Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday January 16 2007 - (813)

Tuesday January 16 2007 edition
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Ice Storm Blacks Out Half A Million Homes In U.S. Northeast 2007-01-16 01:31:25 A storm blamed for at least 41 deaths in six states spread into the Northeast U.S. on Monday, coating trees, power lines and roads with a shell of ice up to a half-inch thick and knocking out power to more than half a million homes and businesses. Icy roads cut into Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday observances from Albany, New York, to Fort Worth and Austin, Texas, where officials also canceled Gov. Rick Perry's inauguration parade Tuesday because another round of ice is expected overnight. The weight of the ice snapped tree limbs and took down power lines, knocking out electricity to about 145,000 customers in New York state and New Hampshire. Even in Maine, a state well-accustomed to winter weather, a layer of sleet and snow on roads shut down businesses, day care centers and schools. Read The Full Story Technology's Web Of Watchful Eyes 2007-01-16 01:30:47 The tracking of Kitty Bernard begins shortly after she wakes up. All through the 56-year-old real estate agent's day, from walking in her building's lobby to e-mailing friends and shopping and working, the watchful eye of technology records her movements and preferences. Welcome to the 21st century. Like many Americans, Bernard uses modern gadgets to make life easier, and along the way creates a data trail that others can access and preserve, sometimes permanently. Every Internet search resides on a computer somewhere. Comings and goings are monitored by security cameras. Phone calls are logged by telecommunications companies. Read The Full Story Bird Flu Reports Spreading In Asia 2007-01-16 01:30:05 An Indonesian hospital was on Monday overwhelmed with patients suffering bird flu symptoms while the virus spread further among flocks in Vietnam and flared anew in Thailand. A recent spurt of human infections with the H5N1 bird flu virus, which re-emerged in Asia in late 2003, has alarmed health officials. Four Indonesians have died this year after a six-week lull in cases, taking the number of people killed by bird flu in the country to 61, the highest in the world. At Jakarta's Persahabatan hospital, where doctors were treating 9 people with bird flu symptoms, including a 5-year-old girl in intensive care, its isolation wards were overwhelmed. Read The Full Story Some Guantanamo Detainees Fall Into Limbo 2007-01-16 01:28:13 Shackled at the wrists and blinded by special goggles, the first captives from the U.S. war in Afghanistan were ushered to makeshift prison cells thousands of miles from the battle, at the U.S. naval station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, five years ago last week. Gholam Ruhani was among them, the prison's third official inmate, flown in by cargo plane with the first group of 20 men. The 23-year-old Afghan shopkeeper, who spoke a little English, was seized near his hometown of Ghazni when he agreed to translate for a Taliban government official seeking a meeting with a U.S. soldier. Ruhani is still at Guantanamo, marking the fifth anniversary of the prison and his own captivity. He remains as stunned about his fate, according to transcripts of his conversations with military officers, as he was when U.S. military police led him inside the razor wire on Jan. 11, 2002, and accused him of being America's enemy. "I never had a war against the United States, and I am surprised I'm here," Ruhani told his captors during his first chance to hear the military's reasons for holding him, three years after he arrived at Guantanamo. "I tried to cooperate with Americans. I am no enemy of yours." Read The Full Story Germany Wants European Union To Outlaw Holocaust Denial, Wearing Of Nazi Insignia 2007-01-16 01:26:51 Germany Monday moved to outlaw denial of the Holocaust, the parading of Nazi symbols, and racist speech across Europe, using a meeting of European Union (E.U.) interior and justice ministers to call for jail terms of up to three years for the offenses. At a meeting in Dresden in eastern Germany, Brigitte Zypries, the German justice minister, demanded that Holocaust denial and the sporting of Nazi symbols be criminalized across the E.U. A European commission official noted that had the practices been outlawed earlier, Prince Harry would have been in breach of the law in 2005 when he was photographed in a Wehrmacht uniform with a Nazi swastika armband. Read The Full Story British Airways' Cabin Crews Vote To Strike In Pay Dispute 2007-01-16 01:25:58 British Airways' (BA) passengers are facing the threat of further disruption after the airline's cabin crew Monday voted overwhelmingly in favor of strike action in a dispute over pay, sick leave and staffing levels. BA managers were due to hold emergency talks with union leaders Tuesday morning in the hope of averting another bout of chaos at Britain's airports. It would be the third standstill in less than a year after thousands of passengers were left stranded by bad weather in the run-up to Christmas and thousands more were affected by a terrorism scare last August. The walkout could come as early as next week but a threat is also hanging over