Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday December 15 2006 - (813)

Friday December 15 2006 edition
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Army Chief Of Staff Calls For More Troops, Lifting Restrictions On Involuntary Call-Ups 2006-12-15 03:26:26 Warning that the active-duty Army "will break" under the strain of today's war-zone rotations, the nation's top Army general Thursday called for expanding the force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year and lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National Guard and Army Reserve troops. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, issued his most dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistanon the nation's main ground force. At one point, he banged his hand on a House committee-room table, saying the continuation of today's Pentagon policies is "not right". In particularly blunt testimony, Schoomaker said the Army began the Iraq war "flat-footed" with a $56 billion equipment shortage and 500,000 fewer soldiers than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Echoing the warnings from the post-Vietnam War era, when Gen. Edward C. Meyer, then the Army chief of staff, decried the "hollow Army," Schoomaker said it is critical to make changes now to shore up the force for what he called a long and dangerous war. Read The Full Story Rice Rejects Talks With Iran, Syria Over Iraq 2006-12-15 03:25:25 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Thursday rejected a bipartisan panel's recommendation that the United States seek the help of Syria and Iran in Iraq, saying the "compensation" required by any deal might be too high. She argued that neither country should need incentives to foster stability in Iraq. "If they have an interest in a stable Iraq, they will do it anyway," Rice said in a wide-ranging interview with Washington Post reporters and editors. She said she did not want to trade away Lebanese sovereignty to Syria or allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon as a price for peace in Iraq. Rice also said there would be no retreat from the administration's push to promote democracy in the Middle East, a goal that was de-emphasized by the Iraq Study Group in its report last week but that Rice insisted was a "matter of strategic interest." She reiterated her commitment to pursuing peace between Palestinians and Israelis - a new effort that President Bush announced in September but that has yielded little so far. Read The Full Story Israel's High Court Backs 'Targeted Killings' Of Terrorist Organization Members 2006-12-15 03:24:25 Israel's high court upheld Thursday the military's right to assassinate members of groups the state defines as terrorist organizations, but cautioned that such operations should always be weighed first against the potential harm to civilian bystanders and the human rights of the target. The unanimous decision departs little from guidelines the military says it already follows in carrying out "targeted killings," the terminology used by the government and by the court in its ruling. But it does say commanders should allow an independent investigation to follow each assassination and recommends that the military compensate "innocent civilians" harmed in the operation. Under current practice, Israel's military works with Shin Bet, the domestic security service, to compile lists of Palestinians who are influential or active figures in armed groups. Using eavesdropping equipment, aerial surveillance and informants, air force pilots or drone operators receive detailed information about a target's movements, most commonly in the Gaza Strip, where the army no longer operates regularly on the ground. Read The Full Story Chinese Engineer Indicted For Alleged Espionage 2006-12-15 03:22:10 A Chinese engineer was charged Thursday with stealing trade secrets from a Silicon Valley company that made military training software and attempting to sell them to Asian governments. Xiaodong Sheldon Meng, 42, a Chinese national with Canadian citizenship, was indicted on 36 felony counts, including the rare charge of economic espionage to benefit a foreign government and various violations of military technology export laws. In an unrelated but similar economic espionage case, two other engineers pleaded guilty Thursday to stealing proprietary computer chip designs from four technology companies and attempting to smuggle them to China. Prosecutors say Meng stole the code for software made by his former employer, Quantum3D Inc., that's used to train military fighter pilots, and tried to sell it to the Royal Thai Air Force, the Royal Malaysian Air Force and a company with ties to China's military. Read The Full Story Climate Agencies: Global Warming Trend Continues 2006-12-15 00:28:20 A decades-long global warming trend that most climate experts say is linked to rising levels of heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases continued apace this year, according to summaries issued Thursday by several national and international climate agencies. Figures differed slightly, with British weather officials and the World Meteorological Organization, based in Geneva, estimating that 2006 would end up the sixth warmest year since modern records began and NASA  scientists putting it fifth. All of the reports noted that temperatures greatly above normal were recorded in places as varied as Australia and Scandinavia’s Arctic islands, shattering a variety of longstanding