Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday November 7 2006 - (813)

Tuesday November 7 2006 edition
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Bush Facing Judgment Day 2006-11-07 00:10:23 America votes today in congressional elections that could turn George Bush into a "lame duck" President for his final two years of office, as well as having profound consequences for the future course of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and beyond. Democrats remain hopeful that they can seize control of the House of Representatives by making a net gain of 15 seats out of 435 being contested. Polls suggest that they have established clear leads in 13 districts, while a further 15 are judged as too close to call. Some pundits believe that the Democrats could gain as many as 40 to 50 seats as they ride a wave of voter angers against Bush and the Iraq war. Read The Full Story 1 Dead As Heavy Flooding Hits Washington State 2006-11-07 00:09:21 A windy Pacific storm dumped heavy rain Monday on western Washington, killing at least one person, prompting warnings of record flooding and forcing rescues by the National Guard. A 20-year-old elk hunter from Seattle died when his pickup truck was swept into the Cowlitz River in southwest Washington, said authorities. Gov. Chris Gregoire declared a state of emergency for 18 counties, authorizing the National Guard to activate and the state Emergency Management Division to coordinate assistance. More than a dozen Guardsmen were sent late Monday to eastern Skagit County near the Canadian border, with the Skagit River expected to reach record levels, to rescue an unknown number of people, said county spokesman Don McKeehen. Another 150 troops were expected Tuesday. Read The Full Story Cost Of Taking Fuel To Iraq Is Questioned 2006-11-07 00:07:58 A Halliburton subsidiary charged the Iraqi government as much as $25,000 per month for each of as many as 1,800 fuel trucks that were to deliver gasoline to Iraq after the 2003 invasion, but the trucks often spent days or weeks sitting idle on the border, says a report released Monday by an auditing agency sponsored by the United Nations. The agency said in a statement that the auditing firm it hired had found that some of the contract costs that had been questioned earlier seemed to be justified but, the agency said, the findings raised new questions about hundreds of millions of dollars billed by the company under a $2.4 billion contract that the Army awarded on the eve of the conflict to KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root. The new audit gives the first detailed picture of how the company incurred many of those costs. Read The Full Story U.N.: Africa Needs Help To Avert Global Warming Catastrophe 2006-11-06 18:00:28 Africa could suffer greater effects from global warming than previously feared, the United Nations said Monday, with the risk of widespread coastal flooding, substantial loss of animal habitat and lower cereal yields all likely in coming decades. In a report published on the eve of a key climate change conference opening in Nairobi today, environmentalists gave warning that the continent needed help in dealing with a problem created by the industrialized world. "Africa has made the lowest contribution to climate change," said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program. "It is also the least prepared to cope with the consequences ... and has the most to lose." The report states that rising sea levels could place 30% of Africa's coastal settlements, including cities such as Cape Town, Lagos and Alexandria, at risk from flooding by 2080. By then, more than a quarter of animal species' suitable habitats may have disappeared. Read The Full Story Ortega Leading In Nicaragua's Presidential Election 2006-11-06 17:59:22 Sixteen years after disenchanted voters cast Daniel Ortega's Marxist revolutionary government from power, the former guerrilla leader Monday appeared headed for a stunning comeback in Nicaragua's presidential election. Partial results from Sunday's vote indicated that Ortega was leading the field of five candidates with 40 percent of the ballots - 7 points ahead of his strongest competitor, Eduardo Montealegre of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance. The official result, which was based on 40 percent of ballots cast, was bolstered by similar findings from a quick count of a representative sample of ballots released Monday morning by Ethics and Transparency, a widely respected Nicaraguan civic groups that fielded 11,050 observers to every polling and counting center in the nation to do their own tally alongside the official one. At a press conference in Managua earlier Monday, Pablo Ayón, president of Ethics and Transparency, said that the margin of error of the quick count was only 1.7 percent. Such a result would ensure Ortega a first-round victory under rules that enable a candidate to win with as little of 35 percent of the vote and a five-point lead. "Based on all the events that our observers have recorded, we have concluded that the irregularities that have been found do not have sufficient weight to alter these results," said Ayón. Read The Full Story Endgame - Remove All Removable Aliens From The United States 2006-11-06 17:57:33 Endgame is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Office of Detention and Remobal (DRO) multi-year strategic enforcement plan.  