in recent times. We have, I think, an important that the American people have confidence in what the Senate does on the merits, as opposed to the appearance of ranked politics. The Democrats insisted it would be a vote of conscience, and Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont rejected charges that Democrats tried to smear Judge Alito. Almost 300 million Americans, only 100 of us, only 100 of us, get a chance to say, when this man will go on the Supreme Court, we can sit there for years, decades even, from where he is supposed to be the ultimate check and balance in the guardian of our rights.

To say that by opposing him, that's very him, that is absolutely not so. There was no agreement today on when the confirmation vote will come. Former President Ford was released from a California hospital today. He returned to his home in Rancho Mirage after 12 days of treatment for pneumonia. He spoke to him and said he was doing well, Mr. Ford is 92 years old. The Internet Search Engine Google launched a new service in China today, but it censored material the Chinese government considered taboo, including sites on human rights and Tibet. Google said, overall, it's deal with Beijing will give the Chinese people more access to information. We'll have more on this story later in the program. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost two points to close at 10,000 709, the Nasdaq fell more than four points to close at 2260. And that's it for the new summary tonight.

Now, the Palestinian vote, lobbying doctors, the Mars rovers, Google and China, and Farnsworth and Basha Lett. And to Margaret Warner for our Palestinian Election Report, I spoke to her this evening from the Election Center and Romala on the West Bank. Margaret hello. Hi, Jim. What can you tell us about the latest on winners and losers? Well, Jim, we just drove back here to the official announcement center through a throng of horn-tuning cars, vans, trucks in the central market square of Romala, mostly Fata members. That is, members of Yastir Arafat, the party he founded. Fata being gunned into the air. But the fact is, it's all very premature. There are no official results. It's 1130 at night here. There are exit polls that show Fata winning from the low 40s to the mid 40s and Hamas the radical group that's been branded to terrorists, group winning from the upper 30s

to the mid 40s. But as we know in the states, exit polls should only be trusted so far. I think the more interesting numbers were the turnout numbers. And I think they tell a story. And that is that the turnout was an astonishing nearly 78%. But the difference between Gaza, which is really a mass stronghold and the West Bank, Gaza had higher turnout by seven or eight points. And the highest turnout was actually in that southern part of Gaza, which is considered the most radical, Rafa. And the man we profiled last night, Gaza, Hamas was running from there, 89%. So that said, you know, it's a very complicated system here. People vote for two nationalist and local candidate. I think it'll be tomorrow before it's all sorted out. But is it premature to say that there's going to have to be a coalition government that neither one of these parties is going to win an outright majority? No, actually, I think it's fair to say that. That whatever happens, however it ends up, I think it's unlikely that FATA is going to win

the 50% plus one that they would need to govern alone. And the question is whether they turn to Hamas to come into the coalition with them or whether they have enough that they can go to some of these secular independent parties and put something together with them. Now you were out at some of the polling places today. What was the mood? What did the people tell you when you talked to them about what they were, how they were voting and why? Well, it was interesting. I would say the mood among the voters was purposeful and proud, but not starry-eyed. That is, one man said to me, he's a plumber. He said, this is a great day for Palestinian democracy. It shows, you know, we finally have a real choice. I mean, they've had elections before, but it's always been FATA dominated. And now they have two parties with real bases and different points of view. And they're very proud of that. But in the next breath, he said, but of course, whatever government selected has limited power because we're not a real state.

He didn't use the word sovereign state, but that's what he was saying. And we're still under occupation. They also, having voted before, have had the experience of voting and then being disappointed. They're not cynical yet at all. Obviously, you wouldn't have a 78% turnout if they were cynical. I think they're realistic, and I think they were very proud to take part. Is there a general feeling among voters and others there that FATA and Hamas can work together? Boy, that is the $64 million question, because Hamas, with the Hamas people we've talked to, said that they wouldn't even decide what they would do, despite all these quotes you're hearing about. We won't give up weapons, and we will go in government, we won't go in government. They're going to have to have a big meeting after this election to decide. So I think they've both been sending signals to the other that they'd like to work together, but I spoke tonight to someone working very closely with President Abbas, who really has not been campaigning here. That was part of the rules.

