Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday January 25 2007 - (813)

Thursday January 25 2007 edition
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Plot Highlights Fears About Weapons-Grade Uranium Smuggling 2007-01-25 03:03:27 Last January, a Russian man with sunken cheeks and a wispy mustache crossed into Georgia and traveled to Tbilisi by car along a high mountain road. In two plastic bags in his leather jacket, Georgian authorities say, he carried 100 grams of uranium so refined that it could help fuel an atom bomb. The Russian, Oleg Khinsagov, had come to meet a buyer who he believed would pay him $1 million and deliver the material to a Muslim man from “a serious organization,” say the authorities. The uranium was a sample, just under four ounces, and the deal a test: If all went smoothly, he boasted, he would sell a far larger cache stored in his apartment back in Vladikavkaz, two to three kilograms of the rare material, four and a half to six and a half pounds, which in expert hands is enough to make a small bomb. Read The Full Story Editorial: Energy Rhetoric, And Reality 2007-01-25 03:02:49 Intellpuke: The following editorial was posted at the New York Times' website on January 25, 2007. For six years, off and on, President Bush has been talking about the need for alternative fuels and conservation to make the country less beholden to unreliable sources of foreign oil. Yet all he has to show for it is a growing dependence on foreign oil, a growing climate problem and an increasingly cynical public. Mr. Bush talked the same game on Tuesday night, offering several impressively specific goals. But whether these new pledges turn out to be as empty as the old ones depends on his capacity for follow-through, and history is not encouraging. Mr. Bush was true to form on one subject. The White House had promised nothing on global warming, and he delivered nothing. He mentioned “global climate change” but showed no sense of urgency on the issue. Nor was there any sign that he had even heard the ever-louder entreaties from Congress - and from many of his friends in the business community - that he support a national program of mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases. At one point, he did suggest that his proposals for alternative fuels and more efficient automobiles could also help reduce greenhouse gases. But these gains would be marginal - passenger vehicles account for only one-fifth of these gases. And even these gains will greatly depend on what alternative fuels are chosen. Read The Full Story Former CIA Official Testifies About Libby's Calls 2007-01-25 03:01:39 A former high-ranking CIA official testified Wednesday that, when Vice President Cheney's agitated chief of staff called him out of the blue in June 2003 to ask what he knew about a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, he jumped to get answers. Summoned out of a meeting with the CIA director to take I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's urgent call later that same afternoon, then-Associate Deputy Director Robert Grenier said he relayed all he had learned about former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man behind news reports of the trip that had Libby so concerned. Yes, Wilson had gone on a CIA-sponsored mission to check out intelligence that Iraq was trying to buy uranium for nuclear weapons and had concluded that the tip was unfounded, Grenier testified he told Libby. And, he told Libby, it appeared that Wilson's wife, a CIA officer, had suggested Wilson for the trip. Read The Full Story Lockheed Chosen For TSA's Ports I.D. Program 2007-01-25 03:00:58 The Transportation Security Administration has decided to award a closely watched contract to supply high-tech identification cards at ports nationwide to Lockheed Martin of Bethesda, Maryland, according to sources familiar with the choice. The initial value of the contract, which involves issuing I.D. cards to 850,000 maritime workers, was estimated at $70 million. The contract could prove far more valuable, however, if it leads to other, related deals for the firm: Identity technology is a fast-growing sector for government contractors, and the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, known as TWIC, is the first of many identity contracts slated to be announced in the next few years. The program, a key element of the government's attempts to secure the nation's ports, was initially supposed to provide transportation workers with I.D. cards embedded with microchips by the end of 2003, but it has been bogged down with technology glitches and privacy concerns, and now Lockheed will have 18 months to finish rolling out its cards. Read The Full Story Despite Censorship, China Soon To Be World Biggest Internet User 2007-01-25 00:12:23 China could overtake the U.S. as the country with the most Internet users within two years, according to its government, which released figures showing that the nation's online population