Britain's half-term school holiday next month, a key time for travel. The union must give seven days notice ahead of its intention to call a strike and any action must be taken within 28 days of the ballot result. Read The Full Story U.S. Scientists Issue Warning On Satellite Maintenance 2007-01-15 15:12:31 The nation’s ability to track retreating polar ice, shifting patterns of drought, winds and rainfall and other environmental changes is being put “at great risk” by faltering efforts to replace aging satellite-borne sensors, a panel convened by the country’s leading scientific advisory group said. By 2010, the number of operating earth-observing instruments on NASA satellites, most of which are already past their planned lifetimes, will likely drop by 40 percent, the National Research Council of the National Academieswarned in a report Monday. The weakening of these monitoring efforts comes even as many scientists and the Bush administration have been stressing their growing importance, both to clarify risks from global warming and natural hazards and to track the condition of forests, fisheries, water and other resources on an increasingly crowded planet. Several prominent scientists welcomed the report, saying that while the overall tightening of the federal budget played a role in threatening earth-observing efforts, a significant contributor was also President Bush’s recent call for NASA to focus on manned space missions. Read The Full Story At Libby Trial, Government And Media 'Power Players' Face Uncomfortable Spotlight 2007-01-15 15:11:51 When Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff goes on trial Tuesday on charges of lying about the disclosure of a CIA officer's identity, members of Washington's government and media elite will be answering some embarrassing questions as well. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's case will put on display the secret strategizing of an administration that cherry-picked information to justify war in Iraq and reporters who traded freely in gossip and protected their own interests as they worked on one of the big Washington stories of 2003. The estimated six-week trial will pit current and former Bush administration officials against one another and, if Cheney is called as expected, will mark the first time that a sitting vice president has testified in a criminal case. It also will force the media into painful territory, with as many as 10 journalists called to testify for or against an official who was, for some of them, a confidential source. Besides Cheney, the trial is likely to feature government and media luminaries including NBC's Tim Russert, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, columnist Robert D. Novak and Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward. Read The Full Story Connecting The Global Warming Dots 2007-01-15 15:08:48 If thought of as a painting, the scientific picture of a growing and potentially calamitous human influence on the climate has moved from being abstract a century ago to impressionistic 30 years ago to pointillist today. The impact of a buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is now largely undisputed. Almost everyone in the field says the consequences can essentially be reduced to a formula: More CO2 = warmer world = less ice = higher seas. (Throw in a lot of climate shifts and acidifying oceans for good measure.) Yet the prognosis - and the proof that people are driving much of the warming - still lacks the sharpness and detail of a modern-day photograph, which makes it hard to get people to change their behavior. Indeed, the closer one gets to a particular pixel, be it hurricane strength, or the rate at which seas could rise, the harder it is to be precise. So what is the basis for the ever-stronger scientific agreement on the planet’s warming even in the face of blurry details? Read The Full Story 21 Dead As Ice Storm Lashes Much Of U.S. 2007-01-15 02:39:17 The ice storms that have been blamed for at least 21 deaths continued to lash much of the nation Sunday, as crews tried to restore power to hundreds of thousands and slick roads spawned accidents. Waves of freezing rain, sleet and snow since Friday have caused at least 12 deaths in Oklahoma, six in Missouri, two in Texas and one in New York. Seven adults were killed early Sunday near Elk City, Oklahoma, when the minivan they were in hit a slick spot on Interstate 40, crossed the median and hit a tractor-trailer, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported. Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt said about 300,000 households there remained without power on Sunday. About 350 National Guardsmen were going door to door checking on residents in the hardest-hit areas and were helping to clear slick roads of tree limbs and power lines. Read The Full Story Saddam's Half-Brother, Former Head Of Iraq Court, Both Hanged 2007-01-15 02:02:04 Saddam Hussein's half brother and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court were both hanged before dawn Monday, said Prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon, two weeks and two days after the former Iraqi dictator was executed in a chaotic scene that has drawn worldwide criticism. Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, had been found guilty along with Saddam in the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt on the former leader in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad. "They (the government) called us before dawn and told us to send someone. I sent a judge to witness the execution and it happened," said al-Faroon. Two aides to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki confirmed that the executions had taken place. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the government had not yet released the information. Read The Full Story Bush Admits Past Mistakes As Confrontation With Iran Grows Over Arrests Of 'Diplomats' 2007-01-15 02:01:04 The confrontation between the U.S. and Iran over Iraq sharpened Sunday, as Tehran demanded the release of five "diplomats" captured in northern Iraq, while the Bush administration insisted the detainees were elite revolutionary guards fomenting the insurgency and warned that America was going to "deal with" Iranian activity in Iraq. President Bush Sunday acknowledged that his administration's decisions had contributed to instability in Iraq, telling a CBS interviewer: "I think history is going to look back and see a lot of ways we could have done things better. No question about it." He also admitted that the execution of Saddam Hussein had been mishandled, describing the event as "discouraging", according to excerpts of the TV show 60 Minutes. He said he had only watched part of the execution on the internet, because he had not wanted to watch Saddam fall through the trap door. However, he stood by his decision to invade Iraq and topple the dictatorship, and his aides have defended his move last week to intensify U.S. action against Iranian agents in Iraq. Read The Full Story Tony Blair Launches New Drive To Let Officials Share Data On British Citizens 2007-01-15 02:00:02 British Prime Minister Tony Blair Monday will spearhead a fresh government initiative to persuade voters they have nothing to fear from consenting to a relaxation of "over-zealous" rules which stop Whitehall departments sharing information about individual citizens. The exercise was denounced by opposition members of Parliament as a further lurch towards a "Big Brother"  state even before the prime minister announced the formation of five citizen panels, each with 100 members, to examine the merits of such a change. Officials were keen to emphasise that talk of a "single massive database" is misconceived. What is at issue is allowing individual departmental systems to talk to each other. Read The Full Story	Global Warming Creates New Island Found Off Greenland 2007-01-16 01:31:09 Flying over snow-capped peaks and into a thick fog, the helicopter set down on a barren strip of rocks between two glaciers. A dozen bags of supplies, a rifle and a can of cooking gas were tossed out onto the cold ground. Then, with engines whining, the helicopter lifted off, snow and fog swirling in the rotor wash. When it had disappeared over the horizon, no sound remained but the howling of the Arctic wind. “It feels a little like the days of the old explorers, doesn’t it?” said Dennis Schmitt. Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer from Berkeley, California, had just landed on a newly revealed island 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle in eastern Greenland. It was a moment of triumph: he had discovered the island on an ocean voyage in September 2005. Now, a year later, he and a small expedition team had returned to spend a week climbing peaks, crossing treacherous glaciers and documenting animal and plant life. Despite its remote location, the island would almost certainly have been discovered, named and mapped almost a century ago when explorers like Jean-Baptiste Charcot and Philippe, Duke of Orléans, charted these coastlines. Would have been discovered had it not been bound to the coast by glacial ice. Read The Full Story MI6 Disputes Blair's Saudi Claim 2007-01-16 01:30:25 Britain's secret intelligence service, MI6, has challenged the government's claim that a major corruption inquiry into Saudi Arabian arms deals was threatening national security. The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, told parliament before Christmas that the intelligence agencies "agreed with the assessment" of Tony Blair that national security was in jeopardy because the Saudis intended to pull out of intelligence cooperation with Britain. But John Scarlett, the head of MI6, has now refused to sign up to a government dossier which says MI6 endorses this view. Whitehall sources have told Britain's Guardian newspaper that the statement to the Lords is incorrect. MI6 and MI5 possessed no intelligence that the Saudis intended to sever security links. The intelligence agencies had been merely asked whether it would be damaging to U.K. national security if such a breach did happen. They replied that naturally it would. The issue has now come to a head because ministers are under pressure at an international meeting Tuesday (British time) to justify why they terminated an important corruption investigation into the arms company BAE Systems. Read The Full Story Commentary: Iraqis Will Never Agree To Sellout Of Oil Resources To Big Oil 2007-01-16 01:29:06 Intellpuke: The following column is written by Kamil Mahdi, an Iraqi academic and