"We need a sustained focus here, and much more needs to be done," Rep. John Tierney said of a scandal enveloping Walter Reed. Charges of bureaucratic delays and poor treatment there have produced calls in Congress for quick reform.

Tierney said he is afraid "these problems go well beyond the walls of Walter Reed," adding that "as we send more and more troops into Iraq and Afghanistan, these problems are only going to get worse, not better."

The hearing brought an apology from the Army's top civilian. "We have let some soldiers down," said Peter Geren, undersecretary of the Army.

As Congress held its first hearing on the scandal at the medical center itself, Tierney, D-Mass., questioned whether problems at the facility are "just another horrific consequence" of inadequate planning that went into war in Iraq; a problem created by contracting out work there to private business, or some other cause.

"This is absolutely the wrong way to treat our troops, and serious reforms need to happen... immediately," he said.

Tierney chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's national security panel, which held the hearing Monday in the hospital's auditorium. The list of Army officials, hospital staff and patients invited to speak includes the medical center's previous commander, Maj. Gen. George Weightman.

Geren, who will become acting Army secretary later this week, told the panel that the revelations of poor conditions at Walter Reed had hurt the Army. Defense Secretary Robert Gates forced Army Secretary Francis Harvey to resign last Friday.

"There's a vow that's part of the soldier's creed: I will never leave a fallen comrade," he said. "That's the -- on the battlefield, in a hospital, as an outpatient. That is the part of our soul of every soldier. And anytime that vow is broken, I can tell you it hurts the heart of the Army," Geren said.

The defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee also scheduled a hearing on Walter Reed for later in the day.

Outraged lawmakers on Sunday vowed quick action and called for an independent commission to examine poor conditions for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a letter Sunday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., asked for an independent commission, possibly headed by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, to investigate all post-combat medical facilities and recommend changes.

"To think that men and women are serving their country in the most honorable and courageous way possible and all we give them is a dilapidated, rat-infested, run-down building to recover is a disgrace," Schumer wrote. "My fear is that Walter Reed is just the tip of the iceberg, and merely highlights the pervasive and systemic mistreatment of our service members."

President Bush last week ordered a comprehensive review of conditions at the nation's network of military and veteran hospitals. They have been overwhelmed by injured troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House said the president would name a bipartisan commission to assess whether the problems at Walter Reed exist at other facilities. Last week, Gates created an outside panel to review the situation at Walter Reed and the other major military hospital in the Washington area, the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md.

Gates also dismissed Harvey, who had fired Weightman and replaced him with Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army's surgeon general and a former commander of Walter Reed. Gates said Harvey's response was not aggressive enough.

The Army announced that Maj. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker will be the new commander of Walter Reed, which is in Washington. In addition, the Army took disciplinary action against several lower-level soldiers at Walter Reed.

The moves came in response to a series of Washington Post reports about substandard conditions and bureaucratic problems affecting the care of injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to Walter Reed, one of the military's highest-profile and busiest medical facilities, and its outpatient facilities.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Sunday the scandal is emblematic of the Bush administration's "lack of accountability" and "overoptimism" about the war in Iraq.

Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian angered Chinese nationalists by renewing his call for independence from China and a new constitution.

Speaking at a dinner in Taipei, Chen said the people of Taiwan did not want to be considered China's 23rd province, the Taipei Times reported Monday.

"Taiwan will say yes to independence," he said. "Taiwan will be correctly named, Taiwan will have a new constitution, Taiwan will develop. Taiwan needs a new constitution in order to become a normal, complete country."

Chang Jung-kung of the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party told reporters the remarks were "an attempt to provoke China when it comes to the issue of cross-straits relations," while Hwang Yih-jiau of the opposition People First Party said Chen was "using rhetoric to stir up independence-unification issues for political gains."

The government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the Food and Drug Administration's scientific advisers that the decision will be dangerous for people.

The drug, called cefquinome , belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine's last defense against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in animals.

The American Medical Association and about a dozen other health groups warned the FDA that giving cefquinome to animals would probably speed the emergence of microbes resistant to that class of antibiotic, as has happened with other drugs. Those super-microbes could then spread to people.

Echoing those concerns, the FDA's advisory board last fall voted to reject the request by InterVet Inc. of Millsboro, Del., to market the drug for cattle.

But the FDA is expected to approve cefquinome this spring. That outcome is all but required, officials said, by a recently implemented "guidance document" that codifies how to weigh threats to human health posed by proposed new animal drugs.

Industry representatives say they trust Guidance 152's calculation that cefquinome should be approved. But others say Guidance 152 makes it too difficult for the FDA to say no to some drugs because it requires that the agency show a direct link to human mortality

An African-American attorney is suing the Los Angeles law firm founded by the late Johnnie Cochran over alleged racial discrimination.

The Los Angeles Times said Saturday that Shawn Chapman Holley has said that after Cochran's death in 2005, the firm's leadership was turned over to "white men who began to discriminate against black lawyers and black clients."

Prior to Cochran's death, the law firm gained notoriety for the acquittal of 1994 double murder charges against O.J. Simpson. The lawsuit has stunned members of the city's black establishment, the Times said.

Public affairs consultant Kerman Maddox, told the Times, "I'm shocked; if true, that would be a devastating blow to the legacy of Johnnie Cochran."

Randy McMurray, a black partner in the firm, denied Holley's charges. "We probably have the most diverse law firm in California; I don't know what race we would be discriminating against," he said.

Holley worked for the firm for some 17 years before she says she was demoted by Caucasian males and then fired in January of 2006, an allegation the firm has denied.

The firings have sparked arguments about the power of the US Attorney General to indefinitely appoint replacement prosecutors, and also allegations that the firings were politically charged. Earlier this week Iglesias told reporters that federal lawmakers pressured him to speed up indictments of local Democrats in time for the November elections. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty denied that the removal of the attorneys was motivated by political considerations.

A three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit threw out a lawsuit challenging Ohio's death penalty procedure Friday on the grounds that the claim was filed too late. In the 2-1 opinion, judges Richard Fred Suhrheinrich and Edward Eugene Siler decided that the statute of limitations on the inmate's 42 USC 1983 method of execution challenge would have run at the latest two years following the 2001 decision that made lethal injection Ohio's only form of execution. Plaintiff Cooey did not file his challenge until December of 2004.

Last year Ohio executed its first prisoner using modified lethal injection procedures aimed at preventing extreme pain during an execution. The procedures were changed last June following a difficult May execution where staff struggled to find a vein to administer the lethal injection cocktail, and the one they did use collapsed before injection.

The US Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) Thursday agreed to extend by 18 months the compliance timeline for the REAL ID Act until December 31, 2009. In addition to the extension of the deadline imposed on states, DHS will allow states to use as much as 20 percent of the money allocated by the agency to ensure compliance. The proposed changes follow resistance by state and federal lawmakers, who questioned the feasibility of implementing uniform driver's license standards under the act before the original May 2008 deadline, and aim at assuaging concerns over the cost of the new regulations.

The REAL ID Act, initially drafted after the Sept 11 attacks and designed to discourage illegal immigration, attempts to make it more difficult for terrorists to fraudulently obtain US driver's licenses and other government IDs by mandating that states require birth certificates or similar documentation and also consult national immigration databases before issuing IDs. The law is also meant to make it more difficult for potential terrorists to board aircraft or enter federal government buildings. After controversy and strenuous opposition from civil libertarians it finally passed in 2005 as part of an emergency supplemental appropriations defense spending bill.