Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday January 1 2007 - (813)

Monday January 1 2007 edition
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Deadline Looms At U.S. Death Toll In Iraq Reaches 3,000 2007-01-01 02:13:09 As George Bush hacked down brushwood and rode his bike at his Crawford, Texas, ranch this weekend, he gave the impression of a U.S. president little preoccupied by two Iraq milestones that complicate his deliberations on a change of strategy. The first, the hanging of Saddam Hussein, found Bush asleep, and according to advisers he spent only a short time discussing the execution. The second, the reports of the 3,000th U.S. fatality in Iraq, evinced a only general remark. "The most painful aspect of the presidency is the fact that I know my decisions have caused young men and women to lose their lives," said Bush at an end-of-year press conference in Texas. A White House spokesman added simply that the president "will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain". The 3,000 figure was arrived at by the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an internet-based monitoring group, and by the Associated Press, which keeps its own tally of U.S. military deaths. The Pentagon disputed the figures, saying that the total of confirmed dead was 2,983. Nonetheless, the widespread reporting of the grim milestone appeared set to offset whatever boost Bush will get from the news about Saddam's death. Read The Full Story Bombs In Bangkok Kill 2, Wound At Least 34 2007-01-01 02:12:34 A volley of nine bombs shattered year-end celebrations in Bangkok last night, killing two people and wounding at least 34, including two Britons. Six near-simultaneous bombs at various points across the capital in the early evening were followed by three explosions shortly before midnight at Central World Plaza, a chic shopping mall with designer stores popular with expatriates. The location was close to where the main countdown celebration for New Year had been due to take place before officials called it off. The injured Britons were named as Alistair Graham, 47, and Paul Hewitt, 55. Hewitt told the Guardian he had been hailing a taxi when an explosion ripped across the street. "There was a huge flash and then I saw blood pouring out of my arm," he said. "Funnily enough I didn't feel anything." Neither was seriously hurt. The other injured foreigners were a Hungarian, an American and two Serbs. Read The Full Story 180 Survivors Of Indonesian Ferry Sinking Rescued, Hundreds Still Missing 2007-01-01 02:11:39 More survivors from an Indonesian ferry sinking were being brought ashore on Monday, but hundreds are still missing and bodies were scattered for miles on beaches along Java's coastline. Rescuers had found nearly 180 survivors from the ferry that went down in stormy seas around midnight on Friday with close to 700 people on board, one official said late on Sunday. Confirmed deaths were just five. There were reports of scores more bodies recovered or sighted but officials were having difficulty compiling definitive data. "We are having problems because the victims are spread all across the beaches from Jepara to Rembang to Tuban and a lot of people are looking for victims, including sailors," said Toni Syaiful, spokesman for the navy's eastern fleet. The area he described stretches some 175 kilometers (110 miles) long. Read The Full Story Family Clues May Lead To Iraq's Missing Oil Billions 2006-12-31 02:04:49 Intellpuke: Saddam Hussein is dead and now the hunt for his illicit fortune is intensifying. Officials from the FBI and the U.S. Treasury are focusing their investigation on $4.4 billion in illegal oil profits, according to the following report by Jason Burke, reporting for The Observer. Mr. Burke's article follows: American and Iraqi government investigators tracing hundreds of millions of dollars missing from Saddam Hussein's illicit fortune are hoping to question members of the former dictator's close family. Officials from the FBI, the American Treasury and the State Department particularly want to find £2.2 billion ($4.4 billion) in illegal profits that Saddam's regime is alleged to have earned from 2000-2003 from an oil-for-trade pact signed with Syria that was outside the official United Nations administered oil-for-food program, according to official documents released to a U.S. congressional sub-committee. State Department and Treasury officials claim that Syria has failed to account properly for more than $500 million  in Iraqi oil profits. The cash, deposited in Syria's central bank, was paid to Syrian "businessmen" after Saddam's fall, say sources. Syrian officials deny the allegations, saying that visits by American officials to Damascus in the autumn of 2003 failed to uncover any evidence of the missing cash apart from $300 million that has already been frozen. Read The Full Story China Chokes On A Coal-Fired Boom 2006-12-31 02:03:30 A great coal rush is under way across China on a scale not seen anywhere since the 19th century. Its consequences have been detected half a world away in toxic clouds so big that they can seen from space, drifting across the Pacific to California laden with microscopic particles of chemicals that cause cancer and diseases of the heart and lung. Nonetheless, the Chinese plan to build no fewer than 500 new coal-fired power stations, adding to some 2,000, most of them unmodernized, that spew smoke, carbon dioxide and sulphur diocide into the atmosphere. It is the political fallout of that decision that is likely to challenge the foundations on which Britain and other developed nations have built their climate change policy - even as there are signs that ordinary Chinese citizens are at last rebelling against lives spent in poisonous conditions. Read The Full Story Hundreds Die