Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday October 16 2006 - (813)

Monday October 16 2006 edition
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Iraq Cancels Peace Talks After Scores More Die 2006-10-16 00:35:24 The unremitting wave of sectarian violence that has greeted the Muslim holy month of Ramadan claimed scores more Iraqi lives over the weekend, as authorities in Baghdad announced the indefinite postponement of a conference of political leaders seen as crucial to quickly diminishing hopes for national reconciliation. In a terse statement from the ministry for national dialogue, the government said the reconciliation conference, which had been scheduled for this Saturday in Baghdad, would be delayed until further notice for "emergency reasons". The cancellation is a further blow to the credibility of the national unity government of Nuri al-Maliki. The embattled prime minister has come under intense pressure from the U.S. and Britain, as well as ordinary Iraqis, to halt the communal violence and the activities of armed militias and death squads. In the weekend's most vicious act of score-settling between the Shia and Sunni Arabs, at least 63 people were killed in the town of Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. Read The Full Story Israeli Police Say President Should Be Charged With Rape 2006-10-16 00:34:30 Police in Israel said Sunday night that the country's president should be charged with raping and sexually assaulting several women who worked for him. In the most serious allegations faced by an Israeli head of state, Moshe Katsav was also suspected of bugging his staff's telephones and of fraud, said police. The case, which has dragged on for months, will now pass to the attorney general, who is expected to take several weeks to decide whether or not to bring charges. "There is prima facie evidence of a number of incidents in which several women who worked under his authority were involved, that the president carried out sex crimes of rape, sexual molestation by force and without consent," the Israeli justice ministry and the police said in a joint statement. Read The Full Story Questions Over Effectiveness Of U.N. Curbs On N. Korea 2006-10-16 00:32:38 Questions over the effectiveness of the Security Council's punitive sanctions on North Korea for its claimed nuclear test grew Sunday, as both South Korea and China - the North's two most important trading partners - indicated that business and economic relations would be largely unaffected. A day after the Council unanimously passed the resolution, following nearly a week of intensive diplomatic negotiations, the South Korean government said it would still pursue economic projects with North Korea, including an industrial zone and tourist resort in the North. Those projects are not explicitly covered by the Security Council resolution, but they are an important source of hard currency for the North. China, which shares a 870-mile porous border with North Korea and is perhaps its most critical economic gateway to the outside world, said Saturday that it had no intention of stopping and inspecting cross-border shipments, as called for, but not specifically required, in the resolution. The Chinese government said nothing on Sunday about how it intended to carry out the sanctions, and American officials said they would be focused on whether the normal trade flow across the border was slowed. Read The Full Story 6.5 Earthquake Hits Hawaii 2006-10-15 13:00:27 An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.5 struck was felt across Hawaii early Sunday, causing a landslide that blocked a major highway on Hawaii Island, the Pacific Tsunami Center said. Power outages were reported across the state and there were unconfirmed reports of injuries, according to the State Civil Defense. Problems with communication prevented more definite reports. Gov. Linda Lingle said in a radio interview with KSSK from Hawaii Island that she had no report of any fatalities. She said boulders fell on highways, rock walls fell down and televisions had been knocked off of stands, she had no reports of building damage. The quake occurred at 7:07 a.m. local time, 10 miles north-northwest of Kailua Kona, a town on the west coast of the Big Island, said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center, part of the U.S. Geological Survey. Read The Full Story On Tuesday, U.S. Population Set To Hit 300 Million 2006-10-15 12:59:43 America's population is on track to hit 300 million on Tuesday morning, and it's causing a stir among environmentalists. People in the United States are consuming more than ever - more food, more energy, more natural resources. Open spaces are shrinking and traffic in many areas is dreadful. Some experts argue that population growth only partly explains America's growing consumption. Just as important, they say, is where people live, what they drive and how far they travel to work. "The pattern of population growth is really the most