Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday October 13 2006 - (813)

Friday October 13 2006 edition
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Analysis: Bush Confounded By ... Unacceptable 2006-10-13 00:45:04 President Bush finds the world around him increasingly "unacceptable." In speeches, statements and news conferences this year, the president has repeatedly declared a range of problems "unacceptable," including rising health costs, immigrants who live outside the law, North Korea's claimed nuclear test, genocide in Sudan and Iran's nuclear ambitions. Bush's decision to lay down blunt new markers about the things he deems intolerable comes at an odd time, a phase of his presidency in which all manner of circumstances are not bending to his will: national security setbacks in North Korea and Iraq, a Congress that has shrugged its shoulders at his top domestic initiatives, a favorability rating mired below 40 percent. Read The Full Story Canadian Troops Battle 10-Foot Marijuana Plants In Afghanistan 2006-10-13 00:44:10 Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy - almost impenetrable forests of marijuana plants 10 feet tall. General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana. "The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices. ... And as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa, Canada. Read The Full Story Man Admits Plan To Hit Britain, U.S. With Dirty Bomb, Exploding Limos 2006-10-12 20:07:17 A British Muslim Thursday admitted plotting mass murder through a series of terrorist outrages in the U.K. and the U.S. that were "designed to kill as many innocent people as possible". In one of the few major successes for anti-terrorist investigators since September 11, 2001, Dhiran Barot, 34, also admitted planning to use a radioactive dirty bomb in the U.K. that would have caused "injury, fear, terror and chaos", a court heard. Among the other targets for the synchronized bombings were landmark financial institutions in New York and Washington, D.C. Another of his plans involved blowing up three limousines, packed with flammable gas cylinders and explosives, in underground parking lots somewhere in Britain. The locations were not specified. Read The Full Story British Government Plans Climate Change Law 2006-10-12 20:06:20 The British government signalled Thursday that it is planning legislation to tackle climate change, with a bill possibly to appear in next month's Queen's Speech, as it acknowledges the formidable political consensus emerging over the need for action. The new law, likely to introduce controls on carbon dioxide emissions and an independent system to gauge progress in reducing greenhouse gases, was welcomed by opposition parties and environmental groups, though it is not expected to include binding annual targets. The environment secretary, David Miliband, told the House of  Commons Thursday that the issue for the government "is not whether to legislate, but what form legislation should take and how it could be organised". He said: "We are looking carefully at the merits of introducing a carbon budget as a means of helping to deliver our goals. The only issue for the government is whether the legislation would help in the battle against climate change, support the efforts to join individual activity with business and government leadership, and link domestic and international action. Read The Full Story U.S. Trade Gap Grows To $69.9 Billion - Another Record High 2006-10-12 14:02:26 The U.S. trade deficit rose to a record $69.86 billion in August, driven by high oil prices, a growing trade gap with China, and rising consumer demand for imported goods from antiques to appliances. The record deficit represents a 2.7 percent increase over July, and it came despite growth in U.S. exports. American companies sold $122.4 billion worth of goods and services overseas in August, an increase of $2.7 billion over the previous month that was led by sales of agricultural products and aircraft. However, American companies and consumers bought far more from abroad, with imports rising to $192.3. That included $20.8 billion worth of crude oil, as demand remained strong even in the face of record prices that touched $77 per barrel over the summer. Read The Full Story Russia, China Oppose U.S. Draft Resolution On N. Korea 2006-10-12 14:00:39 The United States circulated a draft resolution on North Korea to the Security Council today and pressed for a vote by Friday, but both China and Russia immediately signaled their opposition to the measure and said they needed more time. John R. Bolton, the American ambassador, said the United States was still open to suggestions for changes but was determined to produce a decision by the end of the week. "We have believed from the time we first learned of the North Korean explosion that we needed a swift and strong response," he said. Read The Full Story Turkish Writer Orhan Pamuk Wins Nobel For Literature 2006-10-12 13:58:55 Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, whose uncommon lyrical gifts and uncompromising politics have brought him acclaim worldwide and prosecution at home, won the Nobel literature prize Thursday for his works dealing with the symbols of clashing cultures. The selection of Pamuk, whose recent trial for ''insulting Turkishness'' raised concerns about free speech in Turkey, continues a trend among Nobel judges of picking writers in conflict with their own governments. British playwright Harold Pinter, a strong opponent of his country's involvement in the Iraq war, won last year. Elfriede Jelinek, a longtime critic of Austria's conservative politicians and social class, was the 2004 winner. Pamuk, currently a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York, told the Associated Press in a telephone interview that he was overjoyed by the award, adding that remarks he made earlier this year referring to the Nobel literature prize as ''nonsense'' were a mistranslation. He told AP that he accepted the prize as not ''just a personal honor, but as an honor bestowed upon the Turkish literature and culture I represent.'' Read The Full Story New Book By White House Insider Says Bush Just Using Christians 2006-10-12 00:26:37 More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider's tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities. The office's primary mission, providing financial support to charities that serve the poor, never got the presidential support it needed to succeed, according to the book. Entitled "Tempting Faith," the book is not scheduled for release until Oct. 16, but MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" has obtained a copy. "Tempting Faith's" author is David Kuo, who served as special assistant to the president from 2001 to 2003. A self-described conservative Christian, Kuo's previous experience includes work for prominent conservatives including former Education Secretary and federal drug czar Bill Bennett and former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Read The Full Story Hastert Aides Interest Ethics Panel Foley Probe 2006-10-12 00:25:32 With House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert denying personal knowledge of former representative Mark Foley's  activities, investigators for the House ethics committee are bearing down on three senior members of Hastert's staff to determine when they learned of Foley's actions and whether they passed on their knowledge to the speaker. The three - chief of staff Scott Palmer, deputy chief of staff Mike Stokke and counsel Ted Van Der Meid - have formed a palace guard around Hastert (R-Illinois) for years, attaining great degrees of power and unusual autonomy to deal with matters of politics, policy and House operations. They are also remarkably close. Palmer and Stokke have been with Hastert for decades. They live together in a Capitol Hill townhouse and commute back to Illinois on weekends. It is that relationship that has made investigators so interested in their knowledge of Foley's contacts with teenage male congressional pages, especially allegations that his chief of staff personally appealed to Palmer in 2003 to confront the Florida Republican. Foley resigned Sept. 29 when news reports indicated he had sent electronic messages to a former page. Read The Full Story DOH! Gen. Casey: Tough Time In Iraq To Continue 2006-10-12 00:24:10 Violence in the Baghdad region has peaked with a flare-up of sectarian attacks in the past few weeks, leaving U.S. commanders and the Iraqi government "not comfortable" with the current situation there, Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq, said Wednesday. Casey, in Washington for regular meetings with top U.S. officials, said at a Pentagon news conference that Iraq is a "tough situation" and that he expects it to continue to be difficult through Ramadan and in coming months, as Sunni and Shiite extremists vie for control of that nation's capital. "I think it's no surprise to anyone that the situation in Iraq remains difficult and complex," said Casey. Read The Full Story Katrina Insurers Get An Earful From Sen. Lott 2006-10-12 00:22:42 Sometimes, political connections come in handy. Ask Senator Trent Lott, of Mississippi. Lott, a Republican and former majority leader, is one of thousands of homeowners on the Gulf Coast who have been fighting with their insurers over payments for damage in Hurricane Katrina. In an interview Wednesday, he said he was angry about the insurers' "insensitivity and outright meanness" in rejecting many homeowners' claims. He said he inserted a provision into legislation, signed by President Bush last week, directing the Department of Homeland Security to investigate potential fraud by the insurance industry. Lott said he was also drafting legislation to challenge the industry's exemptions from antitrust laws and had asked his staff to investigate the industry's tax rates. "I am outraged," he said. "I'm concerned there are lots of abuses in the aftermath of the hurricane." Read The Full Story	E. Coli On Ranch Near Spinach But No .. Er .. Smoking Cow Found 2006-10-13 00:44:37 Investigators found E. coli in cattle feces near Salinas Valley spinach fields that matches the strain of the bacteria that sickened 200 people and killed at least three - a major discovery in the nearly two-month search for the cause of the outbreak. The fecal samples were found within a mile of spinach fields, on a farm with both beef cattle and produce operations, Kevin Reilly, a California food safety official, said Thursday. Investigators are turning their attention to how the deadly bacteria could have gotten into spinach crops. Theories include contaminated irrigation water, poor worker hygiene, and wild pigs running through pastures and into the spinach fields. "We do not have a smoking cow at this point, no," said Reilly. Read The Full Story Brirtish Army Chief Wants Troops Pulled From Iraq - Soon 2006-10-12 20:07:52 General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the British army, dropped a political bombshell Thursday night by saying that Britain must withdraw from Iraq "soon" or risk serious consequences for Iraqi and British society. In a blistering attack on Tony Blair's foreign policy, Gen. Dannatt said the continuing military presence in Iraq was jeopardizing British security and interests around the world. "I don't say that the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq, but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them," he said in comments that met with admiration from anti-war campaigners and disbelief in some parts of Westminster. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Gen. Dannatt, who became chief of the general staff in August, said we should "get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems". Read The Full Story Time Warner Fires Legal Shot Across Google 2006-10-12 20:06:50 Dick Parsons, the chairman and chief executive of Time Warner, fired a shot across the bows of Google, saying his group would pursue its copyright complaints against the video sharing site YouTube.com. Google paid $1.6 billion for YouTube this week amid concerns that some of the fledgling website's 100 million  videos breached copyright rules. Time Warner, the media and entertainment group that owns the Warner Brothers movie studio, Time Inc. magazines and the HBO TV channel, is one of several large media companies concerned about possible illegal use of its material on YouTube. Parsons told the Guardian: "You can assume we're in negotiations with YouTube and that those negotiations will be kicked up to the Google level in the hope that we can get to some acceptable position." Read The Full Story Senate Report: Groups Perpetrated Fraud On Taxpayers 2006-10-12 14:03:01 Five conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, "perpetrated a fraud" on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Senate investigators said in a report issued Thursday. The report includes previously unreleased e-mails between the now-disgraced lobbyist and officers of the nonprofit groups, showing that Abramoff routed money from his clients to the groups. In exchange the groups, among other things, produced ostensibly independent newspaper op-ed columns or press releases that favored the clients' positions. Officers of the groups "were generally available to carry out Mr. Abramoff's requests for help with his clients in exchange for cash payments," said the report, issued by the Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee after a one-year investigation. Read The Full Story U.S. Guantanamo Detentions Draw British Criticism 2006-10-12 14:01:54 The detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay is unacceptable and counterproductive, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Thursday, underlining an increasingly critical British line on the U.S.