Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday October 27 2006 - (813)

Friday October 27 2006 edition
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Kirkuk: A City At A Boiling Point 2006-10-27 00:51:54 The tribal chiefs, in traditional robes and chequered headdresses, emerged from the dust stirred up by their convoy of pick-up trucks and walked towards the big white tent, gesturing welcomes to each other as they sat. Accompanied by about 500 clansmen and a gaggle of local journalists, the 35 Sunni sheikhs - from Mosul, Tikrit, Samarra and Hawija - converged last week on Hindiya, on the scrappy western edges of Kirkuk, to swear their undying opposition to "conspiracies" to partition Iraq and to pledge allegiance to their president, Saddam Hussein. Under banners exalting the man now standing trial in Baghdad for war crimes and genocide, the gathering heard speeches from prominent northern Iraqi sheikhs, Sunni Arab politicians and self-declared leaders of the Ba'ath party calling for the former dictator's release. Read The Full Story 4 Firefighters Killed In California Fire Started By Arsonist 2006-10-27 00:49:33 A wind-whipped wildfire started by an arsonist killed four firefighters Thursday and stranded up to 400 people in an RV park when flames burned to the edge of the only road out, said officials. "Everybody is hunkered down here. They're fighting the fire around us. It's across the street from us," said Charles Van Brunt, a ranger at the station at the entrance to Silent Valley Club, the recreational vehicle park near Palm Springs. The residents were in no immediate danger, he said. Authorities asked people in the RV park to stay put to leave roads clear for firefighters. Hundreds of others in the area were forced from their homes. Fire officials said the blaze was deliberately set around 1 a.m. Fire Chief John Hawkins said the arson "constitutes murder." Read The Full Story Cheney Remarks Fuel Torture Debate 2006-10-27 00:48:13 Vice President Cheney said this week that dunking terrorism suspects in water during questioning was a "no-brainer," prompting complaints from human rights advocates that he was endorsing the use of a controversial technique known as waterboarding on prisoners held by the United States. In an interview Tuesday with Scott Hennen, a conservative radio show host from Fargo, North Dakota, Cheney agreed with Hennen's assertion that "a dunk in water" may yield valuable intelligence from terrorism suspects. He also referred to information gleaned from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the captured architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but stopped short of explicitly saying what techniques were used. "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" asked Hennen. "Well, it's a no-brainer for me," said Cheney, "but for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in." Read The Full Story Bush Administration Citizenship Changes Draw Objections 2006-10-27 00:46:22 The Bush administration is considering proposals that would make it tougher for legal immigrants to gain U.S. citizenship. The proposals being drafted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, could nearly double application fees, toughen the required English and history exams, and ask probing questions about an applicant's past, such as "Who is your current wife's ex-husband?" In an interview Thursday, a USCIS spokesman said the contemplated changes are necessary to pay increased administrative costs and to standardize an application that is subjective and varies across the country. But immigration rights advocates say the changes would amount to a second wall, a potential barrier against legal immigration that is as formidable as the newly authorized southern border fence is supposed to be against illegal migrants. Read The Full Story Rumsfeld Tells Reporters To Backoff On Iraq Timeline 2006-10-26 14:53:09 Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters Thursday to "just back off" and "relax" instead of looking for differences between U.S. and Iraqi officials on benchmarks for progress in Iraq toward political and security goals, and he rejected the idea of penalizing any failure to hit the targets. In a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld sparred repeatedly with questioners over reported discord between U.S. officials and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on a timeline for Iraqi security forces to assume more responsibilities from U.S. troops. Rumsfeld disputed a characterization of Iraqi forces as chronically failing to meet benchmarks, saying this assertion was "flat wrong" and that the Iraqis have "done a darn good job." In response, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Massachusetts), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, "Today a secretary of defense, who should have been fired a long time ago, lost even greater touch with reality." Read The Full Story September Home Prices Take Sharpest Plunge In 35 Years 2006-10-26 14:52:04 Housing developers are drastically cutting prices to move a backlog of unsold homes