Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday January 31 2007 - (813)

Wednesday January 31 2007 edition
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Scientists Criticize White House Stance On Climate Change Findings 2007-01-31 03:17:13 Under its new Democratic chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman, of California, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform took on the Bush administration’s handling of climate change science Tuesday, and even the Republicans on the panel had little good to say about the administration’s actions. The subject of the hearing was accusations of administration interference with the work of government climate scientists. Almost to a person, Republicans on the panel introduced themselves by proclaiming their agreement that the earth’s climate was warming and that the principal culprit was greenhouse gases generated by people and their machinery. And when witnesses spoke in defense of the administration, it was often to say only that there were still some scientists who doubted that climate view or that the administration’s approach was not unique. Read The Full Story Congress Seeks Consensus On Global Warming 2007-01-31 03:16:36 As 600 scientists meet this week in Paris to finalize the first worldwide assessment in six years of the evidence on global warming, lawmakers on Capitol Hill searched for a political consensus Tuesday on how to address climate change. In a prolonged Senate hearing that one senator compared to "open-mike night," several lawmakers spoke in passionate terms about a need to put a cap on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions before global warming's effects become irreversible, while others sketched out possible policy compromises on the contentious issue. In a separate House hearing, a bipartisan group of lawmakers questioned whether the Bush administration has been suppressing climate science. Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Delaware), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee who has pressed to regulate greenhouse gases for several years, said he did not want his children and grandchildren chastising him for inaction in decades to come. "I don't want them to say, 'What did you do about it? What did you do about it when you had an opportunity? Weren't you in the Senate?' " Carper asked, adding that he hoped to tell them, "I tried to move heaven and Earth to make sure we took a better course." Read The Full Story Miller's Testimony Hurts Libby's Defense 2007-01-31 03:15:29 Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller Tuesday helped the prosecutor who landed her in jail and forced her into the witness chair, providing potentially damaging information about the confidential administration source she tried to shield, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Deliberately and sometimes defensively offering her account in Libby's perjury trial, Miller told the jury that "a very irritated and angry" Libby told her in a confidential conversation on June 23, 2003, that the wife of a prominent critic of the Iraq war worked at the CIA. Libby had told investigators he believed he first learned that information from another journalist nearly three weeks later - the assertion at the core of the charges against him. Miller testified that Libby, then the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, shared this information as they talked alone in his office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and that he complained that the CIA and a former ambassador were unfairly trying to blame the White House for using faulty intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. He then mentioned that the wife of the ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV, worked at a bureau of the CIA. Read The Full Story Linden Labs Sends "Permit-and-Proceed" Letter To First Life 2007-01-31 01:22:27   Linden Labs, creators of "Second Life" issued the following "Permit and Proceed" letter to "Get A First Life", and parody  of Second Life.    Typically in the business world, companies are very threatened by competition, and offended by anyone who would make fun of their product, company, or staff.  In this case, the good folks at Linden Labs, who apparently have a good sense of humor, issued exactly the opposite.   They've invited the folks at Get A First Life to continue, as well as selling products bearing their parody logo.    This is a refreshing change.  The full text of the letter follows. Read The Full Story British Police Arrest Lord Levy Again In Cash-For-Honors Investigation 2007-01-30 21:51:05 British Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief fundraiser and confidant Lord Levy was arrested for a second time Tuesday on suspicion of perverting the course of justice over his role in the cash-for-honors affair. The dramatic development suggests Lord Levy, who answers directly to the prime minister, is suspected of allegedly lying or withholding evidence from detectives as part of a coverup. Police are known to be following a trail of encrypted emails and electronic trails on computer hard drives as part of their 10-month inquiry. Scotland Yard detectives, who are investigating whether money was donated to the Labor party in exchange for peerages, placed the peer under arrest when he went to a central London police station to answer bail Tuesday. Perverting the course of justice involves attempts to put obstacles in the way of police. It is considered an extremely serious offense by the British courts. The maximum jail penalty is life although in practice no one has ever been jailed for more than 10 years in the last century. Read The Full Story Senators Assert Right To Block Bush's Iraq Plan, Say Bush Not The Only 'Decider' 2007-01-30 15:45:44 The Senate Judiciary Committee began laying the constitutional groundwork Tuesday for an effort to block President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq, or to put new limits on the conduct of the war there. Democrats on the committee were joined by Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who led the panel for the last two years, in asserting that Bush cannot simply ignore Congressional opposition to his plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. “I would respectfully suggest to the President that he is not the sole decider,” said Specter. “The decider is a joint and shared responsibility.” Read The Full Story Rep. Waxman Seeks Evidence That Bush Administration Sought To Mislead Public On Global Warming 2007-01-30 15:45:16 The Democratic chairman of a House panel examining the government's response to climate change said Tuesday there is evidence that senior Bush administration officials sought repeatedly "to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming". U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, said he and the top Republican on his oversight committee, Rep. Tom Davis, of Virginia, have sought documents from the administration on climate policy, but repeatedly been rebuffed. "The committee isn't trying to obtain state secrets or documents that could affect our immediate national security," said Waxman, opening the hearing. "We are simply seeking answers to whether the White House's political staff is inappropriately censoring impartial government scientists." "We know that the White House possesses documents that contain evidence of an attempt by senior administration officials to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming and minimize the potential danger," said Waxman. Read The Full Story Ashura Holy Day Attacks Leave Dozens Dead In Iraq 2007-01-30 15:44:25 As more than two million Shiite pilgrims converged on Iraq’s shrines to celebrate the holy day of Ashura, three separate attacks in different cities left dozens of worshippers dead in bombings, mortar attacks and ambushes. There were no reports of violence in Iraq’s two holiest cities, Najaf and Karbala, the day after Iraqi security force, aided by American air power and ground troops, defeated hundreds of militants from a renegade Shiite militia that they said was bent on widespread death and destruction on the holy day. Hundreds of suspects were being questioned today about their possible involvement with the group, said officials. Across the country, security forces were on the streets in numbers. Iraqi Army and police checkpoints were augmented by independent checkpoints set up by the Shiite militias that control many key areas. Read The Full Story Commentary: Bush's Conversion On Climate Change Is Illusory 2007-01-30 02:29:28 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by George Monbiot and appears in the Guardian newspaper's edition for Tusday, January 30, 2007. In his commentary, Professor Monbiot writes that President Bush's avowed conversion on climate change is illusory and that he is just drumming up new business for his "chums".  Prof. Monbiot's commentary follows: George Bush proposes to deal with climate change by means of smoke and mirrors. So what's new? Only that it is no longer just a metaphor. After six years of obfuscation and denial, the U.S. now insists that we find ways to block some of the sunlight reaching the earth. This means launching either mirrors or clouds of small particles into the atmosphere. The demand appears in a recent U.S. memo to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It describes "modifying solar radiance" as "important insurance" against the threat of climate change. A more accurate description might be important insurance against the need to cut emissions. Every scheme that could give us a chance of preventing runaway climate change should be considered on its merits. But the proposals for building a global parasol don't have very many. A group of nuclear weapons scientists at the Lawrence Livermore laboratory in California, apparently bored of experimenting with only one kind of mass death, have proposed launching into the atmosphere a million tons of tiny aluminium balloons, filled with hydrogen, every year. One unfortunate side-effect would be to eliminate the ozone layer. Read The Full Story Europe Resists U.S. On Reducing Ties With Iran 2007-01-30 02:28:45 European governments are resisting Bush administration demands that they curtail support for exports to Iran and that they block transactions and freeze assets of some Iranian companies, say officials on both sides. The resistance threatens to open a new rift between Europe and the United States over Iran. Administration officials say a new American drive to reduce exports to Iran and cut off its financial transactions is intended to further isolate Iran commercially amid the first signs that global pressure has hurt Iran’s oil production and its economy. There are also reports of rising political dissent in Iran. In December, Iran’s refusal to give up its nuclear program led the United Nations Security Council to impose economic sanctions. Iran’s rebuff is based on its contention that its nuclear program is civilian in nature, while the