He wasn't allowed to go out in camping for FATA, but he knows he has to send a signal I'm told to the international community that, hey, you know, don't be scared, I'm still in charge. He is, as soon as the results are out, if they get, at least the most votes FATA does. The plan is for him to come out and say, I've appointed Mr. X Prime Minister, I've given him a clear direction, we can invite anyone into the cabinet as long as they accept three things, and the third will be negotiating with Israel. So there's just a lot of uncertainty right now, and Hamas has to decide whether they'd rather stay in opposition in the parliament and sort of play the provocateur role, or whether they want to come in government and get a couple of ministries that they would like to have. And of course, is Hamas still officially on record as calling for the destruction of Israel? Yes. Now they will say technically we don't call for the destruction of Israel. The phrase in the charter is, as I understand it, they are fighting for a Palestine from the Jordan River to the sea, well, since Israel stands between the Jordan River and the

sea, it's effectively calling for the destruction of Israel, so yes. And there were some quotes from Hamas leaders today, I didn't speak to them saying, we'll never change a word of our charter. So that's going to be an issue. You remember this happened with the Palestinians back what 13 years ago, and it took, it was a big struggle before you could have the handshake on the White House law and the Oslo peace process for them to abandon some provocative words in their charter. Now going into this, finally, Margaret, there was much concern or much speculation as to how Israel and the United States and the European Union would see and deal with the government if it in fact had elements of Hamas in it. They're still talking about it, still wondering about that now? They are. They don't speak to someone in the Israeli high up in the Israeli government today who said, we, they've had a big conference called this one, and we're not saying a word, and even tomorrow they'll probably hold their fire.

They're waiting for a signal from Mahmoud Abbas, and he said to me, now if President Abbas says, we welcome Hamas into the cabinet, well, that's one thing, no conditions. If Abbas says, we welcome them into the cabinet, but only if they disarm that something else. So it's going to be a chess match here. The other thing Israel knows it has to do with the consulting with the United States. So I say about the next move is President Abbas's. And back to the election itself before we go, is it the general feeling that this was a successful election day, are there any allegations of fraud or any kind of unseemliness that the at the polls or anything like that? No, Jim, and in fact to the contrary, it was actually impressive. We went to two polling places, one in a Hamas stronghold of working class city, near Romala, and then one in Romala, which is Murfata. In every case, they were totally prepared for this huge turnout. They had, they were always in schools, you could check your name, you knew which classroom

you went to, you went in, there were plenty of places to vote. People didn't have to wait in long lines, you didn't see people leaving in disgust because they couldn't find their name or because they couldn't vote, it went unbelievably smoothly and there was heavy, heavy security. There were, both places we went, there were at least 50 security troops, both police in their blue uniforms, and the national security forces in their olive drabs, holding foolishnikov rifles, and they were very helpful to the voters, but they were also very firm. They only let voters in, or those of us with special passes, and they just kept things in common. So all the, all the premonitions and all the predictions of violence at the polls, none of that happened, and they're very, very proud of that. All right. Margaret, thank you very much. Thank you, Jim. Now, the debate over whether to ban drug company gifts and to Gwen Eiffel. When you visit your doctor's office, the notepads, the ink pans, even the mirror on the wall

in the exam room, are likely to be imprinted with a name of a pharmaceutical manufacturer, all provided to your physician, free of charge. But what about the drugs you're prescribed? The authors of a new report in the Journal of the American Medical Association say 90% of the $21 billion pharmaceutical companies spend on marketing goes directly to physicians. The article concludes that this poses a financial conflict of interest for medical professionals and recommends that academic medical centers ban most or all of the gift-giving, including drug samples, money for travel, paid speeches, and research studies. So is this conflict real or imagined? For two points of view, we turn to Dr. David Blumenthal, director of the Institute of Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School. He is one of the report's authors. In Daniel Troy, he was chief counsel of the Food and Drug Administration from 2001 until 2004. He's now a partner at the law firm, Siddley Austin, in Washington.