off the market, new statistics from the Commerce Department suggest. The median sale price of a new home in September 2006 was $217,000, 9.7 percent lower than in September 2005, the report said - the steepest year-to-year drop in more than three decades. The lower prices evidently had the desired effect: the number of new homes sold jumped by 5.3 percent in September compared with August, and inventories fell by 2 percent. Even so, the statistics depict a housing market that has slumped considerably from the lofty levels of a year ago. Though better than the month before, the sales volume figure for September was still 14.1 percent lower than in September 2005. Read The Full Story 3 Firefighters Killed, 2 Injured Fighting California Blaze 2006-10-26 14:50:56 Three firefighters were killed and two critically injured today while fighting a wind-whipped, fast-moving fire near Palm Springs., California, said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a televised news conference, the governor said the fire broke out early in the morning in a rugged, brush covered area. He said 700 people had been evacuated from the sparsely populated area. Hundreds of firefighters have been dispatched to battle the blaze, which was being driven by gusting, 18- to 29- mile-per-hour winds. Read The Full Story China Corruption Inquiry Targets Beijing 2006-10-26 14:47:52 A widening Chinese anti-corruption probe has targeted Beijing's party leaders, a sign that President Hu Jintao intends to continue removing officials he considers insufficiently loyal, said people told about the leadership's planning. Some 300 Communist Party investigators have been examining property deals and procurement practices in the capital city since at least late September and have uncovered suspicious dealings that implicate top Chinese leaders, said the people. Among those seen as likely targets of the inquiry are Jia Qinglin, a member of the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee and a former party secretary of Beijing, as well as the current Beijing party secretary, Liu Qi, who is a regular member of the Politburo. If the investigation results in the removal of one or both of the men, it would make the ongoing housecleaning the most sweeping since the shake-up after the 1989 suppression of democracy protests. Read The Full Story Paris Youth Torch 3 Buses 2006-10-26 14:45:56 Youths forced passengers off three buses and set the vehicles on fire overnight in suburban Paris, raising tensions Thursday ahead of the first anniversary of the riots that engulfed France's rundown, heavily immigrant neighborhoods. No injuries were reported, but worried bus drivers refused to enter some suburbs after dark, and the prime minister urged a swift, stern response. The riots in October 2005 raged through housing projects in suburbs nationwide, springing in part from anger over entrenched discrimination against immigrants and their French-born children, many of them Muslims from former French colonies in Africa. Despite an influx of funds and promises, disenchantment still thrives in those communities. Read The Full Story	Sea Change: Gulf Stream Is Weakening 2006-10-27 00:51:31 Scientists have uncovered more evidence for a dramatic weakening in the vast ocean current that gives Britain its relatively balmy climate by dragging warm water northwards from the tropics. The slowdown, which climate modellers have predicted will follow global warming, has been confirmed by the most detailed study yet of ocean flow in the Atlantic. Most alarmingly, the data reveal that a part of the current, which is usually 60 times more powerful than the Amazon river, came to a temporary halt during November 2004. The nightmare scenario of a shutdown in the meridional ocean current which drives the Gulf stream was dramatically portrayed in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow". The climate disaster film had Europe and North America plunged into a new ice age practically overnight. Read The Full Story Campaign Tactics Veer Toward Smear 2006-10-27 00:48:45 Campaign Ads Get Surreal Rep. Ron Kind pays fopr sex! Well, that's what the Republican challenger for his Wisconsin congressional seat, Paul R. Nelson, claims in new ads, the ones with "XXX" stamped across Kind's face. It turns out that Kind - along with more than 200 of his fellow hedonists in the House - opposed an unsuccessful effort to stop the National Institutes of Health from pursuing peer-reviewed sex studies. According to Nelson's ads, the Democrat also wants to "let illegal aliens burn the American flag" and "allow convicted child molesters to enter this country". Read The Full Story IRS Told To Go Slow On Katrina Victims Until After Elections 2006-10-27 00:47:27 The commissioner of internal revenue has ordered his agency to delay collecting back taxes from Hurricane Katrina victims until after the Nov. 7 elections and the holiday season, saying he did so in part to avoid negative publicity. The commissioner, Mark W. Everson, who has close ties to the White House, said in an interview that postponing collections until after the midterm elections, along with postponing notices to people who failed to file tax returns, was a routine effort to avoid casting the Internal Revenue Service in a bad light. "We are very sensitive to political perceptions," Everson said Wednesday, adding that he regularly discussed with his senior staff members when to take actions and make announcements in light of whether they would annoy a powerful member of Congress or get lost in the flow of news. Read The Full Story New Feature - FIP News Aggregator 2006-10-26 22:23:31   Some of you may have noticed the "FIP News Aggregator" link show up on the left-side menu.   