Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday January 9 2007 - (813)

Tuesday January 9 2007 edition
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U.S. Justice Department Pushing For Your Internet Records 2007-01-09 03:11:29 The federal government wants your Internet provider to keep track of every Web site you visit. For more than a year, the U.S. Justice Department has been in discussions with Internet companies and privacy rights advocates, trying to come up with a plan that would make it easier for investigators to check records of Web traffic. The idea is to help law enforcement track down child pornographers, but some see it as another step toward total surveillance of citizens, joining warrantless wiretapping, secret scrutiny of library records and unfettered access to e-mail as another power that could be abused. Read The Full Story Commentary: Bush's Rush To Armaggedon 2007-01-09 03:10:46 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written for the Consortium News by journalist Robert Perry. Mr. Perry broke many of the Inran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book is  "Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty From Watergate to Iraq". In his commentary, Mr. Perry argues that George W. Bush has purged senior military and intelligence officials who were obstacles to a wider war in the Middle East, broadening his options for both escalating the conflic in Iraq and expanding the fighting to Iran and Syria with Israel's help. His commentary follows: On Jan. 4, Bush ousted the top two commanders in the Middle East, Generals John Abizaid and George Casey, who had opposed a military escalation in Iraq, and removed Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who had stood by intelligence estimates downplaying the near-term threat from Iran's nuclear program. Most Washington observers have treated Bush's shake-up as either routine or part of his desire for a new team to handle his planned "surge" of U.S. troops in Iraq. But intelligence sources say the personnel changes also fit with a scenario for attacking Iran's nuclear facilities and seeking violent regime change in Syria. Bush appointed Admiral William Fallon as the new chief of Central Command for the Middle East despite the fact that Fallon, a former Navy fighter pilot and currently head of the Pacific Command, will oversee two ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read The Full Story U.S. Expected To Impose Sanctions On Iranian Bank 2007-01-09 03:09:48 The United States is expected to announce sanctions against Bank Sepah, a major Iranian commercial bank, under a presidential order aimed at freezing the assets of proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their supporters, several U.S. officials and diplomats said on Monday. The action is expected to be announced soon, the officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Undersecretary of Treasury Stuart Levey, who leads U.S. efforts to combat terrorist financing and money laundering, has called a news conference for Tuesday to make an announcement on Iran, but his office declined to disclose details. Read The Full Story EPA Rejects Carcinogenic Wood Preservative For Home Use 2007-01-09 03:08:01 Federal officials Monday rejected an industry bid to use a known carcinogen as a preservative in lumber for backyard decks, picnic tables, playgrounds and other household uses. Industry groups had petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)three years ago to use acid copper chromate (ACC), which contains the carcinogen hexavalent chromium, featured in the film "Erin Brockovich" to treat wood sold in hardware and home improvement stores. EPA Assistant Administrator James B. Gulliford said the agency concluded that the dangers associated with the preservative, which include an increased cancer risk for plant workers and skin irritation among consumers, "outweigh the product's minimal benefits". Among workers handling the preservative, the cancer rate can vary between 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 100,000, according to the EPA. The federally accepted standard is one in a million. Consumers using the product can experience skin irritation that can worsen over time. Read The Full Story Katrina Insurance Trial Begins Tuesday 2007-01-09 03:06:51 Even as the Mississippi attorney general negotiates a potential settlement with State Farm Fire & Casualty Co., an eight-person jury will begin hearing opening statements Tuesday in one of hundreds of insurance lawsuits filed by policyholders after Hurricane Katrina. By seating the jury of four women and four men to hear the lawsuit brought against State Farm by Norman and Genevieve Broussard,U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter, Jr., rejected the insurer's bid to move the proceedings to Oxford, Mississippi, 300 miles from the Gulf Coast. In court papers filed earlier, State Farm claimed it could not receive a