Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday November 22 2006 - (813)

Wednesday November 22 2006 edition
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Report Finds Homeland Security Dept. Lax On Contracting Procedures 2006-11-22 00:36:24 Private consultants hired by the Department of Homeland Security have found widespread problems with its contracting operation, including nearly three dozen contract files that could not be located. Files that could be found often lacked basic documentation required under federal rules, such as evidence that the department negotiated the best prices for taxpayers, according to a copy of the consultants' report obtained by the Washington Post. "The inability to locate files and inconsistent file organization puts the government at risk in ensuring the contractor is fulfilling its contractual obligations and the government is meeting its contract administration responsibilities," the consultants wrote in their report. Read The Full Story Did The CIA Kill Bobby Kennedy? 2006-11-22 00:35:13 Intellpuke: In 1968, Robert Kennedy seemed likely to follow his brother, John, into the White House. Then, on June 6, he was assassinated - apparently by a lone gunman. But investigative journalist Shane O'Sullivan says he has evidence implicating three CIA agents in the murder. I have no idea if Mr. Sullivan is on the right track or not, but his article, which makes for an interesting read, follows: At first, it seems an open-and-shut case. On June 5 1968, Robert Kennedy wins the California Democratic primary and is set to challenge Richard Nixon for the White House. After midnight, he finishes his victory speech at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles and is shaking hands with kitchen staff in a crowded pantry when 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan steps down from a tray-stacker with a "sick, villainous smile" on his face and starts firing at Kennedy with an eight-shot revolver. As Kennedy lies dying on the pantry floor, Sirhan is arrested as the lone assassin. He carries the motive in his shirt-pocket (a clipping about Kennedy's plans to sell bombers to Israel) and notebooks at his house seem to incriminate him. But the autopsy report suggests Sirhan could not have fired the shots that killed Kennedy. Witnesses place Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy, but the fatal bullet is fired from one inch behind. And more bullet-holes are found in the pantry than Sirhan's gun can hold, suggesting a second gunman is involved. Sirhan's notebooks show a bizarre series of "automatic writing" - "RFK must die RFK must be killed - Robert F Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 68" - and even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember shooting Kennedy. He recalls "being led into a dark place by a girl who wanted coffee", then being choked by an angry mob. Defense psychiatrists conclude he was in a trance at the time of the shooting and leading psychiatrists suggest he may have be a hypnotically programmed assassin. Read The Full Story Janet Reno Critical Of Terror Strategy, Urges Courts To Act On Detentions 2006-11-22 00:33:45 Former attorney general Janet Reno has taken the unusual step of openly criticizing the Bush administration's anti-terrorism strategy - joining seven other former Justice Department officials in warning that the indefinite detention of U.S. terrorism suspects could become commonplace unless the courts intervene. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the case of alleged enemy combatant Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, the former prosecutors assert that criminal courts are well equipped to prosecute terrorism suspects while guaranteeing the constitutional rights of defendants arrested on U.S. soil. Reno, reached at her Florida home Tuesday, said she would let the brief "speak for itself. I've been following this, and it reflects my concerns about the detention and treatment of people who have been determined to be enemy combatants in a manner that is not clear how it is being done." Read The Full Story Pupils Evacuated After Warning At Tennessee Nuclear Plant 2006-11-22 00:32:29 In the first nuclear-related evacuation since the Three Mile Island accident of 1979, a Tennessee school district sent all 1,800 pupils home on Tuesday morning because operators at a nearby nuclear reactor believed they might have had a leak of radioactive cooling water inside the plant. The operators, at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority, decided around 6:15 a.m. that instruments indicated a possible leak and declared an “unusual event,” the lowest of four categories of plant problems. They canceled the notification at 7:35 a.m., but by then the children were boarding buses to go home. The school district is in Meigs County, about halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga. Read The Full Story Jeffs Trial Could Challenge U.S. Laws Against Polygamy 2006-11-21 16:29:23 Intellpuke: Over the years a blind eye has been turned to the practice of polygamy in the U.S., but the trial of Fundamentalist Mormon Warren Jeffs for assisting in the rape of a minor could change all that. Guardian correspondent Ed Pilkington visits Utah and discovers a world of "sisterwives", underage marriages and banished teenagers. Mr. Pilkington's article follows: Of all the difficult public relations campaigns in the world, this must be among the toughest: to sell polygamy, the practice of keeping more than one wife by one man, as a deeply Christian, rewarding activity that frees the women as much as it forwards the spiritual standing of the man. But that is the challenge Anne Wilde has taken up, as a sort of unofficial spokeswoman for the polygamists of Utah. There is a mystery to why this woman should be devoting herself to the cause when she has no apparent personal connection to polygamy, but we will come to that later. For now, she is sitting in her kitchen in Salt Lake City, explaining why taking multiple wives - "sisterwives" - is a necessary prerequisite for reaching the highest level of Heaven. Read The Full Story Lebanese Cabinet Minister Assassinated In Beirut 2006-11-21 10:29:30 Lebanese Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, a vocal opponent of Syrian involvement in the country and a leader of the country's Maronite Christian minority, was assassinated in Beirut today, intensifying an already volatile situation and pushing the country's government a step closer to collapse. Gemayel was gunned down this morning as his car drove through a Christian suburb, his silver sedan riddled with bullet holes. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital shortly after 3 p.m. local time, and a distraught crowd quickly gathered to wait for information of his condition. No official announcement was made in the crowded lobby, but word soon spread that the young Cabinet minister was dead. He was believed to be in his mid-30s, although his exact age was not immediately known. Read The Full Story Film Director Robert Altman Dies At 81 2006-11-21 10:28:07 Robert Altman, the caustic and irreverent satirist behind "M-A-S-H," "Nashville" and "The Player" who made a career out of bucking Hollywood management and story conventions, died at a Los Angeles Hospital, his Sandcastle 5 Productions Company said Tuesday. He was 81. The director died Monday night, Joshua Astrachan, a producer at Altman's Sandcastle 5 Productions in New York City, told the Associated Press. The cause of death wasn't disclosed. A news release was expected later in the day, said Astrachan. A five-time Academy Award nominee for best director, most recently for 2001's "Gosford Park," he finally won a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2006. Read The Full Story	Assassination Triggers Fresh Crisis In Lebanon 2006-11-22 00:35:53 Lebanon lurched closer to a fresh round of sectarian bloodletting Tuesday with the assassination of its industry minister, Pierre Gemayel, a member of the country's most powerful Christian family and a leading opponent of Syrian influence. The killing shook Lebanon's beleaguered government and sent tremors across the Middle East, further complicating attempts to find a regional solution to the Iraq war. The Bush administration, under pressure to negotiate with Syria and Iran, Tuesday hinted at the responsibility of both countries' governments, accusing them of trying destabilize Lebanon. Speaking at an air force base in Hawaii, the U.S. president, George Bush, called for a full investigation and pledged U.S. support for Lebanon's government leaders and their efforts "to defend their democracy against attempts by Syria, Iran and allies, to foment instability and violence in that important country". Read The Full Story Former Russian Spy Got Warning On Day He Was Poisoned 2006-11-22 00:34:24 Mario Scaramella, the Italian who had lunch in London with a former Russian spy on the day the man was poisoned, said Tuesday that he showed the Russian e-mails during the meal that warned their lives might be in danger. At a news conference in Rome, Scaramella said that at a sushi restaurant Nov. 1, he showed Alexander Litvinenko messages "regarding their security" and referring to a "well-organized plot". "I said, 'Alex, I received an alarm in the last few days from a source that you introduced to me,' " said Scaramella, a security expert. By his account, both of them discounted the threats, and Litvinenko said: " 'It's unbelievable. Don't worry about that'." Read The Full Story Iraqi Parliament Speaker Escapes Car Bombing 2006-11-22 00:33:03 A car bomb exploded inside the heavily protected Green Zone on Tuesday in an apparent attempt to kill Iraq's  controversial speaker of parliament. About 2 p.m., a small bomb exploded in one of the armored cars in Mahmoud al-Mashhadani's motorcade as it approached the convention center where parliament meets, said Lt. Col. Christopher C. Garver, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq. Mashhadani was not in the car, and the driver survived, said Garver. Bomb-sniffing dogs then detected explosives in another vehicle, Garver said. Bomb specialists detonated that car, which set off a series of blasts that caused a fire but injured no one and caused no major damage to nearby structures. Read The Full Story Iraq, Syria Resume Dipolomatic Ties 2006-11-21 16:29:47 Regional efforts to contain the violence in Iraq gathered pace Tuesday as Baghdad and Syria agreed to restore full diplomatic relations after a 24-year break. The move followed a visit by the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moualem, to Iraq - the first by a Syrian minister since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Moualem pledged cooperation in tackling the growing violence sweeping the country, saying Syria was prepared to work "hand in hand to achieve the security of brother Iraq". He also signed an accord with his Iraqi counterpart, Hoshiyar Zebari, agreeing that U.S. troops should remain in Iraq for the time being. Previously, he had called for a timetable for the withdrawal of 140,000 U.S. troops. Read The Full Story France Launches $13 Billion Nuclear Fusion Project 2006-11-21 16:28:48 Officials from six nations and the European Union Tuesday signed an international treaty launching a $13 Billion (£7 billion) nuclear fusion energy research project aimed at developing an emission-free energy source. The French president, Jacques Chirac, hosted officials from the 25 E.U. countries, the U.S., India, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia as they unveiled the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, called the occasion a "historic event" in the effort to phase out polluting fossil fuels, while Chirac expressed pride that France had been chosen as the site. Read The Full Story U.S. Officers Criticize Efforts To Train Iraqi Forces 2006-11-21 10:28:49 The U.S. military's effort to train Iraqi forces has been rife with problems, from officers being sent in with poor preparation to a lack of basic necessities such as interpreters and office materials, according to internal Army documents. The shortcomings have plagued a program that is central to the U.S. strategy in Iraq and is growing in importance. A Pentagon effort to rethink policies in Iraq is likely to suggest placing less emphasis on combat and more on training and advising, sources say. In dozens of official interviews compiled by the Army for its oral history archives, officers who had been involved in training and advising Iraqis bluntly criticized almost every aspect of the effort. Some officers thought that team members were often selected poorly. Others fretted that the soldiers who prepared them had never served in Iraq and lacked understanding of the tasks of training and advising. Many said they felt insufficiently supported by the Army while in Iraq, with intermittent shipments of supplies and interpreters who often did not seem to understand English. Read The Full Story Group Demands Probe Of Imams Removal From Airliner 2006-11-21 10:27:21 The Council on American-Islamic Relations called Tuesday for an investigation into the behavior of airline staff and airport security in the removal of six Muslim scholars from a US Airways flight on Monday. A passenger raised concerns about the imams - three of whom said their normal evening prayers in the airport terminal before boarding the Phoenix-bound plane, according to one - through a note passed to a flight attendant, according to Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for US Airways. "We are concerned that crew members, passengers and security personnel may have succumbed to fear and prejudice based on stereotyping of Muslims and Islam," Nihad Awad, the council's executive director, said in a news release. Read The Full Story
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