Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday October 21 2006 - (813)

Saturday October 21 2006 edition
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Editorial: Flexing Our Muscles In Space 2006-10-21 00:38:51 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the Saturday, Oct. 21, 2006, edition of the New York Times. In it, the Times editor addresses the new space policy declared by the Bush Administration and discusses criticisms and dangers of that policy, including the danger of initiating an arms race in space. Because this is a much more serious issue than many seem to realize, I decided to give it a broader readership by posting the editorial. I hope the folks at the the N.Y. Times don't mind. The editorial follows: The Bush administration has adopted a jingoistic and downright belligerent tone toward space operations. In a new "national space policy" posted without fanfare on an obscure government Web site, and in recent speeches, it has signaled its determination to be pre-eminent in space - as it is in air power and sea power - while opposing any treaties that might curtail any American action there. This chest-thumping is being portrayed as a modest extension of the Clinton administration's space policy issued a decade ago. And so far there is no mention of putting American weapons in space. But the more aggressive tone of the Bush policy may undercut international cooperation on civilian space projects - a goal to which the new policy subscribes - or set off an eventual arms race in space. The new policy reflects the worst tendencies of the Bush administration - a unilateral drive for supremacy and a rejection of treaties. And it comes just as the White House is desperately seeking help to rein in the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran. That effort depends heavily on cooperation from China and Russia, two countries with their own active space programs. Read The Full Story Chinese Pressure Forces N. Korea To Apologize, Promise No More Tests 2006-10-21 00:36:42 Kim Jong-il has apologized to China and reassured his powerful neighbor that he has no plans to conduct further nuclear tests, according to reports Friday that suggest the North Korean leader is backing down in the face of unprecedented pressure from an historic ally. Amid tightening of financial sanctions and growing international isolation, Kim was quoted as telling a senior Chinese envoy on Thursday that he was prepared to return to the negotiating table and compromise with the United States. The apparent softening came as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew into Beijing on the third leg of a tour of northeast Asia aimed at coordinating the punitive sanctions agreed last weekend by the United Nations Security Council. Read The Full Story Future Forecast: Extreme Weather Caused By Global Warming 2006-10-21 00:34:48 The world - especially the Western United States, the Mediterranean region and Brazil - is likely to suffer more extended droughts, heavy rainfalls and longer heat waves over the next century because of global warming, a new study forecasts. But the prediction of a future of nasty extreme weather also includes fewer freezes and a longer growing season. In a preview of a major international multiyear report on climate change that comes out next year, a study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research details what nine of the world's top computer models predict for the lurching of climate at its most extreme. "It's going to be a wild ride, especially for specific regions," said the study's lead author, Claudia Tebaldi, a scientist at the federally funded academic research center. Read The Full Story Bush, Rumsfeld Deny Change In Iraq Strategy 2006-10-21 00:32:48 President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld Friday defended the U.S. strategy in Iraq, saying the ultimate goals remain unchanged despite escalating violence and increasingly somber assessments from military leaders on the ground. Speaking at a Washington, D.C., fundraiser, Bush said the U.S. goal in Iraq "is clear and unchanging": creating a country that can govern and defend itself and "that will be an ally in the war against these extremists". In a briefing later at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld played down the significance of fighting and sectarian violence that have erupted over the past few days outside Baghdad, as U.S. troops in Iraq suffer some of the highest monthly casualties since the 2003 invasion. Read The Full Story Rumsfeld: Setbacks Do Not Mean U.S. Iraq Strategy Has Failed 2006-10-20 14:52:47 Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld today dismissed the significance of recent setbacks in Iraq, saying they do not mean U.S. strategy has failed and stressing that U.S. forces must continue passing responsibilities to the Iraqis to avoid creating "a dependency on their part". Iraqi authorities, he said, are going to have to provide security for their country "sooner rather than later". However, Rumsfeld declined to say whether he believes a "course correction" is needed in Iraq, where U.S. and Iraqi casualties have been mounting in recent weeks amid spreading sectarian violence and growing insecurity in Baghdad. He said he prefers to give his advice directly to President Bush and noted that he plans to join Bush, Vice President Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley tomorrow in a conference via secure video hookup to "discuss the way forward" in Iraq with Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, and Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., the top U.S. commander in Baghdad. Read The Full Story Japanese Firms Force YouTube To Remove 30,000 