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
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