Free Internet Press

Uncensored News For Real People This is a mirror site for our daily newsletter. You may visit our real site through the individual story links, or by visiting http://FreeInternetPress.com .

: Name: JW Smythe

View my complete profile

Saturday, September 30, 2006

Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday September 30 2006 - (813)

Saturday September 30 2006 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
Rep. Foley Resigns Over Sexually Explicit Emails To Teenage Page 2006-09-30 00:07:19 Six-term U.S. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida) resigned Friday amid reports that he had sent sexually explicit e-mails to at least one underage male former page. Foley, who was considered likely to win reelection this fall, said in a three-sentence letter of resignation: "I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent." The resignation rocked the Capitol, and especially Foley's GOP colleagues, as lawmakers were rushing to adjourn for at least six weeks. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told the Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois), and that Hastert assured him "we're taking care of it". Read The Full Story FDA Says Bayer Failed To Reveal Heart Drug Risk Study 2006-09-30 00:06:31 Bayer A.G., the German pharmaceutical giant, failed to reveal to federal drug officials the results of a large study suggesting that a widely used heart-surgery medicine might increase the risks of death and stroke, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Friday. Bayer scientists even appeared at a public meeting called by the F.D.A. on Sept. 21 to discuss the possibility that the drug, Trasylol, might have serious risks, but they did not mention the study or its worrisome results. In a highly unusual move, the food and drug agency released a public health advisory saying it had learned of the study's existence only on Wednesday. Preliminary results of the study demonstrate "that use of Trasylol may increase the chance for death, serious kidney damage, congestive heart failure and strokes," said the advisory. Read The Full Story Senate Vote Gives U.S.-Mexico Border Fence Final Go-Ahead 2006-09-30 00:05:13 The Senate gave final approval last night to legislation authorizing the construction of 700 miles of double-layered fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border, shelving President Bush's vision of a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration laws in favor of a vast barrier. The measure was pushed hard by House Republican leaders, who badly wanted to pass a piece of legislation that would make good on their promises to get tough on illegal immigrants, despite warnings from critics that a multibillion-dollar fence would do little to address the underlying economic, social and law enforcement problems, or to prevent others from slipping across the border. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) surprised many advocates of a more comprehensive approach to immigration problems when he took up the House bill last week. In Congress's rush to recess last night for the fall political campaigns, the fence bill passed easily, 80 to 19, with 26 Democrats joining 54 Republicans in support. One Republican, Sen. Lincoln D. Chaffee (Rhode Island); one independent, Sen. James M. Jeffords (Vermont); and 17 Democrats opposed the bill. The president has indicated that he will sign it. Read The Full Story Hedge Fund With Big Loss Says It Will Close 2006-09-30 00:03:10 Amaranth Advisors, the $9.2 billion hedge fund that lost $6.5 billion in less than a month, is preparing to shut down. Nicholas Maounis, the founder of the hedge fund, sent a letter to investors last night informing them that the fund was suspending all redemptions for Sept. 30 and Oct. 31, to "enable the Amaranth funds to generate liquidity for investors in an orderly fashion, with the goal of maximizing the proceeds of asset dispositions." Investors have met with Amaranth throughout the week, many demanding the return of their money. "As you know, the multistrategy funds have recently received substantial redemption requests," Maounis said in the letter. Read The Full Story Woodward Book: Card Urged Bush To Replace Rumsfeld 2006-09-29 12:46:42 Former White House chief of staff Andrew Card on two occasions tried and failed to persuade President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, according to a new book by Bob Woodward that depicts senior officials of the Bush administration as unable to face the consequences of their policy in Iraq. Card made his first attempt after Bush was reelected in November, 2004, arguing that the administration needed a fresh start and recommending that Bush replace Rumsfeld with former secretary of state James A. Baker III. Woodward writes that Bush considered the move, but was persuaded by Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, that it would be seen as an expression of doubt about the course of the war and would expose Bush himself to criticism. Card tried again around Thanksgiving, 2005, this time with the support of First Lady Laura Bush, who according to Woodward, felt that Rumsfeld's overbearing manner was damaging to her husband. Bush refused for a second time, and Card left the administration last March, convinced that Iraq would be compared to Vietnam and that history would record that no senior administration officials had raised their voices in opposition to the conduct of the war. Read The Full Story Congressional Report Links Lobbyist Abramoff And White House 2006-09-29 00:17:04 A bipartisan Congressional report documents hundreds of contacts between White House officials and the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his partners, including at least 10 direct contacts between Abramoff and Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist. The House Government Reform Committee report, based on e-mail messages and other records subpoenaed fromAbramoff's lobbying firm, found 485 contacts between Abramoff's lobbying team and White House officials from 2001 to 2004, including 82 with Rove's office. The lobbyists spent almost $25,000 in meals and drinks for the White House officials and provided them with tickets to numerous sporting events and concerts, according to the report, scheduled for release Friday. Read The Full Story Ashcroft Denied Immunity In Wrongful Detention Case 2006-09-29 00:16:11 A federal judge in Idaho has ruled that former attorney general John D. Ashcroft can be held personally responsible for the wrongful detention of a U.S. citizen arrested as a "material witness" in a terrorism case. U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge, in a ruling issued late Wednesday, dismissed claims by the Justice Department that Ashcroft and other officials should be granted immunity from claims by a former star college football player arrested at Dulles International Airport in 2003. Attorneys for the plaintiff in the civil suit, Abdullah al-Kidd, said the decision raises the possibility that Ashcroft could be forced to testify or turn over records about the government's use of the material witness law, a cornerstone of its controversial legal strategy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Read The Full Story Belgian Government Rules That U.S. Sifting Of Bank Data Is Illegal 2006-09-29 00:14:32 A secret U.S. program to monitor millions of international financial transactions for terrorist links violated Belgian and European law and will have to be changed, the Belgian government said Thursday. The decision, announced by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, came as the country's Data Privacy Commission released a 20-page report finding that the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, had improperly turned over data from millions of global financial transactions to U.S. anti-terrorism investigators. "It has to be seen as a gross miscalculation by SWIFT that it has, for years, secretly and systematically transferred massive amounts of personal data for surveillance without effective and clear legal basis and independent controls in line with Belgian and European law," says the report. Read The Full Story	Opinion: Legislating Violations Of The U.S. Constitution 2006-09-30 00:06:55 Intellpuke: The following opinion column was written by Erwin Chemerinsky for the washingtonpost.com website. It addresses constitutional issues involving U.S. House Resolution 2679, primarily those issues dealing with actions by the government that are unconstitutional, including the separation of church and state. Mr. Chemerinsky is the Alston & Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University. The House has approved the bill. Prof. Chemerinsky's column begins here: With little public attention or even