had increased to 137 million people in the last 12 months. Statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center show that more than a 10th of the country's 1.3 billion people now use the internet, with the figure increasing by 23.4% last year. "We believe it will take two years at most for China to overtake the United States," the official China Daily newspaper quoted a center official, Wang Enhai, as saying. About 210 million out of 300 million Americans are online - a figure China will surpass in 24 months if it keeps up this pace. "The growth is now gaining much momentum. We are expecting even faster growth in 2007 and 2008," the official was quoted as telling reporters. Read The Full Story Olmert Urges Israeli President To Quit Over Rape Allegations 2007-01-25 00:11:29 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Wednesday night called on the country's president to resign after the attorney general said he would charge him with rape and other sexual offences. An hour earlier the president, Moshe Katsav, had given an emotional news conference broadcast live in which he insisted he was innocent. Katsav, 61, who has been under investigation since last summer, offered to stand aside for now but said he would only resign if he was formally indicted. However, Olmert began a keynote policy speech Wednesday night by calling on Katsav to go now. "Under these circumstances there is no doubt in my mind that the president cannot continue to fulfil his position and he must leave the president's residence," said Olmert. Read The Full Story Libby Portrayed As Scapegoat By Defense Lawyer 2007-01-24 23:10:03 I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was "put through the meat grinder" by the White House shortly after the Iraq war began, scapegoated to conceal the fact that Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, helped disclose an undercover CIA officer's identity, a defense attorney contended Tuesday as Libby's perjury trial began. The lawyer, Theodore V. Wells, Jr., and Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald agreed that Vice President Cheney ordered Libby, then his chief of staff, to contact reporters early in the summer of 2003 in an effort to rebut criticism that the administration had selectively used intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. According to Wells, the confidential conversations Libby had with several well-known journalists were not intended to spread the identity of Valerie Plame, the covert CIA officer. Instead, Libby's attorney said, he was acting at Cheney's instructions to respond to allegations that the vice president withheld information that would have raised doubts about whether Iraq was trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. The dramatic opening statements in the first hours of the celebrated trial laid bare fissures deep inside the White House. They came as the prosecution and defense provided the jury crackling portrayals of their opposing theories of the case. Read The Full Story E. Howard Hunt, Convicted In Watergate Scandal, Dies At 88 2007-01-24 23:09:31 E. Howard Hunt, 88, the shadowy former CIA man who organized the Watergate break-in and other "dirty tricks" that ultimately brought down the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, died of complications from pneumonia Tuesday at a hospital in Miami, Florida. The Watergate episode was the most notorious caper in a colorful career that included the overthrow of a Guatemalan president, oversight of a group of Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and such over-the-top ideas as firebombing the Brookings Institution to distract guards while his crew burglarized the think tank. Melodramatic and devious in character, resembling the actor Gene Hackman in appearance, Hunt donned a cheap red wig and wore a device that altered his gait while casing another burglary site - the office of a psychiatrist to Daniel Ellsberg, who had released the classified Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War. Hunt recruited four of the five Cuban exiles who broke into the Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1972. He was watching the burglary from an adjacent building when the group was discovered and arrested, and it was his phone number in their address books that let investigators and reporters connect the break-in to the president and his reelection campaign. Read The Full Story A Million Iraqi Refugees Strain The Hospitality Of Jordan 2007-01-24 02:53:29 Yusif Agoub is proud of the fleshy Masgouf fish from the river Euphrates swimming in a tiled pool in his kitchen and the rough Iraqi bread baking in the wood-fired oven. It feels like Baghdad but the carp are imported from Syria and this is one of the best restaurants in the Jordanian capital, Amman. Agoub used to run the Al-Finjan restaurant in Baghdad, which closed after the city's descent into chaos. He packed up in 2004 and invested here with a partner with Jordanian