Videos 2006-10-20 14:51:44 Google's YouTube.com removed 29,549 video files from its popular Website after receiving a demand from a group of Japanese media companies over copyright infringement, an industry group said on Friday. The television, music and movie clips had been posted without the permission of copyright holders, the Tokyo-based Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers said in a statement. The group, which represents 23 media companies including TV networks and movie distributors, said it would ask YouTube to set up screening and other measures to block postings of unauthorized files. It also called on Internet users not to post video clips in violation of copyright laws. Read The Full Story 7 Killed, 41 Wounded In Pakistan Bombing 2006-10-20 14:50:47 A bomb left in a fruit cart struck a crowded market Friday in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least seven people and wounding dozens, police said. The explosion occurred in a downtown district of Peshawar about 10 minutes before iftar, the time for breaking the daily fast during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, said police officer Zafar Khan. The blast left body parts, fruit, colored bangles and sandals scattered across the street, which was cordoned off as bomb disposal experts retrieved pieces of debris. "After the explosion people all around the area were crying," said Habibullah Khan, an 18-year-old glass bangle vendor. "Then there were people lying in pools of blood. Debris was everywhere." Read The Full Story Feds Charge Wisconsin Man In NFL Stadium Threat 2006-10-20 14:49:33 A 20-year-old grocery store clerk who authorities say amused himself by posting prank Internet warnings of terrorist attacks against NFL stadiums was arrested Friday on federal charges that could bring five years behind bars. Jake J. Brahm was accused of writing that radioactive "dirty bombs" would be detonated this weekend at seven football stadiums. He admitted posting the warning about 40 times on various Websites between September and Wednesday, said authorities. The Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, man surrendered to federal authorities and is scheduled to appear in court in Milwaukee later in the day. Read The Full Story FBI Investigating Possible Theft Of Voting Software In Maryland 2006-10-20 00:45:36 The FBI is investigating the possible theft of software developed by the nation's leading maker of electronic voting equipment, said a former Maryland legislator who, this week, received three computer disks that apparently contain key portions of programs created by Diebold Election Systems. Cheryl C. Kagan, a former Democratic delegate who has long questioned the security of electronic voting systems, said the disks were delivered anonymously to her office in Olney on Tuesday and that the FBI contacted her Thursday. The package contained an unsigned letter critical of Maryland State Board of Elections Administrator Linda H. Lamone that said the disks were "right from SBE" and had been "accidentally picked up". Lamone's deputy, Ross Goldstein, said "they were not our disks," but he acknowledged that the software was used in Maryland in the 2004 elections. Diebold said in a statement last night that it had never created or received the disks. Read The Full Story Britain To Defy U.S., Russia On U.N. Arms Trade Resolution 2006-10-20 00:44:28 The U.K. is next week expected to push through the United Nations a resolution to open the way for a landmark arms trade treaty, in spite of opposition from the U.S., Russia and China. Campaigners have been pressing for years for such a treaty. An attempt at the U.N. three years ago had to be abandoned because of the level of hostility and failure to win sufficient backing. But a British government source said, as of Thursday, it had secured the support of 93 of the 192 countries in the general assembly: only 97 votes are needed for the resolution to be adopted. One of the campaign groups said a further four countries had since signed up and the final number is expected to be more than 100. Read The Full Story Major Change Expected In Iraq War Strategy 2006-10-20 00:43:22 The growing doubts among GOP lawmakers about the administration's Iraq strategy, coupled with the prospect of Democratic wins in next month's midterm elections, will soon force the Bush administration to abandon its open-ended commitment to the war, according to lawmakers in both parties, foreign policy experts and others involved in policymaking. Senior figures in both parties are coming to the conclusion that the Bush administration will be unable to achieve its goal of a stable, democratic Iraq within a politically feasible time frame. Agitation is growing in Congress for alternatives to the administration's strategy of keeping Iraq in one piece and getting its security forces up and running while 140,000 U.S. troops try to keep a lid on rapidly spreading sectarian violence. On the campaign trail, Democratic candidates are hammering Republican candidates for backing a failed Iraq policy, and GOP defense of the war is growing muted. A new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll released this week showed that voters are more confident in Democrats' ability to handle the Iraq war than the Republicans' - a reversal from the last election. Read The Full Story Rep. Boehner, Ex-Clerk Of House Testify In Foley Case 2006-10-20 00:41:49 Two key congressional figures testified before a House ethics panel yesterday about their roles in the Mark Foley scandal, reportedly sticking to accounts indicating that Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) or his top aides had been alerted to concerns about the disgraced Florida