This new feature allows you to see what's running on news sites around the world.  Think of it as similar to the service that Google News or Yahoo News run.  Our big difference is that it automatically updates every 10 minutes, and we don't filter, edit, or otherwise censor what is displayed.   We don't have a multi-billion dollar budget (or even a multi-dollar budget) to hire on a staff of people to maintain a news aggregator, to appear dormant for much of the day, so you get the live raw news.   We've only included trustworthy sites.  As always, any errors are from the source, point your finger their way.   If you run across a story which you haven't seen here yet, feel free to hit the "Recommend This Story For FIP!" link on the right side.  You can add it to the submissions queue, so we can poke it, prod! it, and write our own editorial on it, as we're so happy to do around here.   Feel free to put your own comments on the submissions too.  Free speech is for everyone. Read The Full Story Tehran Radio Warns Of Nuclear Impasse 2006-10-26 14:52:35 Russia signaled opposition Thursday to a European-proposed United Nations draft resolution to impose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, and Tehran's state-run radio warned Europe an impasse was looming. Hours before the Security Council's five permanent members, plus Germany, were to meet for the first time to discuss the European draft, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested passage of the measure would require a fight. He said the resolution, which imposes limited sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to cease uranium enrichment, was a departure from existing agreements between major powers. Read The Full Story Exxon Reports $10.49 Billion Third-Quarter Profit 2006-10-26 14:51:25 The ExxonMobil Corporation reported today that it earned $10.49 billion in the third quarter, the second largest quarterly profit ever posted by a publicly traded American company. The largest on record was also reported by ExxonMobil - $10.71 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005. High oil and natural-gas prices and strong demand for energy made the quarter a robust one for the company and for much of the industry. But the search for new supplies is growing more costly as the international oil giants push into ever remoter or more politically unstable territory, leading Royal Dutch/Shell to report a sharp fall in net income today. ExxonMobil's results in the quarter were 26 percent better than in the same period in 2005, and translated into earnings of $1.77 a share, well above the consensus Wall Street forecast of $1.59 a share. Read The Full Story Bush Signs Mexico Border Fence Bill 2006-10-26 14:50:26 President Bush Thursday signed into law a bill that authorizes construction of 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border, a measure he hailed as "an important step in our nation's efforts to secure our border and reform our immigration system." Before signing the Secure Fence Act of 2006 in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Bush said the new law would help modernize the 2,000-mile border, but he said more must be done to achieve immigration reform, and he repeated his call for a program that would allow U.S. employers to bring in guest workers and would offer legal status to many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants nationwide. Congress approved the Secure Fence Act last month as majority Republicans sought to show voters they were tough on illegal immigration ahead of midterm elections. The legislation did not include Bush's guest worker and legalization proposals, which were blocked by key House Republicans who insisted on first tightening control of the nation's southern border. Read The Full Story Sprint Nextel Income Down 52 Percent For Third Quarter 2006-10-26 14:46:28 Sprint Nextel Corp. just missed Wall Street estimates Thursday as subscriber numbers showed it has fallen farther behind in the wireless market. The company reported earnings of $247 million, or 8 cents per share, compared with $514 million, or 23 cents per share during the same period a year ago. Sprint said it earned 32 cents per share in the most recent quarter, after excluding 2 cents for special items and 22 cents for merger and acquisition-related amortization cost. That was a penny short of the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Read The Full Story
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