crucial thing," said Michael Replogle, transportation director for Environmental Defense, a New York-based advocacy group. Read The Full Story Analysis: N. Korea Nuclear Conflict Has Deep Roots 2006-10-15 00:35:39 Democrats and Republicans have been quick to use North Korea's apparent nuclear test to benefit their own party in these final weeks of the congressional campaign, but a review of history shows that both sides have contributed to the current situation. There is more than 50 years of history to Pyongyang's attempt to gain a nuclear weapon, triggered in part by threats from Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower to end the Korean War. In 1950, when a reporter asked Truman whether he would use atomic bombs at a time when the war was going badly, the president said, "That includes every weapon we have." Three years later, Eisenhower made a veiled threat, saying he would "remove all restraints in our use of weapons" if the North Korean government did not negotiate in good faith an ending to that bloody war. Read The Full Story TSA Screener Faces Theft Charge 2006-10-15 00:34:06 A screener with the Transportation Security Administration was arrested after a passenger reported that she took money from the passenger's wallet. The screener, a 26-year-old woman, was taken to jail Saturday awaiting a charge of theft and was being held on $200 bail, according to the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Department. Her name was not released. The passenger, from Genoa City, Wisconsin, was waiting to go through screening at General Mitchell International Airport when the incident occurred, sheriff's officials said. The passenger reported losing $20. But officials eventually recovered $235 after the screener's co-worker told authorities he saw her storing items behind a magazine rack. Read The Full Story	British Universities Urged To Spy On Muslim, Asian-Looking Students 2006-10-16 00:35:00 Lecturers and university staff across Britain are to be asked to spy on "Asian-looking" and Muslim students they suspect of involvement in Islamic extremism and supporting terrorist violence, the Guardian has learned. They will be told to inform on students to special branch because the government believes campuses have become "fertile recruiting grounds" for extremists. Britain's Department for Education has drawn up a series of proposals which are to be sent to universities and other centers of higher education before the end of the year. The 18-page document acknowledges that universities will be anxious about passing information to special branch, for fear it amounts to "collaborating with the 'secret police'". It says there will be "concerns about police targeting certain sections of the student population (e.g.  Muslims)". The proposals are likely to cause anxiety among academics, and provoke anger from British Muslim groups at a time when ministers are at the focus of rows over issues such as the wearing of the veil and forcing Islamic schools to accept pupils from other faiths. Read The Full Story 2 More Deaths Bring Canadian Deaths In Afghanistan To 42 2006-10-16 00:33:46 Two Canadian soldiers in the NATO force were killed and three were wounded in an ambush in southern Afghanistan on Saturday afternoon, and an Afghan provincial council member was assassinated Sunday on his way to work, said officials. In other violence, an Italian photojournalist was reported to have been kidnapped by gunmen in southern Afghanistan. Two policemen were killed in a raid on Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan, and two civilians died in a roadside bomb explosion that was apparently intended for a Westerner's vehicle that was passing by, news agencies reported. The Canadians were killed when their convoy came under fire by rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire in Kandahar Province, forcing their unit to call in airstrikes, according to a NATO news release. Forty-two Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year. Read The Full Story Bill Clinton Rallies Iowa Democrats 2006-10-16 00:31:55 Former president Bill Clinton entered the Hy-Vee Hall in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday night like an aging rock star, striding up a red carpet, wearing a big smile, his arms outstretched to touch the hands of Democratic admirers lined up along his walkway to the stage. Clinton came to rally Democrats three weeks before critical midterm elections. But his visit may have served another purpose as well. Alone among prospective Democratic presidential candidates for 2008, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York) has not set foot in the state all year, and the futures market in Clinton political stock here has been suffering. Early polls by the Des Moines Register have shown former North Carolina senator John Edwards, the Democrats' 2004 vice presidential nominee, to be more popular among Democratic activists than the New York senator. A more recent survey of Iowans