Dr. Blumenthal, in the words of the song, how long has this been going on? It's been going on, I think, ever since drugs have been and device have been manufactured by private industries in the United States. Does that mean that it's just something which is widely accepted and that people don't even recognize if lines have been crossed? I think that that's an accurate statement. I think it's a part of the fabric of American medicine right now for better or worse, and it continues to be. And I think that what this article is about is getting the profession to look at itself and ask what the profession itself should be doing with respect to its relationships with pharmaceutical manufacturers. Daniel Troy, what is what the profession doing in relation to its relationships with pharmaceutical manufacturers, is it by definition a problem? This is old news, and this has really been dealt with. There was a 2002 pharma code which stopped a lot of this behavior. And there's some elements of this proposal which are both very bad and very foolish.

It seems to me a bad idea to take drugs out of the doctor's offices by banning all samples because doctors use samples to start patients on a course of treatment immediately. It is a good thing for doctors to have drugs in the office. And in terms of the ban on gifts, the current rules already ban gifts over $100. And the idea that doctors are going to somehow change their prescribing behavior because they get a pen or they get a note pad, I think is frankly disrespectful to doctors. Let me ask you back that Dr. Blumenthal, it seems that it would be hard to quantify when a doctor receives something and then it's more likely to prescribe a drug in return. How do you know whether that has... There's lots of evidence now accumulating about what's called the gift relationship. And you have to ask yourself, why is it that drug companies and device manufacturers provide these considerations? They don't spend the money because they get no return, they get a return on it.

And it's not true that all the issues that exist were handled by those voluntary regulations or voluntary guidelines that Mr. Troy referred to. There are still lots of relationships that do and are intended to affect physician prescribing behavior. Is there any evidence that patient care suffers today? We're watching the fourth bi-ox trial is underway and in part of that claim is that a man died of a heart attack because he wasn't informed, perhaps it's implied that the doctor was more likely to prescribe bi-ox because the pharmaceutical company was giving him samples. Well, I think there's evidence that drug prescribing behavior is affected. And when problems occur as a result of that, I think you could infer that it has been affected by the efforts to influence physician behavior. But I think that the key thing here is that physicians need to get information from all sources without the considerations that go along with them.

You don't need gifts in order to inform physicians. What about that argument? I think doctors are able to consider the sources of information that they get. And they will are well aware that when the source of information is a drug company, that there's a pecuniary interest that the drug company has in providing the information. And again, I think doctors are able to consider the source of the information. To say, well, doctors should only spend their time reading medical journals might serve the interest of the medical journals and might be a valuable argument for academics. But physicians are practicing physicians are extremely busy and I think that more information is good, not false in misleading information, but more information is good. But say you're a practicing physician and you've entertained, you've had hours of conversation with different drug salesmen and you have a choice between prescribing a drug with a brand name and a drug that's a generic choice. What are you more likely to do? What Dr. Blumenthal said was that there's evidence that influences prescribing behavior.

He didn't say that it's really harming patient care. It may be that on the margins it affects prescribing behavior, although one of the things that can happen and has happened at least to me is you get a branded product as a sample. You take it to the prescription, to the pharmacy, and the prescription that's filled is a generic because the pharmacies often have the ability to substitute. Also these days, generics are actually engaging in what's called counter detailing. They are providing samples. There's also a healthy competition among the branded companies themselves. Another use of samples I was talking to a doctor about today is let's say you have somebody who has a patient as a migraine headache. You might want to give them two different products and see which one works. That particularly would happen with something like pain medication. To cut off the supply of samples, and to cut off the flow of pens on the thought that somehow that is radically affecting patient care, I think is an overreaction, especially in light of the regimes that are already in place to cut down on the worst abuses.

What if your patient is low-income elderly and as often happens, the doctor provides some of these samples as a way of taking the burden of the cost of prescription. I think it would be terrific if pharmaceutical companies donated the value of their prescription samples to physicians and to institutions and enabled them to give those that value the cash equivalent to their patients to purchase the indicated medications. I think that'd be terrific. Is there a way, is there a middle ground here? There have to be an outright ban as you recommend in your report or is there a disclosure. There's a middle ground that you didn't come up with to address the problems you see. Disclosure, I think, is to some degree a palliative. It doesn't really get at the problem. People disclose and then feel that they've dealt with the issue. When in fact, the evidence is that their behavior continues to be subtly, unconsciously affected.

