Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday January 27 2007 - (813)

Saturday January 27 2007 edition
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Senator Surprised By Bush Administration Plan To 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 Shia Death Squad Commander: 'If They Pay We Kill Them Anyway' 2007-01-26 20:38:48 Fadhel is a slim, well-muscled 26-year-old Mahdi Army commander with a thin goatee beard and smoothed down hair that looks like a flat cap. One day last month he described how he and his men seized a group of three Sunni men suspected of killing his fellow Shia. "I followed the group for weeks and then one of them crossed the bridge to Karrada [a Shia district]. We first informed a nearby Iraqi army checkpoint that we were arresting terrorists then we attacked them and put them in the boots (trunks) of the cars. We only have six to seven minutes when we grab someone - we have to act quickly, if he resists we shoot him." In this case, he said, the men were taken to Sadr City, the Shia slum to the northeast of Baghdad, where they were interrogated by a "committee" which ordered their execution. "We ask the families of the terrorists for ransom money," said Fadhel. "And after they pay the ransom we kill them anyway." Kidnapping in Baghdad these days is as much about economics as retribution or sectarian hatred. Another Shia man close to the Mahdi Army told me: "They kidnap 10 Sunnis, they get ransom on five, and kill them all, in each big kidnap operation they make at least $50 000, it's the best business in Baghdad." Read The Full Story Iran Rejects U.N.'s Chief Nuclear Inspector 2007-01-26 20:38:19 Iran has demanded the removal of the United Nations official in charge of inspecting the country's nuclear program, diplomats have said. The official, Chris Charlier, has already been banned from entering Iran. Iran has the right to reject inspectors from the U.N.'s nuclear agency, the IAEA, that it does not want. There are growing international fears Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful uses only. Read The Full Story 14 Killed In Central Baghdad Bomb Attack 2007-01-26 17:17:26 A bomb hidden in a box holding pigeons tore through a crowded pet and livestock market Friday, killing at least 14 people and wounding dozens, said police, in a blast that left the carcasses of dead birds, dogs and other animals scattered on the blood-soaked ground. The attack struck a day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisted there will be "no safe place in Iraq for terrorists," and a suicide car bombing in the Shiite neighborhood of Karradah. Police raised the casualty toll in that attack to 30 killed and 61 wounded. Al-Maliki's comments came Thursday during a raucous session of parliament, with a heated exchange between the Shiite leader and Sunni legislator and cleric Abdul-Nasser al-Janabi, who accused the Shiite-dominated government of carrying out purges against Sunnis, the minority sect in Iraq. Read The Full Story NATO Allies Wary Of Bush's Afghanistan Proposal 2007-01-26 17:16:43 America’s European allies remained noncommittal about sending additional troops to Afghanistan Friday, even as the Bush administration sought to inject new energy into the NATO mission against the Taliban by offering more American soldiers and money. Officially, the language at a NATO meeting in Brussels, Belgium, reflected resolve and commitment on Afghanistan. NATO “is stepping up its game in Afghanistan on all fronts,” the alliance’s secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, of the Netherlands, said. “The fact that you saw so many people from the international community sitting around the table is a strong message itself.” But beyond the sound bytes, the realities that have troubled the NATO mission in Afghanistan since the 26-member trans-Atlantic alliance took command last year remained on display. France and Germany continued to limit their combat role; both countries have refused to deploy troops in the south of the country, where Taliban forces are strongest. Germany’s Parliament has yet to approve a proposal to send six Tornado reconnaissance jets to southern Afghanistan. Read The Full Story U.N. Approves Resolution Condemning Denial Of Holocaust 2007-01-26 17:15:46 The United Nations General Assembly Friday approved a resolution, drafted by the United States and co-sponsored by 103 countries, that condemns denials of the Holocaust. The resolution came six weeks after a conference in Tehran, Iran, organized by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, questioned whether six million Jews were exterminated during World War II. Ahmadinejad and the conference were not mentioned in the resolution, which "condemns without any reservation any denial of the Holocaust" and "urges all member states unreservedly to reject any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, or any activities to this end." The conference, which drew 67 Holocaust skeptics and deniers from 30 nations, including former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, was widely denounced. Read The Full Story Bush Administration Authorizes U.S. Troops To Kill Or Capture Iranian Operatives In Iraq 2007-01-26 02:58:43 The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran's influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort. For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of suspected Iranian agents, holding them for three to four days at a time. The "catch and release" policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries. U.S. forces collected DNA samples from some of the Iranians without their knowledge, subjected others to retina scans, and fingerprinted and photographed all of them before letting them go. Last summer, however, senior administration officials decided that a more confrontational approach was necessary, as Iran's regional influence grew and U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran appeared to be failing. The country's nuclear work was advancing, U.S. allies were resisting robust sanctions against the Tehran government, and Iran was aggravating sectarian violence in Iraq. Read The Full Story Bush To Pump Another $8 Billion Into Afghanistan 2007-01-26 02:58:02 The White House announced a major shift in its strategy towards Afghanistan Thursday that will see more aid and military help for the country after four years in which it has suffered from Washington's overwhelming focus on Iraq. Facing failure in Iraq, where violence is worsening, the U.S. is anxious to avoid a similar catastrophe in Afghanistan. Billions of dollars are to be pumped into Afghanistan to help build up the army and for reconstruction projects such as roads, water, schools and clinics. About 3,200 U.S. troops in Afghanistan from the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, who were due to return home, are to remain for a further 120 days to help NATO counter an expected Taliban spring offensive. Read The Full Story U.K. Wants To Try Russian Businessman For Litvinenko Murder But ... 2007-01-26 02:57:10 The British government is preparing to demand the extradition of a Russian businessman to stand trial for the poisoning with polonium-210 of the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. Senior Whitehall officials have told the Guardian that a Scotland Yard file on the murder which is about to be passed to the Crown Prosecution Service alleges that there is sufficient evidence against Andrei Lugovoi for the CPS to decide whether he should face prosecution. The government is already bracing itself for the cooling of relations with Moscow, which it believes will be an inevitable consequence of an extradition request. The request could be made as early as next month and government officials are convinced the Kremlin will demand, in return, the extradition of Boris Berezovsky, the Russian millionaire oligarch who was granted asylum in the U.K. Lugovoi, 41, a former bodyguard with the KGB, was one of several people interviewed by detectives from Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command in Moscow last month. The Yard is declining to comment on the case and details of the alleged evidence against Lugovoi remain unclear. Read The Full Story Israel Tries To Cut Iran Off From World Markets 2007-01-26 02:56:12 Israel is launching a campaign to isolate Iran economically and to soften up world opinion for the option of a military strike aimed at crippling or delaying Tehran's uranium enrichment program. Pressure will be applied to major U.S. pension funds to stop investment in about 70 companies that trade directly with Iran, and to international banks that trade with its oil sector, cutting off the country's access to hard currency. The aim is to isolate Tehran from the world markets in a campaign similar to that against South Africa at the height of apartheid. Meanwhile, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to be pursued in international courts for calling the Holocaust a myth, and saying Israel should be wiped off the map. The case will be launched under the 1948 United Nations  convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, which outlaws "direct and public incitement to genocide". Read The Full Story Ex-NBC Treasurer Charged With Embezzling $800,000 From TV Firm 2007-01-26 02:55:08 A former treasurer of the American entertainment empire NBC Universal has been charged with embezzling $800,000 (£400,000) from the company and using the money to splash out on private jets, prawn cocktails and Veuve Cliquot champagne. The FBI arrested Victor Jung Thursday. Until last year he was in charge of cash management at NBC Universal - the company behind hit television shows such as "Law & Order", "The Biggest Loser" and the U.S. version of "The Apprentice". Jung faces two counts of wire fraud, carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. An indictment released by New York's federal prosecutor, Michael Garcia, accuses Jung, 34, of creating a false entity called NBCU Media Productions - a company with a name very similar to a genuine subsidiary, NBC Media Productions. 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 Bush Administration's Answer To Global Warming: Smoke And Giant Space Mirrors 2007-01-26 20:38:33 The U.S. government wants the world's scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming, the Guardian has learned. It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be "important insurance" against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a major United Nations report on climate change, the first part of which will be published on Friday, Feb. 2. The U.S. has also attempted to steer the U.N. report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), away from conclusions that would support a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions - as sought by Tony Blair. It has demanded a draft of the report be changed to emphasize the benefits of voluntary agreements and to include criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, the