notice, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that undermines enforcement of the First Amendment's separation of church and state. The Public Expression of Religion Act - H.R. 2679 - provides that attorneys who successfully challenge government actions as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorneys fees. The bill has only one purpose: to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion. A federal statute, 42 United States Code section 1988, provides that attorneys are entitled to recover compensation for their fees if they successfully represent a plaintiff asserting a violation of his or her constitutional or civil rights. For example, a lawyer who successfully sues on behalf of a victim of racial discrimination or police abuse is entitled to recover attorney's fees from the defendant who acted wrongfully. Any plaintiff who successfully sues to remedy a violation of the Constitution or a federal civil rights statute is entitled to have his or her attorney's fees paid. Congress adopted this statute for a simple reason: to encourage attorneys to bring cases on behalf of those whose rights have been violated. Congress was concerned that such individuals often cannot afford an attorney and vindicating constitutional rights rarely generates enough in damages to pay a lawyer on a contingency fee basis. Read The Full Story As India Uses Up Groundwater, Farming And Food Crisis Looms 2006-09-30 00:06:01 Bhanwar Lal Yadav, once a cultivator of cucumber and wheat in Teja Ka Bas, India, has all but given up growing food. No more suffering through drought and the scourge of antelope that would destroy what little would survive on his fields. Today he has reinvented himself as a vendor of what counts here as the most precious of commodities: the water under his land. Each year he bores ever deeper. His well now reaches 130 feet down. Four times a day he starts up his electric pumps. The water that gurgles up, he sells to the local government - 13,000 gallons a day. What is left, he sells to thirsty neighbors. He reaps handsomely, and he plans to continue for as long as it lasts. "However long it runs, it runs," he said. "We know we will all be ultimately doomed." Read The Full Story Brazilian Jet With 150 Aboard Missing After Collision 2006-09-30 00:04:23 A Brazilian jetliner with more than 150 people aboard was reported missing Friday over the Amazon jungle after colliding with a smaller executive jet, according to aviation authorities. Wladamir Caze, spokesman for the Brazilian aviation authority, told the Associated Press that Gol airlines flight 1907 left the jungle city of Manaus and disappeared after a collision. The Brazilian Aviation agency said the accident occurred in midair about 470 miles south of Manaus in the remote southwestern region of Para state. News reports said the plane reportedly struck a Brazilian-made Legacy aircraft. The Legacy managed to land at the Caximbo base in southern Para, some 1,250 miles northwest of Rio, despite suffering damage. Read The Full Story U.K. Blocks U.S. Rice Because Of GM Contamination 2006-09-30 00:02:32 American rice which may have been contaminated with a controversial GM (genetically modified) strain has been effectively blocked from the U.K., it emerged Friday. The world's biggest importer of rice has said it has ceased trading in U.S.-grown rice because of fears about the GM variety, which has not been approved for human use. Ebro Puleva, the Spanish rice processing company which controls 30% of the European Union (E.U.) rice market, said it has stopped all U.S. rice imports because of the threat of contamination by a strain of GM rice grown in crop trials by the GM company Bayer between 1998 and 2001. The strain, known as LLRICE 601, was never approved for human consumption but has escaped in large quantities into the world food chain. Read The Full Story Opinion: Is Woodward Calling Bush A Liar? 2006-09-29 12:46:18 Intellpuke: The following opinion column was written by Dan Froomkin for the washingtonpost.com website. Mr. Froomkin's column begins here: After two books that made President Bush look pretty good, Bob Woodward is out with a new one that comes awfully close to calling the president a liar. I can't imagine Woodward himself ever using the word - it's much too shrill for the poster boy for the mainstream media. But is there any other way to describe what seems like the central theme of his new book, tartly titled "State of Denial"? Woodward is an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, which is scheduled to run excerpts of the book in its Sunday and Monday editions. But the news about the book first came from CBS, which yesterday uncorked a preview of Woodward's upcoming interview on "60 Minutes". The New York Times ran a long piece this morning, after somehow managing to buy a copy of the book four days before the official release date. Read The Full Story Analysis: Many Human Rights Absent In Military Trials Bill 2006-09-29 00:16:40 The military trials bill approved by Congress lends legislative support for the first time to broad rules for the detention, interrogation, prosecution and trials of terrorism suspects far different from those in the familiar American criminal justice system. President Bush's argument that the government requires extraordinary power to respond to the unusual threat of terrorism helped him win final support for a system of military trials with highly truncated defendant's rights. The United States used similar trials on just four occasions: during the country's revolution, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and World War II. Included in the bill, passed by Republican majorities in the Senate Thursday and the House on Wednesday, are unique rules that bar terrorism suspects from challenging their detention or treatment through traditional habeas corpus petitions. They allow prosecutors, under certain conditions, to use evidence collected through hearsay or coercion to seek criminal convictions. The bill rejects the right to a speedy trial and limits the traditional right to self-representation by requiring that defendants accept military defense attorneys. Panels of military officers need not reach unanimous agreement to win convictions, except in death penalty cases, and appeals must go through a second military panel before reaching a federal civilian court. By writing into law for the first time the definition of an "unlawful enemy combatant," the bill empowers the executive branch to detain indefinitely anyone it determines to have "purposefully and materially" supported anti-U.S. hostilities. Only foreign nationals among those detainees can be tried by the military commissions, as they are known, and sentenced to decades in jail or put to death. Read The Full Story Deputy Dies In Shooting Near Florida Schools 2006-09-29 00:15:39 A man who had been pulled over for a traffic violation shot two sheriff's deputies Thursday, killing one of them and prompting an intensive manhunt that forced a lockdown at three schools, said officials. Authorities told residents to lock themselves in their homes as officers swarmed the rural area. The gunman remains at large. The shooter was first approached during a traffic stop, but he fled into a wooded area when the deputy began asking him about his identity, said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. That deputy and another who arrived seconds later with a police dog chased the suspect into the woods. As the officers tracked him, there was a "burst of gunfire," said Judd. The first deputy returned fire, and both deputies and the dog were shot. Read The Full Story Senior Military Tell U.K. Government To Pull Troops Out Of Iraq 2006-09-29 00:13:48 Senior U.K. military officers have been pressing the Blair government to withdraw British troops from Iraq and concentrate on what they now regard as a more worthwhile and winnable battleground in Afghanistan. They believe there is a limit to what British soldiers can achieve in southern Iraq and that it is time the Iraqis took responsibility for their own security, say defense sources. Pressure from military chiefs for an early and significant cut in the 7,500 British troops in Iraq is also motivated by extreme pressure being placed on soldiers and those responsible for training them. "What is more important, Afghanistan or Iraq?" a senior defense source asked Thursday. "There is a group within the Ministry of Defense (MoD) pushing hard to get troops out of Iraq to get more into Afghanistan." Military chiefs have been losing patience with the slow progress made in building a new Iraqi national army and security services. Significantly, they now say the level of violence in the country will not be a factor determining when British troops should leave. Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php

