Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday December 4 2006 - (813)

Monday December 4 2006 edition
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Censorship Fears Rise As Iran Blocks Top Websites 2006-12-04 03:55:10 Iran Sunday shut down access to some of the world's most popular websites. Users were unable to open popular sites including Amazon.com and YouTube following instructions to service providers to filter them. Similar edicts have been issued against Wikipedia, the internet encyclopaedia, IMDB.com, an online film database, and the New York Times site. Attempts to open the sites are met with a page reading: "The requested page is forbidden." The clampdown was ordered by senior judiciary officials in the latest phase of a campaign that has seen high-speed broadband facilities banned in an attempt to impede "corrupting" foreign films and music. It is in line with a campaign by Iran's Islamist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to purge the country of western cultural influences. Read The Full Story Chavez Wins Decisive Victory In Venezuela Election 2006-12-04 03:53:49 By an overwhelming margin, Venezuelans reelected President Hugo Chavez on Sunday, further extending a presidency that began when the former paratrooper was swept into power eight years ago, intent on overturning Venezuela's old social order. Chavez will receive another six years in office to broaden his leftist revolution and contest American initiatives across Latin America. "Today is a new era," the fiery populist leader told screaming supporters. "Venezuela is red, very red." With 78 percent of the votes counted by 10 p.m., electoral authorities announced that Chavez, 52, had secured 61.3 percent of the vote to 38.4 percent for Manuel Rosales, whose candidacy united a fractured opposition that included former guerrillas, industrialists and right-wing radicals, but had only four months to gather momentum. Minutes after the National Electoral Council announced that Chavez had garnered 5.9 million votes to 3.7 million for Rosales, the president appeared at the balcony of the presidential palace. Read The Full Story A CIA Rendition Foiled In Oslo, Norway 2006-12-04 03:52:38 Two months after he helped kidnap a Muslim cleric in Italy, records show, an undercover CIA officer boarded a flight to Norway on another secret mission. Two other U.S. spies followed a few weeks later and checked into the same hotel. Shortly after the agents arrived in the spring of 2003, an Islamic militant living in Oslo known as Mullah Krekar received a warning from an anonymous Norwegian official, according to Krekar's lawyer. The message: Krekar, then head of a Kurdish insurgent group, was a CIA target and should watch his back. The spies left Norway by the end of the summer, according to records of their travels compiled by European investigators. If the CIA was planning to abduct Krekar, like other Islamic radicals it had secretly apprehended in Europe after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, those plans were quietly abandoned. Read The Full Story 2 Firefighters Killed, 9 Injured In U.K. Fireworks Depot Blaze And Explosion 2006-12-04 03:51:17 Two firefighters were killed and 12 people were injured, one critically, when an explosion ripped through a fireworks factory Sunday, shooting rockets and burning debris high into the sky, and creating a mushroom cloud of black smoke visible for miles around. The two fatalities were members of an emergency team sent to fight a fire at the Festival Fireworks factory on an industrial estate in Ringmer, near Lewes in East Sussex. One was a 63-year-old retired officer who occasionally helped the service out in major incidents. The other was a 49-year-old control room staff member. They were thought to be the first fire service personnel to die on duty in England and Wales this year. Nine other firefighters, one police officer and two members of the public were also hurt. Read The Full Story U.S. Mideast Allies Worried, Near Panic 2006-12-03 15:56:27 President Bush and his top advisors fanned out across the troubled Middle East over the last week to showcase their diplomatic initiatives to restore strained relationships with traditional allies and forge new ones with leaders in Iraq. Instead of flaunting stronger ties and steadfast American influence, the president's journey found friends both old and new near a state of panic. Mideast leaders expressed soaring concern over upheavals across the region that the United States helped ignite through its invasion of Iraq and push for democracy - and fear that the Bush administration may make things worse. President Bush's summit in Jordan with the Iraqi prime minister proved an awkward encounter that deepened doubts about the relationship. Vice President Dick Cheney's stop in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, yielded a blunt warning from the kingdom's leaders. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's swing through the West Bank and Israel, intended to build Arab support by showing a new U.S. push for peace, found little to work with. In all, visits designed to show the American team in charge ended instead in diplomatic embarrassment and disappointment, with U.S. leaders rebuked and lectured by Arab counterparts. The trips demonstrated that U.S. allies in the region were struggling to understand what to make of the difficult relationship, and to figure whether, with a new Democratic majority taking over Congress, Bush even had control over his nation's Mideast policy. Read The Full Story Defense Department's Top Intelligence Official To Resign 2006-12-03 15:55:30 The Defense Department's top intelligence official will resign at the end of the year, the Pentagon has announced. Stephen A. Cambone, under secretary of defense for intelligence, is the most senior Pentagon official to announce he is leaving since Donald Rumsfeld tendered his resignation last month. Cambone is one of the last members of the original team that came to the Pentagon with Rumsfeld in January 2001. Cambone has been a key player in Rumsfeld's efforts to transform the military into a lighter, high-tech force, and in carving out a larger role for American military intelligence. Read The Full Story Blowing The Whistle On Big Oil 2006-12-03 03:41:15 During a 22-year career, Bobby L. Maxwell routinely won accolades and awards as one of the Interior Department's best auditors in the nation's oil patch, snaring promotions that eventually had him supervising a staff of 120 people. He and his team scrutinized the books of major oil producers that collectively pumped billions of dollars worth of oil and gas every year from land and coastal waters owned by the public. Along the way, the auditors recovered hundreds of millions of dollars from companies that shortchanged the government on royalties. "Mr. Maxwell's career has been characterized by exceptional performance and significant contributions," wrote Gale A. Norton, then the secretary of the interior, in a 2003 citation. Norton praised Maxwell's "perseverance and leadership" while cataloguing his "many outstanding achievements". Less than two years later, the Interior Department eliminated his job in what it called a "reorganization". That came exactly one week after a federal judge in Denver unsealed a lawsuit in which Maxwell contended that a major oil company had spent years cheating on royalty payments. Read The Full Story Pfizer Ends Experimental Testing On Heart Disease Drug 2006-12-03 03:39:32 Pfizer announced last night that it had discontinued research on its most important experimental drug, a treatment for heart disease.The decision is a stunning development that is likely to seriously damage the company's prospects through the next decades. Preliminary research found that the drug, torcetrapib, appeared to be linked with deaths and heart problems in the patients who were taking it. For people with heart disease, Pfizer's decision to stop the trial represents the failure of a drug that many cardiologists had viewed as a potentially major advance in efforts to reduce heart attacks and strokes. Read The Full Story	Analysis: Amid Hints Bush Will Change Policy, Clues That He Won't 2006-12-04 03:54:40 The debate that will engulf Washington and much of the country this week centers on a question that lurks at the intersection of war strategy and the personality of the commander in chief: after three and a half years, is President Bush ready to abandon his declaration that American forces cannot begin to leave Iraq until the Iraqis demonstrate that they are capable of defending themselves? As administration officials tried to prepare the ground over the weekend for the release of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group's long-awaited report on Wednesday, the president's national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, repeatedly sidestepped questions about how the administration would react to the panel’s recommendations. On three television news programs on Sunday, he offered assurances that Bush would look at all the new ideas landing on his desk to develop what Hadley referred to - 12 times - as a "new way forward," one that the president would announce to the nation in "weeks, not months". Hadley knows that one of the commission's core conclusions is that the White House should announce a plan for American forces to begin pulling back, whether the Iraqis are ready or not. Read The Full Story Bush Mulls Resumed Natural Gas Drilling Off Southwest Alaska 2006-12-04 03:53:15 President Bush is considering whether to lift the 17-year-old moratorium on energy drilling in the waters off southwestern Alaska, a White House spokeswoman said Sunday, which would allow oil and gas companies to try to tap into more than five trillion cubic feet of natural gas that lies beneath rich fishing grounds. The push to market oil and gas leases in these waters, which oil and gas companies favor, is part of a larger national effort to expand domestic supplies of fossil fuel by opening up areas of the outer continental shelf, long off-limits to energy development. Last summer the Interior Department recommended reopening several areas of the outer continental shelf, including the southern part of Bristol Bay, which lies just north of where the Aleutian Islands meet the Alaskan mainland, to energy exploration. The report said that 14 oil and gas companies had supported the idea. The department has estimated that such a move could create up to 11,500 jobs, part of what it describes as "net benefits" of $7.7 billion. Read The Full Story Episcopal Churches To Vote On Separating From U.S. Body 2006-12-04 03:51:51 Two of the country's largest and most historic Episcopal congregations - both in Fairfax County, Virginia - will vote next week on whether to leave the U.S. church on ideological grounds and affiliate instead with a controversial Nigerian archbishop. The decision