United States and other countries believe Iran plans to make weapons. Read The Full Story Main Camera Shutdown 'A Great Loss' For Hubble 2007-01-30 02:27:32 The primary camera on the Hubble Space Telescope has shut down and is likely to be only marginally restored, NASA said Monday, a collapse one astronomer called "a great loss". While other scientific work can still be done by the aging telescope, the unit that failed, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), is the one most scientists depend upon. NASA scientists said that they expect to be able to restore one-third of its observation ability, probably by mid-February. "We're not optimistic at all" about returning it to full function, said Hubble scientist David Leckrone. Read The Full Story	Millions Paid To Iraq Contractors Squandered On Unauthorized Work 2007-01-31 03:16:57 The U.S. government has squandered millions of dollars intended for police training programs in Iraq because of rampant problems overseeing contractors, according to federal reviews released Tuesday. In one case, contractors building a camp for American trainers constructed an Olympic-size swimming pool that hadn't been ordered. In another, human waste reportedly continues to leak from plumbing fixtures at a barracks for Iraqi police recruits, a year after the problem was first identified and despite assurances from the contractor that the problem was being fixed. Together, the reports offer a revealing glimpse at one aspect of the $38 billion American-led reconstruction effort. The police training program has been repeatedly flagged by U.S. officials as particularly crucial to the war effort, given the need for effective Iraqi security forces to take over from the U.S. military. While Tuesday's reports by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction do not address the training itself, they do find major flaws with how both the government and its contractors attempted to build the program's facilities. The flaws, auditors concluded, all had common roots: The government's failure to monitor how contractors were spending taxpayer money. Read The Full Story Ancient Settlement Unearthed Near Stonehenge 2007-01-31 03:15:48 New excavations near the mysterious circle at Stonehenge in southern England have uncovered dozens of homes where hundreds of people lived - at roughly the same time that the giant stone slabs were being erected 4,600 years ago. The finding strongly suggests that the monument and the settlement nearby were a center for ceremonial activities, with Stonehenge probably a burial site, while other nearby circular earthen and timber "henges" were devoted to feasts and festivals. The small homes and personal items found beneath the grounds of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site are the first of their kind from that late Stone Age period in Britain, and they suggest a surprising level of social organization and ceremonial behavior to complement the massive stonework nearby. The excavators said their discoveries, about two miles from Stonehenge itself, together constitute an archaeological treasure. Read The Full Story Sheriff's Wife Among 4 Dead In Shooting 2007-01-31 03:15:03 The wife of a rural Panhandle sheriff, a deputy and two suspects were killed Tuesday evening in shootings outside the sheriff's home in Marianna, Florida. The violence began when Mellie McDaniel, wife of the Jackson County Sheriff, arrived home, said State Attorney Steve Meadows. After pulling into her driveway, the two suspects shot and killed the sheriff's wife, said authorities. A deputy was shot and killed moments later. Deputies and other officers - including the sheriff, John McDaniel - arrived and killed the two suspects in an exchange of gunfire, said Meadows. The names of the deputy and the two suspects were not released. Read The Full Story Europeans Fear U.S. Attack On Iran As Nuclear Impasse Intensifies 2007-01-30 21:51:21 Senior European policy-makers are increasingly worried that the Bush Administration will resort to air strikes against Iran to try to destroy its suspect nuclear program. As transatlantic friction over how to deal with the Iranian impasse intensifies, there are fears in European capitals that the nuclear crisis could come to a head this year because of U.S. frustration with Russian stalling tactics at the United Nations Security Council. "The clock is ticking," said one European official. "Military action has come back on to the table more seriously than before. The language in the U.S. has changed." As the Americans continue their biggest naval build-up in the Gulf since the start of the Iraq war four years ago, a transatlantic rift is opening up on several important aspects of the Iran dispute. The Bush administration will shortly publish a dossier of charges of alleged Iranian subversion in Iraq. "Iran has steadily ramped up its activity in Iraq in the last three to four months. This applies to the scope and pace of their operations. You could call these brazen activities," a senior U.S. official said in London Tuesday. Read The Full Story Canadian Town To Immigrants: You Can't Stone Women 2007-01-30 18:53:18 Immigrants in the small Quebec town of Herouxville must not stone women in public, burn them alive or throw acid on them, according to an extraordinary set of rules made public by the local council. The declaration, published on the town's website, has deepened a debate in the predominantly French-speaking Canadian province over how tolerant Quebecers should be towards the customs and traditions of immigrants. "We wish to inform these new arrivals that the way of life which they abandoned when they left their countries of origin cannot be recreated here," said the declaration, which also says women are allowed to drive, vote, dance, write checks, dress how they want, work and own property. "Therefore we consider it completely outside these norms to ... kill women by stoning them in public, burning them alive, burning them with acid, circumcising them, etc." Read The Full Story Global Climate Panel's First Report Looks Dire, 2nd Report Even More So 2007-01-30 15:45:29 Tidbits of the much-anticipated report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have trickled out over the last week or so - ahead of its official Friday release - and experts on the outside have dickered over whether the findings were spot-on. An early sense that the report would estimate rises in sea levels not quite as dramatic as had been predicted in the past, for instance, caused some chatter - and charges that the panel had failed to include the recent melt-off of large chunks of Greenland and Antarctica. As the Associated Press reported today, "many fear this melt-off will mean the world's coastlines are swamped much earlier than previously thought. Others believe the ice melt is temporary and won't play such a dramatic role." Even as a group of 500 scientists toil in Paris this week, doing a final line-edit on that report, which is still expected to be the strongest and most grave assessment of global warming by the world's experts to date, it is only Part 1 of a three-part series of reports that the panel is compiling. Part 1 describes "The Physical Science Basis" of global warming. Seems though, that Part 2, "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" - not due until April - is where the real fire-and-brimstone stuff is. Yes, a draft copy of that has now leaked out too. Read The Full Story Cheney Aide Recalls Libby Saying 'I Didn't Do It' 2007-01-30 15:45:00 Amid the furor over the 2003 leak of a CIA operative's identity, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, bluntly told a White House lawyer, "I didn't do it," the lawyer testified Tuesday. David Addington, who served as Cheney's legal counsel during the CIA leak scandal, described a September 2003 meeting with Libby around the time that a criminal investigation began. "I just want to tell you, I didn't do it," Addington recalled Libby saying. "I didn't ask what the 'it' was," Addington added. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says Libby discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame with reporters, then lied about those conversations. He is accused of perjury and obstruction but neither he nor anyone else is charged with the leak itself. Read The Full Story U.S. Policy Blamed For Iran's Regional Rise 2007-01-30 02:29:55 Kuwait rarely rebuffs its ally, the United States, partly out of gratitude for the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but in October it reneged on a pledge to send three military observers to an American-led naval exercise in the Gulf, according to U.S. officials and Kuwaiti analysts. "We understood," said a State Department official. "The Kuwaitis were being careful not to antagonize the Iranians." Four years after the United States invaded Iraq, in part to transform the Middle East, Iran is ascendant, many in the region view the Americans in retreat, and Arab countries, their own feelings of weakness accentuated, are awash in sharpening sectarian currents that many blame the United States for exacerbating. Iran has deepened its relationship with Palestinian Islamic groups, assuming a financial role once filled by Gulf Arab states, in moves it sees as defensive and the United States views as aggressive. In Lebanon and Iraq, Iran is fighting proxy battles against the United States with funds, arms and ideology. And in the vacuum created by the U.S. overthrow of Iranian foes in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is exerting a power and prestige that recalls the heady days of the 1979 Islamic revolution, when Iranian clerics led the toppling of a U.S.-backed government. Read The Full Story Bush Directive Increases White House Sway On Regulation 2007-01-30 02:29:08 President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy. In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities. This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats. Read The Full Story Virus Warnings As Microsoft Launches Vista 2007-01-30 02:28:17 Microsoft launches its long-awaited new version of Windows Tuesday with the promise of next-generation computing power, but experts have warned that the system may suffer from the same security problems as its predecessors. Windows Vista, which has been beset by delays, is finally going on sale to the public with the backing of a huge advertising campaign and widespread support from the computer industry. The system - promoted with the tagline "The wow starts now" - is intended to bring huge advances to computer users worldwide, offering detailed 3D graphics, better performance and improved protection from viruses and other online threats. Some security experts, however, are already concerned that the system may not be as secure as users have been led to expect. Webroot Software, one of the plethora of security companies that helps protect Windows users from attacks, said that buyers should be aware of the potential holes in Vista. "We want to make sure that users understand the system's limitations," said Gerhard Eschelbeck, a spokesman for Webroot, "and caution them that Microsoft's anti-virus programs may not fully protect them." In testing, the company said, the new Windows Defender program failed to block 84% of viruses - including 15 of the most common pieces of malicious code. Read The Full Story Analysis: Bush's Big Afghanistan Push Comes To Shove 2007-01-30 02:27:16 Overshadowed by President George Bush's controversial, last-chance bid to salvage American honor in Iraq, the U.S. is mounting a parallel military and reconstruction "surge" in Afghanistan ahead of an anticipated Taliban spring offensive. Washington is also encountering some familiar Iraq-style obstacles: reluctant allies, meddlesome neighbors, a weak central government and the realization that time is not on its side. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice underscored the administration's newfound sense of urgency at a hastily convened NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels last Friday. "Every one of us must take a hard look at what more we can do to help the Afghan people and to support one another," said Rice. "We need greater commitments to reconstruction, to development, to fight the poppy economy. We need additional forces on the ground - ready to fight. And we need to provide greater support for the development of Afghan institutions, especially security forces ... If there is to be a spring offensive, it must be our offensive," said  Rice. Read The Full Story