fair trial in south Mississippi because the jury pool has been tainted by "media propaganda" about the insurance industry's handling of claims after Katrina. Lawyers for the Broussards have argued that State Farm hasn't met the legal burden for showing that the case must be moved. Read The Full Story For Military Veterans, Alaska Is An Attraction 2007-01-09 03:05:35 As a boy in Upstate New York, Bill McCue spent many hours poring over articles in Field and Stream magazine about moose and grizzlies and dreaming about adventures in the Alaska wilderness. Later, as a military man, he was stationed in Alaska, and "it was like a dream come true," said McCue, a Vietnam  veteran who served at the Navy base on Kodiak Island in the early 1960s. "It's like no other place I'd ever been to." McCue is one of nearly 70,000 veterans who have chosen to make their home in Alaska, which, according to the Census Bureau, has the country's highest [per capita] concentration of former military personnel. The high number reflects, in part, that veterans tend to cluster near military bases. Alaska's two biggest cities, Anchorage and Fairbanks,have one Army and one Air Force base apiece. Read The Full Story Montserrat Volcano Shoots Ash 5 Miles Up 2007-01-08 16:08:03 The volcano that destroyed Montserrat's capital in 1997 shot a cloud of ash more than five miles into the sky on Monday, and one of the island's chief scientists said the blast is "a warning call". The government has advised about 50 families on the northwestern side of the volcano's base that their homes were at risk from flows of blistering gas and debris if the dome collapses. Gov. Deborah Barnes Jones said she would sign an evacuation order Monday making it illegal for people to remain in the area. The blast, accompanied by increased seismic rumbling, released gases and steam from inside a lava dome that has grown rapidly over the last week, said Dr. Vicky Hards, director of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. "I think it was a warning call ... of what it can do," said Hards. Read The Full Story Bird Deaths Shut Downtown Austin, Texas 2007-01-08 16:07:36 Police shut down 10 blocks of businesses in the heart of downtown Austin, Texas, Monday morning after dozens of birds were found dead in the streets, but officials said preliminary tests showed no air quality problems and the area reopened around 1 p.m. As many as 60 dead pigeons, sparrows and grackles were found overnight along Congress Avenue, a main route through downtown. No human injuries or illnesses were reported. "We do not feel there is a threat to the public health," said Adolfo Valadez, the medical director for Austin and Travis County Health and Human Services. He said preliminary air-quality tests showed no dangerous chemicals, though the dead birds would be sent for further testing to rule out viruses or poison. Read The Full Story Gas-Like Odor Permeates Parts Of New York City, New Jersey 2007-01-08 15:57:16 A strong odor permeated parts of New York City and nearby areas of New Jersey during the morning commute today, forcing several schools and companies to evacuate and interrupting traffic along some subway and train lines. Authorities investigating widespread reports of the smell, which some described as a gas-like odor, said it did not appear to be harmful. New York City agencies and the United States Coast Guard responded to numerous calls on emergency telephone lines. Fire trucks raced around in search of the odor. “I started smelling it right when I got out of Penn Station,” said Ivolett Bredwood, a legal assistant, who said she noticed the odor shortly after her New Jersey Transit train arrived in Manhattan around 8:45 a.m. Ms. Bredwood said she continued smelling the odor on her walk to her office, at 99 Park Avenue. “It is a really strong gas smell, like cooking gas, not gas from a car,” she said in a telephone interview. “It is sickening.” Read The Full Story Russian Crude Oil Stops Flowing To Europe 2007-01-08 15:56:41 Russian crude oil stopped flowing to Western Europe through a major pipeline across Belarus, said officials in Moscow, Russia, and in Europe. It was not immediately clear who turned off the tap. The head of Russia's oil pipeline monopoly Monday accused Belarus of illegally siphoning off oil beginning on Saturday, escalating a dispute between Russia and Belarus over customs duties and transit fees for energy shipments. Belarus' foreign ministry acknowledged that the flow in the pipeline had been halted, but it denied that Belarus was responsible, suggesting instead that Russia cut it off at their common border. Other officials in Belarus, however, were quoted in news reports saying that the country had indeed cut the flow. Regardless of the cause, the disruption along the pipeline - whose name, Druzhba, means friendship - affected supplies of crude oil headed to Poland, Germany and Ukraine. Read The Full Story China: Power, Corruption And Lies 2007-01-08 