We're not just talking about pens and pads of paper. We're talking about meals that are usually at the best restaurants in town. I don't have to get a luxurious meal in order to learn about the medicines I want to prescribe. We're talking about substantial anoraria that are often provided repetitively to opinion leaders over time. We're talking about consulting relationships that can lead to substantial amounts of money. I don't think we're just talking about things that everyone would contribute to the procedure. I might add, Mr. Troy, we're talking also about medical devices as well. Say you're a doctor who replaces knees or replaces hips and you have a relationship with the company that makes the knee replacement or the hip replacement. You're more likely and why would the patient ever know to use that particular, perhaps, more expensive item? Many of the issues that have been raised here, again, have been dealt with and already prohibited by the pharmacode, by the AMA Code of Medical Ethics, the meals, especially. It's now not supposed to be at the nicest restaurant in town.

I think that this is a problem that may have existed in the 90s and in the 80s, but is not a current issue. This is an example of over-regulation that has the potential to really impede the flow of information to doctors. Your report is particularly to academic medical centers. Is this something they have to comply with or are you just recommended it earlier? I think it's incorrect to call this regulation. This is self-regulation. This is something that we are asking, recommending, that the profession and the institutions of the profession impose on themselves, not the government impose on anybody. And academic health centers are leaders and opinion. They train the next generation of physicians. They set examples. And many of the people who do research on the next generation of pharmaceuticals can be found in these institutions. So they're a particularly important group, they're organized so that they have the opportunity to affect more easily the behavior of the physicians and work there.

I guess I would say that it's in part because these physicians and academic medical centers are so often the experts that to basically say, if a person who's an expert in a drug or in a disease has any kind of relationship with the drug company, they can no longer educate doctors about this, it would be a huge sucking sound of expertise flowing away from the ability to inform patients about drugs and needed treatments. Daniel Choi, David Blumenthal, thank you both very much. Thank you. Thank you. So to come on the news hour tonight, a rover update Google's China problems and the new president of Chile. Now a science unit report on NASA's rovers on Mars, news hour correspondent Jeffrey Kay of KCET Los Angeles has our story.

For two years, a pair of NASA robots have been exploring the inhospitable surface of Mars, driving sub-zero temperatures, punishing terrain, and the vehicle's own expected demise. The rovers, really many science labs, arrived on the red planet in January of 2004, when they rolled onto the Martian surface, scientists and engineers had scheduled them for only a three month mission. But the rovers, one named Spirit, the other opportunity, have left their predicted life spans in the dust and kept on rolling. The vehicles have really surprised everybody. Jim Erickson is project manager for the $900 million Mars rover expedition. They've been doing a great job, they've proved to be far more capable and more long-lasting than any of us ever dreamed of. I mean, I was one of the more optimistic ones at that, gee, we might get six months out of these things.

NASA engineers expected the rovers which rely on solar panels to generate onboard electricity would eventually spot it to a stop and die as they received less sunlight during the short cold days of Martian winters. But back on Earth, the rovers' operators learned how to adapt and keep the power flowing, as Erickson explained to NewsHour producer Sal Gonzalez. Once we lasted long enough to actually understand how these vehicles worked, we were able to find new ways of keeping them in the position of having more power. We would park the rovers every day sort of on the most northerly tilt that we could find to face the solar panels closer to an upright position where they'd get the maximum efficiency from the sun that they could. Spirit, the first of the two vehicles to arrive on the red planet, has journeyed more than three miles from its landing site in the Gussef crater. Opportunity, which landed in a vast flatlands area called Meridiani Planum, has racked up over four miles on its trip.