Republican's behavior toward teenage pages before it became public. The committee spent more than four hours questioning Jeff Trandahl, a central figure who has remained publicly silent about the affair. As House clerk from 1999 through last year, Trandahl oversaw the page program and dealt with several complaints about the actions of Foley, who abruptly resigned his House seat Sept. 29 as ABC News was reporting on sexually graphic electronic messages he had exchanged with former pages. Trandahl joined Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Illinois), the chairman of the House Page Board, in quietly confronting Foley last fall about e-mails that the lawmaker had sent to a Louisiana boy, which the youth and his parents found troubling. Those e-mails were not nearly as explicit as the messages that emerged later from other sources. Read The Full Story British Parliament Member Says Support For Cancer Group Was Naive 2006-10-20 00:40:19 A Labor Party member of Parliament who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on cancer said Thursday night that he had been "naive" to get involved with Cancer United, a pan-European campaign mired in controversy over drug company sponsorship. Dr. Ian Gibson, a former chair of the science and technology select committee, was invited to be filmed for the launch of the campaign during the Labor conference in Manchester, England. "They had taken rooms in a hotel," he said. "They invited people to come and say some positive things about the issue on camera. I said who had they got and they said they had other celebrities, like Alastair Campbell." Read The Full Story	Doctors Rethink Widespread Use Of Heart Stents 2006-10-21 00:38:24 The medical community is having second thoughts about stents. Tiny metal sleeves placed in arteries to keep blood flowing, stents have become such a popular quick fix for clogged coronary vessels that Americans will receive more than 1.5 million of them this year. And stents are a big business, generating $6 billion a year in sales for their makers and thousands of dollars in fees for each procedure performed by the specialists implanting them. But now stent sales are falling and some doctors are rethinking their faith in the devices, driven by emerging evidence that the newest and most common type - drug-coated stents - can sometimes cause potentially fatal blood clots months or even years after they are implanted. Read The Full Story Blair Warns Of Catastrophic Tipping Points From Global Warming 2006-10-21 00:35:29 British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Friday that the world will reach "catastrophic tipping points" on climate change within 15 years, unless serious action is taken to tackle global warming. In his strongest warning yet on the environment, the prime minister told fellow European Union leaders that the world faces "conflict and insecurity" unless it acts now. "We have a window of only 10-15 years to take the steps we need to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points," Blair said, in a joint letter with his Dutch counterpart, Jan Peter Balkenende. Read The Full Story U.S., Britain Seek Iraq Exit Strategy 2006-10-21 00:33:56 Frantic efforts are under way in Washington, D.C., and London to find an exit strategy for Iraq as a renewed surge in violence led George Bush to admit Friday that tactics there might need to change. Diplomats and politicians in both capitals are desperately reviewing and debating options that were once regarded as unthinkable. The review was given added urgency Friday when 800 gunmen, thought to be part of the Mahdi army militia, ran amok in Amara, a town transferred by the British to Iraqi control two months ago. Read The Full Story Train Derails, Bursts Into Flame In Pennsylvania 2006-10-21 00:31:51 A train derailed and burst into flames over a bridge in southwestern Pennsylvania late Friday, leaving fiery rail cars dangling over a river, said authorities. There were no immediate reports of injuries, said Dom Bedolatti, 911 center supervisor at the Beaver County Emergency Management Agency. The eastbound, 80-car Norfolk Southern Railroad train was carrying ethanol when it derailed above the Beaver River at about 10:50 p.m., said Norfolk Southern spokesman Rudy Husband. ''There are cars on the bridge, hanging off the bridge and in the water,'' said Brian Hayden, a spokesman for the Beaver County Emergency Operations Center. Read The Full Story Medicare Drug Aid No Longer Automatic For Low-Income Elderly And Disabled 2006-10-20 14:52:16 More than 600,000 low-income elderly and disabled people who automatically received federal help to pay for their Medicare drug coverage this year will have to actively apply to get such assistance in 2007, Medicare officials said Thursday. The change affects people who were automatically enrolled in the inaugural year of the drug benefit and got the low-income subsidy in 2006 but who are no longer eligible for Medicaid or two other government assistance programs. Some advocates say the affected seniors may not have understood a letter about the change that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent last month. And even beneficiaries aware of the change might have trouble completing the six-page application, they said. "Just sending these folks a letter and an application doesn't mean they necessarily are going to apply for the extra help even though they may need it," said Marisa Scala-Foley, associate director of the Access to Benefits Coalition at the National Council on Aging. "These are still likely to be low income folks who need all the help they can get. ... These folks are going to need a lot of hand-holding." Read The Full Story House Intelligence Chair Suspends