Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday December 9 2006 - (813)

Saturday December 9 2006 edition
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Democrats Plan Oil Royalties Inquiry 2006-12-09 03:31:59 House Democratic leaders vowed Friday to pursue a broad overhaul of tax breaks and other subsidies to oil companies in January, saying that their first target would be an investigation of how the government collects billions of dollars in royalties on oil and gas produced on federal property. "The Interior Department has a background of mismanagement, to put it mildly, in the collection of these royalties," said Representative Nick J. Rahall II, of West Virginia, a Democrat who will become chairman of the House Resources Committee next year. Rahall said he planned a sweeping investigation of the Interior Department's enforcement of royalty payments as well as the possible repeal of a 10-year-old law that allows energy companies drilling in deep coastal waters to avoid billions of dollars in payments. Read The Full Story Traveler Data Mining Program Violates Congressional Ban 2006-12-09 03:30:58 The Department of Homeland Security violated a congressional funding ban when it continued to develop a computerized program that creates risk assessments of travelers entering and leaving the United States, according to lawmakers and privacy advocates. Although congressional testimony shows that department officials apparently disclosed some important elements of the controversial Automated Targeting System program to lawmakers in recent months, several key members of Congress said that they were in the dark about the program and that it violated their intentions. "Clearly the law prohibits testing or development" of such computer programs, said Rep. Martin O. Sabo (D. Minnesota), who wrote the three-year-old prohibition into homeland security funding legislation. "And if they are saying that they just took some system, used it and therefore did not test or develop it, they clearly were not upfront about saying it." Read The Full Story Berezovsky's Bitter Feud With Putin A Plot Line In Litvinenko Poisoning 2006-12-09 03:26:51 No ordinary billionaire, Boris Berezovsky is a onetime mathematician who travels around London with a posse of bodyguards. He openly taunts Russian President Vladimir Putin and once wore a rubber cartoonish mask of his face. Accustomed to drama, he is now a central figure in the fatal poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, the most sensational case of international intrigue since the Cold War. Police found traces of the poison, radioactive polonium-210, in Berezovsky's office in elegant Mayfair in central London. He said Litvinenko came there Nov. 1, the day he began feeling ill. Berezovsky, 60, had credited Litvinenko with saving him from assassination in the 1990s, and the billionaire helped Litvinenko financially after he fled Russia in 2000 and settled in London. Berezovsky visited the sickened man at the hospital shortly before he died last month and attended his burial Thursday. Read The Full Story Bush Administration Gropes For New Iraq Strategy 2006-12-09 03:25:06 As pressure mounts for a change of course in Iraq, the Bush administration is groping for a viable new strategy for the president to unveil by Christmas, with deliberations now focused on three main options to redefine the U.S. military and political engagement, according to officials familiar with the debate. The major alternatives include a short-term surge of 15,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops to secure Baghdad and accelerate the training of Iraqi forces. Another strategy would redirect the U.S. military away from the internal strife to focus mainly on hunting terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda. And the third would concentrate political attention on supporting the majority Shiites and abandon U.S. efforts to reach out to Sunni insurgents. As President Bush and his advisers rush to complete their crash review and craft a new formula in the next two weeks, some close to the process said the major goal seems to be to stake out alternatives to the plan presented this week by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. The White House denied trying to brush off the study group's report and said those recommendations are being considered alongside internal reviews. Read The Full Story Ethics Panel Blasts Hastert In Foley Scandal 2006-12-08 19:53:39 Former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley was described as a "ticking time bomb" for his sexual come-ons to male pages, but Republican lawmakers and aides for a decade failed to protect the teenagers vulnerable to his advances, the House ethics committee concluded Friday. Despite that finding, the panel said no rules had been broken and no one should be punished. The committee harshly criticized Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, saying the evidence showed he was told of the problem months before he acknowledged learning of Foley's questionable e-mails to a former Louisiana page. It rejected Hastert's contention that he couldn't recall separate warnings from two House Republican leaders. Hastert said he was pleased the committee found "there was no