Together, the rovers' cameras have sent back nearly 140,000 pictures. Working on opposite sides of Mars, the twin robot's instruments have probed and analyzed rocks and soil, all with one primary mission to look for signs that water, an essential building block of life once existed on the planet's surface. We found compelling evidence that Mars was warm and wet at a time when life started here on Earth. Matt Gallumback heads the rover project science operation team. He says his claim of a once-warm and wet Mars is based on the geology the rovers have encountered, particularly opportunity. The evidence for opportunity is unambiguous, I would argue. It shows rocks that are evaporites, effectively they form when sea water evaporates away, typically in hot and dry climates, and leaves behind the minerals that are in solution in the water, and the rocks that we found at Meridiani are telltale signs that liquid

water pooled and sat at the surface for significant periods of time at about 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists are uncertain about how much water Mars had in its past, and where it was. One possibility is that you had groundwater table that fluctuated locally, and that created the environment in which the materials were deposited. There was no ocean elsewhere, and it may have been intermittently wet and dry. Another interpretation that's possible is that you actually filled up the northern planes and you had an ocean that was kilometers deep on Mars at that time. Many scientists believe Mars still holds much water in the form of ice below the surface. Beyond the hunt for clues to water, the rovers are also sending back valuable information about present day Martian weather patterns, and the planet's more recent geological history. This opportunity and spirit continue their journeys, mission personnel are increasingly adventurous

about where they send the rovers. We've expanded the envelope of what we would consider to have the rovers actually even do. Instead of the nice flat, gentle perch with some rocks on it to rain, we now fully expect these things to do up slopes, into sand dunes, you name it. With the robotic explorers are starting to show their age and ailments, from a bad wheel on opportunity, to a worn out rock cutting tool aboard spirit. So it's sort of like we're in the middle age, we're looking forward to old age, and we're trying to make it a nice graceful old age, but at the same time we really want to wear these things out. Our whole goal is to get as much for the, much bang for the buck as we can. Ericsson acknowledges the rovers could go dead at any moment, but he believes they still have many more Martian miles to travel. In the end of their days, years from now, they'll be creaking down to try and get that one less glimpse into a new crater, and that's the right way for them to go.

Years from now. Well, we'll see what happens. We've gone two years, we always say the best prediction of the future is the past, so I wouldn't be surprised to see these things a year or two from now, still moving around. In the days ahead, spirits on its way to investigate a geological feature dubbed home plate. Opportunity, meanwhile, is steering a cost to the edge of a large crater named Victoria. Google and government controls in China. We begin with this report from Faisal Islam of Independent Television News. People no longer an upstart internet search engine, but now the world's biggest media company by stock market value. The company's mission, it says, is to make the world's information universally accessible. Today, it relaunched Google China for the Asian giant 100 million users of the internet, yet uniquely Google.cn is its first self-sensoring search engine, filtering out information

not approved by China's communist authorities. The company said it had done so in response to local Chinese laws, but huge amounts of information inconvenient for the Chinese authorities have been edited out. Anybody with an internet connection can see for themselves, go to Google.com, any Google site around the world, and type in Tiananmen Square. And you get 1.7 million results. And the top five are all about the brutal repression of the democracy demonstrations of 1989. But the new Google China site launched today, typing the same thing, only 13,000 results, and in the top 10, no mention whatsoever of the events of 1989. Similarly searching for Falun Gong, the religious organization banned in China yields the same result. Human rights campaign is a furious at what they say is a sellout. Google have always prided themselves on their ethical image, but that image is now in

smithereens, and they're colluding with an repressive regime. It's not just Google's funky image at risk. Google's success is built upon its democratic search technology, rankings determined by an objective mathematical formula, rather than advertising dollars. But Google China changes that. And it was less than two years ago that founder Sergei Brintold, Channel Four News, that it wouldn't let its ethos be compromised in China. But China has a variety of filtering mechanisms for the internet, and maybe some specific to Google now. But certainly there are no trade-offs involved. China's never hidden its extensive laws to control information, but new technologies have led to a greatly ramped-up effort, some 30,000 internet police prowling the information superhighway for offending articles, blogs, and text messages. The ethical difficulty for Google is that this censorship effort is now being carried out not by this so-called Great's Firewall of China, but by its own computers in California. And a Jeffrey Brown.