Friday, September 29, 2006

Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday September 29 2006 - (813)

Friday September 29 2006 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
Congressional Report Links Lobbyist Abramoff And White House 2006-09-29 00:17:04 A bipartisan Congressional report documents hundreds of contacts between White House officials and the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his partners, including at least 10 direct contacts between Abramoff and Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist. The House Government Reform Committee report, based on e-mail messages and other records subpoenaed fromAbramoff's lobbying firm, found 485 contacts between Abramoff's lobbying team and White House officials from 2001 to 2004, including 82 with Rove's office. The lobbyists spent almost $25,000 in meals and drinks for the White House officials and provided them with tickets to numerous sporting events and concerts, according to the report, scheduled for release Friday. Read The Full Story Ashcroft Denied Immunity In Wrongful Detention Case 2006-09-29 00:16:11 A federal judge in Idaho has ruled that former attorney general John D. Ashcroft can be held personally responsible for the wrongful detention of a U.S. citizen arrested as a "material witness" in a terrorism case. U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge, in a ruling issued late Wednesday, dismissed claims by the Justice Department that Ashcroft and other officials should be granted immunity from claims by a former star college football player arrested at Dulles International Airport in 2003. Attorneys for the plaintiff in the civil suit, Abdullah al-Kidd, said the decision raises the possibility that Ashcroft could be forced to testify or turn over records about the government's use of the material witness law, a cornerstone of its controversial legal strategy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Read The Full Story Belgian Government Rules That U.S. Sifting Of Bank Data Is Illegal 2006-09-29 00:14:32 A secret U.S. program to monitor millions of international financial transactions for terrorist links violated Belgian and European law and will have to be changed, the Belgian government said Thursday. The decision, announced by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, came as the country's Data Privacy Commission released a 20-page report finding that the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, had improperly turned over data from millions of global financial transactions to U.S. anti-terrorism investigators. "It has to be seen as a gross miscalculation by SWIFT that it has, for years, secretly and systematically transferred massive amounts of personal data for surveillance without effective and clear legal basis and independent controls in line with Belgian and European law," says the report. Read The Full Story Foster Gulch Complex Fire 2006-09-28 21:45:17 R: This is the copter [S] works with sucking up water out of the Snake River in Hell's Canyon in Idaho/Oregon border. Can you imagine being in those rafts? I thought this was such an awesome picture. S: That pic that [R] sent to you was taken in Hell's Canyon while battling the Foster Gulch fire. Read The Full Story Identity Thieves Target Smaller E-Businesses 2006-09-28 13:44:59 Schuyler Cole needed an accessory for his Palm Treo 600 smartphone, so the Haleiwa, Hawaii, resident fired up his Web browser last month and ran a Google search. After scanning the search results, he purchased the inexpensive item - a USB cable used to synchronize the Treo's settings with his personal computer - from Cellhut.com, the first online store displayed in the results that looked like it carried the cable. The site featured a "Hackersafe" logo indicating that the site's security had been verified within the past 24 hours. Later that day, information from Cole's purchase - including his name, address, credit card and phone numbers, and the date and exact time of the transaction - were posted into an online forum that caters to criminals engaged in credit card and identity theft. Ostensibly, the data on Cole was posted as an enticement to other fraudsters lurking on the forum who might be interested in buying large numbers of similar records. Read The Full Story IBM Recalls 526,000 ThinkPad Batteries 2006-09-28 13:42:30 Some 526,000 batteries used in ThinkPad notebook computers worldwide are being recalled in the latest problem with batteries made by Sony Corp., the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said Thursday. IBM Corp., based in Armonk, New York, and Lenovo Inc. of Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, recalled the rechargeable, lithium-ion batteries used in ThinkPad computers because they may pose a fire hazard. About 168,500 of the batteries were sold in the U.S., while the rest were distributed worldwide, said the CPSC. It was the fourth recall in recent months involving Sony batteries believed to be defective. In August, Dell asked customers to return 4.1 million faulty laptop batteries and Apple recalled 1.8 million batteries worldwide, warning they could catch fire. Last week, Toshiba said it was recalling 340,000 laptop batteries due to a problem that caused the laptops to sometimes run out of power. Read The Full Story Police Indentify Gunman In Colorado School Shooting 2006-09-28 13:41:12 The gunman who took six girls hostage in a high school classroom, killing a 16-year-old, had sexually assaulted at least some of them, the sheriff said Thursday. "He did traumatize and assault our children," Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener said. "I'll only say that it's sexual in nature." Wegener identified the suspect as Duane R. Morrison, 53, of the Denver area. He said investigators had not established any previous connection between him and the hostages at Platte Canyon High School. Wegener said that Morrison was from the Denver area but had been living in his car. State records showed he was arrested in July in the west Denver suburb of Lakewood on a charge of obstructing police in another suburb. He was also arrested for larceny and marijuana possession in 1973. Read The Full Story $75 Million Iraq Police Academy A Disaster 2006-09-28 00:54:37 A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to recruits and might need to be partially demolished, U.S. investigators have found. The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest". "This is the most essential civil security project in the country - and it's a failure," said Stuart W. Bowen, Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. "The Baghdad police academy is a disaster." Bowen's office plans to release a 21-page report Thursday detailing the most alarming problems with the facility. Read The Full Story U.S. Military Officials Critical Of Iraq Goverment 2006-09-28 00:53:42 Senior American military officials are warning that time is growing short for Iraq to root out militias inside and outside the government and purge ministries of corrupt officials who are diverting large sums of money to their own political parties. "We are now at a time when we have a little bit of influence there," said a senior military official. Referring to the problem of militias, he added, "There is going to come a time when I would argue we are going to have to force this issue." The official said political parties who were plundering ministries were squandering chances to make progress that could reduce sectarian violence. "I can tell you in every single ministry how they are using that ministry to fill the coffers of the political parties," said the official. "They are doing that because that is exactly what Saddam Husseindid." Read The Full Story	Analysis: Many Human Rights Absent In Military Trials Bill 2006-09-29 00:16:40 The military trials bill approved by Congress lends legislative support for the first time to broad rules for the detention, interrogation, prosecution and trials of terrorism suspects far different from those in the familiar American criminal justice system. President Bush's argument that the government requires extraordinary power to respond to the unusual threat of terrorism helped him win final support for a system of military trials with highly truncated defendant's rights. The United States used similar trials on just four occasions: during the country's revolution, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and World War II. Included in the bill, passed by Republican majorities in the Senate Thursday and the House on Wednesday, are unique rules that bar terrorism suspects from challenging their detention or treatment through traditional habeas corpus petitions. They allow prosecutors, under