Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday December 6 2006 - (813)

Wednesday December 6 2006 edition
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In Lebanon, Hezbollah Gambles In Quest For Political Dominance 2006-12-06 03:14:29 Hezbollah has entered territory uncharted in its 24-year history as armed militia, social welfare group and nascent political party, effectively seeking an unprecedented, decisive say in Lebanese politics to protect what it sees as its interests from foes at home and abroad. The month-long political crisis that has roiled Lebanon, hurtling it dangerously close to the precipice of civil war, marks a revealing shift for the Shiite Muslim movement that for years, at least rhetorically, tried to stay above politics, entering the cabinet for the first time in 2005. Now, by mobilizing its rank and file and pouring them into downtown Beirut to topple the government, the movement has framed that pursuit for political power in the same martial language of this summer's war with Israel. Read The Full Story Internet Spam Doubles, Finding New Ways To Deliver Itself 2006-12-06 03:13:26 Hearing from a lot of new friends lately? You know, the ones that write “It’s me, Esmeralda,” and tip you off to an obscure stock that is “poised to explode” or a great deal on prescription drugs. You’re not the only one. Spam is back - in e-mail in-boxes and on everyone’s minds. In the last six months, the problem has gotten measurably worse. Worldwide spam volumes have doubled from last year, according to Ironport, a spam filtering firm, and unsolicited junk mail now accounts for more than 9 of every 10 e-mail messages sent over the Internet. Much of that flood is made up of a nettlesome new breed of junk e-mail called image spam, in which the words of the advertisement are part of a picture, often fooling traditional spam detectors that look for telltale phrases. Image spam increased fourfold from last year and now represents 25 to 45 percent of all junk e-mail, depending on the day, Ironport says. Read The Full Story New York City Bans Most Trans Fats In Restaurants 2006-12-06 03:11:54 The New York City Board of Health voted Tuesday to adopt the nation's first major municipal ban on the use of all but tiny amounts of artificial trans fats in restaurant cooking, a move that would radically transform the way food is prepared in thousands of restaurants, from McDonald's to fashionable bistros to Chinese take-outs. Some experts said the measure, which is widely opposed by the restaurant industry, would be a model for other cities. Chicago is considering a similar prohibition that would affect restaurants with more than $20 million in annual sales. "New York City has set a national standard," said Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, who predicted that other communities would follow suit. Read The Full Story Senate Committee Unanimously Endorses Gates As Defense Secretary 2006-12-05 20:34:06 The Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday unanimously approved President Bush's nomination of Robert M. Gates to be the next secretary of defense, replacing Donald H. Rumsfeld, the panel's chairman announced. The announcement by Sen. John W. Warner (R-Virginia) came after Gates testified before the committee in an open confirmation hearing and a closed session, impressing senators from both the Republican and Democratic parties with what they described as his "candor". The nomination now goes to the full Senate for a confirmation vote, which could be held as soon as tomorrow. Read The Full Story U.S. House Postpones Offshore Drilling Bill - Votes Not There 2006-12-05 20:32:18 U.S. House leaders pulled an offshore drilling measure off the calendar today, an apparent signal that the bill did not have the two-thirds majority of votes needed for it to be adopted. The bill would open up a substantial amount of new acreage for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and would divert 37.5 percent of future federal royalties - ultimately billions of dollars - to four coastal states. It has already been approved by the Senate. Kevin Madden, spokesman for House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), said the measure could still come up later this week. "The House will revisit the offshore drilling legislation again at some point before the end of this week, though details on the mechanics of how the measure will be considered have yet to be decided." Read The Full Story Iraq Prime Minister Calls For Regional Conference 2006-12-05 20:29:55 Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki on Tuesday called for a regional conference on stabilizing his country but rejected U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's proposal that such a discussion take place outside of Iraq.  "After preparing the proper political atmosphere, we will call for holding a conference in which all those countries that are interested in the security and stability of Iraq will participate," he said in a televised speech, on a day in which three U.S. soldiers were killed and about 100 Iraqis were killed or found dead. Over the past 24 hours, police have discovered the tortured bodies of 60 people who were bound, blindfolded, then shot and left in Baghdad, the Associated Press reported. Maliki's comments come after Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and the leader of Iraq's largest Shiite Muslim party, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, strongly rejected calls for a regional conference. "We do not want to distribute shares of powers to neighboring countries," Hakim said Monday after meeting with President Bush in Washington. Read The Full Story Egypt Arrests American, Europeans In Terrorist Cell Case 2006-12-05 04:11:02 Egyptian authorities said Monday that they had arrested an American and nearly a dozen Europeans after breaking up an international terrorist cell that was recruiting operatives to go to Iraq. The Egyptian Interior Ministry said the cell was "related to some terrorist organizations abroad" but did not name the network or those arrested. The official Egyptian news agency MENA reported that the suspects included nine French citizens and two Belgians, as well as two Syrians, a Tunisian woman and an undisclosed number