And joining me to talk about Google and China is Rebecca McKinnon, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. She previously served as Beijing Bureau Chief and Correspondent for CNN, and is fluent in Mandarin, Chinese, and welcome to you. Rebecca, this is being called voluntary self-censorship, but how does Google decide which sites and which terms to keep away from the site? Well, we're assuming that they're going to be making this decision in the same way that all other Chinese internet companies and other companies doing this kind of business in China like Yahoo are making that decision, which is maintaining a very large and long list, which is kind of built throughout the industry. The government doesn't actually come to you and give you a list and say, these are the banned terms. But there's a list that's maintained amongst these internet companies and privately people compare. And then if it turns out that you failed to censor enough, you get phone calls from the

authorities asking you to add some things to your list and so on. So it's kind of an organic process. It's very untransparent. I think one thing that many people are hoping to see or going to be very interested to see is how transparent Google ends up being about what it's censoring and why, because all other companies operating in China in this way, at this point, are not telling their users why they're censoring, what they're censoring, and what the list is. In this case, in fact, Google is going to tell a viewer that the site has been taken down, quote, in response to local laws and regulations. Right? Is that sort of a compromise by Google? Well, that does seem to be a step that they are taking towards being a bit more honest with the users than any of their competition is being. Now they are not telling you exactly which sites they're removing, but they are putting a little notice at the very bottom of the screen.

And we saw that in there. If you read Chinese, you would have noticed it there, and it says that these results have been filtered in accordance with local law. But it doesn't say, oh, by the way, you know, they were all these various addresses and it was because of such and such word that they were banned. So it doesn't explain that. So it will be very interesting to see how Google goes forward in terms of how transparent it is about its processes. Now, clearly, the Chinese market is important for Google and other search companies. But why does Google say that it's that it agreed to this deal? What's their argument for it? Well, their argument is that this was necessary for them to do to make this information available to Chinese users. Now, that's not entirely true because, of course, Google has been accessible to Chinese users already via its service that has been hosted in the United States.

And the experience was, is that a Chinese user would go and do a Google search and then a certain percentage of their results might be impossible to click through. They'd try and click onto the link and then it would be blocked on the Chinese internet service and so that they just wouldn't get through to anything they'd get an error message. And now what's happening is that Google is doing that censoring for the user and for the government to a certain extent so that the users aren't clicking on these dead links all the time that end up being censored by the Chinese government. They claim that they're doing this for the users to improve their experience. However, they are certainly and what is the great concern is every time another company goes and complies with censorship internally and agrees to have their own employees doing this kind of censorship. It institutionalizes censorship.

It legitimizes it. It creates a business and management model for censorship within these types of internet service companies that, you know, there is some concern that if they're doing it for the Chinese market, that also might that model also increasingly be applied elsewhere. Well when you look at the criticism that came because of this and we just heard a little bit of in that setup, there was a lot of it, it was immediate. Is there, there were some suggestions that Google and these other companies do have some power if they band together to confront the Chinese government with a policy on searches and technology? Is there some room do you think for them to push back against the government? I think there is more room than the companies have been seeking at this point. I think many companies are a little too quick to roll over and play dead as soon as the Chinese government says boo.

And I think that it is possible if the industry were to get together and agree upon standards that they could go a lot further towards protecting the interests of the user and the rights of the user. They could do things like pledge to be more transparent. They could do things like adopt policies of how their local employees in China handle the data of users and when somebody from the police department, for instance, calls to a local Chinese employee of Google or Microsoft and says, will you take down the information of such and such a blogger or will you hand over the information of so-and-so that there have to be very, very clear procedures that employee can't just act on their own. They have to take it up to the management chain. It needs to be challenged with the authorities and that these companies need to insist on much clearer and more transparent procedures in terms of what they're doing and why and

make it open to the Chinese users. And Rebecca, we just have a minute, but just tell us how important is this in China? How? What role does the internet and search engines in particular do they play in China today? While internet use is growing very fast, it's only 8 percent of the Chinese population, but that's already the world's second largest user base in the cities amongst the educated urban elite, increasingly, the internet is how people do get their information. And so if you have a information environment where people don't even know what they're missing, because they don't know what's been censored, because number one, it's censored. And number two, nobody's being honest with them about the fact that they're censoring. This really skews people's outlook on the world and about their country's relationship with the rest of the world and about what their own government may or may not be doing and