certain conditions, to use evidence collected through hearsay or coercion to seek criminal convictions. The bill rejects the right to a speedy trial and limits the traditional right to self-representation by requiring that defendants accept military defense attorneys. Panels of military officers need not reach unanimous agreement to win convictions, except in death penalty cases, and appeals must go through a second military panel before reaching a federal civilian court. By writing into law for the first time the definition of an "unlawful enemy combatant," the bill empowers the executive branch to detain indefinitely anyone it determines to have "purposefully and materially" supported anti-U.S. hostilities. Only foreign nationals among those detainees can be tried by the military commissions, as they are known, and sentenced to decades in jail or put to death. Read The Full Story Deputy Dies In Shooting Near Florida Schools 2006-09-29 00:15:39 A man who had been pulled over for a traffic violation shot two sheriff's deputies Thursday, killing one of them and prompting an intensive manhunt that forced a lockdown at three schools, said officials. Authorities told residents to lock themselves in their homes as officers swarmed the rural area. The gunman remains at large. The shooter was first approached during a traffic stop, but he fled into a wooded area when the deputy began asking him about his identity, said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. That deputy and another who arrived seconds later with a police dog chased the suspect into the woods. As the officers tracked him, there was a "burst of gunfire," said Judd. The first deputy returned fire, and both deputies and the dog were shot. Read The Full Story Senior Military Tell U.K. Government To Pull Troops Out Of Iraq 2006-09-29 00:13:48 Senior U.K. military officers have been pressing the Blair government to withdraw British troops from Iraq and concentrate on what they now regard as a more worthwhile and winnable battleground in Afghanistan. They believe there is a limit to what British soldiers can achieve in southern Iraq and that it is time the Iraqis took responsibility for their own security, say defense sources. Pressure from military chiefs for an early and significant cut in the 7,500 British troops in Iraq is also motivated by extreme pressure being placed on soldiers and those responsible for training them. "What is more important, Afghanistan or Iraq?" a senior defense source asked Thursday. "There is a group within the Ministry of Defense (MoD) pushing hard to get troops out of Iraq to get more into Afghanistan." Military chiefs have been losing patience with the slow progress made in building a new Iraqi national army and security services. Significantly, they now say the level of violence in the country will not be a factor determining when British troops should leave. Read The Full Story Senate Narrowly Rejects Amendment To Detainee Bill 2006-09-28 13:45:37 The Senate today narrowly rejected a measure that would have allowed suspected terrorists to challenge their detention in federal court, as the body moved closer to passing a White House-backed bill to authorize special military tribunals for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. In a key vote on an amendment sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermonth, the Senate voted 51 to 48 against deleting from the bill a provision that rules out habeas corpus petitions for foreigners held in the war on terrorism. The writ of habeas corpus, which is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, allows people to challenge in court the legality of their detention, essentially meaning that they cannot be held indefinitely without charge or trial. The issue was one of the most contentious in the bill, the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The proposed legislation authorizes the president "to establish military commissions for the trial of alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses. ..." It would also set the parameters for interrogating terrorism suspects. In debate on the amendment, Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and other Republicans whom he described as "moderate," charged that denying habeas corpus to detainees would be unconstitutional. Read The Full Story Video Linked To Al-Qaeda Urges More Attacks In Iraq 2006-09-28 13:44:15 The new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq purportedly said Thursday in an audio message posted online that more than 4,000 foreign militants have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 - the first apparent acknowledgment from the insurgents about their losses. The message also called for experts in the fields of "chemistry, physics, electronics, media and all other sciences - especially nuclear scientists and explosives experts" to join the terror group's holy war against the West. "We are in dire need of you," said the man, who identified himself as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir - also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri - the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. "The field of jihad (holy war) can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases (in Iraq) are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them." Read The Full Story 2 Deputies, K-9 Shot, Manhunt Near Florida School 2006-09-28 13:42:00 Florida police were searching for a suspect who shot two sheriff's deputies and a K-9 police dog Thursday, said authorities. The Polk County deputies were taken to a hospital following the early afternoon shooting in north Lakeland, sheriff's spokeswoman Donna Wood said. She didn't know their conditions. A hospital spokeswoman referred questions about the deputies to the sheriff's office. The shooting occurred near Kathleen High School, which was locked down, Wood said. A woman who would identify herself only as Mrs. Platt said students were locked in their classrooms and were safe. Read The Full Story Ex-Hewlett-Packard Exec Says Other Companies Use Surveillance 2006-09-28 13:40:33 The ousted chairwoman of Hewlett-Packard Co. told a House subcommittee today that some of the tactics used by the computer giant in its surveillance scandal are employed by other American companies. "I believe that these methods may, in fact, be quite common, not just at Hewlett-Packard but at companies around the country," said Patricia Dunn, who was fired by the company on Friday. "Every company has a security department. Every company of consequences has people who do detective-type work in order to ferret out the forces of nefarious activities." House lawmakers are using the hearing on Capitol Hill to strongly denounce tactics that Hewlett-Packard used to secretly probe leaks about the company to the media. This morning, 10 former Hewlett-Packard employees and outside contractors, including the ex-general counsel, refused to testify. Read The Full Story Gunman Kills Girl Hostage And Himself At Colorado School 2006-09-28 00:54:12 A gunman took six girls hostage at the Platte Canyon High School in the mountain town of Bailey, Colorado, Wednesday, using them as human shields for hours before he shot and fatally wounded a girl, then killed himself as a SWAT team moved in, said authorities. The gunman, believed to be between 30 and 50 years old, was cornered with the girls in a second-floor classroom, and released four of them, one by one. Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener said authorities decided to enter the school to save the two remaining hostages after the gunman cut off negotiations and set a deadline. He said the man had threatened the girls during the four-hour ordeal. The man was not identified. "I don't know why he wanted to do this," said Wegener. Read The Full Story New Hope For Democrats In Bid For U.S. Senate 2006-09-28 00:53:18 Six weeks before Election Day, the Democrats suddenly face a map with unexpected opportunities in their battle for control of the Senate. In Virginia, a state that few expected to be seriously competitive, Senator George Allen looks newly vulnerable after a series of controversies over charges of racial insensitivity, strategists in both parties say. In Tennessee, another Southern state long considered safely red, Representative Harold E. Ford, Jr., a Democrat, has run a strong campaign that has kept that state in contention. Elsewhere, Democratic challengers are either ahead or close in races in five states held by the Republicans: Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, according to political strategists in both parties and the latest polls. Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday September 28 2006 - (813)