Committee Staffer 2006-10-20 14:51:19 Democrats say the Republican head of the House Intelligence Committee had no grounds to suspend a staff member who's come under scrutiny for the leak of a secret intelligence assessment. The unidentified staff member, a Democrat, was suspended this week by Chairman Peter Hoekstra and is being denied access to classified information pending the outcome of a review. In an interview on Friday, Hoekstra said the step was the least aggressive he could take while the committee investigates. The Michigan Republican said the committee aide will be interviewed and other information will be collected. That could include correspondence, phone records and interviews with people who interacted with the aide. For now, Hoekstra said, he has not involved the FBI, which would normally handle investigations into leaks of classified material. Read The Full Story Iranian President Threatens Allies Of Israel 2006-10-20 14:50:13 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad branded Israeli leaders "a group of terrorists" Friday, after Israel's prime minister warned Tehran would have "a price to pay" if it does not roll back its nuclear program. The exchange was among the harshest from either leader, and reflected tension ahead of the planned circulation next week of a United Nations draft resolution on Iran's nuclear program. Ahmadinejad called the U.N. Security Council and all its decisions "illegitimate" and said the world body was being used as a tool of Iran's enemies - the United States and Britain. Read The Full Story Commentary: Welcome to the Fourth Reich 2006-10-20 09:13:24 It is a rare occasion when a President can sign a bill that he knows will save American lives; I have that privilege this morning," US President George W Bush trilled as he consigned 200 years of judicial oversight to the scrap heap of history. For the bill that he signed with such evident satisfaction has relieved the federal courts of their rights and duty to hear petitions for a writ of habeas corpus, which allow prisoners to challenge their confinement under Constitutional principles. The new law, called the Military Commissions Act of 2006, will allow rough treatment during interrogations, so long as the President designates a practice not to be torture. But he is permitted to "interpret" international law forbidding torture to suit himself. Read The Full Story Brazil To Call For Global Fund To Save Rainforests 2006-10-20 00:44:57 Plans for a global fund to help contain rainforest destruction and slash carbon emissions will be unveiled next month by the Brazilian government. The project, by which rich nations would offer financial incentives to developing countries that combat deforestation, will be announced at a November convention on climate change in Nairobi, Kenya. Championed by Marina Silva, Brazil's environment minister, officials claim the fund would help protect tropical forests while giving a much-needed economic impetus to the developing world. Read The Full Story California Battles Big Oil 2006-10-20 00:43:58 Call it the battle of Big Oil vs. Silicon Valley with a whole lot of Hollywood funding thrown in. Oil companies are squaring off against venture capitalists in a fight over a California proposition that would tax oil production in the state to fund alternative energy. To date, $107 million has been raised in the fight. If it is all spent, it will make Proposition 87 the most expensive proposition in the nation's history, dwarfing the $93 million epic, also in California, to legalize Las Vegas-style casinos on Indian reservations in 1998. Oil companies, including Chevron; Aera Energy, a partnership of Shell Oil and Exxon Mobil; and Occidental Petroleum have given more than $60 million to oppose the measure. On the other side is a coalition of environmentalists and venture capitalists led by John Doerr, a partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and former partners Vinod Khosla and William Randolph Hearst III. The 800-pound gorilla in that camp is Hollywood mogul Stephen Bing, who has donated $40 million. Read The Full Story Republican Woes Leads To Feuding Conservatives 2006-10-20 00:42:34 Tax-cutters are calling evangelicals bullies. Christian conservatives say Republicans in Congress have let them down. Hawks say President Bush is bungling the war in Iraq. And many conservatives blame Representative Mark Foley'ssexual messages to teenage pages. With polls showing Republican control of Congress in jeopardy, conservative leaders are pointing fingers at one other in an increasingly testy circle of blame for potential Republican losses this fall. "It is one of those rare defeats that will have many fathers," said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, expressing the gloomy view of many conservatives about the outcome on Election Day. "And they will all be somebody else." Read The Full Story U.S.: Battle For Baghdad Disheartening 2006-10-20 00:41:01 A day after George Bush conceded for the first time that America may have reached the equivalent of a Tet offensive in Iraq, the Pentagon Thursday admitted defeat in its strategy of securing Baghdad. The admission from President Bush that the U.S. may have arrived at a turning point in this war - the Tet offensive led to a massive loss of confidence in the American presence in Vietnam - comes during one of the deadliest months for U.S. forces since the invasion. Thursday the number of U.S. troops killed since October 1 rose to 73, deepening the sense that America is trapped in an unwinnable situation and further damaging Republican chances in midterm elections that are less than three weeks away. Read The Full Story
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