what's going on in their own surroundings. And so increasingly, as people do become dependent on the internet for information, we do need to be concerned about who is controlling what information gets through to whom and the extent to which those controls enable power holders to stay in power and not to be challenged in ways that perhaps in the pre-internet age might have been more possible. All right, Rebecca McKinnon, thank you very much. You're welcome. Finally, tonight, the newly elected president of Chile, Michelle Basha-led. She's a pediatrician, a socialist, and a former minister of health and defense. Her father and Air Force general was tortured and died in prison. He'd been in the government of Salvador Ayende, which was overthrown in a 1973 coup

led by a gusto pin and shed. Michelle Basha-led and her mother were also imprisoned and tortured. Special correspondent Elizabeth Farnsworth spoke to the president-elect at a hotel in Santiago late last week. Welcome to the program and congratulations. Thank you very much. I'm very pleased to be here with you today. In your speech, in your victory speech, you said, because I was the victim of hate, I've consecrated my life to turning hate into understanding tolerance and why not say it love. As president, what policies will you follow to promote this kind of understanding and tolerance between those who tortured and killed in the past and those who were tortured like you? Well, I won't begin this now. I started it when I was minister of defense, and I will be doing it wherever I am until the day I will die. That's the idea of how we are able to build bases in our society where tolerance, understanding

of diversity, integration and not discrimination will be the main policies. And when I'm speaking of love, when I'm speaking of reversing hate and speaking not only on reconciliation, even though I don't use that word, I use another word Spanish that's called re-inquent, but I don't know, then it's not exactly reconciliation, but I will use because more are we coming together, would you say? Yes, I don't know if something like that. Because reconciliation means when somebody is related to forgiveness and that's very individual. So some people forgive, some people just not. So that's why I would say, but let's use it reconciliation. We will have to continue advancing in reconciliation between people who were victims and the

families and people who were responsible for that. I want to talk just a little bit about your own situation. For example, for you, is it important that the people who mistreated you and your mother and who were responsible for the death of your father be tried? Have there been trials of any of the people who were responsible for those acts? Well, some of them, not all, because you know we were blindfolded, so we were not able to recognize who those specific persons were, but I don't look at this as a personal issue. I look at it as a process where justice must do their work and the important thing is in our country, we do have trials who are going on, we are advancing and under my government, we will still advance and the three great principles, truth, justice and liberation for all the victims or the families of the victims.

We have been walking in that direction and we will, and I will do all my efforts to continue in that direction. I mean, no impunity now, because I mean, I'm a doctor. I know that when you have an injury, it will heal if it's clean enough to kill, if your injury is dirty, it won't heal. And so when you are talking in societies, we are also talking in healing processes and for a good healing process. You need to make the right things right. Do you think Augusto Pinochet will ever be tried? We have some trials in process and in investigations. Yes, yes, yes. I won't say specific opinion because I don't want to influence any decision of the justice. But the important thing is that justice is doing their work.

I wish really interested that night in the celebration. Many people said to me, even people who had suffered a lot under the dictatorship, we really appreciate the fact that Dr. Bushlet is willing to forgive. You suffered a lot. You don't like to talk about it. Your mother was six days in a cage the size of like a square. Your father died because of the tortures. He wrote letters you've read. I'm sure that are the saddest letters one could imagine about what happened to him. How do you come to this position of being so positive about the possibility for Ray and Quintero for the coming together of the nation? I wouldn't be honest if I tell you that in some moment of my life I had a lot of rage. Probably hate. I'm not sure if hate, but right, please. But you know what happens is that then you realize that you cannot do to others what you think nobody has to do to anybody.

