Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday November 17 2006 - (813)

Friday November 17 2006 edition
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Iraq Issues Arrest Warrant For Prominent Sunni Cleric 2006-11-17 00:13:39 The Iraq government issued an arrest warrant late Thursday for Sheik Harith al-Dhari, one of Iraq's most prominent Sunni Arab clerics, on charges of inciting terrorism and violence, said officials. Dhari, head of the influential Muslim Scholars Association, has been an outspoken critic of the foreign military presence in Iraq and has said he approves of the armed resistance in the absence of a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. This stance has won him support among hard-line Sunni Arabs and respect among the rebels, and news of the arrest warrant raised concerns among many Iraqis that it could further inspire the insurgency. Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani announced the warrant on state-run television, saying, "The government's policy is that anyone who tries to spread division and strife between the Iraqi people will be chased by our security agencies." Read The Full Story U.S. Airstrikes In Afghanistan Climb Sharply To Aid NATO Ground Troops 2006-11-17 00:12:32 The Air Force has conducted more than 2,000 airstrikes in Afghanistan over the past six months, a sharp increase in bombing that reflects the growing demand for American air cover since NATO has assumed a larger ground combat role, said Air Force officials. The intensifying air campaign has focused on southern Afghanistan, where NATO units, primarily from Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, as well as American Special Forces have been engaging in the heaviest and most frequent ground combat with Taliban rebels since the invasion five years ago. The NATO forces are mostly operating without heavy armor or artillery support, and as Taliban resistance has continued, more air support has been used to compensate for the lightness of the units, said Air Force officials.  Most of the strikes have come during "close air support" missions, where the bombers patrol the area and respond to calls from ground units in combat rather than performing planned strikes. Read The Full Story Bush Opens Visit To Vietnam 2006-11-17 00:11:30 President Bush opened a visit Friday to Hanoi, the wartime capital of this once-divided country, a trip that is stirring inevitable comparisons between the unpopular war in Iraq and the divisive conflict fought and lost in Vietnam more than three decades ago. Vietnamese officials greeted Bush and his wife, Laura, at the airport on a humid and breezy morning. Two young girls, wearing flowing traditional dresses, presented them with bouquets of flowers. Bush's itinerary promised some interesting moments. Before attending a state dinner Friday evening, Bush is scheduled to drop by the headquarters of the Communist Party to talk with its general secretary. Read The Full Story Civilian Convoy Hijacked In Iraq, 4 Americans Believed Held 2006-11-16 21:10:34 A convoy of civilians was hijacked in southern Iraq Thursday and up to 14 people were abducted, the U.S. military said. Four Americans are believed to be among the captives, said an official. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said that preliminary reports suggested the convoy included about 19 vehicles. An official familiar with the incident said preliminary reports being checked by the military indicated that the attack occurred at a checkpoint near Nasiriyah and that four Americans were believed to have been taken captive. Read The Full Story Bush To Face The Ghosts Of America's Last Failed War 2006-11-16 21:09:27 On the morning of April 30, 1975, a young corporal in the army of North Vietnam drove a tank through the streets of an unfamiliar city wreathed in smoke and resounding with gunfire, and stopped at a set of wrought-iron gates. Corpses lay on the pavement, and in the distance a lone helicopter rose above the U.S. embassy and turned towards the river. The soldier, Nguyen Van Tap, paused: could the gate be electrified? Then he gunned the engine and crashed into Saigon's Independence Palace. Moments later, Nguyen's lieutenant, Vu Dang Toan, took the surrender of the South Vietnamese regime barricaded inside. The Vietnam war was over, and the two villagers from north of Hanoi had witnessed what would have once been unthinkable: the humbling of a superpower by a peasant army. In the paint factory on the outskirts of Hanoi where the two men work now, Mr. Vu says the significance of the victory was apparent even then. "When a small country like Vietnam is invaded by a big country like America and wins, then all the other countries can learn a lesson - that they can win a war against America," he says. Read The Full Story Reservists Returning From Iraq Find Jobs Gone And Little Government Help 2006-11-16 21:08:01 Darryl Jackson's reserve unit lost seven men while he served in Iraq. He was relieved to get home to his family and back to his job. "My job was the last place that I thought I would have any kind of issues whatsoever," he says. But six months after returning, Jackson was fired by