of Egyptians. In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said U.S. officials knew the identity of the American and are "seeking consular access to this individual". He said the U.S. suspect was arrested Nov. 26 but declined to name the person, citing federal privacy laws. Read The Full Story Iraqi Shiite Leader Speaks Bluntly In Washington, D.C. 2006-12-05 04:06:21 President Bush Monday told the leader of Iraq's largest Shiite Muslim party that the United States is not satisfied with the progress in Iraq and appealed for more help in fighting extremism and reconciling the country's increasingly fractured society. In a speech after their hour-long meeting, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim countered that U.S. troops need to do more to fight the insurgency and denied that the Shiite militias are fueling the sectarian strife in Iraq. It was one of the starkest criticisms of U.S. military strategy by an Iraqi leader. "The strikes [the insurgents] are getting from the multinational forces are not hard enough to put an end to their acts, but leave them to stand up again to resume their criminal acts," Hakim said in a speech at the United States Institute of Peace. "This means that there is something wrong in the policies taken to deal with that danger threatening the lives of Iraqis." Read The Full Story Saudi Fury Over Investigation's Slush Fund Claims 2006-12-05 04:05:15 Britain's broader commercial relationship with Saudi Arabia as well as co-operation in the War on Terror are being threatened by the escalating spat over a long-running fraud investigation, according to senior Saudi sources. The House of Saud's embarrassment and frustration over the inquiry is said to threaten not only a £10 billion ($20 billion) contract to buy Eurofighter combat aircraft from BAE Systems, but other lucrative deals with British defense and industrial companies. A prominent Saudi businessman told The Times Monday that it was a huge mistake for Britain to alienate the Royal Family, which controls all government contracts in a country flush with the proceeds of record oil prices. "Saudi Arabia does not make commercial or defense decisions based on what shareholders or voters think," he said. "It is run like a family business. If you upset members of the family, they will simply choose another supplier." Read The Full Story Almost As Many Contractors In Iraq As Troops 2006-12-05 04:04:09 There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield. The survey finding, which includes Americans, Iraqis and third-party nationals hired by companies operating under U.S. government contracts, is significantly higher and wider in scope than the Pentagon's only previous estimate, which said there were 25,000 security contractors in the country. It is also 10 times the estimated number of contractors that deployed during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, reflecting the Pentagon's growing post-Cold War reliance on contractors for such jobs as providing security, interrogating prisoners, cooking meals, fixing equipment and constructing bases that were once reserved for soldiers. Read The Full Story	New Artery Stents Raise Safety Concerns 2006-12-06 03:13:59 A flurry of recent research has raised alarm about the safety of a new generation of stents that have quickly become the most commonly used devices for treating clogged arteries, creating widespread concern about how to care for millions of heart-disease patients. The stents, tiny drug-secreting mesh tubes used to prop coronary arteries open, appear to carry a small but significantly increased risk of causing blood clots, compared with older "bare metal" versions. That may boost the patients' chances of suffering a heart attack or dying, according to the studies, including one released Tuesday. The accumulating evidence prompted the Food and Drug Administration to convene an urgent two-day meeting of a panel of outside experts Thursday to assess the devices, known as drug-eluting stents, including whether their risks outweigh their benefits. Read The Full Story Richest Tenth Own 85 Percent Of World's Assets 2006-12-06 03:12:40 The richest 2 per cent of adults own more than half the world’s wealth, according to the most comprehensive study of personal assets. Among the largest economies, Britain boasted the third-highest average wealth of $126,382 (£64,172) per adult, after the United States and Japan, a United Nations development research institute found. Those with assets of $500,000 could consider themselves to be among the richest 1 per cent in the world. Those with net assets of $2,200 per adult were in the top half of the wealth distribution. Although global income was distributed unequally, the spread of wealth is more skewed, according to the study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the U.N. University. Read The Full Story U.S. Supreme Court Favors Immigrant In Drug Deportation Case 2006-12-05 20:34:32 The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that an immigrant convicted of a state felony drug charge that would be a lesser crime under federal law may contest the government's decision to deport him. The 8-1 ruling, with Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting, held that a state felony charge that would be only a misdemeanor under federal statutes is not the kind of conviction that would trigger automatic deportation under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act. The court's actions reverse lower court decisions that led the government to send Jose Antonio Lopez back to Mexico. Lopez, a South Dakota grocery store owner, had pleaded guilty in 1997 to aiding and abetting another person's possession of cocaine. Read The Full Story U.S. Bird Flu Watch Said To Focus On Wrong Area 2006-12-05 20:33:23 The federal government has been looking in the wrong direction for signs that bird flu has arrived on the U.S. mainland, research suggests. A study in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that birds flying north from Latin America are more likely to bring the H5N1 virus to the United States than are those migrating from Asia. The United States' $29 million bird flu surveillance program has focused heavily on migratory birds flying from Asia to Alaska. Yet those birds present a much lower risk than do migratory birds that come into contact with the hundreds of thousands of chickens imported each year to Central America and Mexico, said A. Marm Kilpatrick, lead author of the study. Read The Full Story Power Of Privacy Board Questioned 2006-12-05 20:30:41 Civil liberties advocates urged a White House privacy board Tuesday to review aggressively the government's warrantless surveillance program, even as they questioned whether it has the power to do so. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, created in late 2004 after a recommendation by the Sept. 11 commission, held its first hearing with testimony from nongovernment experts on ways to protect Americans' rights during the war on terror. Its five members, who left the agenda open, repeatedly found themselves under scrutiny. ''This board needs to bring a little sunshine,'' said Caroline Frederickson, director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office. She said she was disappointed panel members recently praised the surveillance program's safeguards that a federal judge initially ruled as illegal. Read The Full Story China Pursues Major Role In Particle Physics 2006-12-05 04:11:46 Mao Zedong dreamed of splitting an electron. This was no idle diversion. According to natural dialectics, which formed the philosophical underpinnings of Marxism, the entire universe, from top to bottom, was seething with tension and change. As a result, Mao thought, nature should be infinitely divisible. "Take a footlong stick and remove half every day. In 10,000 years it will not run out," Mao, who rarely missed the chance to chat up physicists, often said. "This is truth. If you don't believe it, you may test it. If there is an end, there is no science." Suitably inspired by such thoughts, in the 1960s Chinese physicists invented a sort of onion-layer theory of particles called the straton model, in which both protons and electrons have a common constituent. Sheldon Glashow, the physicist and Nobelist now at Boston University, once suggested that such a particle, if found, should be named the Maon. Read The Full Story NASA Wants Self-Sustaining Moon Settlement By 2024 2006-12-05 04:06:46 NASA unveiled plans yesterday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts at the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020 - the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system. The long-awaited proposal envisions initial stays of a week by four-person crews, followed by gradually longer visits until power and other supplies are in place to make a permanent presence possible by 2024. The effort was presented as an unprecedented mission to learn about the moon and places beyond, as well as an integral part of a long-range plan to send astronauts to Mars. The moon settlement would ultimately be a way station for space travelers headed onward, and would provide not only a haven but also hydrogen and oxygen mined from the lunar surface to make water and rocket fuel. Read The Full Story U.S. Army Equipment Wearing Out 2006-12-05 04:05:54 Field upon field of more than 1,000 battered M1 tanks, howitzers and other armored vehicles sit amid weeds here at the 15,000-acre Anniston Army Depot - the idle, hulking formations symbolic of an Army that is wearing out faster than it is being rebuilt. The Army and Marine Corps have sunk more than 40 percent of their ground combat equipment into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to government data. An estimated $17 billion-plus worth of military equipment is destroyed or worn out each year, blasted by bombs, ground down by desert sand and used up to nine times the rate in times of peace. The gear is piling up at depots such as Anniston, waiting to be repaired. The depletion of major equipment such as tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and especially helicopters and armored Humvees has left many military units in the United States without adequate training gear, officials say. Partly as a result of the shortages, many U.S. units are rated "unready" to deploy, officials say, raising alarm in Congress and concern among military leaders at a time when Iraq strategy is under review by the White House and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. Read The Full Story Litvinenko Case: British Investigators Face Extradition Obstacle In Moscow 2006-12-05 04:04:42 The polonium-210 poisoner who claimed the life of the former spy Alexander Litvinenko may never face British justice because Russian citizens cannot be extradited to stand trial, the Guardian has learned. As a team of Scotland Yard detectives touched down at Moscow's Domodedovo airport last night to interview a series of possible witnesses, the scale of the judicial and political problems which they are likely to face was becoming clear. Their arrival coincided with the news that a room in the British embassy in Moscow is to be tested for radioactive contamination; it is thought that the room is where businessmen Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun gave a statement about their London meeting with Litvinenko to Britain's deputy ambassador on November 23. Read The Full Story E. Coli Sickens 39 People In New Jersey, New York 2006-12-05 04:03:35 At least 39 people in central New Jersey and in New Yoirk's Long Island were infected, two of them critically, with E. coli bacteria in an outbreak of food poisoning last month that has been traced to the Taco Bell restaurant chain, health officials in New York and New Jersey said Monday. It was the nation's most serious outbreak of E. coli toxins since mid-September, when the same strain of the bacteria, linked to packages of contaminated spinach grown in California, killed three people and infected more than 200 in 26 states. Taco Bell, which serves burritos, quesadillas and other Mexican specialties in 5,800 outlets in the United States and generated sales of $6.2 billion last year, voluntarily closed one outlet in South Plainfield, New Jersey, where 20 customers and 2 workers became infected, and eight other restaurants on Long Island, in what it called a temporary precaution to sanitize and restock outlets where E. coli had been traced. Read The Full Story
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