Thursday September 28 2006 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
$75 Million Iraq Police Academy A Disaster 2006-09-28 00:54:37 A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to recruits and might need to be partially demolished, U.S. investigators have found. The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest". "This is the most essential civil security project in the country - and it's a failure," said Stuart W. Bowen, Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. "The Baghdad police academy is a disaster." Bowen's office plans to release a 21-page report Thursday detailing the most alarming problems with the facility. Read The Full Story U.S. Military Officials Critical Of Iraq Goverment 2006-09-28 00:53:42 Senior American military officials are warning that time is growing short for Iraq to root out militias inside and outside the government and purge ministries of corrupt officials who are diverting large sums of money to their own political parties. "We are now at a time when we have a little bit of influence there," said a senior military official. Referring to the problem of militias, he added, "There is going to come a time when I would argue we are going to have to force this issue." The official said political parties who were plundering ministries were squandering chances to make progress that could reduce sectarian violence. "I can tell you in every single ministry how they are using that ministry to fill the coffers of the political parties," said the official. "They are doing that because that is exactly what Saddam Husseindid." Read The Full Story Georgia Arrests Russian Officers As Spies, Surrounds Army HQ 2006-09-27 19:01:56 The nation of Georgia Wednesday detained four Russian military officers and 12 civilians on espionage charges, marking a serious escalation in tensions between Tbilisi and Moscow. Georgian forces were late last night surrounding Russia's military headquarters in Tbilisi to demand the handover of another Russian officer. Georgia's ambassador to Moscow was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry and given a protest note demanding the immediate release of the officers. The ministry said the detentions were "an outrageous escapade". The Georgian interior minister, Vano Merabishvili, said the officers and their agents in Georgia were part of a "very serious and dangerous" spy network that had been involved in espionage for years. "They showed a particular interest in Georgia's defense capability, its programs of integration into NATO, energy, security, political parties and organizations," he told journalists. Merabishvili said the detained officers were members of Russia's GRU army intelligence unit and had been planning "a serious provocation". Read The Full Story Editorial: The Fine Art Of Declassification 2006-09-27 10:49:20 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in today's New York Times: It's hard to think of a president and an administration more devoted to secrecy than President Bush and his team. Except, that is, when it suits Mr. Bush politically to give the public a glimpse of the secrets. And so, yesterday, he ordered the declassification of a fraction of a report by United States intelligence agencies on the global terrorist threat. Mr. Bush said he wanted to release the document so voters would not be confused about terrorism or the war when they voted for Congressional candidates in November. But the three declassified pages from what is certainly a voluminous report told us what any American with a newspaper, television or Internet connection should already know. The invasion of Iraq was a cataclysmic disaster. The current situation will get worse if American forces leave. Unfortunately, neither the report nor the president provide even a glimmer of a suggestion about how to avoid that inevitable disaster. Despite what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, have tried to make everyone believe, one of the key findings of the National Intelligence Estimate, which represents the consensus of the 16 intelligence agencies, was indeed that the war in Iraq has greatly increased the threat from terrorism by "shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives." Read The Full Story Gas Well Accident Releases 1.7 Million Cubic Feet Of Mud A Day 2006-09-27 10:48:31 Indonesia will resettle more than 3,000 families whose houses have been swamped by mud surging from a gas exploration site and will dump the sludge into the sea to avoid more destruction, the government said Wednesday. The mud appeared four months ago after an accident occurred deep in a drilling shaft on the seismically charged island of Java. It now covers more than 665 acres and is currently being contained by an ever-expanding network of dams that are breached almost daily. Public Works Minister Djoko Kirmanto said efforts would continue to cap the so-called mud volcano, which has been streaming from the ground at a rate of 1.7 million cubic feet a day. In the meantime, the mud will be dumped in the sea and more than 3,000 families would be resettled on the orders of the president because the land "was no longer fit for human habitation," he said. Read The Full Story Locust Swarm Hits Cancun, Mexico 2006-09-27 10:47:39 Clouds of locusts have descended around the Mexican beach resort of Cancun, destroying corn crops and worrying officials in a region still recovering from the devastating fury of last year's Hurricane Wilma. Traveling in dark fogs, locusts are grasshoppers that have entered a swarming phase, capable of covering large distances and rapidly stripping fields of vegetation. "Imagine, they fly in the form of a flock. Imagine the width of a street," government official Martin Rodriguez said Tuesday, describing the fields around Cancun on the Yucatan Peninsula. Towns have formed pesticide-armed brigades and are winning the war against the 3-week-old plague that has left tourist areas unharmed, said authorities. Read The Full Story Dozens Sickened By Noxious Gas Cloud In New Jersey 2006-09-27 00:43:27 A trucking company worker damaged a pressurized tank containing sulfur dioxide on Tuesday, releasing a cloud of gas that sickened dozens of people, said authorities. Fifty-two people were decontaminated and taken to area hospitals, said city fire director Onofrio Vitullo. Several, including a firefighter, reported trouble breathing, but none of the injuries appear to be serious, said Vitullo. Witnesses said people exposed to the gas began to vomit. Sulphur dioxide can irritate the eyes and lungs. The accident happened at about 3 p.m. as a worker was attempting to dismantle a pressurized tank similar to a welding tank at Full Circle Carriers, a trucking company. The worker snapped the neck off and the cloud was released, said Vitullo. Read The Full Story	Gunman Kills Girl Hostage And Himself At Colorado School 2006-09-28 00:54:12 A gunman took six girls hostage at the Platte Canyon High School in the mountain town of Bailey, Colorado, Wednesday, using them as human shields for hours before he shot and fatally wounded a girl, then killed himself as a SWAT team moved in, said authorities. The gunman, believed to be between 30 and 50 years old, was cornered with the girls in a second-floor classroom, and released four of them, one by one. Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener said authorities decided to enter the school to save the two remaining hostages after the gunman cut off negotiations and set a deadline. He said the man had threatened the girls during the four-hour ordeal. The man was not identified. "I don't know why he wanted to do this," said Wegener. Read The Full Story New Hope For Democrats In Bid For U.S. Senate 2006-09-28 00:53:18 Six weeks before Election Day, the Democrats suddenly face a map with unexpected opportunities in their battle for control of the Senate. In Virginia, a state that few expected to be seriously competitive, Senator George Allen looks newly vulnerable after a series of controversies over charges of racial insensitivity, strategists in both parties say. In Tennessee, another Southern state long considered safely red, Representative Harold E. Ford, Jr., a Democrat, has run a strong campaign that has kept that state in contention. Elsewhere, Democratic challengers are either ahead or close in races in five states held by the Republicans: Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, according to political strategists in both parties and the latest polls. Read The Full Story Lobby Tactics Of Drug Firms Revealed 2006-09-27 19:01:33 Multinational drug companies have been lobbying British government ministers in an attempt to subvert the independent appraisal process and get their expensive new medicines approved for large-scale use in the National Health Service (NHS), the Guardian revealed. Over the eight months from October to May this year, senior executives from 10 drug companies met ministers to press for favorable decisions on their products. The executives were highly critical of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), an independent expert body set up to decide which drugs are cost-effective for use in the NHS. Documents obtained by the Guardian under the U.K.'s Freedom of Information legislation reveal that: -- The world's biggest drug company, Pfizer, warned ministers that it could take its business elsewhere. "Pfizer ... noted that there is complacency in some quarters of Whitehall regarding their continued investment in the U.K.," the minutes of the meeting record. Ministers later agreed to a special meeting where six companies could lobby for their drugs for Alzheimer's disease. Read The Full Story Letter From Intelligence, Military Professionals On Use Of Torture 2006-09-27 10:48:59 Intellpuke: I found this letter at the Truthout.org website and felt it merited a broader audience. Here's the lead-in written by Truthout's editor: The following letter was sent Tuesday to the U.S. Senate Committe On Intelligence to the attention of Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont). It represents the views of former U.S. government and military officials who served in the CIA, in the Army, in the Air Force, at the Department of State and at the FBI. It represents a consensus view that torture is an ineffective and immoral practice. The letter follows: Tuesday 26 September 2006 United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary 224 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 The Honorable Arlen Specter, Chairman The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy, Ranking Democratic Member Dear Senators: We write as experienced intelligence and military officers who have served in the frontlines in waging war against communism and Islamic extremism. We fully support the need for proactive operations to identify and disrupt those individuals and organizations who wish to harm our country or its people. We also recognize that intelligence operations, unlike law enforcement initiatives, enjoy more flexibility and less scrutiny, but at the same time must continue to be guided by applicable US law. We are very concerned that the proposals now before the Congress, concerning how to handle detainees suspected of terrorist activities, run the risk of squandering the greatest resource our country enjoys in fighting the dictators and extremists who want to destroy us - our commitment as a nation to the rule of law and the protection of divinely granted human rights. Read The Full Story Researchers: Global Warming Nears Dangerous Levels 2006-09-27 10:48:09 Global temperatures are dangerously close to the highest ever estimated to have occurred in the past million years, scientists reported Monday. In a study that analyzed temperatures around the globe, researchers found that Earth has been warming rapidly, nearly 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) in the last 30 years. "The average surface temperature is 15, maybe 16 degrees Celsius (60 degrees Fahrenheit)," said Alan Robock, a meteorologist and climate researcher from Rutgers University who was not involved with the study. If global temperatures go up another 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C), it would be equal to the maximum temperature of the past million years. "This evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made (anthropogenic) pollution," said study leader James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Read The Full Story Big California Fire Moves Toward Homes Again 2006-09-27 00:43:48 Fire trucks, bulldozers and water tankers guarded homes within sight of a massive wildfire Tuesday as officials urged rural residents of Southern California mountain communities to evacuate. Thick smoke turned the sky gray and purplish as flames rolled through pines and juniper trees on slopes of Los Padres National Forest, where more than 3,500 firefighters have battled the blaze since it started on Labor Day. No homes had been lost to the fire, one of the largest and longest-burning wildfires in state history, burning some 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Overall, containment was just 43 percent. Six unoccupied buildings were destroyed, including a modular home, a cabin, barns and camp trailers, said fire spokesman Dan Bastion. Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday September 27 2006 - (813)