03:15:32 Intellpuke: To the west, China is a waking economic giant, poised to dominate the world. Yet British writer Will Hutton begs to differ, and argues in the following extract from his new book, "The Writing On The Wall", that the west has consistently exaggerated and misunderstood the threat - and the consequences could be grave. The extract from Mr. Hutton's book, which appears on the Guardian Unlimited's website for Jan. 8, 2007, follows: The emergence of China as a $2 trillion economy from such inauspicious beginnings only 25 years ago is such a giddy accomplishment that the temptation to see its success as proof positive of your own prejudices is overwhelming. And the west's broad prejudice is that China is growing so rapidly because it has abandoned communism and embraced capitalism. China's own claim - that it is building a very particular economic model around what it describes as a socialist market economy - is dismissed as hogwash, the necessary rhetoric the Communist party must use to disguise what is actually happening. China proves conclusively that liberalization, privatization, market freedoms and the embrace of globalization are the only route to prosperity. China is on its way to capitalism but will not admit it. But the closer you get to what is happening on the ground in China, its so-called capitalism looks nothing like any form of capitalism the west has known and the transition from communism remains fundamentally problematic. The alpha and omega of China's political economy is that the Communist party remains firmly in the driving seat not just of government, but of the economy - a control that goes into the very marrow of how ownership rights are conceived and business strategies devised. The western conception of the free exercise of property rights and business autonomy that goes with it, essential to any notion of capitalism, does not exist in China. Read The Full Story War's Toll On Iraqi's In 2006 Put At 22,950 - Give Or Take Several Thousand 2007-01-08 03:13:16 More than 17,000 Iraqi civilians and police officers died violently in the latter half of 2006, according to Iraqi Health Ministry statistics, a sharp increase that coincided with rising sectarian strife since the February bombing of a landmark Shiite shrine. In the first six months of last year, 5,640 Iraqi civilians and police officers were killed, but that number more than tripled to 17,310 in the latter half of the year, according to data provided by a Health Ministry official with direct knowledge of the statistics. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release the information, said those numbers remained incomplete, suggesting the final tally of violent deaths could be higher. Much of last year's politically motivated bloodshed unfolded in Baghdad. The Bush administration is considering sending more U.S. troops there, as the newly ascendant Democrats in Congress press for a military withdrawal. Bringing stability and rule of law to the capital is a cornerstone of the administration's strategy to exit Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced over the weekend his own security push to tame Baghdad's sectarian strife. Read The Full Story Fatah Faithful Gather In Gaza To Confront Hamas Rivals 2007-01-08 03:11:56 Tens of thousands of Fatah supporters packed Gaza's main football stadium Sunday in a show of strength to boost the movement in its increasingly violent struggle with the Islamic militant group Hamas. Fatah's strongman in Gaza, Muhammad Dahlan, was given a hero's welcome as he entered the stadium. The gathering was the largest Fatah demonstration in Gaza since 1994, when Yasser Arafat returned triumphantly to Gaza from exile in the framework of a partial peace deal with Israel. Fatah and Hamas have been locked in a bloody struggle for control of the Palestinian government since the Islamic group won parliamentary elections last year. The victory ended four decades of Fatah political domination, though the group still controls the powerful Palestinian presidency. Read The Full Story Science Blog: Long Shot For A Deep Impact 2007-01-08 03:11:03 Intellpuke: The following Science Blog was written by Daniel Dasey for the Sydney Morning Herald's January 6, 2007 edition. It deals with an asteroid that NASA says will pass within 5,000 kilometers of Earth in 2041 and is estimated to have a 1-in-48,000 chance of hitting the planet. Mr. Dasey's blog follows: It's more than 1 kilometer long, made of rock and may - just may - collide with the Earth later this century. NASA has excited amateur star gazers by revealing an asteroid discovered late last year could make a heart-stoppingly close fly-by of the Earth in 2041. Asteroid 2006 XG1, which measures 670 metres across its diametre, is expected to pass as close as 5,000 kilometers to the Earth and latest estimates suggest it has 1-in-48,000 chance of actually striking the planet. The impact of such a collision would be catastrophic