It stresses the effective and efficient execution of the critical service DRO provies its partners and stakeholders to enforce the nation's immigration na naturalization laws.  The DRO strategic plan sets in motion a cohesive enforcement program with a ten-year time horizon that will build the capacity to "remove all removable aliens", eliminate the backlog of unexecuted final order removal cases, and realize its vision Read The Full Story Recruiters Lie 2006-11-06 16:22:57 An ABC News undercover investigation showed Army recruiters telling students that the war in Iraq was over, in an effort to get them to enlist. ABC News and New York affiliate WABC equipped students with hidden video cameras before they visited 10 Army recruitment offices in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. "Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?" one student asks a recruiter. "No, we're bringing people back," he replies. "We're not at war. War ended a long time ago," another recruiter says. Last year, the Army suspended recruiting nationwide to retrain recruiters following hundreds of allegations of improprieties. Read The Full Story Armitage Tips Democrats To Win U.S. House 2006-11-06 11:31:08 A senior former White House official Monday predicted that the Republicans would suffer heavy losses in the midterm elections, despite polls showing a cut in the Democratic party's lead. The former U.S. deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage - a Republican who opposed the Iraq war - said his party would pay the price for presenting an "angry face" to the world after the September 11 attacks. "We were showing a very snarly and angry face," said Armitage. "I think it's understandable to a certain degree. But we're well past that now, and it's time to turn another face to the world, back to more traditional things such as the export of hope and opportunity." Read The Full Story Rialto, California, Fire Moves Dangerously Close To Homes 2006-11-06 11:27:48 A wind-fueled wildfire burned 300 acres of brush Monday, threatening as many as 100 homes and torching an industrial yard where stacks of pallets went up in flames, said officials. The flames moved dangerously close to homes, prompting officials to call for voluntary evacuations, San Bernardino County fire spokesman Steve Hansen said. More than 150 firefighters moved in with trucks on the ground and planes and helicopters flew over the blaze making water drops. Read The Full Story	Commentary: Where Are Checks, Balances? 2006-11-07 00:10:01 Intellpuke: The following commentary is by Keith Olbermann, anchor of MSNBC's "Countdown" program. In his column, Mr. Olbermann comes up with some very good reasons why you shouldn't stay at home Tuesday but, instead, should exercise your consitutional right, and duty, to vote. Mr. Olbermann's commentary begins here: We are, as every generation, inseparable from our own time. Thus is our perspective, inevitably that of the explorer looking into the wrong end of the telescope. But even accounting for our myopia, it’s hard to imagine there have been many elections more important than this one, certainly not in non-presidential years. Read The Full Story Arizona Housing Boom Turns To Bust 2006-11-07 00:08:50 Until recently, this fast-growing area was a paradise on earth for home builders. Fulton Homes’ developments, for example, were so popular last year that it was able to raise prices on its new homes by $1,000 to $10,000 almost every week. “People were standing in line for lotteries,” recalled Douglas S. Fulton, president of the company, one of the largest private builders in the Phoenix area. And they were “camping overnight begging to be the next number in the next lot in the next house.” No more. Today, it is the company’s sales agents that do most of the waiting. Not only are there few new customers to talk to, but many buyers who put down a deposit are not even bothering to come back for the walk-through. “All of a sudden, they just don’t show up,” said Fulton, noting that such cancellations often mean the buyers forfeit as much as 5 percent of the price. The reason? The prospective buyers got cold feet or simply could not sell their old home. Read The Full Story Probe Charges 57 Iraqi Officials With Human Rights Crimes 2006-11-07 00:07:13 Iraq's Interior Ministry has charged 57 employees, including high-ranking officers, with human rights crimes for their roles in the torture of hundreds of detainees once jailed in a notorious eastern Baghdad prison known as Site 4, officials announced Monday. The charges marked the first time the present Iraqi government has taken criminal action against members of its own security forces for operating torture chambers inside Interior Ministry prisons, said Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a ministry spokesman. Sunni Arab detainees and human rights groups have