Wednesday September 27 2006 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
Big California Fire Moves Toward Homes Again 2006-09-27 00:43:48 Fire trucks, bulldozers and water tankers guarded homes within sight of a massive wildfire Tuesday as officials urged rural residents of Southern California mountain communities to evacuate. Thick smoke turned the sky gray and purplish as flames rolled through pines and juniper trees on slopes of Los Padres National Forest, where more than 3,500 firefighters have battled the blaze since it started on Labor Day. No homes had been lost to the fire, one of the largest and longest-burning wildfires in state history, burning some 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Overall, containment was just 43 percent. Six unoccupied buildings were destroyed, including a modular home, a cabin, barns and camp trailers, said fire spokesman Dan Bastion. Read The Full Story Failed Attempt At Artificial Reef May Be Retrieved 2006-09-26 23:28:55 A Virginia-based salvage unit, whose divers are trained to clear harbors and raise sunken ships, probed the ocean off Sunrise Boulevard in a project that offers hope of solving one of South Florida's most bizarre and intractable environmental problems. More than 30 years ago, with government approval, recreational fishing groups dumped an estimated 1 million to 2 million tires off Broward County to create a huge artificial reef. On a single day in 1972, as the Goodyear blimp flew overhead, more than 100 boats headed off shore to heave tires into the water. Like similar efforts around the country, the project was intended to build structures that would attract fish by providing hiding places and vertical formations in the ocean. Read The Full Story Musharraf: Iraq War Makes World More Dangerous 2006-09-26 19:17:40 The war in Iraq has not made the world safer from terror, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf told CNN, saying he stands by statements on the subject he makes in his new book, "In the Line of Fire." In the book, Musharraf - a key ally who is often portrayed as being in complete agreement with U.S. President George W. Bush on the war on terror and other issues - writes he never supported the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. "I stand by it, absolutely," Musharraf told CNN's "The Situation Room." Asked whether he disagreed with Bush, he said, "I've stated whatever I had to ... it [the war] has made the world a more dangerous place." He also addressed allegations that Pakistan was a less-than-enthusiastic recruit into the war on terror and that former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a Pakistani official that the United States would bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" if it did not cooperate with Washington after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Read The Full Story No Compromise On Wiretap Bill 2006-09-26 19:16:45 A high-profile Republican effort to clarify the legality of President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program will almost certainly not pass before Congress recesses at week's end for the fall campaign, leaving the legislation in deep trouble, congressional leaders conceded Tuesday. Efforts to reach agreement on a single version of the bill that could be brought before the Senate and House this week foundered Tuesday on the insistence of key House members that they vote on a House version that they say is significantly tougher than the Senate's. House Republican leaders are deferring to the House bill's primary author, Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-New Mexico), who is locked in one of the tightest House election contests of the season. "I don't think that's possible," Wilson said of the House and Senate reaching agreement on a compromise bill. "Our focus has to be on passing the House bill." House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said GOP leaders would still like to pass a bill this week "but that may be a bit of a stretch." Read The Full Story British Lawyer: Officer At Guantanamo Threatened Me 2006-09-26 19:15:26 A British lawyer who represents detainees at Guantánamo Bay yesterday claimed he was threatened with internment at the notorious camp by a U.S. military officer. Clive Stafford-Smith told the Guardian that the U.S. military claimed he had incited inmates to commit suicide and go on hunger strike. Stafford-Smith says the U.S. has been repeatedly interrogating one of his clients to try to get him to implicate him in three suicides. Stafford-Smith has made at least eight visits to the camp, situated on Cuban land occupied by the U.S., to consult with several detainees he represents. He said the alleged intimidation reached a peak last summer during a mass hunger strike. In August 2005, he said, "a military lawyer took me into a cell and said it would be for me, as he alleged I was behind the hunger strike. They have been making stuff up about the clients and now they are making it up about me." Read The Full Story Opinion: A Textbook Definition Of Cowardice 2006-09-26 12:41:55 Intellpuke: The following opinion column was written by Keith Olbermann, anchor of MSNBC's "Countdown" program. In the column, Olbermann writes about the recent sandbagging of former President Clinton on a t.v. program - and much more that I found not only interesting, but also perceptive and important, which is why I decided to post it. Mr. Olbermann's column follows: The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past president, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back. It is not important that the current President's portable public chorus has described his predecessor's tone as "crazed." Our tone should be crazed. The nation's freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as al-Qaeda; the nation's marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would've quit. Read The Full Story E.U. Panel Questions Legality Of U.S. Sifting Bank Data 2006-09-26 12:40:45 A European Union panel has serious doubts about the legality of a Bush administration program that monitors international financial transactions, the group's leader said Monday, and plans to recommend tighter controls to prevent privacy abuses. "We don't see the legal basis under the European law, and we see the need for some changes," said Peter Schaar, a German official who leads the panel, in a telephone interview. The group is to deliver a final report this week in Brussels, and Schaar said he expected it to conclude that the program might violate European law restricting government access to confidential banking records. The program, started by the Bush administration weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, allows analysts from the Central Intelligence Agencyand other American intelligence agencies to search for possible terrorist financing activity among millions of largely international financial transactions that are processed by a banking cooperative known as Swift, which is based in Belgium. Read The Full Story Army Chief Tells Bush Not Enough Money To Run Iraq War 2006-09-26 00:25:12 George Bush suffered a serious rebuke of his wartime leadership Monday when his army chief said he did not have enough money to fight the war in Iraq. Six weeks before midterm elections in which the war is a crucial issue, the protest from the army head, General Peter Schoomaker, exposes concerns within the U.S. military about the strain of the war on Iraq, and growing tensions between uniformed personnel