In Indonesian Ferry Disaster 2006-12-31 02:02:23 Survivors of an Indonesian ferry disaster told Saturday night how they had fought each other for life jackets as the vessel broke apart and sank, drowning up to 500 passengers. The Senopati ran into trouble off Mandalika island, about 300 kilometers northeast of the capital, Jakarta, amid heavy storms. Huge waves crashed over the bows as the ship was travelling across the Java Sea from Borneo to the port of Semarang, central Java. In the last radio contact, the captain said that the ferry was damaged and capsizing. "We all just prayed as waves got higher," said Cholid, a passenger who survived by clinging to wooden planks, but lost his daughter. "The ship broke up after turning upside down." Read The Full Story	Planet-Hunter Searches For Second 'Earth' 2007-01-01 02:12:51 The hunt for a second Earth began in earnest late last week with the launch of a space probe that will peer beyond the solar system to distant planets warmed by the faintest of stars. At 2:23 p.m. U.K. time a modernized soyuz rocket tore into the sky over Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying Corot, the first space telescope designed to find habitable planets orbiting stars in remote solar systems. The mission, which will take place over a two-and-a-half-year period, will look for rocky worlds about twice the size of Earth that lie in what space scientists call habitable zones, the "Goldilocks" regions of space in every solar system where heat from the nearest star is neither too hot nor too cold to sustain liquid water - believed to be the essential ingredient for life. Warm rocky planets similar in size to Earth are astronomers' best hope of finding extraterrestrial life, and any spotted by Corot will be studied intensely by future missions scheduled for the next decade. The mission will also prove invaluable for scientists hoping to understand how planets form and how common other "Earths" may be. Read The Full Story Belarus Avoids Cold New Year By Capitulating To Russia On Gas Price Increase 2007-01-01 02:12:05 Belarus narrowly escaped a winter energy crisis last night after a last-minute deal on gas prices was struck with Russian gas monopoly Gazprom. Gazprom had said it would cut off supplies to Belarus, also threatening fuel supplies to European countries served by the Belarus pipeline, if a deal was not reached by midnight last night. The five-year contract will require Belarus to pay $100 per 1,000 cubic meters, a steep rise on the previous tariff of $45, but a reduction from the $105 that Gazprom had demanded. The agreement requires Belarus to pay gradually increasing prices after the current contract until world market levels are reached by 2011. "A mid-term agreement was reached on gas prices to Belarus and on transit shipments to Europe," Gazprom boss Alexei Miller told a press briefing at the Russian gas monopoly's headquarters. Read The Full Story Scientists Genetically Engineer Cattle Without Mad Cow Protein 2007-01-01 02:11:09 Scientists said Sunday that they have used genetic engineering techniques to produce the first cattle that may be biologically incapable of getting mad cow disease. The animals, which lack a gene that is crucial to the disease's progression, were not designed for use as food. They were created so that human pharmaceuticals can be made in their blood without the danger that those products might get contaminated with the infectious agent that causes mad cow. That agent, a protein known as a prion (pronounced PREE-on), can cause a fatal human ailment, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, if it gets into the body. More generally, said scientists, the animals will facilitate studies of prions, which are among the strangest of all known infectious agents because they do not contain any genetic material. Prions also cause scrapie in sheep and fatal wasting diseases in elk and minks. Read The Full Story Now, You Have To Believe That A Man Can Fly - At 187 MPH - Without A Plane! 2006-12-31 02:04:05 For those who are bored with hang-gliding or find skydiving just too dull, a Swiss airline captain has devised the ultimate aerial thrill: flying like a bird. Thanks to high technology and nerve, Yves Rossy has come closer than anyone to realizing the ancient dream of soaring free, flitting through the sky, guided only by the body. As well as a crash helpet he wears a small pair of wings and four tiny jet engines. As he skims the Alps at up to 187 m.p.h. (300 km/h), the only thing that the former fighter pilot has come up against so far is the Swiss law. "They were totally confused," said the birdman, whose flying suit gives him a passing resemblance to Buzz Lightyear in "Toy Story". "The authorities said that I was an unregistered aircraft and to fly, you need a license. I told them, 'No. To fly, you need wings'." Read The Full Story Hundreds Of U.S. Drivers Rescued In Massive Winter Storm 2006-12-31 02:03:01 A winter storm stretching nearly from Canada to Mexico rolled out of the Rockies on Saturday, sparing Denver, Colorado, another round of heavy snow but trapping drivers farther east in 10-foot drifts. Denver had expected a foot or more of additional snow through Sunday, but the storm trudged northeast from New Mexico into the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. Parts of eastern Colorado still expected up to 2 feet, along with high winds. "It's still a very powerful storm," said meteorologist Jim Kalina of the National Weather Service. Winds exceeding 50 mph produced whiteout conditions. National Guard troops in tracked vehicles crawled through the blizzard to rescue hundreds of motorists who became stranded in the region's second blizzard during the busy holiday travel season. Read The Full Story
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