citizenship. This restaurant, Zad al-Kheir (Generous Fare), is an elegant place buzzing with well-heeled diners arriving in Mercedes and BMWs, many with Iraqi or diplomatic number plates. With his pocket calculator and two mobile phones in front of him, Agoub does not look like a refugee. "I am succeeding with the help of our Jordanian brothers, led by His Majesty the King, who make things easy for us," he says. "We have a good life here. I would like to go home tomorrow, but it's hard to be optimistic." Read The Full Story Democrats' Response To Bush's Speech 2007-01-24 02:52:29 When President Bush concluded his State of the Union address, Democrats did not turn to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, or to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to deliver their response. They chose a different face for the party: a former Republican, an ex-marine and a secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration. That Democrat, Senator Jim Webb, of Virginia, who won his seat at least in part through his tenacious opposition to the Iraq war, wore his son’s combat boots on the campaign trail last year. And on Tuesday evening, Webb invoked his own biography, and his family’s three generations of military service, as he declared that today’s soldiers could no longer trust the judgment of their commander in chief. “The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought, nor do the majority of our military, nor does a majority of our Congress,” said Webb. “We need a new direction.” Read The Full Story Through Settlement With Mississippi, State Farm Will Pay 640 Katrina Claims 2007-01-24 02:50:14 In a move that is expected to jump-start rebuilding along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, State Farm Insurance said Tuesday that it had reached an agreement with state officials to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to owners of homes along the coast that were wrecked by Hurricane Katrina. The agreement settles lawsuits filed by 640 homeowners and allows thousands of others to reopen damage claims that State Farm previously closed. Insurance executives said they expected the outlines of the deal to be adopted by other carriers. The agreement does not apply to New Orleans, where the failure of the levees left much of the city underwater for days. Lawyers and insurers say no similar settlement talks are in progress there. Read The Full Story Mass Protest At Editor's Funeral In Turkey 2007-01-24 02:49:21 More than 100,000 people marched in a funeral procession Tuesday for the murdered Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. "We are all Armenians," chanted mourners in an extraordinary outpouring of affection for a journalist who had made enemies by calling the mass killings of Armenians towards the end of the Ottoman empire genocide. Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper Agos on Friday. The murder touched off debate about excessive nationalism, free expression and the ability of Turks of different backgrounds to live together. Throngs of mourners marched along the five-mile route from the Agos offices to an Armenian Orthodox church, virtually shutting the city center. Many carried placards that read: "We are all Hrant Dinks." Thousands leaned out of office windows to applaud and throw flowers. Read The Full Story	Worldwide View Of U.S. Drops Sharply In Opinion Poll 2007-01-25 03:03:07 Global opinion of U.S. foreign policy has sharply deteriorated in the past two years, according to a BBC poll released on the eve of President Bush's annual State of the Union address. Nearly three-quarters of those polled in 25 countries disapprove of U.S. policies toward Iraq, and more than two-thirds said the U.S. military presence in the Middle East does more harm than good. Nearly half of those polled in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East said the United States is now playing a mainly negative role in the world. More than 26,000 people were questioned for the survey. "It's been a horrible slide," said Doug Miller, president of GlobeScan, an international polling company that conducted the BBC survey with the Program on International Policy Attitudes, an affiliate of the University of Maryland. He said views of U.S. policy have steadily declined since the annual poll began two years ago. Read The Full Story Experts Examine Bush's Health Plan, Clear Winners, Losers Evident 2007-01-25 03:02:20 Economists are still sorting out the implications of the broad health-care proposals President Bush unveiled this week, but already some clear winners and losers are emerging. Families with generous employer-sponsored coverage would be worse off, while those who buy insurance on the individual market, or whose health plan costs less than $15,000 annually, would come out ahead; but some of the winners will probably become losers over time, said analysts. Moreover, while Bush's plan would alter a historic imbalance in the tax code that favors generally