violation of any House rules by any member or staff". He added that no evidence was uncovered that salacious instant messages from Foley - which surfaced after the scandal became public - were known to any House member or employee before that time. Read The Full Story Iraqi Officials Claim U.S. Raid Killed Civilians, Not Insurgents 2006-12-08 19:52:23 Iraqi officials Friday contradicted U.S. claims that 20 al-Qaeda militants had died in a coordinated U.S. air and ground assault, saying instead that 17 civilians had been killed. According to a U.S. military statement, the raid was launched after troops searched buildings near the Thar Thar lake, northwest of Baghdad. A spokesman said the soldiers were attacked and returned fire, killing two militants, before calling in air support to combat continuing resistance. The military said the air attack killed a further 18 fighters, including two women. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq has both men and women supporting and facilitating their operations, unfortunately," said a military statement. Read The Full Story Lebanon Prime Minister Derides Hezbollah 2006-12-08 13:48:05 Lebanon's Prime Minister Fuad Saniora denounced Hezbollah and its leader on Friday in an unusually personal attack, a day after the guerrilla group's chief renewed his pledge to bring down the U.S.-backed government. The prime minister and Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah had traded barbs in the past, mostly through aides or supporters, but their recent remarks descended into direct attacks for the first time. The escalation of rhetoric marked a sharp turn in Lebanon's political crisis and further stoked the tensions between the two sides that threatens to tear the country apart. "What we've seen yesterday was an unnecessary fit of anger and rudeness that we don't accept," Saniora told hundreds of supporters at his heavily fortified office complex where he has been holed up since the opposition launched street protests on Dec. 1 to bring down his government. Read The Full Story Coalition Forces Kill 20 Insurgents 2006-12-08 13:47:03 U.S.-led coalition forces killed 20 insurgents, including two women, Friday in fighting and airstrikes that targeted al-Qaeda in Iraq militants northwest of Baghdad, the military said. The mayor of the village, which was the site of a U.S. raid earlier this year, said 19 civilians were killed, including seven women and eight children. In the south, more than 1,000 British and Danish troops conducted a pre-dawn raid in the outskirts of Basra, said coalition officials, describing the operation as the largest of its kind in the area since the war began. Five Iraqis, described as members of "a rogue, breakaway" Shiite militia, were detained. In the coalition raid northwest of Baghdad, near Lake Tharthar in the predominantly Sunni Salahuddin province, ground forces were searching buildings when they were attacked. They returned fire, killing two insurgents, the U.S. military said. Read The Full Story Hotel Bar Staff Poisoned With Polonium-210, Officials Seek 250 Bar Patrons 2006-12-08 03:23:39 Concern that hundreds of members of the public may have been at risk of radioactive poisoning during the killing of Alexander Litvinenko were raised Thursday night by the discovery that seven hotel workers have consumed polonium-210. Health officials say they are anxious to test around 250 people who went into the bar of the London hotel where the Russian ex-spy is thought to have been exposed to a massive dose of the toxic isotope on November 1. Britain's Health Protection Agency (HPA) also wants to track down and test hundreds more guests who drank in the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel on the days either side of the attack. Read The Full Story Australia Wants Its Troops Out Of Iraq 2006-12-08 03:22:20 Australian Prime Minister John Howard, responding to the Iraq Study Group report, said Friday he would like to see Australian troops out of Iraq but refused to set a deadline for their withdrawal. Howard's comments echoed those of President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who also have given the group's proposals a chilly reception. "Everybody would like to be out as soon as possible. We all know it is going badly," Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting. "But I am not going to make myself in any way hostage to a particular date." Read The Full Story Changes Expected In U.S. Voting By 2008 Elections 2006-12-08 03:21:04 By the 2008 presidential election, voters around the country are likely to see sweeping changes in how they cast their ballots and how those ballots are counted, including an end to the use of most electronic voting machines without a paper trail, say federal voting officials and legislators. New federal guidelines, along with legislation given a strong chance to pass in Congress next year, will probably combine to make the paperless voting machines obsolete, say the officials. States and counties that bought the machines will have to modify them to hook up printers, at federal expense, while others are planning to scrap the machines and buy new ones. Motivated in part by voting problems during the midterm elections last month, the changes are a result of a growing