to the region affected. Read The Full Story 20 Injured As Washington, D.C., Subway Derails 2007-01-08 03:09:37 Twenty people were injured yesterday when a Metro train carrying more than 100 passengers jumped the tracks at the Mount Vernon Square Station in Northwest Washington, said officials. The passenger injury total appeared to be one of the highest in 31 years of subway operation and raised new questions about the system's safety. With little warning, the northbound Green Line train began to shake and bump as the wheels of one of its rear cars left the tracks about 3:45 p.m. Part of one car hit the wall of the tunnel. Shattered glass and chunks of fiberglass tumbled to the floor of at least one car. Lights went out and shouting passengers ran through darkened cars, according to witnesses. "It was real scary because we thought something would happen to us," said Erica Paris, 16, who was not injured. "The lights turned off and people started looking at each other and screaming." Almost all the injuries were described as minor, but one passenger suffered a head injury, and a pregnant woman began to experience contractions, according to a Washington, D.C., fire department official. Washington Hospital Center said seven injured people were brought there. A spokeswoman said she expected five would be released Sunday night. Others were treated elsewhere. Read The Full Story	U.S. Submarine, Japanese Ship Collide Near Straits Of Hormuz 2007-01-09 03:11:11 A U.S. nuclear-powered submarine and Japanese merchant ship collided near the busy shipping lanes of the Straits of Hormuz, the U.S. Navy and Japanese government said Tuesday. No one was seriously injured. Damage to the fast-attack USS Newport News submarine and the tanker was light and there was no resulting spill of oil or leakage of nuclear fuel, said officials from U.S. Navy, Japanese and Emirates government. Both ships remained able to navigate, said a Navy official in Japan who requested anonymity because the details of the incident had not yet been released. The bow of the nuclear-powered Newport News hit the stern of the oil tanker Mogamikawa as the vessels were passing just outside the Straits Monday night, causing minor damage to the Japanese vessel, said Japan's Foreign Ministry.  The Japanese government said it was informed of the crash by the Navy and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. Read The Full Story U.S. Air Force Gunship Strikes Al-Qaeda Members In Somalia 2007-01-09 03:10:16 A U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship attacked suspected al-Qaeda members in southern Somalia on Sunday, and U.S. sources said the operation may have hit a senior terrorist figure. The strike took place near the Kenyan border, according to a senior officer at the Pentagon. Other sources said it was launched at night from the U.S. military facility in neighboring Djibouti. It was based on joint military-CIA intelligence and on information provided by Ethiopian and Kenyan military forces operating in the border area. It was the first acknowledged U.S. military action inside Somalia since 1994, when President Bill Clinton withdrew U.S. troops after a failed operation in Mogadishu that led to the deaths of 18 Army Rangers and Delta Force special operations soldiers. Sources said Monday night that initial reports indicated the attack had been successful, although information was still scanty. Read The Full Story U.S. House Bill Backs More Reforms From 9/11 Comission Report 2007-01-09 03:08:52 U.S. House Democrats announced legislation Monday aimed at implementing many of the remaining reforms suggested by the Sept. 11 commission, including calls for more thorough cargo screening, better emergency communications and more money for cities at the highest risk of terrorist attack. Democratic leaders plan to push through votes this week on a long list of Sept. 11-related changes that were rejected by the previous Republican-controlled Congress. The proposals signal an early willingness on the part of House Democrats to pressure their colleagues in the Senate, where lawmakers from both parties are cooler to some of the ideas and where no similar package of legislation has been proposed. Democrats said that the House proposals would implement nearly all the remaining reforms recommended in 2004 by the bipartisan commission on the 2001 attacks, including ways to beef up funding and training for first responders as well as calls to rewrite many U.S. policies for controlling weapons of mass destruction and nuclear proliferation. Read The Full Story Sprint Nextel Plans To Lay Off 5,000 Workers 2007-01-09 03:07:22 Sprint Nextel, still losing cellphone customers despite changes in management and operations, plans to lay off about 5,000 employees in the coming months, executives announced Monday. The Restion, Virginia-based company suffered a net loss of about 300,000 wireless subscribers in the last quarter of 2006, said company officials, who