better-off consumers who get insurance through their jobs, it also could undermine coverage for some sicker, older people and erode the employer-sponsored system that still provides coverage to more than half of all Americans. Some experts questioned whether the plan would have any impact on holding down spiraling health costs or extending health coverage to some of the 47 million people in the nation who have none. "It's not solving the uninsured problem and it's not solving the cost problem, so it's not really advancing what we need to have happen," said Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit health policy research organization. "What it does is favor individual insurance. ... The question is, should you try to undermine employer coverage? Employer coverage has lower administrative costs and it covers everybody in a firm, not just those who are healthy enough to pass a medical exam." Read The Full Story Sen. Kerry Rules Out Second Presidential Bid In 2008 2007-01-25 03:01:15 Sen. John F. Kerry, of Massachusetts, ruled out a second presidential bid Wednesday, asserting that he could do more to change the course of Iraq policy in the Senate than by campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire. "I've concluded this isn't the time for me to mount a presidential campaign," said the former Democratic nominee. "I intend to work here to change a policy in Iraq that threatens all that I have worked for and cared about since I came home from Vietnam." Since his loss to President Bush in 2004, Kerry had left open the possibility of a return run. He had emerged as one of the most vociferous voices in opposition to the war in Iraq and spent much of the 2006 campaign season traveling the country in support of Democratic candidates. Much of that work was forgotten when, a little more than a week before Election Day, Kerry made a remark that Republicans said was disparaging to American troops in Iraq. He insisted that it was nothing more than a botched joke, but he quickly issued an apology. Read The Full Story U.S., Iraqi Troops Kill 30 Militants In Baghdad 2007-01-25 00:12:41 U.S. and Iraqi troops battled Sunni insurgents hiding in high-rise buildings on Haifa Street in the heart of Baghdad Wednesday, with snipers on roofs taking aim at gunmen in open windows as Apache attack helicopters hovered overhead. Iraq said 30 militants were killed and 27 captured. New details also emerged about the downing of a private U.S. security company helicopter on Tuesday, with U.S. and Iraqi officials saying four of five Americans who died in the incident were shot execution-style. Violence was unrelenting in Iraq on Wednesday, with at least 69 people killed or found dead, including 33 tortured bodies found in separate locations in Baghdad. Read The Full Story Senate Committee Rejects Bush Appeal, Says Iraq Plan 'Not In National Interest' 2007-01-25 00:11:48 Democrats and Republican senators Wednesday rebuffed George Bush's state of the union appeal to be given more time on Iraq, and pressed ahead with a resolution condemning his proposed 21,500 US troop increase. After a debate, the Senate foreign affairs committee gave the go-ahead to the resolution, saying the increase is "not in the national interest", a rare repudiation of a president in wartime. The rejection mirrored widespread indifference in the U.S. and beyond towards the speech, which was delivered less than 24 hours earlier. The Senate foreign relations committee voted 12 to 9 in favor of adopting the anti-war resolution, which is scheduled to go before the whole Senate next week. At that time, at least nine Republican senators intend to back the resolution, though they will negotiate with Democrats over the next few days to change the language. The Democrats are likely to agree in an effort to win as many votes as possible. Read The Full Story Prison Release For Former Panamanian Dictator Manuel Nolriega Set For Sept. 9 2007-01-25 00:11:13 Former dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega hopes to immediately board a plane for Panama when he is released from prison on Sept. 9, and he plans to fight his conviction back home in the slayings of two political opponents, said his attorney. Noriega's eight-year rule over Panama ended after the United States invaded the county on Dec. 20, 1989, to force him from power. He is being held in the Federal Correctional Institution in Miami, Florida, on drug trafficking and money laundering charges. Noriega was sentenced to a 30-year term for protecting Colombian cocaine shipments through Panama in the 1980s but received deductions in his punishment for good behavior. Noriega's release in 2007 was first scheduled more than three years ago. The exact date, Sept. 9, was posted on the U.S. Bureau of Prisons Web site more than a year ago. Read The Full Story In Iran, Old Rival Tests Ahmadinejad's Nerve 2007-01-24 23:09:50 Iran's beleaguered president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is facing a powerful