records. Read The Full Story Judge: Federal Law On Treatment Of Detained Immigrants Is Unconstitutional 2006-12-15 00:20:31 In the first legal decision on a federal law that denies access to U.S. courts to detainees in the war on terrorism, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that foreign prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could not sue for freedom. But, in a split decision, U.S. District Judge James Robertson also ruled that the law's denial of that right to the more than 12 million legal immigrants living in the United States is unconstitutional. The first part of the ruling affirmed what Congress intended when it passed the Military Commissions Act in October. The decision came in the case of Salim Hamdan, the onetime driver to Osama bin Laden, who won what appeared to be a landmark victory in the Supreme Court in June. Taking up Hamdan's lawsuit, the high court's justices said President Bush had overstepped his power when he created a system of military tribunals for foreign-born alleged terrorists. Read The Full Story Know Your Rights When 'Flying While Muslim' 2006-12-15 00:18:21 Thousands of American Muslims planning to make their annual pilgrimage to Haj this month are being briefed by an Islamic civil rights group to know their rights when “flying while Muslim.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), citing what it calls the “airport profiling” of six imams removed from a recent flight, has issued guidelines against discrimination for American Muslims traveling to perform their pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia this month. “Given the increase in the number of complaints CAIR has received alleging airport profiling of American Muslims, we believe it is important that all those taking part in this year’s Haj be aware of their legal and civil rights,” said CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. The Washington-based CAIR has issued tips and established a toll-free hotline for American Muslims heading to Makkah and Madinah, and published a pocket guide for Haj pilgrims entitled “Your Rights and Responsibilities as an American Muslim”. Read The Full Story Blair Shuts Down Criminal Investigation Into Britain's Arms Industry 2006-12-14 20:18:29 A major criminal investigation into alleged corruption by the British arms company BAE Systems and its executives was stopped in its tracks Thursday when the prime minister claimed it would endanger Britain's security if the inquiry was allowed to continue. The remarkable intervention was announced by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, who took the decision to end the Serious Fraud Office inquiry into alleged bribes paid by the company to Saudi officials, after consulting cabinet colleagues. In recent weeks, BAE and the Saudi embassy had frantically lobbied the government for the long-running investigation to be discontinued, with the company insisting it was poised to lose another lucrative Saudi contract if it was allowed to go on. This came at a time when the SFO appeared to have made a significant breakthrough, with investigators on the brink of accessing key Swiss bank accounts. Read The Full Story AOL: Happy Holidays, 450 Of You Are Out Of A Job 2006-12-14 20:17:30 AOL laid off more than 450 employees at its corporate headquarters Wednesday as part of plans announced earlier this year to cut costs and change the company's business strategy. The Dulles company said it was not cutting as many jobs locally as originally anticipated. In August, AOL executives said that about 1,000 of the 5,000 jobs to be cut worldwide would be local. Including Wednesday's cuts, AOL has eliminated fewer than 600 positions in Northern Virginia. "In August, we were making a preliminary estimate based on very early information about how the company's new strategy would affect our structure," said Andrew Weinstein, a spokesman for the company. "When we worked through the implications of the new structure, we found there were fewer jobs on the Virginia campus that were impacted than expected." Read The Full Story Sen. Johnson In Critical Condition After Surgery 2006-12-14 20:16:19 Sen. Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota) underwent emergency surgery overnight to repair bleeding inside his brain and was "recovering without complication" Thursday, according to the U.S. Capitol physician. Johnson, 59, who is in the critical care unit at George Washington University Hospital, fell ill at the Capitol Wednesday, introducing a note of uncertainty over control of the Senate just weeks before Democrats are to take over with a one-vote margin. In an update on his condition late this afternoon, Johnson's office released a brief statement quoting Adm. John Eisold, attending physician of the U.S. Capitol, as saying the senator "has continued to have an uncomplicated post-operative course" and has been "appropriately responsive to both word and touch." Eisold added, "No further surgical intervention has been required." Read The Full Story Lawmakers: Coast Guard Withheld Flaws In Cutter Design 2006-12-14 03:35:27 The U.S. Coast Guard withheld from Congress warnings raised more than two years ago by its chief engineer about structural design flaws in its new National Security Cutter, a $564 million ship now near completion in Mississippi, Democrats and Republicans said in interviews this week. The lack of full disclosure about that and other problems in the Coast Guard’s $24 billion modernization