existing treaty which the U.S. administration opposes. The final IPCC report, written by experts from across the world, will underpin international negotiations to devise a new emissions treaty to succeed Kyoto, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft of the report last year and invited to comment. Read The Full Story Commentary: The Myth Of McCain 2007-01-26 20:38:03 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Simon Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and author of the book "How Bush Rules". Mr. Blumenthal's commentary appears on the Guardian Unlimited's website edition for Saturday, January 27, 2007. His column follows: When Senator John McCain appeared at the Conservative party conference in Bournemouth last October as the presumptive next president of the U.S., the stars seemed fixed in the firmament for him. The myth of McCain appeared as invincible as ever. His war story - a bomber pilot shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, held prisoner for five years and tortured - is the basis of his legend as morally courageous, authentic, unwavering in his convictions, an independent reformer willing to take on the reactionaries of his own party, an "American maverick" as he calls himself in his campaign autobiography. The titles of his books reflect the image: "Character Is Destiny", "Why Courage Matters", and "Faith of My Fathers". Defeat at the hands of George Bush in the battle for the Republican nomination in 2000, in which he was subjected to dirty tricks, completed his canonization. The press corps so venerated him that he called them "my base". Read The Full Story Bush: 'I'm The Decision-Maker' On Iraq 2007-01-26 17:17:08 President Bush Friday rebuffed congressional opponents who want to stop his plan to increase U.S. troop strength in Iraq, declaring that "I'm the decision-maker" on the war effort and challenging skeptics to produce their own plan for success. Bush also vowed forceful action to prevent Iranian operatives in Iraq from harming U.S. troops, but he denied that he wants to expand military action beyond Iraq's borders, and he said his administration would continue working to resolve issues with Iran diplomatically. Bush made the comments in a brief question-and-answer session with reporters following a White House meeting with top defense officials. Among them was newly promoted Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was confirmed unanimously by the Senate this morning as the next commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. Read The Full Story U.S. Confirms Kidnapping Of 4 American Troops In Iraq 2007-01-26 17:16:15 Four American soldiers were abducted during a sophisticated sneak attack last week in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, the U.S. military confirmed Friday. It said three were shot to death and a fourth was mortally wounded with a gunshot to the head when they were found in a neighboring province, far from the compound where they were captured. Two of the four were handcuffed together in the back seat of an SUV near the southern Iraqi town of Mahawil. A third dead soldier was on the ground nearby. The fourth soldier died on the way to the hospital, the military said in a statement issued late Friday that confirmed details reported by the Associated Press earlier. On Jan. 20, the day of the highly sophisticated raid on a security meeting in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, the military said five soldiers were killed repelling the attack. Within hours of an A.P. report that four of the five dead soldiers had been abducted and found dead or dying about 25 miles to the east, the military issued a long account of what took place. Read The Full Story Canada Agrees To Pay Torture Victim $10.5 Million 2007-01-26 17:14:33 Maher Arar, the Canadian software engineer who was detained by American officials in 2002 and deported to Syria, where he was kept captive for nearly a year and regularly tortured, will receive more than 10.5 million Canadian dollars ($8.9 million) in compensation from the Canadian government, under a settlement announced today. The settlement, which also includes an unspecified additional amount to cover Arar's legal costs, ends a lawsuit brought by Arar and follows a recommendation from a judicial inquiry into his case. That inquiry found that the expulsion to Syria was apparently caused by false assertions made by Canadian police to United States officials, saying that Arar was linked to al-Qaeda. Arar was pulled aside by immigration agents at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as he changed planes on his way home to Montreal from Tunis. He was traveling on a Canadian passport, but was sent instead to Syria, where he was born. The Canadian judicial inquiry cleared Arar of any terrorism connections in September 2006, and concluded that Canadian officials had also orchestrated a smear campaign against him following his return from Syria in October 2003. Read The Full Story Iran's Influence Grows In Iraq 2007-01-26 02:58:24 When Fadhil Abbas determined that his mother's astigmatism required surgery, they did not consider treatment in his home town of Najaf, in southern Iraq. Instead they joined a four-taxi convoy of ailing Iraqis headed to Iran.  