showed her running weaker than Edwards, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Massachusetts) and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (a Democrat) in a series of hypothetical general election matchups against prospective Republican candidates. Read The Full Story Iraq Violence Spreads To Kirkuk 2006-10-15 13:00:07 The death toll in two days of bloody fighting between two Shiite and Sunni towns in the north rose to at least 80 on Sunday, a hospital official said, with more bodies allegedly lying in the streets and unable to be retrieved. In all, at least 110 people had died since Saturday in the surge of violence in and around the northern town of Balad, in the northern oil center of Kirkuk, and in Baghdad and other cities, said authorities. The worst bloodshed took place about 50 miles north of Baghdad, around the predominantly Sunni town of Duluiyah and the larger, predominantly Shiite town of Balad. The two communities are separated by the Tigris River. The bloodletting there was touched off Friday by the kidnapping and beheading of 17 Shiite laborers working in date-palm groves in Duluiyah. Shiite leaders in the neighboring town said Saturday they asked militias of powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to come from Baghdad to strike back and take revenge. Shiite militias poured into the area, and Balad hospital workers said the bodies of 27 Sunnis had been brought to the hospital by Saturday night, all of them shot to death and bearing holes from electric drills and other signs of torture. Read The Full Story As Many As 40 More Nations Have Skill To Make Nuke Bombs 2006-10-15 00:36:29 The declaration last Monday by North Korea that it had conducted a successful atomic test brought to nine the number of nations believed to have nuclear arms. But atomic officials estimate that as many as 40 more countries have the technical skill, and in some cases the required material, to build a bomb. That ability, coupled with new nuclear threats in Asia and the Middle East, risks a second nuclear age, officials and arms control specialists say, in which nations are more likely to abandon the old restraints against atomic weapons. The spread of nuclear technology is expected to accelerate as nations redouble their reliance on atomic power. That will give more countries the ability to make reactor fuel, or, with the same equipment and a little more effort, bomb fuel - the hardest part of the arms equation. Signs of activity abound. Hundreds of companies are now prospecting for uranium where dozens did a few years ago. Argentina, Australia and South Africa are drawing up plans to begin enriching uranium, and other countries are considering doing the same. Egypt is reviving its program to develop nuclear power. Read The Full Story Commentary: Why Does Habeas Corpus Hate America? 2006-10-15 00:35:04 Intellpuke: The following opinion column is by Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's "Countdown" program. Mr. Olbermann aired this opinion earlier this week but, as usual with his commentaries, I felt that it merited a broader audience because of it deals with an important constitutional issue and because Mr. Olbermann discusses it with intelligence and wit. Mr. Olbermann's commentary follows: Because the Mark Foley story began to break the night of September 28th, exploding the following day, many people may not have noticed a bill passed by the Senate that night. Our third story on the Countdown tonight, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and what it does to something called "habeas corpus." And before we reduce the very term "habeas corpus" to something vaguely recalled as sounding kinda like the cornerstone of freedom, or maybe kinda like a character from "Harry Potter," we thought a Countdown Special Investigation was in order. Congress passed The Military Commissions Act to give Mr. Bush the power to deal effectively with America's enemies - those who seek to harm this country. And he has been very clear about who that is: " for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America." Read The Full Story Good: U.S. Has Flu Vaccine Supply. Bad: It Cannot Get It To You 2006-10-15 00:33:27 Barely two weeks into the flu-shot season, the promise of a record supply of vaccine already is being tarnished by shipment delays that are causing sporadic shortages and forcing some doctors to postpone clinics or serve only high-risk patients. Some 26 million doses were distributed across the country in September, and federal officials expected that three times that many would be on their way by the end of this month. Yet having vaccine in the pipeline doesn't mean getting it to thousands of destinations on time. Immunizations at grocery and drug store chains are proceeding with few apparent difficulties, but physicians who can't meet demand are questioning the stability and fairness of the distribution. Read The Full Story
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