projected lower sales for 2007 than analysts had anticipated. Most of the planned layoffs will be completed by early April, they said, and will be spread throughout the company. Sprint, the nation's third-largest wireless carrier, has about 64,600 employees. About 5,000 are in Reston, and more than 14,000 are in Kansas City. Read The Full Story Moroccan Journalists Face Five Years In Jail For Telling Jokes 2007-01-09 03:06:14 Retelling other people's jokes can have serious consequences, as two Moroccan journalists have found to their cost as they face charges of insulting Islam and offending public morality - and a possible prison sentence of up to five years. The case against the Arabic weekly Nichane has serious implications for press freedom and highlights tensions between hopes for liberalization and Islamist opinion outraged by what the magazine says was a harmless survey of the nation's sense of humor. Editor Driss Ksikes and journalist Sanaa al-Aji appeared in court in Casablanca Monday to insist they had not intended to insult anyone or anything. "We made no judgment on religion, politics or the monarchy," Ms. Aji told the judge, according to the Mideast Online news agency. "All I did is report to readers a phenomenon Moroccans are seeing in jokes and anecdotes." Read The Full Story Tapes: Saddam, Cousin Discussed Using Chemical Weapons To Kill Thousands Of Kurds 2007-01-08 16:08:19 Saddam Hussein and his cousin "Chemical Ali" discussed killing thousands with chemical weapons before unleashing them on Kurds in 1988, according to tapes played on Monday in a trial of former Iraqi officials. Nine days after Saddam's hanging, his front-row seat in the dock was conspicuously empty, but Ali Hassan al-Majeed and five other Baath party officials remain on trial for their roles in the 1988 Anfal, or Spoils of War, campaign in northern Iraq. "I will strike them with chemical weapons and kill them all," a voice identified by prosecutors as that of Majeed, Saddam's cousin and a senior aide, is heard saying. "Who is going to say anything? The international community? A curse on the international community!" the voice continued. Read The Full Story Scientists Shining Light Into Black Holes 2007-01-08 16:07:51 It wasn't all that long ago that black holes existed only in the realm of theory, a space- and mind-bending musing of Albert Einstein,who posited the existence of objects in the universe so dense that even light could not escape them. Even after scientists began to accept several decades ago that these extremely exotic and powerful objects were not the stuff of science fiction, they still knew virtually nothing about them. Over the past 10 years, however, black holes have moved to the center of the world of astrophysics, leading to a steady flow of discoveries that have begun to answer, or at least better describe, some of their mysteries. "We're now in a golden age for black hole astrophysics," J. Craig Wheeler, of the University of Texas, who is president of the American Astronomical Society, said in a recent interview. "How they form, how they behave, their role in the formation of new galaxies. They're all very hot topics." Read The Full Story Head Priest At Poland's Krakaw Cathedral Resigns Over Communist Links 2007-01-08 16:07:07 A second prominent Catholic clergyman quit his post Monday amid allegations he collaborated with Poland's Communist-era secret police, a day after Warsaw's new archbishop resigned after admitting he had cooperated with the despised agency. The Rev. Janusz Bielanski resigned as rector, or head priest, of Krakow's prestigious Wawel Cathedral, the burial site of Polish kings and queens. Bielanski has submitted his resignation to Krakow's archbishop, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, "in connection with repeated allegations about his cooperation with the secret services" of the Communist era, said Robert Necek, a spokesman for Dziwisz. Dziwisz, the longtime secretary of the late Pope John Paul II, "accepted the resignation," Necek added. John Paul served as priest and later archbishop of Krakow before his election as pontiff. Read The Full Story YouTube Blocked In Much Of Brazil 2007-01-08 15:56:56 YouTube is being blocked by Brazil's second largest fixed-line telephone operator in response to a judicial order banning a steamy video of supermodel Daniela Cicarelli, the telephone company said Monday. Brasil Telecom SA prohibited access to YouTube across a wide swath of Latin America's most populous country late Friday after receiving the order, said a company spokesman who declined to give his name because of departmental policy. The widely viewed video shows Cicarelli and Brazilian banker Renato Malzoni in intimate scenes along a beach near the Spanish city of Cadiz. It became even more popular over the weekend after the Brazil ban made headlines worldwide and users posted it to a slew of other Web sites. A judge last Friday ordered YouTube to prevent