For more than two weeks last fall, Abbas, his sister and his mother were treated to free hotels, trips to the zoo and religious shrines, and his mother's $1,300 eye surgery at a hospital in Tehran, all courtesy of the offices of Moqtada al-Sadr, Iraq's ascendant Shiite Muslim cleric. Abbas returned to Najaf glowing over the technical prowess of Iran. "When you look at this hospital, it is like something imaginary - you wouldn't believe such a hospital like this exists," said Abbas, a 22-year-old college student. "Iran wants to help the patients in Iraq. Other countries don't want to let Iraqis in." The increasingly common arrangement for sick or wounded Iraqis to receive treatment in Iran is just one strand in a burgeoning relationship between these two Persian Gulf countries. Thousands of Iranian pilgrims visit the Shiite holy cities in southern Iraq each year. Iran exports electricity and refined oil products to Iraq, and Iraqi vendors sell Iranian-made cars, air coolers, plastics and the black flags, decorated with colorful script, that Shiites are flying this week to celebrate the religious holiday of Ashura. Yet when President Bush and top U.S. officials speak of Iran's role in Iraq, their focus is more limited. U.S. officials accuse Iranian security forces, particularly the al-Quds Brigade of the Revolutionary Guards, of funneling sophisticated explosives to Iraqi guerrillas. Read The Full Story U.S. Justice Department Seeks Dismissal Of Lawsuit Against NSA's Warrantless Wiretaps 2007-01-26 02:57:44 A lawsuit challenging the legality of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program should be thrown out because the government is now conducting the wiretaps under the authority of a secret intelligence court, according to court papers filed by the Justice Department Thursday. In a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Justice Department lawyers said the lawsuit of the American Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs - which received a favorable ruling from a federal judge in Detroit, Michigan - should be considered moot because the case "no longer has any live significance". The ACLU called the government's arguments implausible and said it plans to file its response Friday. The brief is the latest volley in the legal battle over the controversial spying effort, dubbed by the administration as the "Terrorist Surveillance Program," or TSP. Under the program, the NSA monitored, without obtaining warrants, telephone calls and e-mails between the United States and overseas if the government determined that one of the parties was linked to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups. Read The Full Story Candidate Obama Attacks Madrasa Smear 2007-01-26 02:56:34 The Democratic senator, Barack Obama, has launched an aggressive counter-attack against rumors that he is a Muslim and was educated at a madrasa in Indonesia. In an interview with a Chicago television station, Obama denounced what he called a "climate of smear", intended to scupper his run for the White House in 2008. "When I was six, I attended an Indonesian public school where a bunch of the kids were Muslim, because the country is 90% Muslim," he said. "The notion that somehow, at the age of six or seven, I was being trained for something other than math, science and reading, is ludicrous." Read The Full Story British Airways Grounds Planes After Union Talks Collapse 2007-01-26 02:55:48 British Airways will be brought to a near-standstill next week after the collapse of talks to avert a walkout by cabin crew. The airline will ground 1,300 flights at Heathrow and Gatwick on Tuesday and Wednesday, forcing 154,000 passengers to make alternative plans and costing B.A. up to £30 million ($60 million). Analysts warned that the losses could mount as customers stay away from Europe's third largest carrier until the dispute over pay and conditions is resolved. Willie Walsh, B.A. chief executive, and Tony Woodley, general secretary of the Transport & General Workers' Union, met Thursday night in an attempt to revive peace talks. Negotiations between B.A. and union officials representing nearly 11,000 flight attendants collapsed in confused circumstances Thursday morning, with B.A.  believing it had a deal within its grasp on sick leave - the biggest grievance among cabin crew. The T&G said B.A.'s "incomprehensible" behavior was responsible for the breakdown, while the airline labelled the strikes "unjustified". Read The Full Story British Critics Angered At Light Sentence In Child Pornography Case 2007-01-26 02:54:31 Britain's Home Secretary John Reid was under renewed pressure Thursday night after a judge gave a man who downloaded child pornography a suspended prison sentence, citing overcrowded prisons and the home secretary's appeal to the courts to spare less serious offenders a jail term. Judge John Rogers Queen's Cousel, sitting at Mold crown court, in North Wales, gave Derek Williams, 46, a six-month sentence suspended for two years, saying he had to consider the current sentencing climate. "As of yesterday I have to bear in mind a communication from the home secretary," he said, referring to Reid's appeal to the courts not to jail less serious and non-dangerous offenders because the prisons were "very close to capacity". Williams from Penygwdwn, North Wales, last night admitted that he was "lucky to be out", but said the judge was "only doing his job". He told BBC News: "You cannot blame the judge for what he has done. His hands are tied." David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said last night: "We now have a situation where sentences are being dictated by the prison capacity and not the severity of the crime." Read The Full Story
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