Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday November 14 2006 - (813)

Tuesday November 14 2006 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
British Intelligence Officials Warn Al-Qaeda Plotting Nuclear Attack On U.K. 2006-11-14 00:40:01 British intelligence officials believe that al-Qaeda is determined to attack the U.K. with a nuclear weapon, it emerged Monday. The announcement, from an officially organized British Foreign Office counter-terrorism briefing for the media, was the latest in a series of bleak assessments by senior officials and ministers about the terrorist threat facing Britain. U.K. officials have detected "an awful lot of chatter" on jihadi websites expressing the desire to acquire chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons. Asked whether there was any doubt that al-Qaeda is trying to gain the technology to attack the west, including the U.K., with a nuclear weapon, a senior Foreign Office counter-terrorism official said: "No doubt at all." Read The Full Story Rich Countries 'Blocking Cheap Drugs For Developing World' 2006-11-14 00:38:59 Poor people are needlessly dying because drug companies and the governments of rich countries are blocking the developing world from obtaining affordable medicines, according to a report issued Tuesday. Five years to the day after the Doha declaration - a groundbreaking deal to give poor countries access to cheap drugs - was signed at the World Trade Organization, Oxfam says things are worse. The charity accuses the U.S., which champions the interests of its giant pharmaceutical companies, of bullying developing countries into not using the measures in the Doha declaration and the European Union of standing by and doing nothing. Doha technically allows poor countries to buy cheap copies of desperately needed drugs but the U.S. is accused of trying to prevent countries such as Thailand and India, which have manufacturing capacity, making and selling cheap generic versions so as to preserve the monopolies of the drug giants. Read The Full Story Bush Faces New Pressures To Alter Policies In The Middle East 2006-11-14 00:37:46 President Bush came under new pressure yesterday at home and abroad to alter his policies in the Middle East. British Prime Minister Tony Blair pushed for a broader Arab-Israeli peace initiative to help stabilize Iraq, while the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee pledged to take a hard line on seeking early troop withdrawals. Bush offered little indication that he is planning to adjust his approach, telling reporters gathered in the Oval Office that "the best military options depend upon the conditions on the ground" in Iraq. The president also met for more than an hour with former secretary of state James A. Baker III, former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Indiana) and other members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which is looking to chart a new course in the war. Asked about calls for dialogue with Iran and Syria to help curb violence in Iraq, Bush said there was no change in his position that Iran must first suspend uranium enrichment. "Our focus of this administration is to convince the Iranians to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions," Bush said after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "That focus is based upon our strong desire for there to be peace in the Middle East. And an Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a destabilizing influence." Read The Full Story Report: Climate Efforts Falling Short 2006-11-14 00:36:27 Sweden, Britain and Denmark are doing the most to protect against climate change, but their efforts are not nearly enough, according to a report released Monday by environmental groups. The United States - the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases - ranked 53rd, with only China, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia doing worse. "We don't have any winners, we only have countries that are better compared to others," said Matthias Duwe, of Climate Action Network Europe, which released the data at the U.N. climate conference. "We don't have big shining stars." Read The Full Story Pope Warns Of Alien Attack 2006-11-14 00:35:20 The Earth is wide open to alien attack, a former British government advisor has warned. Nick Pope said the department that formally investigated UFO sightings had closed down, meaning unexplained phenomena are not being investigated. Pope, who ran Britain's Ministry of Defense (MoD) UFO project from 1991 to 1994, said there had been a series of "highly credible" alien sightings and landings in the U.K. "The consequences of getting this one wrong could be huge," he said. "If you reported a UFO sighting now, I am absolutely sure that you would just get back a standard letter telling you not to worry. Read The Full Story U.S. Forces Raid Al-Sadr Militia Enclave In Baghdad 2006-11-13 16:17:25 U.S. forces raided the homes of followers of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr late Monday, and U.S. jets were firing rockets on the northwest Baghdad neighborhood, residents said. Police put the death toll at five, though an aide to the cleric said nine people were killed. The U.S. military said it had no immediate comment. Jalil al-Nouri, a senior al-Sadr aide, told the Associated Press by telephone that “occupation forces are currently carrying out raids against al-Sadr’s followers in the neighborhood of Shula.” Al-Nouri said nine people were killed and others were wounded. Police Lt. Mohammed Kheyoun said five were killed and 15 wounded. Read The Full Story Study: Eating Red Meat May Increase Breast Cancer Risk 2006-11-13 16:16:33 Eating red meat may raise a woman’s risk of a common type of breast cancer, and vitamin supplements will do little if anything to protect her heart, two new studies suggest. Women who ate more than 1½ servings of red meat per day were almost twice as likely to develop hormone-related breast cancer as those who ate fewer than three portions per week, one study found. The other - one of the longest and largest tests of whether supplements of various vitamins can prevent heart problems and strokes in high-risk women - found that the popular pills do no good, although there were hints that women with the highest risk might get some benefit from vitamin C. Read The Full Story Fatah, Hamas Agree On A Prime Minister 2006-11-13 16:15:22 A former university president in the Gaza Strip emerged Monday as the top candidate to head a Palestinian national unity government now being assembled in a bid to end the economic sanctions that have crippled the Hamas-led administration. Officials from the rival Hamas and Fatah movements said Mohammed Shubeir, 60, is the consensus choice to serve as prime minister in a future power-sharing government whose creation has proved elusive for months. Shubeir is not a member of Hamas, the radical Islamic movement that has run the Palestinian Authority since soon after it won January parliamentary