skepticism among local and state election officials, federal legislators and the scientific community about the reliability and security of the paperless touch-screen machines used by about 30 percent of American voters. Read The Full Story	Bush Administration Says U.S. Officials Can't Be Held Liable For Torture 2006-12-09 03:31:30 The Bush administration asserted in federal court Friday that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and three former military officials cannot be held liable for the alleged torture of nine Afghans and Iraqis in U.S. military detention camps because the detainees have no standing to sue in U.S. courts. Deputy Assistant Attorney General C. Frederick Beckner III also argued that a decision by the court to let a trial proceed would amount to an infringement by the judiciary on the president's power to wage war and would open the door to new litigation in U.S. courts by foreign nationals who feel aggrieved by U.S. government policies. "Foreign aliens abroad enjoy no constitutional rights," Beckner told Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan at a hearing on a government motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed on behalf of the defendants by the American Civil Liberties Union and human rights groups. Read The Full Story Stents Increase Risk Of Blood Clots, Heart Attacks, Death 2006-12-09 03:27:41 New drug-oozing stents widely used to prop open clogged arteries are associated with an increased risk of blood clots, heart attacks and death for the majority of patients receiving the devices, an expert panel concluded Friday. Based on the finding, the special 21-member Food and Drug Administration panel recommended that the agency issue new warnings to doctors and patients that the devices' safety has not been established except for relatively low-risk patients, for whom the stents were originally tested and approved. "If you use the device outside that indication, you're going to have a higher incidence of complications," said William H. Maisel, of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, who chaired the panel. Read The Full Story Hot Job In Iraq: Being Saddam Hussein's Executioner 2006-12-09 03:25:56 One of the most coveted jobs in Iraq does not yet exist: the executioner of Saddam Hussein. The death sentence against Hussein is still under review by an appeals court, but hundreds of people have already started lobbying the prime minister's office for the position. They have sent messages through cabinet officials and their assistants, and by way of government guards and clerical workers. One candidate, an Iraqi Shiite living in London whose brother was killed by Hussein, telephoned an aide to the prime minister to say he was prepared to drop everything and fly to Baghdad to execute the former ruler. "One of the hardest tasks will be to determine who gets to be the hangman because so many people want revenge for the loss of their loved ones," said Basam Ridha, an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. Read The Full Story Chicago Gunman Shoots 4, Dies In Gunfire 2006-12-08 19:54:12 A gunman shot four people and took a hostage in a downtown Chicago skyscraper Friday, then died after police fired at him, authorities said. The gunman was armed with a snub-nose revolver, knife and hammer, said police Superintendent Phil Cline. He was holding the hostage when police shot at him, but he also may have shot himself, said Cline. Three people were hospitalized in critical condition - two at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and one at Cook County Hospital - and one was in stable condition at Rush University Medical Center, said Fire Department spokeswoman Eve Rodriguez. Fire officials said they had reports of shots fired in the top floor of the 38-story Citigroup Center. Read The Full Story Seoul Charges Five With Spying For North Korea 2006-12-08 19:53:10 Five suspected North Korean agents were indicted in Seoul Friday in what South Korean prosecutors are calling the biggest espionage case in more than five years. Investigators accused Chang Min-ho, a Korea-American businessman, of leading a spy ring that passed on secrets about a realignment of U.S. forces on the peninsular, as well as profiles of hundreds of politicians. The alleged ring's members include two senior officials in the leftwing Democratic Labor Party, which has a small presence in parliament. >From 2002, the five are said to have provided information to Pyongyang and worked as agitators in several large anti-U.S. demonstrations. They were arrested in October within weeks of North Korea's nuclear test. Read The Full Story U.S. Rep. McKinney Introduces Bill To Impeach Bush 2006-12-08 19:51:45 In what was likely her final legislative act in Congress, outgoing Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney announced a bill Friday to impeach President Bush. The legislation has no chance of passing and serves as a symbolic parting shot not only at Bush but also at Democratic leaders. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, has made clear that she will not entertain proposals to sanction Bush and has warned the liberal wing of her party against making political hay of impeachment. McKinney, a Democrat who drew national headlines in March when she struck a Capitol police officer, has long insisted that Bush was never legitimately elected. In introducing her legislation in the final hours of the current Congress, she said Bush had violated his oath of office to defend the Constitution and the nation's laws. Read The Full Story California Farm May Be Linked To E. Coli Cases 2006-12-08 13:47:33 Green onions suspected of sickening Taco Bell customers in six states have been traced to one of Ventura County's largest vegetable growers, but authorities said Thursday it is too early to blame anyone for the outbreak. Taco Bell Corp. voluntarily removed green onions from its restaurants Wednesday after discovering that the "vast majority" of at least 58 people who suffered E. coli food poisoning in the last week, mostly in New Jersey and New York, had eaten at a Taco Bell, federal officials said Thursday. No one has died, but 48 people have been hospitalized with kidney failure or other problems caused by the bacteria. Taco Bell said its preliminary testing had found a strain of E. coli in its green onions, although it is awaiting confirmation from more accurate tests. "We have an initial indication that it is the green onions and we have tested everything in our restaurants," said Will Bortz, a spokesman for the Irvine-based fast-food chain, who added that "our investigation is still looking at lots of possible sources". Read The Full Story Hamas Leader Tells Iranians Hamas Will Never Recognize Israel 2006-12-08 13:46:27 Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told thousands of Iranians on Friday that his Hamas-led government will never recognize Israel and will continue to fight for the "liberation of Jerusalem". Making his first visit abroad since the militant group took power in March, Haniyeh blasted U.S. demands that Hamas recognize Israel as a basis for renewed peace talks and before international aid to the Palestinians resumes. The U.S. "and Zionists ... want us to recognize the usurpation of the Palestinian lands and stop jihad and resistance and accept the agreements reached with the Zionist enemies in the past," Haniyeh told worshippers at Tehran University. The United States is pressing the Palestinian government to not only recognize Israel, but to renounce violence and form a national unity government with the moderate Fatah party. Read The Full Story Egypt Expels 8 French, 2 Belgian Terror Suspects; 1 American, 1 French In Custody 2006-12-08 03:22:59 Authorities expelled two Belgian and eight French suspected terrorists Thursday, but an American and another French citizen remained in Egyptian custody, said officials. The 12, along with an unknown number of Egyptians and Arabs from other countries, were arrested late last month for allegedly belonging to an Islamic terror cell plotting attacks. The two Belgian and eight French suspects left Cairo International Airport under tight security on a charter flight for Brussels, said an airport official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media. Read The Full Story U.N. Plea For Millions In Palestinian Aid, Half Of Population Short On Food 2006-12-08 03:21:43 United Nations aid agencies launched their biggest appeal for funding to tackle the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories Thursday, asking for $453 million (£231 million) for next year and warning of a weakening in the Palestinians' ability to govern. Senior U.N. aid officials in Jerusalem said there were clear signs of a worsening economic crisis. Around two-thirds of the 4 million Palestinian population were living below the poverty line and half the population were "food-insecure", meaning they could not afford the basic foods to meet dietary needs. Unemployment is running as high as 40% in the Gaza strip and at around 25% in the West Bank. Most of the money will be spent on emergency food aid and economic recovery, including job programs. Kevin Kennedy, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, said the crisis was not only an economic collapse but was also tied to an increase in closures and access restrictions imposed on the occupied territories by the Israeli government and to continued conflict, internal political fighting and a breakdown of law and order. Read The Full Story Hewlett-Packard, California Settle Spying Lawsuit 2006-12-08 03:20:01 California's attorney general announced a $14.5 million civil settlement with Hewlett-Packard over its corporate spying scandal Thursday and said in an interview that he was exploring a possible settlement of criminal charges against the firm's former chairman. Patricia C. Dunn was ousted as chairman in September after the HP ethics and spying scandal became public. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed fraud and conspiracy charges against her in October, a day after Dunn learned that she had suffered a relapse of ovarian cancer. Lockyer said he has been talking to Dunn's attorney, James Brosnahan, about a potential settlement. "I'm sympathetic to her health problems," Lockyer said in an interview, adding that there was "nothing yet that would indicate that settlements are likely." Brosnahan did not return a reporter's call Thursday. Read The Full Story
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