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Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday January 30 2007 - (813)

Tuesday January 30 2007 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
U.S. Policy Blamed For Iran's Regional Rise 2007-01-30 02:29:55 Kuwait rarely rebuffs its ally, the United States, partly out of gratitude for the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but in October it reneged on a pledge to send three military observers to an American-led naval exercise in the Gulf, according to U.S. officials and Kuwaiti analysts. "We understood," said a State Department official. "The Kuwaitis were being careful not to antagonize the Iranians." Four years after the United States invaded Iraq, in part to transform the Middle East, Iran is ascendant, many in the region view the Americans in retreat, and Arab countries, their own feelings of weakness accentuated, are awash in sharpening sectarian currents that many blame the United States for exacerbating. Iran has deepened its relationship with Palestinian Islamic groups, assuming a financial role once filled by Gulf Arab states, in moves it sees as defensive and the United States views as aggressive. In Lebanon and Iraq, Iran is fighting proxy battles against the United States with funds, arms and ideology. And in the vacuum created by the U.S. overthrow of Iranian foes in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is exerting a power and prestige that recalls the heady days of the 1979 Islamic revolution, when Iranian clerics led the toppling of a U.S.-backed government. Read The Full Story Bush Directive Increases White House Sway On Regulation 2007-01-30 02:29:08 President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy. In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities. This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats. Read The Full Story Virus Warnings As Microsoft Launches Vista 2007-01-30 02:28:17 Microsoft launches its long-awaited new version of Windows Tuesday with the promise of next-generation computing power, but experts have warned that the system may suffer from the same security problems as its predecessors. Windows Vista, which has been beset by delays, is finally going on sale to the public with the backing of a huge advertising campaign and widespread support from the computer industry. The system - promoted with the tagline "The wow starts now" - is intended to bring huge advances to computer users worldwide, offering detailed 3D graphics, better performance and improved protection from viruses and other online threats. Some security experts, however, are already concerned that the system may not be as secure as users have been led to expect. Webroot Software, one of the plethora of security companies that helps protect Windows users from attacks, said that buyers should be aware of the potential holes in Vista. "We want to make sure that users understand the system's limitations," said Gerhard Eschelbeck, a spokesman for Webroot, "and caution them that Microsoft's anti-virus programs may not fully protect them." In testing, the company said, the new Windows Defender program failed to block 84% of viruses - including 15 of the most common pieces of malicious code. Read The Full Story Analysis: Bush's Big Afghanistan Push Comes To Shove 2007-01-30 02:27:16 Overshadowed by President George Bush's controversial, last-chance bid to salvage American honor in Iraq, the U.S. is mounting a parallel military and reconstruction "surge" in Afghanistan ahead of an anticipated Taliban spring offensive. Washington is also encountering some familiar Iraq-style obstacles: reluctant allies, meddlesome neighbors, a weak central government and the realization that time is not on its side. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice underscored the administration's newfound sense of urgency at a hastily convened NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels last Friday. "Every one of us must take a hard look at what more we can do to help the Afghan people and to support one another," said Rice. "We need greater commitments to reconstruction, to development, to fight the poppy economy. We need additional forces on the ground - ready to fight. And we need to provide greater support for the development of Afghan institutions, especially security forces ... If there is to be a spring offensive, it must be our offensive," said  Rice. Read The Full Story Ari Fleischer: Libby Discussed CIA Officer At Lunch 2007-01-29 14:41:49 Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer testified Monday that then-colleague I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told him over lunch that the wife of a prominent war critic worked at the CIA. Fleischer said the conversation happened June 7, 2003, days before Libby told investigators he was surprised to learn about the CIA operative from a reporter. That discrepancy is at the heart of Libby's perjury and obstruction trial. Fleischer, who was the chief White House spokesman for the first 2 1/2 years of President Bush's first term, said Monday that Libby invited him to lunch to discuss Fleischer's planned departure from the White House. He said it was the first time he and Libby had eaten lunch together. They talked about Fleischer's career plans and their shared interest in the Miami Dolphins football team, Fleischer testified. He can't remember who brought it up but he said the conversation then turned to the growing controversy over former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who accused the White House of ignoring prewar intelligence on Iraq. Read The Full Story Italy's Ex-Intelligence Chief Testifies At Rendition Trial 2007-01-29 14:41:07 Nicolo Pollari, former Italian intelligence chief who faces possible indictment over the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, said Monday he never took part in illegal activity. Pollari said at a hearing that he was unable to defend himself properly, claiming documents that would clarify his position had been excluded from the proceedings because they contained state secrets, according to his lawyers. He is one of five Italian intelligence officials facing possible indictment in the alleged abduction of cleric and terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003. Prosecutors say Pollari and other officials of the military intelligence agency SISMI worked with the Americans to abduct the cleric. Read The Full Story U.S., Iraqi Forces Claim 250 Islamist Insurgents Dead In Najaf 2007-01-29 03:39:22 Iraqi troops backed by U.S. helicopters and F-16 jets fought one of the fiercest battles since the end of the 2003 war Sunday, as they attacked insurgents supposedly plotting to wreak carnage at a Shia commemoration. Iraqi officials said 250 members of a messianic Islamic group had been killed in a day of fighting during which a U.S. helicopter was shot down, killing two U.S. servicemen. The high death toll could not be verified last night with the fighting still raging but if confirmed it would represent the highest number of casualties in a single battle since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile in Baghdad at least four mortar shells struck a girls' secondary school Sunday, killing five pupils and wounding 20. Witnesses at al-Khaloud school said the shells thudded into the school's yard at about 11 a.m., when many pupils were gathered for a break. Four girls died instantly and a fifth died later in a hospital. Read The Full Story Commentary: Xenophobes Are Uniting Across Europe 2007-01-29 03:38:19 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Yudit Kiss, a Hungarian economist based in Geneva, Switzerland. The column appears on the Guardian Unlimited's website for Monday, January 29, 2007. Kiss writes that opening European Union membership to Eastern European countries, such as Romania and Bulgaria, has brought with it the undesired side-effect of racists groups a larger voice and a larger political role. Kiss' column follows: The long awaited and welcome accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the European Union has already had a nasty side-effect. It has made it possible for the extreme right to form its own group in the European parliament - giving its parties extra time and money - Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty. Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front, formerly a vociferous opponent of the E.U.'s enlargement, has delegated Bruno Gollnisch, a recidivist Holocaust denier, to head the group. He has received with open arms the five representatives of the Greater Romania party and Dimitar Stoyanov of the Bulgarian Ataka party, who had already made his debut in the European parliament commenting on the bodies and purchase price of Gypsy women. The newcomers will certainly feel at home in the company of Alessandra Mussolini ("proud to be a fascist"), Ashley Mote (formerly of the British Ukip), and the MEPs (European Parliament members) of the migrant-bashing Belgian Vlaams Belang, and the Austrian FPO, formerly headed by Jorg Haider. The proletarians of the world seem to be so disoriented by the blows of industrial change and deregulation that they are rather slow to move. So it is the xenophobes of Europe that are uniting - and demonstrating a great deal of mutual tolerance, despite not so long ago having depicted each other as dangerous aliens. Read The Full Story Starbucks Stirred By Free-Trade Film 2007-01-29 03:37:39 A campaign by Ethiopia to get a fair price for its coffee - some of the world's finest - kicks off in London Monday as a spokesman for the east African country's impoverished coffee growers meets British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The meeting will be accompanied by a screening of the film "Black Gold" - an expose of the global coffee industry - to Parliament members at Westminster, who will also be addressed by the Ethiopian ambassador to Britain. The spokesman, Tadesse Meskela, who is the subject of "Black Gold", together with the film's English makers, brothers Nick and Marc Francis, are a serious irritant to some of the world's coffee giants - in particular Seattle-based Starbucks, whose annual turnover of $7.8 billion (£4 billion) is not much lower than Ethiopia's entire gross domestic product. Read The Full Story Disks Of Hardened Oil Wash Up On Frence Beaches 2007-01-29 03:36:40 Disks of hardened oil have been washing up on beaches in northwestern France, officials said Sunday, and tests will determine if they came from a cargo ship across the English Channel that leaked oil after it was damaged in a storm. The disks range in size from that of a plate to about 11 square feet, officials from the office for the Cotes-d'Armor region said. They began to wash up Friday on beaches in Brittany, which includes Cotes-d'Armor, said officials, adding that the bodies of several birds, covered in oil, also washed up over the weekend. The British cargo ship MSC Napoli was deliberately run aground across the English Channel from Brittany after it was stricken in a storm Jan. 17. The ship was believed to have spilled between 17,000 and 30,000 gallons of oil. Read The Full Story	Commentary: Bush's Conversion On Climate Change Is Illusory 2007-01-30 02:29:28 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by George Monbiot and appears in the Guardian newspaper's edition for Tusday, January 30, 2007. In his commentary, Professor Monbiot writes that President Bush's avowed conversion on climate change is illusory and that he is just drumming up new business for his "chums".  Prof. Monbiot's commentary follows: George Bush proposes to deal with climate change by means of smoke and mirrors. So what's new? Only that it is no longer just a metaphor. After six years of obfuscation and denial, the U.S. now insists that we find ways to block some of the sunlight reaching the earth. This means launching either mirrors or clouds of small particles into the atmosphere. The demand appears in a recent U.S. memo to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It describes "modifying solar radiance" as "important insurance" against the threat of climate change. A more accurate description might be important insurance against the need to cut emissions. Every scheme that could give us a chance of preventing runaway climate change should be considered on its merits. But the proposals for building a global parasol don't have very many. A group of nuclear weapons scientists at the Lawrence Livermore laboratory in California, apparently bored of experimenting with only one kind of mass death, have proposed launching into the atmosphere a million tons of tiny aluminium balloons, filled with hydrogen, every year. One unfortunate side-effect would be to eliminate the ozone layer. Read The Full Story Europe Resists U.S. On Reducing Ties With Iran 2007-01-30 02:28:45 European governments are resisting Bush administration demands that they curtail support for exports to Iran and that they block transactions and freeze assets of some Iranian companies, say officials on both sides. The resistance threatens to open a new rift between Europe and the United States over Iran. Administration officials say a new American drive to reduce exports to Iran and cut off its financial transactions is intended to further isolate Iran commercially amid the first signs that global pressure has hurt Iran’s oil production and its economy. There are also reports of rising political dissent in Iran. In December, Iran’s refusal to give up its nuclear program led the United Nations Security Council to impose economic sanctions. Iran’s rebuff is based on its contention that its nuclear program is civilian in nature, while the United States and other countries believe Iran plans to make weapons. Read The Full Story Main Camera Shutdown 'A Great Loss' For Hubble 2007-01-30 02:27:32 The primary camera on the Hubble Space Telescope has shut down and is likely to be only marginally restored, NASA said Monday, a collapse one astronomer called "a great loss". While other scientific work can still be done by the aging telescope, the unit that failed, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), is the one most scientists depend upon. NASA scientists said that they expect to be able to restore one-third of its observation ability, probably by mid-February. "We're not optimistic at all" about returning it to full function, said Hubble scientist David Leckrone. Read The Full Story U.S.: Air Defense At Nuclear Reactors Impractical 2007-01-29 14:42:03 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded Monday that it is impractical for nuclear power plant operators to try to stop terrorists from crashing an airliner into a reactor. Plant operators instead should focus on limiting radioactive release from any such airborne attack, the agency said in a revised defense plan for America's 103 commercial nuclear plants. The agency approved the new defense plan, most of which is secret, by a 5-0 vote at a brief hearing in which it was not discussed in any detail. The new plan spells out what the operators of the nation's commercial nuclear power plants must be capable of defending against. It assumes that a terrorist attack force would be relatively small - and that its weapons would be limited. Read The Full Story Radioactive Isotope Patients Setting Off Dirty Bomb Alarms 2007-01-29 14:41:30 When 75,000 football fans pack into Dolphin Stadium in Miami for the Super Bowl on Feb. 4, at least a few may want to carry notes from their doctors explaining why they're radioactive enough to set off "dirty bomb" alarms. With the rising use of radioisotopes in medicine and the growing use of radiation detectors in a security-conscious nation, patients are triggering alarms in places where they may not even realize they're being scanned, said doctors and security officials. Nearly 60,000 people a day in the United States undergo treatment or tests that leave tiny amounts of radioactive material in their bodies, according to the Society of Nuclear Medicine. It is not enough to hurt them or anyone else, but it is enough to trigger radiation alarms for up to three months. Read The Full Story Iranian Ambassador Reveals Plan To Expand Role In Iraq 2007-01-29 03:41:12 Iran's ambassador to Baghdad outlined an ambitious plan on Sunday to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq - including an Iranian national bank branch in the heart of the capital - just as the Bush administration has been warning the Iranians to stop meddling in Iraqi affairs. Iran's plan, as outlined by the ambassador, carries the potential to bring Iran into further conflict in Iraq with the United States, which has detained a number of Iranian operatives in recent weeks and says it has proof of Iranian complicity in attacks on American and Iraqi forces. The ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, said Iran was prepared to offer Iraq government forces training, equipment and advisers for what he called "the security fight". In the economic area, said Qumi, Iran is ready to assume major responsibility for Iraq reconstruction, an area of failure on the part of the United States since American-led forces overthrew Saddam Hussein nearly four years ago. "We have experience of reconstruction after war," said Qumi, referring to the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. "We are ready to transfer this experience in terms of reconstruction to the Iraqis." Read The Full Story 'We've Got No Choice', Drought Causes Australian State To Recycle Sewage For Drinking Water 2007-01-29 03:39:03 The Australian state of Queensland plans to introduce recycled sewage to its drinking water as a record drought threatens water supplies around the nation, a state leader said Monday. Queensland state Premier Peter Beattie said falling dam levels have left his government with no choice but to introduce recycled water next year in the state's southeast - one of Australia's fastest growing urban areas. "We're not getting rain; we've got no choice," Beattie, who said his government had scrapped a referendum planned for March on the issue, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. Australian farms and most cities are in the grip of the nation's worst drought in a century, with some areas receiving below average rainfall for a decade. Read The Full Story National Parks Case Could Affect Public's Access 2007-01-29 03:37:59 The plunging waterfalls and soaring crags chiseled by the Merced River draw millions of visitors each year, but the crowds are precisely what threatens the waterway and the park. Efforts to safeguard the Merced have spawned a court battle over the future of development in Yosemite National Park's most popular stretch. The case may come down to the challenge facing all of America's parks: Should they remain open to everyone, or should access be limited in the interest of protecting them? In November, a federal judge barred crews from finishing $60 million in construction projects in Yosemite Valley, siding with a small group of environmentalists who sued the federal government, saying further commercial development would bring greater numbers of visitors, thus threatening the Merced's fragile ecosystem. "The park's plans for commercialization could damage Yosemite for future generations," said Bridget Kerr, a member of Friends of Yosemite Valley, one of two local environmental groups that filed the suit. Read The Full Story Body Found In Airplane Wheel Well At Los Angeles International Airport 2007-01-29 03:36:59 The body of a male stowaway was found Sunday in the wheel well of a British Airways jet at Los Angeles International Airport, said officials. A pilot discovered the body of the young man in the front right wheel well of the 747-400 during a routine inspection shortly before it was to return to London, said airport spokeswoman Nancy Castles. The FBI determined the stowaway likely died in the wheel well, said Castles. Autopsy results won't be available until later this week. Authorities had not identified the victim late Sunday. The aircraft, British Airways Flight 283, had arrived from London Heathrow Airport at 3:15 p.m. and was scheduled to depart at 5:20 p.m. The airline notified officials of the discovery just before 4:30 p.m., said Castles. Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php

Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday January 29 2007 - (813)

Monday January 29 2007 edition
