Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday September 23 2006 - (813)

Saturday September 23 2006 edition
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Inspector General Report: U.S. Education Officials Violated Rules 2006-09-22 23:41:40 Department of Education officials violated conflict of interest rules when awarding grants to states under President Bush's billion-dollar reading initiative, and steered contracts to favored textbook publishers, the department's inspector general said Friday. In a searing report that concludes the first in a series of investigations into complaints of political favoritism in the reading initiative, known as Reading First, the report said officials improperly selected the members of review panels that awarded large grants to states, often failing to detect conflicts of interest. The money was used to buy reading textbooks and curriculum for public schools nationwide. States have received more than $4.8 billion in Reading First grants during the Bush administration, and a recent survey by an independent group, the Center on Education Policy, reported that many state officials consider the initiative to be highly effective in raising reading achievement. But the report describes a tangled process in which some states had to apply for grants as many as six times before receiving approval, with department officials scheming to stack panels with experts tied to favored publishers. Read The Full Story U.S. Fatalities In War Exceed Those Of 9/11 2006-09-22 23:40:27 Now the death toll is 9/11 times two. U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now surpass those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America's history, the trigger for what came next. The latest milestone for a country at war came Friday without commemoration. It came without the precision of knowing who was the 2,974th to die in conflict. The terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. An Associated Press count of the U.S. death toll in Iraq rose to 2,696. Combined with 278 U.S. deaths in and around Afghanistan, the 9/11 toll was reached, then topped, the same day. The Pentagon reported Friday the latest death from Iraq, an as-yet unidentified soldier killed a day earlier after his vehicle was hit by a roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad. Read The Full Story Analysis: Detainee Deal Comes With Contradictions 2006-09-22 23:39:26 The compromise reached on Thursday between Congressional Republicans and the White House on the interrogations and trials of terrorism suspects is, legal experts said Friday, a series of interlocking paradoxes. It would impose new legal standards that it forbids the courts to enforce. It would guarantee terrorist masterminds charged with war crimes an array of procedural protections, but it would bar hundreds of minor figures and people who say they are innocent bystanders from access to the courts to challenge their potentially lifelong detentions. While there is substantial disagreement about just which harsh interrogation techniques the compromise would prohibit, there is no dispute that it would allow military prosecutors to use statements that had been obtained under harsh techniques that are now banned. Read The Full Story Astronaut Collapses During Ceremony 2006-09-22 23:36:54 An astronaut collapsed twice Friday, a day after she returned to Earth in the shuttle Atlantis, and officials attributed her wobbles to the adjustment from 12 days at zero gravity. Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper left the welcome-home ceremony at the hangar at Ellington Field but was not taken to a hospital. Officials said she was doing fine. Piper, the fifth of the six astronauts to speak, appeared to be confused before her legs buckled during her address. NASA officials and crew members braced her and lowered her to the ground. She stood up again, and the crowd applauded. ''Boy, if that's not a little embarrassing,'' she said. Read The Full Story American Activist Released From Vietnam Jail 2006-09-22 23:35:43 An American activist who was jailed in Vietnam for more than a month on suspicion of plotting against the communist government said Friday he would continue his fight for democracy in his native country. ``I plan to keep on fighting as long as possible,'' Cong Thanh Do said at a news conference. ``In Vietnam, the society has changed a lot, but the political system is still under a political dictatorship.'' Appearing with his wife and children, Do looked frail and tired. He arrived at San Francisco International Airport on Thursday night, after the Vietnamese government deported him without comment. He said he still felt weak after staging a hunger strike for 38 days, but was relieved to be back in the U.S. ``I feel very happy to be here,'' Do said. ``I feel very happy to come home to the family.'' Read The Full Story	25 Killed In Crash Of German High-Speed Train 2006-09-22 23:40:48 A futuristic high-speed train collided with a service vehicle during a test run on Friday in northwestern Germany,  killing 25 people and dealing a setback to magnetic levitation technology, which aims to narrow the speed gap between trains and planes. The train, carrying at least 29 passengers, slammed into the vehicle at a speed of 125 miles per hour, scattering wreckage, including seats and clothing, along the elevated concrete track, said the authorities in Lathen, a small town near the Dutch border. Ten people were seriously injured, said Andrea Menke, a spokeswoman for the local police. About 400 rescue workers labored until nightfall to extract bodies from the wreckage. Among the victims were two maintenance workers, she said; their condition was unclear. "It's been very difficult for the rescue workers, because the magnetic train is above the ground, which makes it hard to reach," said Ms. Menke. Read The Full Story Hezbollah Leader Nasrallah: We Still Have 20,000 Rockets 2006-09-22 23:40:01 In a defiant "victory" speech in a bombed-out suburb of Beirut, the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said Friday his organization had recovered from its month-long war with Israel and now possessed more than 20,000 rockets. "Within days, and [despite] emerging from a ferocious war, [Hezbollah] has recovered all its organizational and military capabilities ... it is stronger than it was before July 12," he told a cheering crowd of several hundred thousand people. Under intense security amid fears of an assassination attempt, Nasrallah was making his first public appearance since the war started more than 10 weeks ago. Read The Full Story Officers Warn About Plight Of British Troops 2006-09-22 23:37:30 British troops in Afghanistan are exhausted and desperately short of helicopters, and there is no sign that the casualty rate will fall, according to accounts Friday from officers on the frontline. The reports, including a leaked email describing the RAF as "utterly, utterly useless", put the Blair government under fresh pressure over whether it adequately prepared British troops for operations in the hostile south of the country. The most graphic accounts came in emails from Major James Loden of 3 Para, who described British forces as desperately short of reinforcements and helicopters, and berated the RAF for being "utterly, utterly useless". Maj Loden, who was awarded the Bronze Star medal in 2004 by the U.S. military for his services in Afghanistan in support of its Operation Enduring Freedom, lambasted the pilot of a Harrier fighter bomber for firing phosphorus bombs closer to British troops on the ground than the enemy. Read The Full Story U.K. Foreign Secretary To Warn U.N. On Climate Change 2006-09-22 23:36:21 Intellpuke: This article by Britain's Press Associated appeared on the Guardian website Friday. As I posted this at Free Internet Press, it is Saturday in the U.K. Presumably British Foreign Secretary Beckett made her comments to the U.N. General Assembly on Friday in the U.S. The Press Association's article follows: All countries must take their share of responsibility for tackling climate change or suffer its consequences, British  Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett will warn the U.N. general assembly today. Attempts to "free ride" will end up in "freefall", she will say. The speech comes after Beckett said she hoped the next U.S. administration would "engage fully" in international discussions on how to fight global warming. She told a gathering of Wall Street executives in New York Thursday that she was talking to them because the business community had the best chance of influencing the American government to do more on the environment. The U.S. is not currently signed up to the Kyoto Protocol. Read The Full Story Yet Another 9/11 Story 2006-09-22 22:59:27   5 years after 9/11, the government story still doesn't match up with the facts.   It's no question that the official government version is spin-doctored for all the wrong reasons.   Despite the majority of Americans already knowing this to be true, the government hasn't come out with the truth.  Don't expect it any time soon.  Nothing is going to change that.  9/11 is still a driving force for the American conquest of the oil lands. Read The Full Story
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