his employer, InCharge Institute, which claimed it was downsizing. "I have three kids and, you know, I'm not going to say I lost it, but I was very close to losing it," says Jackson. "I mean, definitely a lot of sleepless nights." The law requires that, at a minimum, reservists get their old jobs back for at least a year. Read The Full Story At Least 6 Dead As Thunderstorms, Tornadoes Lash U.S. South 2006-11-16 10:32:12 A tornado struck a tiny riverside community early Thursday, killing at least five people as thunderstorms continued a path of destruction across the South. Another person died earlier in Louisiana, and a car crash death near Charlotte, North Carolina, was also blamed on the storms. Dozens of homes were destroyed in Riegelwood, on the Cape Fear River about 20 miles west of the coastal city of Wilmington, according to Gov. Mike Easley's office. "You see one that's standing still. It's not touched," said Columbus County Commissioner Sammie Jacobs. "And you'll see four or five others that are demolished, and houses on top of cars and cars on top of houses." "We've stepped across bodies to get (to) debris and search for other bodies here this morning," he said. Read The Full Story CIA: Taliban, Al-Qaeda Resurgent In Afghanistan 2006-11-16 10:31:01 Al-Qaeda's influence and numbers are rapidly growing in Afghanistan, with fighters operating from new havens and mimicking techniques learned on the Iraqi battlefield for use against U.S. and allied troops, the directors of the CIA and defense intelligence told Congress Wednesday. Five years after the United States drove al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the CIA, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that both groups are back, waging a "bloody insurgency" in the south and east of the country. U.S. support for the Kabul government of Hamid Karzai will be needed for "at least a decade" to ensure that the country does not fall again, he said. At Wednesday's Senate hearings, devoted mostly to Iraq, Hayden and Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, painted a stark portrait of a struggling Afghanistan and a successful al-Qaeda capable of operating on two battlefields. "The direct tissue between Iraq and Afghanistan is al-Qaeda," said Hayden, who visited both countries recently. "The lessons learned in Iraq are being applied to Afghanistan." Read The Full Story U.K. Environment Secretary: U.S. Must Sign Up To New Climate Deal 2006-11-16 10:29:51 Britain's Environment Secretary David Miliband said Thursday it is "vital" that the U.S. signs up to a post-Kyoto agreement to beat the global climate change threat. Speaking to Guardian Unlimited on the fourth day of his visit to the United Nations talks in Nairobi, Kenya, the environment secretary said Britain was determined to secure a "successor" to segue into the first set of commitments under the Kyoto protocol, which end in 2012. He said the second phase agreement required support from all nations, though developing countries with fledgling economies would be asked to do less than their industrialized counterparts. Read The Full Story	Astronomers: Universe's 'Dark Energy' At Least 9 Billion Years Old 2006-11-17 00:13:08 A strange thing happened to the universe five billion years ago. As if God had turned on an antigravity machine, the expansion of the cosmos speeded up, and galaxies began moving away from one another at an ever faster pace. Now a group of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that billions of years before this mysterious antigravity overcame cosmic gravity and sent the galaxies scooting apart like muscle cars departing a tollbooth, it was already present in space, affecting the evolution of the cosmos. "We see it doing its thing, starting to fight against ordinary gravity," Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute said about the antigravity force, known as dark energy. He is the leader of a team of "dark energy prospectors," as he calls them, who peered back nine billion years with the Hubble and were able to discern the nascent effects of antigravity. The group reported their observations at a news conference Thursday and in a paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal. Read The Full Story Florida Opens Criminal Probe In Foley Case 2006-11-17 00:11:55 Florida has opened a full criminal investigation into sexually explicit Internet messages from disgraced former Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, whose resignation amid scandal helped Democrats win control of Congress, officials said Thursday. State investigators previously launched a preliminary inquiry into the e-mails and instant messages sent by Foley to underage former congressional aides. "We are now doing an active criminal investigation," said Heather Smith, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Read The Full Story Socialists Back Woman For French President 2006-11-17 00:10:55 Segolene Royal moved a step closer to becoming the first female president of France early Friday, crushing her two male rivals for the Socialist Party nomination in next April's election. With most of the vote in, Ms. Royal, 53, a regional president and former