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Iranian Ambassador Reveals Plan To Expand Role In Iraq 2007-01-29 03:41:12 Iran's ambassador to Baghdad outlined an ambitious plan on Sunday to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq - including an Iranian national bank branch in the heart of the capital - just as the Bush administration has been warning the Iranians to stop meddling in Iraqi affairs. Iran's plan, as outlined by the ambassador, carries the potential to bring Iran into further conflict in Iraq with the United States, which has detained a number of Iranian operatives in recent weeks and says it has proof of Iranian complicity in attacks on American and Iraqi forces. The ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, said Iran was prepared to offer Iraq government forces training, equipment and advisers for what he called "the security fight". In the economic area, said Qumi, Iran is ready to assume major responsibility for Iraq reconstruction, an area of failure on the part of the United States since American-led forces overthrew Saddam Hussein nearly four years ago. "We have experience of reconstruction after war," said Qumi, referring to the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. "We are ready to transfer this experience in terms of reconstruction to the Iraqis." Read The Full Story 'We've Got No Choice', Drought Causes Australian State To Recycle Sewage For Drinking Water 2007-01-29 03:39:03 The Australian state of Queensland plans to introduce recycled sewage to its drinking water as a record drought threatens water supplies around the nation, a state leader said Monday. Queensland state Premier Peter Beattie said falling dam levels have left his government with no choice but to introduce recycled water next year in the state's southeast - one of Australia's fastest growing urban areas. "We're not getting rain; we've got no choice," Beattie, who said his government had scrapped a referendum planned for March on the issue, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. Australian farms and most cities are in the grip of the nation's worst drought in a century, with some areas receiving below average rainfall for a decade. Read The Full Story National Parks Case Could Affect Public's Access 2007-01-29 03:37:59 The plunging waterfalls and soaring crags chiseled by the Merced River draw millions of visitors each year, but the crowds are precisely what threatens the waterway and the park. Efforts to safeguard the Merced have spawned a court battle over the future of development in Yosemite National Park's most popular stretch. The case may come down to the challenge facing all of America's parks: Should they remain open to everyone, or should access be limited in the interest of protecting them? In November, a federal judge barred crews from finishing $60 million in construction projects in Yosemite Valley, siding with a small group of environmentalists who sued the federal government, saying further commercial development would bring greater numbers of visitors, thus threatening the Merced's fragile ecosystem. "The park's plans for commercialization could damage Yosemite for future generations," said Bridget Kerr, a member of Friends of Yosemite Valley, one of two local environmental groups that filed the suit. Read The Full Story Body Found In Airplane Wheel Well At Los Angeles International Airport 2007-01-29 03:36:59 The body of a male stowaway was found Sunday in the wheel well of a British Airways jet at Los Angeles International Airport, said officials. A pilot discovered the body of the young man in the front right wheel well of the 747-400 during a routine inspection shortly before it was to return to London, said airport spokeswoman Nancy Castles. The FBI determined the stowaway likely died in the wheel well, said Castles. Autopsy results won't be available until later this week. Authorities had not identified the victim late Sunday. The aircraft, British Airways Flight 283, had arrived from London Heathrow Airport at 3:15 p.m. and was scheduled to depart at 5:20 p.m. The airline notified officials of the discovery just before 4:30 p.m., said Castles. Read The Full Story Saudi Officials Seek To Keep Oil Prices Around $50 A Barrel 2007-01-28 17:25:05 Saudi Arabia, which benefited immensely from record oil prices last year, has sent signals in the past two weeks that it is committed to keeping oil at around $50 a barrel - down $27 a barrel from the summer peak that shook consumers across the developed world. The indications came in typically cryptic fashion for the oil-rich kingdom. In Tokyo last week, Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, said Saudi Arabia’s policy was to maintain “moderate prices.” The previous week, on a stop in New Delhi, he effectively put his veto on an emergency meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to prop up prices after oil briefly dropped below $50 a barrel, the lowest level in nearly two years. The events that propelled oil prices above $77 a barrel last July, then dragged them down again, were beyond the control of any single producer. Still, Saudi Arabia, which is by far the largest oil producer within OPEC and sets the cartel’s agenda, is seeking to avoid a repeat of the dramatic rise in prices while trying to put a floor beneath them. Read The Full Story At Least 5 Killed, 20 Wounded In Mortar Strike On Girls' School In Iraq 2007-01-28 17:24:34 The girls had just finished taking an exam at a school in the Sunni Adil neighborhood, and were gathering in an inner courtyard Sunday when a mortar suddenly landed between them. Witnesses said the explosion killed at least five girls, aged 12-16, and wounded at least 20, tearing limb from limb, shattering glass, shredding the students' blue and white uniforms, and leaving the survivors bloodied and confused. "She hugged and kissed me, then went outside and the bomb hit," said a teacher at the scene, referring to one of the victims. "After a few minutes, she was dead." "We just don't know what to do with the other girls," said the teacher. "They’re young; they've never seen this." In a city seemingly numb to bloodshed, attacks on schools still have the capacity to shock. Read The Full Story Israeli Government Approves First Muslim Cabinent Minister 2007-01-28 17:23:51 The Israeli cabinet on Sunday approved the first Arab Muslim minister of the Jewish state, a milestone marked here mostly by bitter criticism over what many lawmakers viewed as a politically motivated selection. Raleb Majadele, a Labor Party legislator, was approved by a wide margin as minister without portfolio in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet. Only Avigdor Lieberman, minister of strategic affairs from the Israel Is Our Home party, voted against the nomination. Majadele's approval is "a significant, historic step towards equality and peace in the region," said Amir Peretz, the Labor leader, who chose Majadele for a cabinet post several weeks ago amid an ongoing fight for the party leadership. Read The Full Story Analysis: On Iran, Bush Faces Haunting Echoes Of Iraq 2007-01-28 17:22:56 As President Bush and his aides calibrate how directly to confront Iran, they are discovering that both their words and their strategy are haunted by the echoes of four years ago - when their warnings of terrorist activity and nuclear ambitions were clearly a prelude to war. This time, they insist, it is different. “We’re not looking for a fight with Iran,” R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for policy and the chief negotiator on Iranian issues, said in an interview on Friday evening, just a few hours after Bush had repeated his warnings to Iran to halt “killing our soldiers” and to stop its drive for nuclear fuel. Read The Full Story FIP Update. Expanded Archive Searches and Viewing 2007-01-28 14:17:03   We've added a couple new features to Free Internet Press.   Last week, we added a new search, which will help you find older stories for you.   Today, we've added the "View Archives By Month" link.  This will let you view all the stories for the month, sorting by a few different methods.   You can use the navigation buttons to browse to previous months.   Both links are on the left side, just above the list of recent stories. Read The Full Story Experts Divided Over Climate Change Impact On Antarctic 2007-01-28 00:43:28 Serious disagreement has broken out among scientists over a United Nations climate report's contention that the world's greatest wilderness - Antarctica - will be largely unaffected by rising world temperatures. The report, to be published on Friday, will be one of the most comprehensive on climate change to date, and will paint a grim picture of future changes to the planet's weather patterns. Details of the report were first revealed by The Observer last weekend. However, many researchers believe it does not go far enough. In particular, they say it fails to stress that climate change is already having a severe impact on the continent and will continue to do so for the rest of century. At least a quarter of the sea ice around Antarctica will disappear in that time, say the critics, though this forecast is not mentioned in the study. One expert denounced the report - by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC - as "misleading". Another accused the panel of "failing to give the right impression" about the impact that rising levels of carbon dioxide will have on Antarctica. Read The Full Story Iran's Nuclear Plans In Chaos, But It's Propaganda Could Provoke Israeli Attacks 2007-01-28 00:42:31 Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology. Iran's uranium enrichment program has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes. Despite Iran being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world peace - in particular by an increasingly bellicose Israel and its closest ally, the U.S. - a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian program have told The Observer it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production. Read The Full Story Dutch Extradite Man Allegedly Linked To Attacks On U.S. Troops 2007-01-28 00:39:02 The Netherlands' government has extradited a naturalized Dutch citizen charged with involvement in terror attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, the Justice Ministry said Saturday. Iraqi-born Wesam al Delaema, 32, was on a plane headed for an undisclosed location in the U.S., said Justice Ministry spokesman Ivo Hommes. In December, Dutch courts ruled that al Delaema could be extradited for his alleged role in attacks on U.S. forces in 2003. Al Delaema will become the first suspect tried in a U.S. court for alleged terrorism in Iraq's bloody insurgency. He is charged in the U.S. with possession of explosives and conspiracy to use them in an attack. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. Read The Full Story	U.S., Iraqi Forces Claim 250 Islamist Insurgents Dead In Najaf 2007-01-29 03:39:22 Iraqi troops backed by U.S. helicopters and F-16 jets fought one of the fiercest battles since the end of the 2003 war Sunday, as they attacked insurgents supposedly plotting to wreak carnage at a Shia commemoration. Iraqi officials said 250 members of a messianic Islamic group had been killed in a day of fighting during which a U.S. helicopter was shot down, killing two U.S. servicemen. The high death toll could not be verified last night with the fighting still raging but if confirmed it would represent the highest number of casualties in a single battle since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile in Baghdad at least four mortar shells struck a girls' secondary school Sunday, killing five pupils and wounding 20. Witnesses at al-Khaloud school said the shells thudded into the school's yard at about 11 a.m., when many pupils were gathered for a break. Four girls died instantly and a fifth died later in a hospital. Read The Full Story Commentary: Xenophobes Are Uniting Across Europe 2007-01-29 03:38:19 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Yudit Kiss, a Hungarian economist based in Geneva, Switzerland. The column appears on the Guardian Unlimited's website for Monday, January 29, 2007. Kiss writes that opening European Union membership to Eastern European countries, such as Romania and Bulgaria, has brought with it the undesired side-effect of racists groups a larger voice and a larger political role. Kiss' column follows: The long awaited and welcome accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the European Union has already had a nasty side-effect. It has made it possible for the extreme right to form its own group in the European parliament - giving its parties extra time and money - Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty. Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front, formerly a vociferous opponent of the E.U.'s enlargement, has delegated Bruno Gollnisch, a recidivist Holocaust denier, to head the group. He has received with open arms the five representatives of the Greater Romania party and Dimitar Stoyanov of the Bulgarian Ataka party, who had already made his debut in the European parliament commenting on the bodies and purchase price of Gypsy women. The newcomers will certainly feel at home in the company of Alessandra Mussolini ("proud to be a fascist"), Ashley Mote (formerly of the British Ukip), and the MEPs (European Parliament members) of the migrant-bashing Belgian Vlaams Belang, and the Austrian FPO, formerly headed by Jorg Haider. The proletarians of the world seem to be so disoriented by the blows of industrial change and deregulation that they are rather slow to move. So it is the xenophobes of Europe that are uniting - and demonstrating a great deal of mutual tolerance, despite not so long ago having depicted each other as dangerous aliens. Read The Full Story Starbucks Stirred By Free-Trade Film 2007-01-29 03:37:39 A campaign by Ethiopia to get a fair price for its coffee - some of the world's finest - kicks off in London Monday as a spokesman for the east African country's impoverished coffee growers meets British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The meeting will be accompanied by a screening of the film "Black Gold" - an expose of the global coffee industry - to Parliament members at Westminster, who will also be addressed by the Ethiopian ambassador to Britain. The spokesman, Tadesse Meskela, who is the subject of "Black Gold", together with the film's English makers, brothers Nick and Marc Francis, are a serious irritant to some of the world's coffee giants - in particular Seattle-based Starbucks, whose annual turnover of $7.8 billion (£4 billion) is not much lower than Ethiopia's entire gross domestic product. Read The Full Story Disks Of Hardened Oil Wash Up On Frence Beaches 2007-01-29 03:36:40 Disks of hardened oil have been washing up on beaches in northwestern France, officials said Sunday, and tests will determine if they came from a cargo ship across the English Channel that leaked oil after it was damaged in a storm. The disks range in size from that of a plate to about 11 square feet, officials from the office for the Cotes-d'Armor region said. They began to wash up Friday on beaches in Brittany, which includes Cotes-d'Armor, said officials, adding that the bodies of several birds, covered in oil, also washed up over the weekend. The British cargo ship MSC Napoli was deliberately run aground across the English Channel from Brittany after it was stricken in a storm Jan. 17. The ship was believed to have spilled between 17,000 and 30,000 gallons of oil. Read The Full Story Iraqi Soldiers Clash With 350 Sunni Insurgents Near Najaf 2007-01-28 17:24:49 Iraqi soldiers supported by U.S. helicopter forces on Sunday clashed with a gathering of insurgents hiding out amid date palm orchards near the southern holy city of Najaf, according to Iraqi officials. For the past several weeks, Sunni insurgents, including Arab fighters from outside Iraq, have stockpiled weapons and dug trenches amid the orchards in apparent preparations to attack the thousands of Shiite Muslim travelers observing the religious holiday of Ashura, said Iraqi officials. Iraqi police stormed the Zarqaa area early Sunday morning, but took heavy gunfire from the orchards, where an estimated 350 to 400 fighters were entrenched, according to Col. Majid Rashid of the Iraqi army in Najaf. Read The Full Story U.S. Officials: Israel May Have Violated Arms Pact 2007-01-28 17:24:10 The Bush administration will inform Congress on Monday that Israel may have violated agreements with the United States when it fired American-supplied cluster munitions into southern Lebanon during its fight with Hezbollah last summer, the State Department said Saturday. The finding, though preliminary, has prompted a contentious debate within the administration over whether the United States should penalize Israel for its use of cluster munitions against towns and villages where Hezbollah had placed its rocket launchers. Cluster munitions are anti-personnel weapons that scatter tiny but deadly bomblets over a wide area. The grenadelike munitions, tens of thousands of which have been found in southern Lebanon, have caused 30 deaths and 180 injuries among civilians since the end of the war, according to the United Nations Mine Action Service. Read The Full Story U.S. Missiles In Eastern Europe Opposed By Locals, Russia 2007-01-28 17:23:18 A Bush administration plan to deploy a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe is drawing protests from Russia  and from residents who oppose hosting foreign military bases and fear the facilities might make their countries targets for attack. The proposed placement of about 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar tracking station in the Czech Republic would pose a "clear threat" to Russia, Col. Gen. Vladimir Popovkin, chief of Russia's Space Forces, told reporters last week. He spoke after the United States announced it would open formal negotiations with the two former client states of the Soviet Union. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin underlined his government's opposition Friday, saying in an interview with the ITAR-Tass news agency that "the creation of a U.S. European anti-missile base can only be regarded as a substantial reconfiguration of the American military presence in Europe." He called the move "a mistaken step with negative consequences for international security". Read The Full Story Sen. Johnson's Illness Raises Concerns, Personal And Political, In Congress 2007-01-28 17:22:05 The desk is heavy and wooden, well-used, not ornate. Lying flat on the uncluttered glass top is a big calendar. Diagonal blue lines cross out the days as they pass. The felt-tip pen is here, ready to continue marking time's march. But the last day that has been dismissed with a blue slash is Tuesday, Dec. 12. For Sen. Tim Johnson, the Democrat from South Dakota, time is in suspension now. Everything in his Hart Building office is exactly how he left it last Dec. 13: The morning when words deserted him, and they rushed him, speechless, to the hospital. By the calendar is the Dec. 13 edition of the Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper. Behind his chair on the thick blue carpet is his briefcase, a scuffed black leather satchel, worn gray in places. Read The Full Story U.S. Army Probes War Contractor Fraud 2007-01-28 00:43:40 From high-dollar fraud to conspiracy to bribery and bid rigging, Army investigators have opened up to 50 criminal probes involving battlefield contractors in the war in Iraq and the U.S. fight against terrorism, the Associated Press has learned. Senior contracting officials, government employees, residents of other countries and, in some cases, U.S. military personnel have been implicated in millions of dollars of fraud allegations. "All of these involve operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait," Chris Grey, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, confirmed Saturday to the A.P. "CID agents will pursue leads and the truth wherever it may take us," said Grey. "We take this very seriously." Read The Full Story Crowds On Both Coasts Protest Iraq War 2007-01-28 00:43:01 Convinced this is their moment, tens of thousands marched Saturday in an anti-war demonstration linking military families, ordinary people and an icon of the Vietnam protest movement in a spirited call to get out of Iraq. Celebrities, a half-dozen lawmakers and protesters from distant states rallied in the capital under a sunny sky, seizing an opportunity to press their cause with a Congress restive on the war and a country that has turned against the conflict. Marching with them was Jane Fonda, in what she said was her first anti-war demonstration in 34 years. "Silence is no longer an option," Fonda said to cheers from the stage on the National Mall. The actress once derided as "Hanoi Jane" by conservatives for her stance on Vietnam said she had held back from activism so as not to be a distraction for the Iraq anti-war movement, but needed to speak out now. Read The Full Story Playwright Tom Stoppard Has 'Oprah-Effect' For Book About Russian Thinkers 2007-01-28 00:39:37 We know all about Oprah Winfrey and Richard and Judy and their ability to send sales of a book spiralling into the stratosphere simply by mentioning the title. But Tom Stoppard? The playwright appears to have acquired Oprah-like powers, at least in Manhattan. The book in question is Isaiah Berlin's "Russian Thinkers", a collection of essays in Berlin's classic prose that surveys the terrain of Russian intellectuals in the 19th century and contains his most famous essay, "The Hedgehog and the Fox". In recent years sales of the book have been, shall we say, steady. Its publisher Penguin says it averaged 36 sales a month across the whole of the United States. Since November, however, booksellers in New York have noticed a strange phenomenon: customers have been requesting the title in growing numbers and there are now 2,000 orders for it that cannot be supplied. Behind the surge lay the opening last November at the Lincoln Centre of Stoppard's epic trilogy "The Coast of Utopia", and an innocent entry at the back of the play's program notes that list seven books, with Berlin's right at the top. Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php

Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday January 28 2007 - (813)

Sunday January 28 2007 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
U.S. Army Probes War Contractor Fraud 2007-01-28 00:43:40 From high-dollar fraud to conspiracy to bribery and bid rigging, Army investigators have opened up to 50 criminal probes involving battlefield contractors in the war in Iraq and the U.S. fight against terrorism, the Associated Press has learned. Senior contracting officials, government employees, residents of other countries and, in some cases, U.S. military personnel have been implicated in millions of dollars of fraud allegations. "All of these involve operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait," Chris Grey, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, confirmed Saturday to the A.P. "CID agents will pursue leads and the truth wherever it may take us," said Grey. "We take this very seriously." Read The Full Story Crowds On Both Coasts Protest Iraq War 2007-01-28 00:43:01 Convinced this is their moment, tens of thousands marched Saturday in an anti-war demonstration linking military families, ordinary people and an icon of the Vietnam protest movement in a spirited call to get out of Iraq. Celebrities, a half-dozen lawmakers and protesters from distant states rallied in the capital under a sunny sky, seizing an opportunity to press their cause with a Congress restive on the war and a country that has turned against the conflict. Marching with them was Jane Fonda, in what she said was her first anti-war demonstration in 34 years. "Silence is no longer an option," Fonda said to cheers from the stage on the National Mall. The actress once derided as "Hanoi Jane" by conservatives for her stance on Vietnam said she had held back from activism so as not to be a distraction for the Iraq anti-war movement, but needed to speak out now. Read The Full Story Playwright Tom Stoppard Has 'Oprah-Effect' For Book About Russian Thinkers 2007-01-28 00:39:37 We know all about Oprah Winfrey and Richard and Judy and their ability to send sales of a book spiralling into the stratosphere simply by mentioning the title. But Tom Stoppard? The playwright appears to have acquired Oprah-like powers, at least in Manhattan. The book in question is Isaiah Berlin's "Russian Thinkers", a collection of essays in Berlin's classic prose that surveys the terrain of Russian intellectuals in the 19th century and contains his most famous essay, "The Hedgehog and the Fox". In recent years sales of the book have been, shall we say, steady. Its publisher Penguin says it averaged 36 sales a month across the whole of the United States. Since November, however, booksellers in New York have noticed a strange phenomenon: customers have been requesting the title in growing numbers and there are now 2,000 orders for it that cannot be supplied. Behind the surge lay the opening last November at the Lincoln Centre of Stoppard's epic trilogy "The Coast of Utopia", and an innocent entry at the back of the play's program notes that list seven books, with Berlin's right at the top. Read The Full Story Experts See Peril In Bush Health Plan 2007-01-27 17:13:47 With his proposal to uproot a tax break that has been in place for more than 60 years, President Bush has touched off an impassioned debate over the future of the employer-based system that provides health insurance to more than half of all Americans. “Changing the tax code is a vital and necessary step to making health care affordable for more Americans,” Bush said in his State of the Union address this week. Bush said his proposal would eliminate a bias in the tax code that strongly favored insurance provided by employers over coverage bought by individuals and families outside the workplace. Paul Fronstin, director of health research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan organization, said: “The president’s proposal would mean the end of employer-based benefits as we know them. It gives employers a way out of providing the benefits because their employees could get the same tax break on their own.” Read The Full Story Abu Ghraib Officer Faces Court Martial 2007-01-27 17:13:16 The only U.S. military officer charged with a crime in the Abu Ghraib scandal will be court-martialed on eight charges, including cruelty and maltreatment of prisoners, the Army said Friday. Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, a 50-year-old reservist from Virginia who ran the interrogation center at the Iraqi prison, was accused of failing to exert his authority as the place descended into chaos, with prisoners stripped naked, photographed in humiliating poses and intimidated by snarling dogs. He was also charged with lying to investigators. Jordan has not been accused of personally torturing or humiliating prisoners and was not pictured in any of the photos that embarrassed the Pentagon and shocked the world. Read The Full Story Washington Finally Recognizes Global Warming 2007-01-27 13:43:42 Maybe it's the weird winter weather, or the newly Democratic Congress. Maybe it's the news reports about starving polar bears, or the Oscar nomination for Al Gore's global warming cri de coeur, "An Inconvenient Truth." Whatever the reason, years of resistance to the reality of climate change are suddenly melting away like the soon-to-be-history snows of Kilimanjaro. Now even George W. Bush says it's a problem. For years, the president and his supporters argued that not enough was known about global warming to do anything about it. But during last week's State of the Union address Bush finally referred to global warming as an established fact. "These technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change," Bush said in proposing a series of measures to reduce gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years. Environmentalists and scientists who study the problem say the nostrums Bush proposed Tuesday night will do little to prevent the serious environmental effects that the globe faces in coming decades. Read The Full Story As Temperatures Rise, So Do Illness And Death 2007-01-27 13:23:21 As global climate change pushes average temperatures higher, heat waves will likely become more frequent and more intense, which could mean tens of thousands of heat-related deaths each year in the United States at a cost of billions of dollars. Then there are indirect health impacts, such as a rise in West Nile virus and other diseases carried by heat-loving mosquitoes. Ironically, California's enviably mild, Mediterranean-style climate could make its population more vulnerable. Compared with those in hotter parts of the country, far fewer California homes, schools and other buildings have air conditioning. "We don't need heat waves or extreme ambient temperatures or high humidity levels" to cause heat-related health problems and deaths, said epidemiologist Rupa Basu of the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. Read The Full Story IAEA: Iran To Start Assembling Centrifuges To Enrich Uranium 2007-01-27 03:08:24 Iran plans to begin work next month on an underground uranium enrichment facility, as part of a plan to create a network of tens of thousands of machines turning out material that could be used to make nuclear arms, United Nations officials said Friday. "I understand that they are going to announce that they are going to build up their 3,000-centrifuge facility ... sometime next month," Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "If Iran takes this step, it is going to confront universal international opposition," warned U.S. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns. "If they think they can get away with 3,000 centrifuges without another Security Council resolution and additional international pressure, then they are very badly mistaken." Read The Full Story Intel: Chips Will Run Faster, Use Less Power 2007-01-27 03:08:01 Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, has overhauled the basic building block of the information age, paving the way for a new generation of faster and more energy-efficient processors. Company researchers said the advance represented the most significant change in the materials used to manufacture silicon chips since Intel pioneered the modern integrated-circuit transistor more than four decades ago. The microprocessor chips, which Intel plans to begin making in the second half of this year, are designed for computers but they could also have applications in consumer devices. Their combination of processing power and energy efficiency could make it possible, for example, for cellphones to play video at length - a demanding digital task - with less battery drain. Read The Full Story Mexico Grapples With Soaring Prices For Corn, Tortillas 2007-01-27 03:06:53 Thick, doughy tortillas roll hot off the conveyor belt all day at Aurora Rosales's little shop in the congested city of Nezahualcoyotl, built on a dry lake bed east of Mexico City. Using cooking techniques that date to the Mayan empire, Rosales has never altered her recipe. Nor did her father, grandfather or great-grandfather. On good days, the neighbors line up for her tortillas. But these are not good days, and sometimes hours pass without any customers. Read The Full Story 11 Girls Dead, More Than A Dozen Injured In India School Collapse 2007-01-27 03:04:55 Rescue teams on Saturday ended their search through the rubble of a school residence in the western Indian state of Gujarat, which collapsed killing 11 girls and injuring over a dozen, said officials. Parts of a three-story hostel belonging to the Adarsh Nivas school in Tichakpura village, 300 kilometers (185 miles) south of the state's main city, Ahmedabad, came down on Friday, burying many students under mounds of rubble. The residence was home to about 150 girls, mainly members of India's disadvantaged tribal communities, and 20 teachers. Read The Full Story North Korea Denies Cooperating With Iran 2007-01-27 03:03:03 North Korea dismissed allegations Saturday that the communist regime is cooperating with Iran in nuclear development, accusing Western media of spreading the rumor to mislead public opinion. The "assertion is nothing but a sheer lie and fabrication intended to tarnish the image of (North Korea) by charging it with nuclear proliferation," the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency. North Korea, which quit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in early 2003, conducted its first-ever nuclear test in October, raising concerns about possible nuclear proliferation. North Korea and Iran - both labeled by President Bush as part of an "axis of evil" along with prewar Iraq - are under growing international pressure to give up their pursuit of nuclear programs. Read The Full Story	Experts Divided Over Climate Change Impact On Antarctic 2007-01-28 00:43:28 Serious disagreement has broken out among