long alleged that members of the ministry's police force, made up mostly of Shiite Muslims, took revenge on Sunni captives through beatings and other brutal methods. For months, Shiite officials have said such accusations are exaggerations, branding them attempts by Sunnis to discredit the Shiite-led government. Read The Full Story Bush Administration Stands Firm Against Caps On Greenhouse Gas Emissions 2006-11-06 18:00:00 The chief U.S. climate negotiator on Monday defended Washington's stand against compulsory caps on global-warming emissions, and said the Bush administration was unlikely to change its policy. At the opening of a two-week United Nations treaty conference on climate change, Harlan Watson told reporters the United States is doing better at restraining the growth of such gases voluntarily than some countries committed to reductions under the Kyoto Protocol. ''With few exceptions you're seeing those emissions rise again,'' Watson said of countries bound by Kyoto. Developing nations, the European Union, environmentalists and others are urging Washington to sign onto obligatory cuts after 2012 - when Kyoto expires - in emissions of heat-trapping gases blamed by scientists for global warming. Read The Full Story Mercury Crossing The Sun On Wednesday 2006-11-06 17:57:40 An infrequent astronomical sight - tiny Mercury inching across the surface of the sun - takes place Wednesday afternoon in North America. But you'll need the right kind of telescope to see it. Mercury is so tiny - 1/194th the size of the sun - and looking at the sun is so dangerous to the eyes that viewing must be done with a properly outfitted telescope or online telescope cameras, experts say. Still, for many people, it may be the only chance to see the closest planet to the sun, said Michelle Nichols, a master educator at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, one of many places that will hold special viewings of Mercury's trek. Mercury is usually seen in the early evening, but it's often obscured by buildings, city lights and trees, she said. ''You definitely need a telescope to spot this one, a properly filtered telescope,'' Nichols said. ''You will see a small black dot against the face of a bright sun.'' Read The Full Story 5 More U.S. Soldiers Killed In Iraq 2006-11-06 17:57:08 Two American soldiers were killed aboard a helicopter that crashed in Iraq today, and three U.S. service members died over the weekend from fighting in the country's volatile Anbar province, said the U.S. military. No gunfire was reported in the area of the helicopter crash in Salahuddin province, according a military statement. The province includes Tikrit, hometown of former president Saddam Hussein. Salahuddin is one of several areas of Iraq placed under curfew this weekend because government officials feared violent reactions to yesterday's sentencing of Hussein, who was condemned to death for crimes against humanity. The military said it is investigating the cause of the crash. The two soldiers were attached to the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade. Read The Full Story Political Parties Crank Up Voter Turnout Efforts 2006-11-06 11:31:48 Republicans seized on signs of movement in their direction yesterday as they unleashed a massive election-eve voter mobilization operation in an effort to stave off potentially substantial losses in the House and preserve at least a slender majority in the Senate. Democrats answered the Republicans' get-out-the-vote machinery with intensified efforts to contact infrequent and still-undecided voters in a handful of tight Senate races as well as in more than two dozen GOP-held House districts where races were too close to call. A Pew Research Center poll showed a significant narrowing in the partisan advantage in House races that the Democrats have enjoyed for much of the year, findings that echoed those of a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Saturday showing the Democrats with a six-point edge. Read The Full Story Khalilzad, U.S. Envoy To Iraq, Is Likely Quitting 2006-11-06 11:28:22 Zalmay Khalilzad, the plainspoken dealmaker and Republican insider who has won praise and criticism for attempts to broker Sunni political participation in Iraq's fragile government, is likely to quit his post as U.S. ambassador in Baghdad in the coming months, a senior Bush administration official said Monday. As the midterm elections approached in the United States, Khalilzad has been a public face of Bush administration attempts to project both willingness to change strategy or tactics in an unpopular war and solidarity with the increasingly fractious Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Khalilzad's departure has been rumored for months, but he has not turned in his resignation, the State Department official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because neither the White House nor Khalilzad has announced any personnel changes. Khalilzad could leave as soon as the end of this year, but is more likely to remain in his post through the spring, said the official. Read The Full Story
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