challenge from his fiercest political rival, Hashemi Rafsanjani, for control of the country's nuclear and economic policies. Rafsanjani, a pragmatic conservative defeated by Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election, believes Iran may have to yield to western demands to suspend uranium enrichment to save the country's Islamic system from collapse. He is trying to persuade the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in state matters, that further negotiations are essential to avoid a potentially disastrous conflict with the U.S. or Israel. Rafsanjani demonstrated his growing influence over the nuclear issue in a meeting Wednesday with Britain's ambassador to Tehran, Geoffrey Adams. He told Adams that Iran is willing to submit to "any verifying measures by the responsible authorities" to prove the peaceful nature of its nuclear program, which many in the west suspect is aimed at making atomic bombs. Read The Full Story Iraq Struggles To Finish Oil Law 2007-01-24 02:53:42 Four months ago, about 80 oil company executives and consultants packed an office on St. James's Square in London for a briefing on exploration prospects in Iraq's Kurdish region and a Kurdish draft of an Iraqi national petroleum law. Despite the immense risks of working in Iraq - pipeline explosions, kidnappings, insurgency, political infighting - the oil company executives were lured by the potential rewards, which are immense, too. Outside Saudi Arabia,  no country has proven oil reserves as big as Iraq's. And the oil there is high quality, easy and cheap to produce, and bottled up in reservoirs that many major oil companies were familiar with three decades ago before wars and sanctions drove them out. "Exxon Mobil has more seismic data on Iraq than on Houston real estate," says Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. who used to work for Mobil. "If Exxon had security on the ground, the following day it would have crews there," said Gheit. "And money would be no object." Read The Full Story Bush Urges Congress To Give Iraq Plan A Chance 2007-01-24 02:53:08 President Bush implored lawmakers and the nation last night to give him one more chance to win the war in Iraq and avoid the "nightmare scenario" of defeat while presenting a domestic agenda intended to find common cause with the new Democratic Congress on issues such as energy and immigration. Politically wounded but rhetorically unbowed, Bush gave no ground on his decision to dispatch 21,500 more troops to Iraq despite a bipartisan cascade of criticism. Addressing for the first time a Congress controlled by the other party, Bush challenged Democrats to "show our enemies abroad that we are united in the goal of victory" and warned that the consequences of failure in Iraq "would be grievous and far-reaching." "I respect you and the arguments you've made," Bush told skeptical lawmakers from both parties in his sixth State of the Union address and the fourth since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. "We went into this largely united - in our assumptions and in our convictions. And whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure. Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work." Read The Full Story Analysis: The State Of The President - Beleaguered 2007-01-24 02:52:10 President Bush used his State of the Union address last night to try to revive his presidency against what may be the greatest odds any chief executive has faced in a generation. Other presidents have encountered difficult moments and have been dealt electoral setbacks, but few have faced the combination of obstacles that now confront this White House. Bush arrived at the Capitol at his lowest point in public-opinion polls, facing new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and lame-duck status as attention turns rapidly toward a 2008 presidential campaign that will choose his successor. Bush's problems all stem from the same issue. The public has lost confidence in his Iraq war policy, and, in the face of evidence that Americans are looking for a change in course, the president has chosen with his new plan to deploy additional troops to the conflict - a direction the public overwhelmingly opposes. Read The Full Story ABC Newsman Escapes Injury In Iraq Bomb Attack 2007-01-24 02:49:55 ABC newsman Chris Cuomo narrowly escaped harm in Iraq yesterday when a roadside explosion crippled the armored Humvee he was riding in but the shrapnel failed to fully penetrate the vehicle. "I got very, very lucky," Cuomo, 36, said in a telephone interview from Baghdad. He praised "the greatness of the soldiers" involved, saying: "I know if I had been there with any other group of individuals, I would not be able to have this conversation." The harrowing episode unfolded almost one year after another roadside bomb in Iraq badly injured ABC anchor Bob Woodruff, who is still recovering from head wounds. Read The Full Story
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