elections. But he is closely identified with Hamas in Gaza City, where he served as president of the Islamic University of Gaza - a key training ground for the movement's leadership - for 12 years before stepping down in 2005. Read The Full Story	Pakistan Link Seen In Afghan Suicide Attacks 2006-11-14 00:39:30 Afghan and NATO security forces have recently rounded up several men like Hafiz Daoud Shah, a 21-year-old unemployed Afghan refugee who says he drove across the border to Afghanistan in September in a taxi with three other would-be suicide bombers. Every case, Afghan security officials say, is similar to that of Shah, who repeated his story in a rare jailhouse interview with a reporter in Kabul, the Afghan capital. The trail of organizing, financing and recruiting the bombers who have carried out a rising number of suicide attacks in Afghanistan traces back to Pakistan, they say. “Every single bomber or I.E.D. in one way or another is linked to Pakistan,” a senior Afghan intelligence official said, referring to improvised explosive devices like roadside bombs. “Their reasons are to keep Afghanistan destabilized, to make us fail, and to keep us fragmented.” He would speak on the subject only if not identified. Read The Full Story Evangelicals: Supporting Israel Is 'God's Foreign Policy' 2006-11-14 00:38:26 As Israeli bombs fell on Lebanon for a second week last July, the Rev. John Hagee, of San Antonio, Texas,  arrived in Washington, D.C., with 3,500 evangelicals for the first annual conference of his newly founded organization, Christians United For Israel. At a dinner addressed by the Israeli ambassador, a handful of Republican senators and the chairman of the Republican Party, Hagee read greetings from President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and dispatched the crowd with a message for their representatives in Congress. Tell them “to let Israel do their job” of destroying the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, said Hagee. He called the conflict “a battle between good and evil” and said support for Israel is “God’s foreign policy.” The next day he took the same message to the White House. Read The Full Story Britain Kills European Union Attempt To Regulate Internet Video Clips 2006-11-14 00:37:03 The British government is set to fight off proposed European rules that would make it responsible for overseeing taste and decency in video clips on sites such as YouTube and MySpace. Under a clause in the European media regulation directive "TV Without Frontiers", national governments would be responsible for regulating the internet for the first time. Britain's media watchdog, Ofcom, backed by the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, argued that the plan was unworkable and would stifle creativity and investment in new media across Europe. Ofcom said internet users should be left to police themselves within the bounds of the law. Because internet technology does not respect borders, it argued, users would simply turn instead to websites in the U.S. and elsewhere. Read The Full Story Press Freedom Being Eaten Away, Says British Watchdog Chief 2006-11-14 00:35:53 Sir Christopher Meyer, chairman of Britain's Press Complaints Commission who sparked a political furore by lifting the lid on his time as ambassador to Washington, warned last night that freedom of the press is being gradually chipped away by the British government. He said the breakdown in communication between the government and newspapers is unhealthy for democracy. "I believe the boundaries of freedom of expression seem to be closing in a bit on newspapers and magazines in a way which may not be healthy," said Sir Christopher, who has been head of the self-regulatory body for almost four years and survived repeated calls for his resignation last November. "I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I don't believe in government plotting to curb freedom of expression," he said. "But when you read that after two years, there are proposals to make it more difficult to obtain information under the Freedom of Information Act, you have to worry." Read The Full Story U.S. General Confronts Iraqi Leader On Security 2006-11-14 00:34:01 The U.S. Central Command chief confronted Iraq's prime minister on Monday over how Iraqi forces would halt raging violence and signaled a possible prelude to shifts in American policy on engaging Iran and Syria. The meeting came as sectarian attacks killed at least 90 people throughout Iraq, 46 of them showing signs of torture. The U.S. military announced the deaths of four additional American soldiers. Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, sternly warned Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that he must disband Shiite militias and give the United States proof that they were disarmed, according to senior Iraqi government officials with knowledge of what the two men discussed. Read The Full Story New York's Giuliani Takes First Step For 2008 Presidential Bid 2006-11-13 16:17:00 Former New York City mayor Rudy Giulani, a moderate Republican best known for his stewardship of the city after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has taken the first step in a 2008 presidential bid, GOP officials said Monday. The former mayor filed papers to create the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Exploratory Committee, Inc., establishing a panel that would allow him to raise money for a White House run and travel the country. The four-page filing, obtained by the Associated Press, lists the purpose of the non-profit corporation ''to conduct federal 'testing the waters' activity under the Federal Election Campaign Act for Rudy Giuliani.'' Read The Full Story Ohio GOP Fundraiser Convicted Of Theft, Money Laundering, Forgery 2006-11-13 16:15:53 A former GOP fundraiser was convicted Monday of embezzling from a rare-coin investment fund in a scandal that hurt Ohio’s Republican Party on Election Day. Tom Noe, a coin dealer and former Republican fundraiser, was convicted of theft, money laundering, forgery and tampering with evidence. The scandal surrounding the investment became a political liability for the GOP, which lost all but one of the statewide, nonjudicial offices up for election Tuesday. Read The Full Story Still In The Slammer: U.S. Supreme Court Won't Review Skakel Verdict 2006-11-13 16:14:50 Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel lost a longshot effort to win reversal of his murder conviction when the Supreme Court on Monday declined to take his case. The justices refused, without comment, to review Skakel's conviction in the beating death of Martha Moxley, his neighbor in Greenwich, Conn., 31 years ago when the two were teenagers. Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, was convicted in 2002. Now 46, Skakel is serving 20 years to life in prison. "We're very pleased," said prosecutor Jonathan Benedict. "This has been researched for years. This is not unexpected." Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php