could lead to a bitter court battle and the loss of $25 million in property. Many members of The Falls Church and Truro Church, as well as some conservative leaders around the country, hope a split will establish a legal structure that would make it easier for dozens more like-minded congregations to also depart the national denomination. Some conservatives in the Episcopal Church, the U.S. wing of the worldwide Anglican Communion, believe the church abandoned Scripture by installing a gay bishop in New Hampshire in 2003, among other things. Those feelings of alienation were strengthened when Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori - who supports the New Hampshire bishop - was elected this summer to lead the national church. Read The Full Story OPEC President Expects Oil Production Cut 2006-12-03 16:18:20 OPEC is likely to trim oil production again, the president of the oil cartel said Friday, adding that he expects a cut of at least 500,000 barrels a day. The specific amount will be decided at the OPEC meeting scheduled for this month in Nigeria's capital, he said. "There is likely to be some further trimming, the actual amount will depend on the circumstances," Edmund Daukoru, who is Nigeria's oil minister and president of the 11-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, told a group of reporters ahead of a news conference in Abuja. Read The Full Story Investigation Widens Into Death Of Ex-KGB Spy 2006-12-03 15:55:57 British authorities said Sunday they are widening their investigation into the poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko on the heels of a fresh series of leads into the Russian's murky political and business connections that spanned from Moscow to the U.S. "Over the next few days, I think all of these things will widen out a little from the circle just being here in Britain," Home Secretary John Reid told Britain's Sky News Sunday Live program. Quoting unidentified law enforcement sources, British press reports said police investigators are in the U.S. interviewing former KGB agent Yuri Shvets, who purportedly has information on a dossier Litvinenko had in his possession relating to the Kremlin's pursuit of figures connected to Yukos Oil Co. The company was forcibly broken up and effectively renationalized in 2004 after Russian authorities imprisoned its chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. One of President Vladimir V. Putin's closest lieutenants, KGB veteran Igor Sechin, became board chairman of the state-owned company that took over Yukos. Read The Full Story Georgia State Legislator's Wife Fights Deportation 2006-12-03 03:42:15 The wife of a Georgia legislator known for his strong support of immigrants'  rights is in hiding after federal agents came to their home on Tuesday with an order to deport her to her native Colombia, said her lawyer. In a written statement issued on Wednesday, State Senator Curt Thompson, 37, a Democrat, said his wife, Sascha Herrera, 28, missed an immigration-related court hearing in February 2005. Thompson said notices about an asylum application that had been mistakenly filed on her behalf had been sent to the wrong address, causing her to miss the hearing. Because Ms. Herrera did not appear in court, a federal judge issued a deportation order in February 2005, Charles H. Kuck, Ms. Herrera's immigration lawyer, said on Friday. Kuck said Mr. Thompson told him that his wife was not at the couple's home when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived on Tuesday to take her into custody. Kuck would say only that Ms. Herrera was in a safe place. Read The Full Story U.S. Adivsers Step In As Iraq Army Mission Falters 2006-12-03 03:40:29 The bullets flew from every direction - from rooftops, windows, alleys and doorways. Soldiers from the Iraqi army's 9th Division were pinned against a wall. They were under a covered sidewalk. According to accounts from U.S. forces who were with them on Friday, a suspected insurgent with an AK-47 assault rifle aimed at them from a doorway. Pieces of concrete fell as the insurgent's fire ripped into the wall above the Iraqi soldiers. That's when they froze. U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Kent McQueen, 37, arrived to help. As he tried to get them out, he was hit. The night-vision goggles perched on his helmet fell down his face. They were dented. He had been shot in the head. "God was definitely on my side," McQueen said Saturday. Read The Full Story In Lebanon, Fault Lines And Blame 2006-12-03 03:39:01 In a city of frontiers, Beirut built another border Saturday. On one side of coiled barbed wire and metal barricades were armored personnel carriers manned by soldiers in red berets toting U.S.-made M-16 rifles and guarding the colonnaded, stone government headquarters where Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and other ministers have taken up residence. On the other were the fervent young men of Hezbollah and its allies, who have turned a downtown tailored for the rich into the site of an open-ended protest to force the government's fall. "This is the point of confrontation between us and them," said Khodr Hassan, who walked 12 hours from his southern village to the protest with 30 other youths. He pointed at his friends at the barricade, some surging forward, others lolling about. "This is the line of separation," said one of them, Ali Aitawi. Read The Full Story
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