minister, won 60.6 percent of the vote of the party's nearly 219,000 members in an unusual primary. Her closest rival, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 57, a former finance minister, received 20.8 percent of the vote, and Laurent Fabius, 60, a former prime minister, 18.5 percent. The tally in France ended around 1:30 a.m. and will be complete after overseas territories finish voting. Read The Full Story Storms Kill 12 In U.S. South, 4 Children In Critical Condition 2006-11-16 21:10:07 A tornado flipped cars, shredded trees and ripped mobile homes to pieces in the little riverside community of Riegelwood, North Carolina, early Thursday, killing at least eight people, authorities said. The disaster brought the two-day death toll from a devastating line of thunderstorms that swept across the South to 12. Kip Godwin, chairman of the Columbus County Commission in North Carolina, said authorities had concluded their search of the area where the eight deaths occurred - a cluster of mobile homes and an adjacent neighborhood of brick homes - and had accounted for everyone. Twelve people were hospitalized, including four children in critical condition, said hospital officials. Read The Full Story Wanted: Man To Land On Killer Asteroid And Gently Nudge From Path To Earth 2006-11-16 21:08:52 It is the stuff of nightmares and, until now, Hollywood thrillers. A huge asteroid is on a catastrophic collision course with Earth and mankind is poised to go the way of the dinosaurs. To save the day, NASA now plans to go where only Bruce Willis, Robert Duvall and a few other actors have  gone before. The U.S. space agency is drawing up plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid hurtling through space at more than 30,000 mph. It wants to know whether humans could master techniques needed to deflect such a doomsday object when it is eventually identified. The proposals are at an early stage, and a spacecraft needed just to send an astronaut that far into space exists only on the drawing board, but they are deadly serious. A smallish asteroid called Apophis has already been identified as a possible threat to Earth in 2036. Chris McKay of the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, told the website Space.com: "There's a lot of public resonance with the notion that NASA ought to be doing something about killer asteroids ... to be able to send serious equipment to an asteroid. Read The Full Story Setback For Pelosi: House Democrats Elect Hoyer Majority Leader 2006-11-16 10:32:40 U.S. Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Maryland) was elected as new House majority leader this morning, defeating Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi's candidate, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pennsylvania). Hoyer won overwhelmingly - 149 to 86 - despite heavy lobbying by Pelosi for Murtha. The showdown divided the Democrat House caucus only a week after their party won a majority of seats in the Congress that begins meeting in January, and it prompted numerous complaints that Nancy Pelosi and her allies used strong-arm tactics and threats to try to elect Murtha to the job. Read The Full Story Analysts: Sectarian Strife In Iraq Imperils Entire Middle East 2006-11-16 10:31:46 While American commanders have suggested that civil war is possible in Iraq, many leaders, experts and ordinary people in Baghdad and around the Middle East say it is already underway, and that the real worry ahead is that the conflict will destroy the flimsy Iraqi state and draw in surrounding countries. Whether the U.S. military departs Iraq sooner or later, the United States will be hard-pressed to leave behind a country that does not threaten U.S. interests and regional peace, according to U.S. and Arab analysts and political observers. "We're not talking about just a full-scale civil war. This would be a failed-state situation with fighting among various groups," growing into regional conflict, Joost Hiltermann, Middle East project director for the International Crisis Group, said by telephone from Amman, Jordan. "The war will be over Iraq, over its dead body," said Hiltermann. Read The Full Story Gen. Abazaid: Withdrawal From Iraq Would Mean More Unrest 2006-11-16 10:30:34 The top U.S. commander for Iraq told Congress Wednesday that a phased withdrawal of American troops would unleash more sectarian strife, and instead he advocated a "major change" in strategy that would beef up U.S. military teams training Iraqi forces. Gen. John P. Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command, said bolstering the training effort could require a further increase in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, already higher than expected at more than 140,000, and said no cuts are planned. Facing searing questions from Democrats and Republicans alike, some of whom voiced disappointment in Abizaid and questioned his credibility, the general acknowledged mistakes in the war effort, but he voiced optimism that Iraq's military can stabilize the country, given enough U.S. backing and political support from Iraq's government. Read The Full Story
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