the video from being seen by Brazilians. The judge also said fixed-line operators that provide the gateway to Internet providers must take part in the ban until YouTube can prove that the clip cannot be accessed in Brazil on its site. Read The Full Story Romania's First Gift To The European Union - A Caucus Of Neo-Fascists And Holocaust Deniers 2007-01-08 03:15:57 In France, the group's prospective leader has been barred from teaching at his university and is awaiting a court verdict for questioning the Nazis' mass murder of Europe's Jews. His Bulgarian colleague brags that his country has the "prettiest Gypsies" and says he knows where to buy 12-year-old Gypsy brides for "up to €5,000" (£2,250 or about $5,500). Then there is the Polish professor who uses public office to pay tribute to General Franco, the late Spanish dictator. Or the intellectual strategist of an Austrian party whose ideology, according to a Vienna court, is similar to that of Hitler's "national socialism". Such are the leading lights of "Europe of the Fatherlands", the world of politically organized European far-right extremism who are expected to form their first transnational organization next week by establishing a formal caucus in the European parliament. Read The Full Story Venezuela's Chavez Lays Ground For Steps To Socialism 2007-01-08 03:14:55 Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president, has promoted loyalists to key positions and said he will shut down a pro-opposition television station on the eve of his third term in office. Chavez has signalled more radical policies by tightening his grip in the run-up to his inauguration on Wednesday, the start of what he said would be a new phase in his "socialist revolution". Since being re-elected to a six-year term last month he has moved to unite the ruling coalition into a single party, reshuffled the cabinet and fired a shot across the bows of media critics. The former paratrooper told a gathering of army officers last week that the broadcast licence of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) would not be renewed when it expires in March. He accused the channel of backing a coup against him in 2002. Read The Full Story DOH! New U.S. Commander Says Iraq War Could Last For Years 2007-01-08 03:12:49 The new American operational commander in Iraq said Sunday that even with the additional American troops likely to be deployed in Baghdad under President Bush's new war strategy it might take another "two or three years" for American and Iraqi forces to gain the upper hand in the war. The commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, assumed day-to-day control of war operations last month in the first step of a makeover of the American military hierarchy here. In his first lengthy meeting with reporters, General Odierno, 52, struck a cautious note about American prospects, saying much will depend on whether commanders can show enough progress to stem eroding support in the United States for the war. "I believe the American people, if they feel we are making progress, they will have the patience," he said. Right now, he added, "I think the frustration is that they think we are not making progress". Read The Full Story Communist-Era Links Force Warsaw's New Archbishop To Resign 2007-01-08 03:11:27 One of the most senior clerics in Poland's Roman Catholic church was forced to resign Sunday, 48 hours after becoming archbishop of Warsaw, because of revelations that he had collaborated with communist security services for decades. Draped in gold vestments and wearing a bishop's mitre, Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus told hundreds of worshippers at Warsaw's St. John's Cathedral that he was stepping down, a decision applauded by the Vatican only a month after Pope Benedict XVI appointed him. The cathedral Mass was to have been a ceremony of investiture for the cleric who took up the post on Friday. Read The Full Story Class Action Lawsuit Starts In U.K. Over Toxic Waste Dumped In Africa 2007-01-08 03:10:39 Lawyers Monday will begin preparing the ground for one of the largest class actions heard in the U.K. over 400 tons of allegedly highly toxic waste dumped in the Ivory Coast city of Abidjan from a cargo ship chartered by a London-based company. The legal team will start taking statements from thousands of witnesses. At least 10 people died and more than 40,000 sought medical advice after suffering from sickness and nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting, breathlessness, headaches, skin damage, and swollen stomachs. Hospitals, health centers and the Red Cross were overwhelmed after noxious fumes drifted over the city. Amid angry protests and panic, the government temporarily collapsed. According to Leigh Day, the British law firm which arrived Sunday in Abidjan, Ivory Coast's economic capital, up to 5,000 people may sue those to blame. Read The Full Story
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