and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Three retired senior military officers Monday accused Rumsfeld of bungling the war on Iraq, and said the Pentagon was "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically". Major General Paul Eaton, a retired officer who was in charge of training Iraq troops, said: "Mr Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making." Read The Full Story Rover Set To Examine Mars History 2006-09-26 00:23:16 When the Mars rovers Opportunity and Spirit reached their distant destination in early 2004, NASA scientists hoped the vehicles would probe the planet's frigid landscape for 90 days before they pooped out or were undone by the harsh Martian environment. More than 900 days later, however, both robotic explorers are going strong - and Opportunity is literally on the cusp of what is likely to be its greatest accomplishment. After enduring an 18-month trek through rugged terrain, dust devils and daily temperature swings approaching 200 degrees, the rover is scheduled to arrive Tuesday within easy lens view of a deep and geologically revealing crater. By tomorrow, if all goes well, the little robot that could will be right at Victoria Crater's edge and in position to peer inside and send back images like none seen before. "Exploring Victoria is something we joked and fantasized about but never really thought we could realistically get to it," said Steven Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for the rovers' science instruments. "This is the absolutely highest-priority destination we could have reached." Read The Full Story Detainee Legislation To Have Fewer Restrictions 2006-09-26 00:22:04 Republican lawmakers and the White House agreed over the weekend to alter new legislation on military commissions to allow the United States to detain and try a wider range of foreign nationals than an earlier version of the bill permitted, according to government sources. Lawmakers and administration officials announced last week that they had reached accord on the plan for the detention and military trials of suspected terrorists, and it is scheduled for a vote this week. But in recent days the Bush administration and its House allies successfully pressed for a less restrictive description of how the government could designate civilians as "unlawful enemy combatants," the sources said Monday. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of negotiations over the bill. The government has maintained since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that, based on its reading of the laws of war, anyone it labels an unlawful enemy combatant can be held indefinitely at military or CIA prisons. Congress has not yet expressed its view on who is an unlawful combatant, and the Supreme Court has not ruled directly on the matter. As a result, human rights experts expressed concern Monday that the language in the new provision would be a precedent-setting congressional endorsement for the indefinite detention of anyone who, as the bill states, "has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" or its military allies. Read The Full Story	Dozens Sickened By Noxious Gas Cloud In New Jersey 2006-09-27 00:43:27 A trucking company worker damaged a pressurized tank containing sulfur dioxide on Tuesday, releasing a cloud of gas that sickened dozens of people, said authorities. Fifty-two people were decontaminated and taken to area hospitals, said city fire director Onofrio Vitullo. Several, including a firefighter, reported trouble breathing, but none of the injuries appear to be serious, said Vitullo. Witnesses said people exposed to the gas began to vomit. Sulphur dioxide can irritate the eyes and lungs. The accident happened at about 3 p.m. as a worker was attempting to dismantle a pressurized tank similar to a welding tank at Full Circle Carriers, a trucking company. The worker snapped the neck off and the cloud was released, said Vitullo. Read The Full Story Excerpts Of Secret Intelligence Report Say Iraq War Fueled Terrorism 2006-09-26 19:18:09 The Bush administration released portions of a classified intelligence estimate Tuesday that says the global jihadist movement is growing and being fueled by the war in Iraq even as it becomes more decentralized, making it harder to identify potential terrorists and prevent future attacks. The war in Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for jihadists, breeding resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and drawing new adherents to the movement, says the assessment. The growth in the number of potential terrorists is also being fed by corruption, slow-moving political reform in many Muslim countries and "pervasive" anti-American sentiment, according to the report. The document, which reflects the collective judgment of the nation's 16 intelligence agencies, asserts that the jihadist movement is potentially limited by its ultra-conservative view of Islam and could be slowed by democratic reforms in the Muslim world. In addition, it says that if jihadists are perceived to be defeated in Iraq "fewer fighters would be inspired to carry on the fight". Still, terrorists with experience constructing roadside bombs and other deadly devices in Iraq "are a potential source" of leadership for attacks elsewhere, according to the intelligence report. Read The Full Story U.S. Blocked Report Linking Global Warming, Stronger Hurricanes 2006-09-26 19:17:13 The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday. The possibility that warming conditions may cause storms to become stronger has generated debate among climate and weather experts, particularly in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. In the new case, Nature said weather experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - part of the Commerce Department - in February set up a seven-member panel to prepare a consensus report on the views of agency scientists about global warming and hurricanes. According to the reporting by Nature, a draft of the statement said that warming may be having an effect. Read The Full Story Suspected Bird Flu Case In Sydney, Australia 2006-09-26 19:16:15 An international traveller with suspected bird flu has been taken to a hospital from Sydney Airport. The New South Wales Health department issued a statement saying the patient arrived at the airport Wednesday morning and was taken to the hospital for a routine medical check. "The person has a recent history of being in an area with chicken in Vietnam and of having a previous influenza-like illness," said the statement. While health experts believe it is very unlikely the diagnosis will be avian influenza, the man has still been quarantined for testing. He is believed to have been unconscious for most of the flight. Under Australian Quarantine laws all airlines are required to report ill passengers to the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service prior to landing. Read The Full Story Health Insurance Costs Rise At Twice The Inflation Rate 2006-09-26 12:42:20 Increases in health insurance premiums for working families slowed for the third straight year in 2006, but still rose at a rate more than double that of inflation and growth in workers' pay, an annual nationwide survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows. Premiums for workers rose 7.7 percent this year - the lowest increase since 2000 - down from 9.2 percent in 2005 and almost half the recent peak of 13.9 percent in 2003, according to the survey, which was released today and included more than 