effort, known as Deepwater, has created a credibility gap that some members of Congress say now jeopardizes the endeavor. “The Coast Guard clearly does not understand that transparency and accountability are essential to a program of this magnitude,” said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, the chairwoman of the Senate panel that oversees the service’s operations. Read The Full Story U.S. Subpoena Is Seen As Bid To Stop Leaks 2006-12-14 03:34:09 Federal prosecutors are trying to force the American Civil Liberties Union to turn over copies of a classified document it received from a source, using what legal experts called a new extension of the Bush administration’s efforts to protect national-security secrets. The novelty in the government’s approach is in its broad use of a grand jury subpoena, which is typically a way to gather evidence, rather than to confiscate all traces of it. But the subpoena issued to the A.C.L.U. seeks “any and all copies” of a document e-mailed to it unsolicited in October, indicating that the government also wants to prevent further dissemination of the information in the document. The subpoena was revealed in court papers unsealed in federal court in Manhattan yesterday. The subject of the grand jury’s investigation is not known, but the A.C.L.U. said that it had been told it was not a target of the investigation. The subpoena, however, raised the possibility that the government had found a new tool to stop the dissemination of secrets, one that could avoid the all but absolute constitutional prohibition on prior restraints on publication. Read The Full Story Scientists: 2006 Will Be Britain's Warmest Year Since Records Began 2006-12-14 03:32:25 Britain is on course for the warmest year since records began, according to figures from the Metropolitan Office and the University of East Anglia Wednesday. Temperatures logged by weather stations across England reveal 2006 to have been unusually mild, with a mean temperature of 10.84 degrees Celsius (over 50 degrees Fahrenheit). The record beats the previous two joint hottest years of 1999 and 1990 by 0.21C. Temperatures in central England have been recorded since 1659, the world's longest climate record, and they indicate the trend towards warming weather across Britain as a whole. Experts are convinced that the warming can only be explained by rising greenhouse gases from human activity and rule out the impact of natural variations, such as the sun's intensity. "Our climate models show we should be getting warmer and drier weather in the summer, and warmer and wetter in the winter, and that's exactly what we're seeing," said Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia. "I cannot see how else this can be explained." Read The Full Story	Editorial: A Gag On Free Speech 2006-12-15 03:26:01 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Friday, December 15, 2006, and deals with attempts by the Bush administration to trample on freedom of speech and expression in America. The editorial follows: The Bush administration is trampling on the First Amendment and well-established criminal law by trying to use a subpoena to force the American Civil Liberties Union to hand over a classified document in its possession. The dispute is shrouded in secrecy, and very little has been made public about the document, but we do not need to know what’s in it to know what’s at stake: if the government prevails, it will have engaged in prior restraint -  almost always a serious infringement on free speech - and it could start using subpoenas to block reporting on matters of vital public concern. Justice Department lawyers have issued a grand jury subpoena to the A.C.L.U. demanding that it hand over “any and all copies” of the three-and-a-half-page government document, which was recently leaked to the group. The A.C.L.U. is asking a Federal District Court judge in Manhattan to quash the subpoena. There are at least two serious problems with the government’s action. It goes far beyond what the law recognizes as the legitimate purpose of a subpoena. Subpoenas are supposed to assist an investigation, but the government does not need access to the A.C.L.U.’s document for an investigation since it already has its own copy. It is instead trying to confiscate every available copy of the document to keep its contents secret. The A.C.L.U. says it knows of no other case in which a grand jury subpoena has been used this way. Read The Full Story U.S. Dropping Effort To Track If Visitors Leave Country 2006-12-15 03:24:51 In a major blow to the Bush administration’s efforts to secure borders, domestic security officials have for now given up on plans to develop a facial or fingerprint recognition system to determine whether a vast majority of foreign visitors leave the country, say officials. Domestic security officials had described the system, known as U.S. Visit, as critical to security and important in efforts to curb illegal immigration. Similarly, one-third of the overall total of illegal immigrants are believed to have overstayed their visas, according to a Congressional report. Tracking visitors took on particular urgency after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when it became clear that some of the hijackers had remained in the country after their visas had expired. Read The Full Story Negroponte: Fidel Castro Near Death 2006-12-15 03:22:38 Cuban President Fidel Castro is very ill and close to death, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte said Thursday. "Everything we see indicates it will not be much longer ... months, not years," Negroponte told a meeting of Washington Post editors and reporters. Castro relinquished power for the first time in 47 years after surgery July 31 for an undisclosed intestinal disorder. His brother, Raul, has assumed Castro's duties, but Cuban authorities have repeatedly insisted that he is recovering and eventually will return to office. He was last seen in an Oct. 28 video, shown on Cuban national television, in which he appeared gaunt and weak and warned that his convalescence would be lengthy. Read The Full Story South Korea's Ban Ki Moon Sworn In As New U.N. Secretary General 2006-12-15 03:21:36 South Korean diplomat Ban Ki Moon was sworn in Thursday as the United Nations' eighth secretary general in a ritualistic General Assembly ceremony as the United States and other countries praised Kofi Annan's 10-year stewardship of the world's premier political institution. Ban, 62, said his priority when he takes office Jan. 1 is to restore public confidence and civility to a body that has been buffeted by corruption and sexual misconduct scandals, and has been riven by feuding over its future between its weakest and most powerful countries. "You could say that I'm a man on a mission, and my mission could be dubbed 'Operation Restore Trust': trust in the organization and trust between member states and the secretariat," Ban said at a news conference after the ceremony. "I hope this mission is not mission impossible." Read The Full Story Commentary: E.P.A. Library Closures Could Threaten Public Health 2006-12-15 00:27:57 Intellpuke: The following commentary is written by Leslie Burger, President of the American Library Association. In it, she makes a very strong argument that the U.S. Congress needs to fund $2 million to keep the 29 libraries of the Environmental Protection Agency open because they contain important, and potentially life-saving, data that can protect the public's health. Ms. Burger's column follows: If you needed to find out how much pollution an industrial plant in your neighborhood was spewing, or what toxic chemicals were in a local river, where would you go? Until recently, you could discover the answer at one of the Environmental Protection Agency's 29 libraries. But now the E.P.A. has obstructed the American public - as well as its own scientists and staff - by starting to dismantle its crown jewel, the national system of regional E.P.A. libraries. Until now, any citizen could consult these resources, which include information on things like siting incinerators, storing toxic waste and uncovering links between asthma and car exhaust. E.P.A. staff members and other scientists have counted on the libraries to support their work. First responders and other state and local government officials have used E.P.A. information to protect communities. In the age of terrorism, when the safety of our food and water supply, the uninterrupted flow of energy and, indeed, so much about our environment has become a matter of national security, it seems particularly dangerous to take steps that would hinder our emergency preparedness. Although lawmakers haven't yet agreed to President Bush's proposed 2007 budget, which includes $2 million in cuts to the agency's library system, the head of the E.P.A. has already instituted cuts. The agency's main library in Washington has been closed to the public, and regional E.P.A. libraries in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City, Missouri, have been closed altogether. At the Boston, New York, San Francisco and Seattle branches, hours and public access have been reduced. Read The Full Story Soldiers Sue Military Over Mandatory Anthrax Inoculations 2006-12-15 00:19:11 Two years after an earlier lawsuit temporarily halted mandatory anthrax vaccinations for all 2.4 million service members and some military contractors, another group of military service members and Pentagon civilian contractors are going to federal court to block the controversial vaccine's forced use once again. Six complainants, remaining unidentified to protect them from retaliatory military discipline, filed suit against federal military and health officials Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. They are asking a judge to once again declare the controversial vaccine an unapproved drug and unlawful for use without informed consent. Each of the plaintiffs faces either termination from employment or criminal prosecution if they refuse inoculation. The lawsuit is part of a class action on behalf of all military service members and civilians facing inoculation, supposedly to protect them from aerosolized anthrax spores weaponized by terrorists or enemies of the United States. Read The Full Story Israel Closes Egyptian-Gaza Crossing As Hamas Tries To Bring In Millions 2006-12-14 20:19:01 Israel ordered the closure of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza Thursday, apparently to prevent the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, from returning home with millions of dollars in donated money. More than 1,000 Hamas militants stormed the crossing after it was closed, firing into the air as travellers ducked for cover and sparking a gun battle with Palestinian security guards. Two bombs were detonated nearby to blow a hole through the concrete wall on the border. Reports said Haniyeh, who leads the Hamas government, was bringing suitcases