-run prison from America's closest ally. Beckett, releasing Britain's annual report on human rights around the world, said that detention without trial of hundreds of suspects was "unacceptable in terms of human rights" and "ineffective in terms of counterterrorism". The report called for the camp to be closed and said Britain welcomed President Bush's statement that the he hopes to see the camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, shut down. "It's widely argued now that the existence of the camp is as much a radicalizing and discrediting influence as it is a safeguard for security," she said. Read The Full Story 11 Killed As Gunmen Storm New TV Station In Iraq 2006-10-12 14:00:07 Gunmen, some dressed in police uniforms, stormed the offices of a new satellite television station Thursday and killed 11 employees, some of whom were asleep in the building at the time of the raid after working late in preparation for the station's planned launch on Saturday, said employees and witnesses. It was the second attack on an Iraqi television station this month and the single most deadly attack against the Iraqi media since the 2003 invasion. The motive for the attack remained unclear and several employees of the station, Al Shabbiya, said they knew of no threats against the channel or its founder and director, Abdul Rahim Nasralla al-Shameri, who was killed along with 5 staff members and 5 guards. Read The Full Story Japan Bans All Trade With North Korea 2006-10-12 00:27:04 Japan unilaterally imposed fresh sanctions on North Korea Wednesday, including a ban on shipping, as Pyongyang warned it would consider U.S. pressure "a declaration of war". Three days after North Korea claimed it had conducted its first nuclear test, there was no sign of tension subsiding. Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, unwilling to wait for the United Nations Security Council, announced a total trade ban on North Korea. All its ships will be denied entry to Japanese ports. As he spoke, about two dozen North Korean ships lay idle in Japanese ports Wednesday with no dockers to unload them. Other measures include a ban on the entry of North Koreans, other than those with residential status. Tokyo imposed limited sanctions in July after Pyongyang test-fired missiles over the Sea of Japan. Read The Full Story Economists: Minimum Wage Hike Would Help U.S. Economy 2006-10-12 00:26:04 More than 650 economists, including five winners of the Nobel Prize for economics, called Wednesday for an increase in the minimum wage, saying the value of the last increase, in 1997, has been "fully eroded". Economists including Nobel prize winners Kenneth Arrow of Stanford University, Lawrence Klein of the University of Pennsylvania, Robert Solow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Joseph Stiglitz at Columbia University and Clive Granger of the University of California, San Diego said in a statement released Wednesday that the real value of today's federal minimum wage is less than it has been at any time since 1951. Federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have set their minimum wages above the federal level. Read The Full Story Gaza Sliding Into Civil War 2006-10-12 00:24:55 When they buried Rafiq Siam, the traffic stopped and hundreds of armed men, some firing into the air, gathered at the Gaza mosque. Eight men wearing red berets and black combat uniforms lifted his body wrapped in a white shroud and Palestinian flag and carried it inside with as much ceremony as the pressing crowd would allow. Siam, 40, a father of seven, was the victim of a single bullet to the base of his skull. He died on Sunday a week after he was shot, the latest victim in the worst outbreak of factional violence in Gaza for more than 10 years. Years of rivalry between the Islamic Hamas movement, which now dominates the government, and the more secular Fatah, which was ousted from power in January elections, is spilling over into a struggle for power. Protests A few hours after the funeral, Siam's father sat with a dozen mourners outside the family home. His son, he explained, had worked at the office of the Palestinian president and Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas. The morning he was shot, armed men from a new Hamas unit, the Executive Force, clashed with Fatah protesters who were demonstrating about unpaid government salaries. "He was hit by a bullet on the back of his head," said his father, Yusuf, 74. At least 15 people were killed in the clashes last week. "This is no small thing that is happening. There is no nationalism here. It's just a competition between two forces. I'm sick of both sides because they can't control the situation. We are the victims. The victims are my son and the sons of others." Read The Full Story U.S. Population Poised To Hit 300 Million 2006-10-12 00:23:20 Clicking upward at a rate of one person every 11 seconds, the U.S. population will officially surpass 300 million in the next week or so. The milestone is a reminder that the United States remains a remarkable demographic specimen, 230 years old (since the Declaration of Independence) and still in a growth spurt. Behind only China and India, it is the planet's third most populous nation. For a rich, highly developed country, it is anomalously fertile, with a population that is increasing briskly, in sharp contrast to anemic growth or decline in Western Europe and Japan. Some demographers say this continued growth is essential to support an aging population in retirement and a sign of the continued allure of the United States even at a time when its image around the world has been sullied by the war in Iraq. Read The Full Story
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