3,000 companies with 3 or more workers. At the end of April, when the survey was completed, wages had increased 3.8 percent from a year earlier and the rate of inflation had increased 3.5 percent, the survey said. "Nobody's celebrating, and nobody should be celebrating," said Drew E. Altman, head of the foundation, a non-profit organization that studies healthcare issues. "A modest reduction in an already high rate of increase hardly looks like salvation to working people and businesses, who have been getting hammered by high healthcare costs year after year." Read The Full Story Opinion: Fox Lamely Hides Behind Copyright Law 2006-09-26 12:41:25 Intellpuke: The following opinion column was written by the Rev. Bill McGinnis, who submitted it to Free Internet Press for publication. Like the preceding opinion column by Keith Olbermann, it deals with the Fox interview with former President Bill Clinton. Rev. McGinnis, however, looks at an interesting aspect of the emerging brouhaha over the Fox interview, but that aspect is just as relevant as those Mr. Olbermann raised in his column. Rev. McGinnis' column follows: The chicken-hawk Fox News Network has forced the Bill Clinton/Chris Wallace interview video off YouTube.com, claiming copyright violations. A few minutes ago I went to see for myself what all the fuss was about regarding Bill Clinton's interview last Sunday with Chris Wallace on Fox News. I had seen a few selected excerpts, and I had read that Clinton had finally stood up and blasted both Bush and Fox, and I wanted to see the whole thing for myself. But when I went to YouTube.com to see it, it got this notice: "This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Fox News Network, LLC because its content was used without permission." What a lame cop-out by Fox News! This Neo-Conservative/Bush-Whitehouse mouthpiece, pretending to be a fair and objective news source, is apparently so afraid that this video will make them look foolish, that they are willing to suppress the news in order to keep the truth from being widely revealed! Read The Full Story Afghanistan Suicide Bombing Kills At Least 18 2006-09-26 12:39:56 A suicide bomber struck outside the compound of a southern Afghan governor on Tuesday, killing 18 people, including several Muslim pilgrims seeking paperwork to travel to Mecca, said officials. The attacker detonated his suicide vest when Afghan soldiers stopped him at the compound's security gate, said Ghulam Muhiddin, spokesman for the Helmand provincial governor. The bomber had been walking toward a vehicle of the private military contractors who provide security for the governor, said Squadron Leader Jason Chalk, a NATO spokesman. Nine Afghan soldiers and nine civilians were killed, said Rahmatullah Mohammdi, director of the hospital in Lashkar Gah. Seventeen people were wounded, he said. Read The Full Story U.S. Extends Iraq Tour For Another Army Unit 2006-09-26 00:24:06 The Pentagon Monday delayed for six weeks the return home of about 4,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq's volatile Anbar province - the second extension of U.S. forces in the country in two months - as the insurgency and rising sectarian violence exert heavier demands on a stretched American ground force. A brigade of the Army's 1st Armored Division, operating in Anbar's contested capital of Ramadi, has been ordered to stay on for 46 more days. Another brigade - from the 1st Cavalry Division based at Fort Hood, Texas - will depart a month early, in late October, for a year of combat duty in Iraq. "There's no question but that any time there's a war, the forces of the countries involved are asked to do a great deal," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said when asked about the troop decisions at the Pentagon yesterday. According to a Pentagon announcement, the shift is necessary to "maintain the current force structure in Iraq into the spring of next year." That confirms an assessment last week by Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, that no cuts in the more than 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are likely before next spring. Read The Full Story Opinion: Covert Lobbying Sets Back Efforts To Fight Global Warming 2006-09-26 00:22:43 Intellpuke: The following column on global warming by George Monbiot appears in Tuesday's edition of the Guardian newspaper. Mr. Monbiot's column follows: On the letters page of the Guardian last week, a Dr. Alan Kendall attacked the Royal Society for "smearing" its opponents. The society had sent an official letter to Exxon, complaining about the oil company's "inaccurate and misleading" portrayal of the science of climate change and about its funding of lobby groups that deny global warming is taking place. The letter, Kendall argued, was an attempt to "stifle legitimate discussion". Perhaps he is unaware of what has been happening. The campaign of dissuasion funded by Exxon and the tobacco company Philip Morris has been devastatingly effective. By insisting that man-made global warming is either a "myth" or not worth tackling, it has given the media and politicians the excuses for inaction they wanted. Partly as a result, in the U.S. at least, these companies have helped to delay attempts to tackle the world's most important problem by a decade or more. Should we not confront this? If, as Kendall seems to suggest, we should refrain from exposing and criticizing these groups, would that not be to "stifle legitimate discussion"? There is still much more to discover. It is unclear how much covert corporate lobbying has been taking place in the U.K. But the little I have been able to find so far suggests that here, as in the U.S., there seems to be some overlap between Exxon and the groups it has funded and the operations of the tobacco industry. Read The Full Story Abe Elected Japanese Prime Minister 2006-09-26 00:20:48 Japanese nationalist Shinzo Abe, a proponent of a tight alliance with the United States and a more assertive military, won election as Japan's new prime minister Tuesday, scoring comfortable majorities in both houses. Abe won 339 votes out of 475 counted in the powerful lower house, and 136 ballots out of 240 in the upper house, reflecting the dominance of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party in parliament. Abe, 52, has pushed for a tight alliance with the United States, revision of the pacifist constitution, a more assertive foreign policy and patriotic teaching in public schools. Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday September 26 2006 - (813)

Tuesday September 26 2006 edition

Free Internet Press is operated on your donations.
Donate Today

Army Chief Tells Bush Not Enough Money To Run Iraq War
2006-09-26 00:25:12

George Bush suffered a serious rebuke of his wartime leadership Monday when his army chief said he did not have enough money to fight the war in Iraq.

Six weeks before midterm elections in which the war is a crucial issue, the protest from the army head, General Peter Schoomaker, exposes concerns within the U.S. military about the strain of the war on Iraq, and growing tensions between uniformed personnel and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Three retired senior military officers Monday accused Rumsfeld of bungling the war on Iraq, and said the Pentagon was "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically". Major General Paul Eaton, a retired officer who was in charge of training Iraq troops, said: "Mr Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making."