Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday December 16 2006 - (813)

Saturday December 16 2006 edition
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Federal Panel Urges Limits, Warnings For Antibiotic Ketek 2006-12-16 03:13:17 The risks of the controversial antibiotic Ketek outweigh its benefits for minor illnesses and it should not be sold to patients with sinusitis or bronchitis, a federal advisory panel concluded Friday. The panel stopped short of taking Ketek off the market, voting 16 to 3 that it could still be used for mild to moderate pneumonia, the most serious of the three conditions for which it is prescribed. Even for that illness, the drug should be a secondary alternative to other medicines, said the panel. A majority of the 19-member panel also recommended that Ketek should carry a so-called black box warning about its rare but potentially serious side effects, which include liver failure, visual disturbances, loss of consciousness and serious aggravation of myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular condition. The warning is the strongest that the F.D.A. can require drug makers to include on a drug’s label. Read The Full Story Testimony Helps Detail CIA's Post-9/11 Reach 2006-12-16 03:12:29 A few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the CIA station chief in Rome paid a visit to the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, Adm. Gianfranco Battelli, to float a proposal: Would the Italian secret services help the CIA kidnap terrorism suspects and fly them out of the country? The CIA man did not identify which targets he had in mind but was "expressly referring to the possibility of picking up a suspected terrorist in Italy, bringing him to an airport and sending him from there to a foreign country," Battelli, now retired, recalled in a deposition. This initial secret contact and others that followed, disclosed in newly released documents, show the speed and breadth with which the CIA applied in post-9/11 Europe a tactic it had long reserved for the Third World - "extraordinary rendition," the extrajudicial abduction of Islamic radicals overseas for interrogation in friendly countries. Read The Full Story 'Tis This Season To Be Really Jolly - If You're A Wall Street Executive 2006-12-16 03:10:48 The heads of Wall Street’s most profitable banks are in line for record bonuses after their most successful year ever, led by Goldman Sach’s Lloyd Blankfein who is in line for a $50 million (£25.3 million paycheck.) James Cayne, Bearn Stearns’ chief executive, Richard Fuld, of Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch’s Stan O’Neal are also expected to rake in between $40 million and $50 million in salary and bonuses this year after their banks followed Goldman Sachs’ lead and reported record profits for 2006 last week. The world’s biggest securities firm posted a 93 per cent rise in net income to $3.15 billion for the fourth quarter. Fulds has received $10.9 million in stock this year, and is expected to receive an additional cash bonus. These compensation packages are taken from some of the heftiest bonus pools ever amassed on Wall Street. Read The Full Story New Mechanical Heart Has No Pulse 2006-12-16 01:16:27 A 65-year-old Quebec man who received a new long-term mechanical heart last month is being described as the only living Canadian without a pulse. Dr. Renzo Cecere implanted the “Heartmate II” mechanical heart into Gerard Langevin in an three-hour operation Nov. 23. Officials at the McGill University Health Centre say the device, which is about the size of a flashlight battery, could last up to 10 years. Read The Full Story Blizzard Lashes U.S. Pacific Northwest 2006-12-15 22:08:07 A blizzard lashed the Pacific Northwest Friday, with winds gusting up to 110 miles an hour knocking down trees and damaging homes and businesses, as heavy rains at lower altitudes swelled rivers and led to flooding. About 1.5 million homes and businesses in Washington and Oregon last power, as falling trees brought down power lines and blocked access to some roads. The downed trees and fierce weather prevented repair crews from reaching some areas to restore power. “They’ve had to pull back; it just been too hairy out there,” said Roger Thompson, a spokesman for Puget Sound Energy, according to the Associated Press. Other utility officials said it was too dangerous to elevate the buckets on repair trucks in the high winds. Read The Full Story Commentary: Blackmailed By Dictators 2006-12-15 22:07:31 Intellpuke: The following opinion column is written by John Kampfner, editor of the New Statesman magazine (Newstatesman.com). In his column, Mr. Kampfner maintains that British Prime Minister Tony Blair has shamefully flouted the law to protect the U.K. arms industry's bungs. It's an all time low, writes Mr. Kampfner, who column begins here: This much we knew already: Tony Blair's administration is riddled with double standards and hypocrisy in its international dealings. But Lord Goldsmith's announcement that the Serious Fraud Office was calling off its investigation into alleged corruption involving BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia dragged matters to an all-time low. The explanations given are startling. Goldsmith has form in being flexible with the law and the truth - as with his legal advice in advance of Iraq. He said the following, to a near-empty House of Lords on Thursday evening as the media's attention was on the police questioning of the prime minister and the report on Diana's death: "It has been necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest." In this respect, he was nothing if not candid: the law is not sacrosanct. He and others went on to say that this interest was not commercial, but based in diplomacy and security. As not a shred of evidence has been provided, one can be fairly safe in dismissing this as disingenuous. The economic concerns are understandable. BAE is one of the U.K.'s largest corporations and the world's fourth largest arms company. The Al-Yamamah deal, signed in 1988, has been worth £43 billion. These and other justifications were eloquently set out on the radio yesterday (Friday) by the former Conservative convict, Jonathan Aitken. Read The Full Story 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	Opinion: Bush Has Created A Comprehensive Catastrophe Across The Middle East 2006-12-16 03:12:53 Intellpuke: The following opinion column is written by Timorthy Garton Ash and appeared in Britain's Guardain newspaper on Thursday, December 14, 2006. In his column, Mr. Ash contends that U.S. President George W. Bush's policies have, in every vital Middle East area from Afghanistan to Egypt, made the situation worse than it was before. Mr. Ash's column begins here: What an amazing bloody catastrophe. The Bush administration's policy towards the Middle East over the five years since 9/11 is culminating in a multiple train crash. Never in the field of human conflict was so little achieved by so great a country at such