scientists over a United Nations climate report's contention that the world's greatest wilderness - Antarctica - will be largely unaffected by rising world temperatures. The report, to be published on Friday, will be one of the most comprehensive on climate change to date, and will paint a grim picture of future changes to the planet's weather patterns. Details of the report were first revealed by The Observer last weekend. However, many researchers believe it does not go far enough. In particular, they say it fails to stress that climate change is already having a severe impact on the continent and will continue to do so for the rest of century. At least a quarter of the sea ice around Antarctica will disappear in that time, say the critics, though this forecast is not mentioned in the study. One expert denounced the report - by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC - as "misleading". Another accused the panel of "failing to give the right impression" about the impact that rising levels of carbon dioxide will have on Antarctica. Read The Full Story Iran's Nuclear Plans In Chaos, But It's Propaganda Could Provoke Israeli Attacks 2007-01-28 00:42:31 Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology. Iran's uranium enrichment program has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes. Despite Iran being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world peace - in particular by an increasingly bellicose Israel and its closest ally, the U.S. - a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian program have told The Observer it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production. Read The Full Story Dutch Extradite Man Allegedly Linked To Attacks On U.S. Troops 2007-01-28 00:39:02 The Netherlands' government has extradited a naturalized Dutch citizen charged with involvement in terror attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, the Justice Ministry said Saturday. Iraqi-born Wesam al Delaema, 32, was on a plane headed for an undisclosed location in the U.S., said Justice Ministry spokesman Ivo Hommes. In December, Dutch courts ruled that al Delaema could be extradited for his alleged role in attacks on U.S. forces in 2003. Al Delaema will become the first suspect tried in a U.S. court for alleged terrorism in Iraq's bloody insurgency. He is charged in the U.S. with possession of explosives and conspiracy to use them in an attack. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. Read The Full Story Pakistan Bombing Near Mosque Kills 11, Including Police Chief, Wounds 35 2007-01-27 17:13:29 A suspected suicide attacker exploded a bomb near a Shiite Muslim mosque in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar late Saturday, killing at least 11 people, including the city police chief, and wounding 35, said police. Most of the victims were police and municipal officials who were clearing the route for a procession of Shiites in a crowded old quarter of Peshawar, said police officer Aziz Khan. The procession had yet to begin. This weekend marks the start of the festival of Ashoura, when Shiites mourn the 7th century death of the prophet Muhammad's grandson, Imam Hussein. In the past the festival has been a target for sectarian attacks. The blast went off in a bazaar area about 200 yards from the mosque that was the starting point for the Shiite procession. It caused a power outage that left the city center in darkness, complicating rescue efforts. Read The Full Story Bush Is Left Isolated As America Turns Green 2007-01-27 15:45:44 For years, the most powerful voice in the US Senate on the environment was a conservative Republican from Oklahoma, James Inhofe, who famously declared "global warming is a hoax", and compared warnings about climate change to Nazi propaganda. This month, he was replaced by Barbara Boxer, a Democratic senator from California who considers global warming "a potential crisis of a magnitude we have never seen". George Bush may have two years to run on his presidency, and remains personally opposed to mandatory caps on carbon gases, but the change in the Senate illustrates how the rest of America has moved on. Congress, big business, state governments such as California, and mayors have embarked on a course that could bring America into step with the international community on climate change. In Congress, Democrats and Republicans have introduced five new bills on climate change so far this month, which would seek to reduce emissions by 60-80% below 1990 levels by the middle of the century. Other legislation that would set a higher standard for fuel efficiency in cars is also in the works. Read The Full Story Tens Of Thousands In D.C. Protest War 2007-01-27 13:43:29 Protesters energized by fresh congressional skepticism about the Iraq war demanded a withdrawal of U.S. troops in a demonstration Saturday that drew tens of thousands and brought Jane Fonda back to the streets. A sampling of celebrities, a half dozen members of Congress and busloads of demonstrators from distant states joined in a spirited rally under a sunny sky, seeing opportunity to press their cause in a country that has turned against the war. Read The Full Story Senator Surprised By Bush Administration Plan To Use FPS Forces In Iraq 2007-01-27 03:08:36 Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new top U.S. commander in Iraq, told Congress that he might supplement efforts to secure Baghdad using the Iraqi Facilities Protection Service, a 150,000-man force that guards Iraqi government agencies. Yet that service is widely considered unreliable, and elements were described in July by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as "more dangerous than the militias," according to Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island). "The prime minister said he wanted to get rid of the FPS as fast as possible," Reed said this week, recalling his meeting with Maliki in Baghdad last summer. There are "bad elements" in FPS units that "are carrying out murders and kidnappings ... [and] attacking the infrastructure that they are supposedly protecting," said Reed in his trip report about what Maliki had told him. "Because of the FPS," Reed wrote, Maliki said that "some governmental ministries' guards are more dangerous than the militias". The FPS was formed in 2003 by order of L. Paul Bremer, then administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, to protect the 27 Iraqi ministries and their facilities throughout Iraq. Each minister, who generally represents one of Iraq's political parties, has his or her own FPS unit, whose armed members wear military uniforms. Read The Full Story Editorial: The Bait-And-Switch White House 2007-01-27 03:08:11 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times' edition for Saturday, January 27, 2007. We often wonder whether there is a limit to the Bush administration’s obsession with secrecy, its assault on the rule of law, its disdain for the powers of Congress, its willingness to con the public and its refusal to heed expert advice or recognize facts on the ground. Events of the past week suggest the answer is no. In his State of the Union speech, Mr. Bush stuck to his ill-conceived plans for Iraq, but at least admitted the situation was dire. He said he wanted to work with Congress and announced a bipartisan council on national security. That lasted a day. By Wednesday evening, Vice President Dick Cheney was on CNN contradicting most of what Mr. Bush had said. We were left asking, once again, Who exactly is running this White House? Read The Full Story In Presidential Hunt, Sen. Clinton Has To Gain Ground In Iowa 2007-01-27 03:07:19 When New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton arrives in Des Moines, Iowa, for her first presidential campaign events this weekend, she will encounter unfamiliar terrain - a landscape where she is not the perceived front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Although Clinton appears formidable at the national level, she has not built up a lead in Iowa, home of the first caucuses of the 2008 campaign next January. Most recent polls of Iowa Democrats have shown former senator John Edwards of North Carolina in the lead, with Clinton in a pack that includes Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack. "This is anyone's race to win, including obviously Governor Vilsack, who is very familiar with the landscape here," said newly elected Iowa Gov. Chet Culver (D), who met with Clinton shortly after she arrived Friday afternoon but who is remaining neutral. "That's the wonderful thing about the caucus process. The winner will have to earn it." That puts Clinton in the unusual position of having to prove herself against other Democrats, and having to build up a political infrastructure in Iowa at a time when many rivals already have a head start. Her appearances here - her first in more than three years - are certain to start a media frenzy, potentially intruding on the direct access to candidates that caucus-goers have come to expect. Read The Full Story At Least 13 Killed In Palestinian Factional Violence 2007-01-27 03:06:11 Hamas gunmen stormed the home of a fighter from the rival Fatah movement Friday, witnesses said, sparking a deadly gun battle. The clash capped a day of factional violence across the Gaza Strip that killed at least 13 people, including a 2-year-old boy. The fighting, among the deadliest in nearly two months, marred the anniversary of Hamas's upset victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections. After nightfall, gunfire continued to echo through Gaza City. The heaviest shooting was concentrated around the residence of Mansour Shaleil, a Fatah leader in the Jabalya refugee camp just north of Gaza City. Hamas gunmen surrounded the house early Friday to detain Shaleil, accusing him of involvement in a shooting in which two Hamas supporters were killed. After an hours-long standoff, dozens of gunmen stormed the house and exchanged fire with Shaleil and a supporter, according to witnesses and ambulance drivers. Read The Full Story Dow Ends Down 15.54 On Economic Reports 2007-01-27 03:04:39 Wall Street closed out a volatile week with a mixed performance Friday after a pair of economic reports dashed hopes for an interest rate cut anytime soon. The major indexes were down for the week. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 15.54, or 0.12 percent, to 12,487.02. Stocks found some late-day strength as investors sought bargains after a two-day pullback that erased most of its 2007 gains. The market had its worst performance so far this year, despite optimism about earnings earlier in the week that lifted the Dow Jones industrials to its fourth record high of the year. Strong results from Microsoft Corp. helped lift technology stocks, while heavy machinery maker Caterpillar Inc.  lent some support to the Dow Jones industrials. However, those gains were offset by economic reports that raised concerns about interest rates. Read The Full Story
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