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

Thursday September 28 2006 edition
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$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
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