containing about $35 million  (£17.8 million) in donations from abroad, following an international financial boycott. Egyptian officials tried to negotiate to allow Haniyeh to cross into Gaza without the money but European Union monitors, who supervise the crossing, said Rafah had closed for the night. The crossing is supposed to open only in the presence of the monitors. Read The Full Story Oil Prices Jump $1.14 A Barrel On OPEC Announcement 2006-12-14 20:17:56 Oil prices jumped $1.14 to more than $62 a barrel today after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries announced plans to cut production by 500,000 barrels a day. OPEC said it will trim its output Feb. 1 "in order to balance supply and demand," the organization's president, Edmund Daukoru, said at a meeting in Abuja, Nigeria. For motorists, OPEC's announcement signals that gasoline prices may not be heading down anytime soon. The announcement came a day after the U.S. Energy Department said crude oil supplies had fallen for a third straight week. That pushed oil prices higher Wednesday. Read The Full Story Ipswich Victim Found In Woodland Was Strangled 2006-12-14 20:17:02 A woman found dead in woods near Ipswich after she was strangled was identified Thursday as the missing prostitute Paula Clennell. Ms. Clennell, 24, was one of the two dead women whose bodies were found in scrubland close to the village of Levington, in Suffolk, on Tuesday afternoon. Police believe the second body - found around 150 yards away from Ms. Clennell's - is that of the missing Annette Nicholls, 29. Her identity, however, has not yet been formally confirmed. The dead women were the fourth and fifth found over 10 days in Suffolk. Police are hunting a killer who has been targeting prostitutes who work in the red light area of Ipswich. Read The Full Story Sen. Tim Johnson Undersgoes Surgery, Outcome Could Affect U.S. Senate Majority 2006-12-14 03:36:07 U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota) was in surgery last night after falling ill at the Capitol, introducing a note of uncertainty over control of the Senate just weeks before Democrats are to take over with a one-vote margin. Johnson, 59, was taken to George Washington University Hospital shortly after noon, where he underwent "a comprehensive evaluation by the stroke team," his office said. Aides later said he had not suffered a stroke or heart attack, but they offered no further comment or details of the surgery. The two-term senator's illness - which sent Senate Democratic leader Harry M. Reid (Nevada) rushing to the hospital to check on Johnson - underscored the fragility of Democrats' hold on the next Senate, which they won by the narrowest of margins in the Nov. 7 elections. Should Johnson be unable to complete his term, South Dakota's Republican governor, Michael Rounds, would name a replacement for the next two years. With Johnson in office, Democrats would hold a 51-to-49 edge in the Senate that convenes Jan. 4 as part of the 110th Congress. (The two independents have said they will caucus with the Democrats.) But if he is to leave office before then and Rounds replaces him with a Republican, the GOP would control the chamber. In a 50-50 Senate, Vice President Cheney could break tie votes in the GOP's favor; but a Senate that becomes evenly split after it is in session would not necessarily fall to Republicans, said Senate historians. Rules and precedents could leave a party in charge of the chamber even after its membership falls below that of the other party. Read The Full Story Circumcision Reduces HIV Risk By Half 2006-12-14 03:34:48 Circumcision appears to reduce a man’s risk of contracting AIDS from heterosexual sex by half, United States government health officials said yesterday, and the directors of the two largest funds for fighting the disease said they would consider paying for circumcisions in high-risk countries. The announcement was made by officials of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as they halted two clinical trials, in Kenya and Uganda, on the ground that not offering circumcision to all the men taking part would be unethical. The success of the trials confirmed a study done last year in South Africa. AIDS experts immediately hailed the finding. “This is very exciting news,” said Daniel Halperin, an H.I.V. specialist at the HarvardCenter for Population and Development, who has argued that circumcision slows the spread of AIDS in the parts of Africa where it is common. Read The Full Story Regional War Looms In Africa 2006-12-14 03:33:21 With the Ethiopian government saying it is technically at war with Somalia's Islamic Courts movement, and the movement having declared holy war against Ethiopia, there is fear that an all-out conflict in the Horn of Africa may be unavoidable. In the past week, several skirmishes have broken out between militias loyal to Ethiopia and those loyal to the Council of Islamic Courts, the movement that has taken control of the southern region of the country, including Mogadishu, the capital. The fighting has occurred around the southern town of Baidoa, seat of Somalia's fragile but internationally recognized transitional government. Ethiopia considers the interim government a buffer against Islamic Courts leaders who have long expressed desire to create a "Greater Somalia," including ethnically Somali portions of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti. Read The Full Story
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