vast expense. In every vital area of the wider Middle East, American policy over the last five years has taken a bad situation and made it worse. If the consequences were not so serious, one would have to laugh at a failure of such heroic proportions - rather in the spirit of Zorba the Greek who, contemplating the splintered ruins of his great project, memorably exclaimed: "Did you ever see a more splendiferous crash?" But the reckless incompetence of Zorba the Bush has resulted in the death, maiming, uprooting or impoverishment of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children - mainly Muslim Arabs but also Christian Lebanese, Israelis and American and British soldiers. By contributing to a broader alienation of Muslims it has also helped to make a world in which, as we walk the streets of London, Madrid, Jerusalem, New York or Sydney, we are all, each and every one of us, less safe. Laugh if you dare. In the beginning, there were the 9/11 attacks. It's important to stress that no one can fairly blame George Bush for them. The invasion of Afghanistan was a justified response to those attacks, which were initiated by al-Qaida from its bases in a rogue state under the tyranny of the Taliban. But if Afghanistan had to be done, it had to be done properly. It wasn't. Creating a half-way civilised order in one of the most rugged, inhospitable and tribally recalcitrant places on the planet was always going to be a huge challenge. If the available resources of the world's democracies, including those of a new, enlarged Nato, had been dedicated to that task over the last five years, we might at least have one partial success to report today. Read The Full Story Defense Science Board Seeks Consensus On U.S. Nuclear Weapons Arsenal 2006-12-16 03:11:26 A prestigious Defense Department advisory panel has determined there is no national agreement on what the nation needs in the way of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War period. In a recently released declassified version of a report on U.S. nuclear capabilities completed earlier this year, the Defense Science Board reported that its task force on the subject concluded "there is a need for a national consensus on the nature and role of nuclear weapons, as well as a new approach to sustaining a reliable, safe, secure and credible nuclear stockpile". The task force found "most Americans agree that as long as actual or potential adversaries possess or actively seek nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, the United States must maintain a deterrent to counter possible threats and support the nation's role as a global power and security partner". Beyond that, however, it found "sharp differences". Read The Full Story Florida, California Suspend Lethal Injections In Death Penalty Cases 2006-12-16 03:10:03 Executions by lethal injection were suspended in Florida and ordered revamped in California on Friday, as the chemical method once billed as a more humane way of killing the condemned came under mounting scrutiny over the pain it may cause. Gov. Jeb Bush (R) ordered the suspension in Florida after a botched execution in which it took 34 minutes and a second injection to kill convicted murderer Angel Nieves Diaz. A state medical examiner said that needles used to carry the poison had passed through the prisoner's veins and delivered the three-chemical mix into the tissues of his arm. In California, a federal judge ruled that the state must overhaul its lethal-injection procedures, calling its current protocol unconstitutional because it may inflict unacceptable levels of pain. Read The Full Story Two Criminal Investigations Looking Into Interior Dept.'s Oil-Gas Division 2006-12-15 22:08:29 The Justice Department has begun two criminal investigations into the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, which is already the focus of several inquiries into its collection of royalties for oil and gas produced on federal property. The new investigations are still in the early stages, said Congressional officials who were briefed this week by Earl E. Devaney, the Interior Department's chief independent investigator. The investigations are an unexpected development in what has already become a broad examination of the Interior Department's oversight of companies that pump more than $60 billion worth of oil and gas each year from publicly owned land and coastal waters. One Justice inquiry involves Interior Department officials in Denver, Colorado, who manage the government's fast-growing program to collect "royalties in kind," which are royalties in the form of oil and gas rather than in financial payments, said people briefed on the investigation. Read The Full Story 'This Looks Like Civil War' - Fatah, Hamas Battle Each Other On The Streets 2006-12-15 22:07:49 Palestinian factions fought on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank Friday as the territories slid further into violence and political confrontation. In Gaza City the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, appeared before a rally of tens of thousands of Hamas supporters while in Ramallah at least 30 people were hurt, many seriously, in clashes between Hamas and Fatah gunmen. British Prime Minister Tony Blair is due to visit the Middle East shortly to promote an "arc of moderation" in the region and a return to peace talks. On a visit three months ago Blair tried to encourage the creation of a national unity government and raised the prospect of talks between the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president and Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas. Since then the unity talks have broken down and there has been no meeting between Olmert and Abbas. Read The Full Story Blair Government's Decision To Drop Saudi Arms Deal Investigation May Get Court Challenge 2006-12-15 22:07:12 The British government's controversial decision to drop a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation into allegations that Saudi officials were bribed to win a lucrative order for a British arms firm could be challenged in the high court, it emerged Friday night. Anti-arms trade campaigners Friday instructed lawyers to consider a legal action against Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, after he halted the SFO inquiry into allegations of corruption by officials from BAE Systems when sealing the Al-Yamamah deal in the 1980s. The Campaign against the Arms Trade and the Corner House, a social and environmental justice group, believe the grounds for the decision - made after the prime minister warned it was against Britain's security and foreign policy interests - could be subject to judicial review. David Pannick Queen's Counsel has been hired. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development also signalled that it would launch its own investigation. Britain is a signatory to the 30-nation grouping's anti-bribery convention. 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
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