Life is important for me. I'm not any kind of like quality to of life. So probably it's strange or difficult to understand, but everything that happened to me really made me not only rationally, but emotionally get to a deep conviction, yes, conviction. And that is that I have to do my best to create all the conditions in our country in order to know that we will be able to guarantee to further generations that they will never have to leave what we had to leave. You mentioned that life is very important to you as a doctor and you've spoken a lot about torturing. As a doctor who's treated victims of torture and now president of Chile, are you willing to become an international spokesperson at all to condemn and stop torture? Chile has always has a very clear foreign policy about this and we will always discuss

every situation in particular and we will always be a big promoter of the human rights all over the world. I would say whatever, I mean, wherever violations are Chile will be clear that we want the world where human rights are respected. How do you feel about the United States? You lived in the United States as a child. Do you know as a person who was a victim of the Pinochet quinta that the United States put a lot of money and a lot of agents into subverting the Yandeg government and had very close relations with the secret police under Pinochet? How do you feel about the United States? Well, first of all, I would say my first contact with United States when I was 12 and my father was in the Air Force mission there in Washington, D.C. It was very surprising for me to see that in United States, you know, but I knew anything about Chile and I was and they thought that we will live in like Indian houses and things

like that. So it was very strange for me that is so huge and powerful country knew so little about so many, many countries, but I had a wonderful life there. I had good friends, I enjoy a lot, going to public libraries, a reading, I read every book of M. Lewis Alcott, you know, Little Women and so on. And I was really happy, no bitterness about the Yandeg experience. First of all, I was talking about the people and I think you find people all over the world wonderful in every time of the history. Second, I think that the great problem was that we fell in this Cold War doctrine and I think one thing we shouldn't do is come into that kind of perspective of the world again. Because of the Cold War, it's that happened when Enagendes' Regine happens, you know.

It was like this communist struggle and so on. And of course, I mean that that's how the Nixon administration saw, so it is a communism. Yes, but it was a long period where you divide the world between the ones who were that caller and that caller and I think life is much more complicated than that and Latin America has great threats, but the great threats in Latin America and our poverty are the lack of integration of people who don't have all the benefits, all the people who are from the indigenous groups and so the thing is not to demonize one person or the other, one government or the other, Latin America sometimes, I would say, realize that we are not in the main agenda of the big countries, they always look at us as trouble and they don't see the great opportunities that in our countries exist.

How are you different from, say, the newly elected Eva Morales in Bolivia or Ugo Chavez in Venezuela? As you know, the U.S. press says you're part of the left where tilt happening in Latin America. How do you respond to that? I don't like stereotypes, no kind of stereotypes, I believe in what I believe and I will do my best to go to fulfill the objectives and the commitments that I made during my campaign. I'm very different from them, you're saying. You should be looked at, I'm not interested in looking at, am I different, am I the same and I will work with all the precedents in order of obtaining good results for our nations. Madam President, elect, I thank you very much for being with us. Well, thank you very much. Michelle Bachelet takes office March 11th. Again the major developments of this day, Palestinians voted in their first parliamentary

election on a decade, exit polls had the ruling fought up party, leading the Islamic militant group Hamas. And Secretary Rumsfeld rejected claims the strain of war is wearing out the U.S. military and the U.S. Senate opened debate on confirming Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Before we go, the tap dancing Nicholas Brothers, fared Nicholas died yesterday in Los Angeles at age 91. He and his brother Harold performed for decades in clubs on Broadway and in the movies, inspiring several generations of dancers, including Fred Astaire and Gregory Hines. Here's an excerpt from one of their most famous numbers, one we aired when Harold Nicholas died in the year 2000. From the 1943 film, Stormy Weather. We'll see you on line and again here tomorrow evening.

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On the news hour tonight, the news of this Wednesday, then the latest on the Palestinian elections from Margaret Warner in Ramallah, a debate over whether free samples from drug companies influence patient care, a science unit report on the rover robots that keep rolling across Mars, a look at how Google is grappling with government controls in China, and an Elizabeth Farnsworth conversation with the new President of Chile. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lara has been provided by each person has a unique way of seeing the world. That's why, for over 135 years, Pacific Life has offered the power of choice.

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Numbers today, in their first Parliament, early exit polling results indicates one more than 40% of the...