senior lecturer in Middle East economics at Britain's University of Exeter. In his column, which appears on the Guardian Unlimited website for Tuesday, January 16, 2007, Mr. Mahdi argues that the Bush Administration is about to take control of Iraq's oil resources, a move, he says, Iraqis will resist. Mr. Mahdi's column follows: Today Iraq remains under occupation, and the gulf between those who profess to rule and those who are ruled is filled with blood. The government is beholden to the occupation forces that are responsible for a humanitarian catastrophe and a political impasse. While defenseless citizens are killed at will, the government carries on with its business of protecting itself, collecting oil revenues, dispensing favors, justifying the occupation, and presiding over collapsing security, economic well-being, essential services and public administration. Above all, the rule of law has all but disappeared, replaced by sectarian demarcations under a parliamentary facade. Sectarianism promoted by the occupation is tearing apart civil society, local communities and public institutions, and it is placing people at the mercy of self appointed communal leaders, without any legal protection. The Iraqi government is failing to properly discharge its duties and responsibilities. It therefore seems incongruous that the government, with the help of USAID, the World Bank and the United Nations, is pushing through a comprehensive oil law to be promulgated close to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) deadline for the end of last year. Once again, an externally imposed timetable takes precedence over Iraq's interests. Before embarking on controversial measures such as this law favoring foreign oil firms, the Iraqi parliament and government must prove that they are capable of protecting the country's sovereignty and the people's rights and interests. A government that is failing to protect the lives of its citizens must not embark on controversial legislation that ties the hands of future Iraqi leaders, and which threatens to squander the Iraqis' precious, exhaustible resource in an orgy of waste, corruption and theft. Read The Full Story Iraq Hangings Bring More Condemnation 2007-01-16 01:27:31 By the time the corpses of Saddam Hussein's half brother and another top official, hanged before dawn Monday, arrived in the village of Auja for burial, the word had spread among the mourners: The head of Hussein's brother had been severed from his body. Many of the people who had gathered considered the decapitation of Barzan Ibrahim to be a calculated insult, another act by the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to humiliate followers of the executed former president and all his fellow Sunni Arabs. A doctor inspected the remains to assess the government's explanation that the noose inadvertently took off the head after Ibrahim dropped through the trapdoor of the scaffold. "We knew that he would be executed and would join a parade of heroes, but Maliki, why did you behead him?" asked Salam al-Tikriti, 41, a relative of Ibrahim. "Why did you insult his body? Are you still afraid of him even after he is dead? We will cut your heads the same way that you are cutting the heads of the heroes of Iraq." Read The Full Story Former Iraqi Translator For U.S. Military Tells Of Threats 2007-01-16 01:26:28 A former Iraqi translator for the U.S. military says his life was saved when he was granted a special visa to live in the United States, a status made available to only 50 Afghan and Iraqi nationals annually who served in the same capacity. The 27-year-old Sunni Arab, set to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, says he was threatened by enraged fellow students at his college, survived a car bombing and learned his name was listed on the doors of mosques calling for his death. The former translator, who will not use his real name, and a second witness who also did jobs for the U.S. military were to testify behind screens to protect their identities. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, has argued for an increase in the number of translator visas. Only the translators themselves count toward the 50-visa limit, but their spouses and children may be able to join them in this country after the visa is issued. Read The Full Story Fidel Castro Reportedly In Grave Condition 2007-01-16 01:25:39 Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro is in "very grave" condition after three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection, a Spanish newspaper reported Tuesday. The newspaper El Pais cited two unnamed sources from the Gregorio Maranon hospital in the Spanish capital of Madrid. The facility employs surgeon Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, who flew to Cuba in December to treat the 80-year-old Castro. In a report published on its Web site, El Pais said: "A grave infection in the large intestine, at least three failed operations and various complications have left the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, laid up with a very grave prognosis." Cuba has released little information on Castro's condition since he temporarily ceded power in July to his brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro, until he could recover from emergency intestinal surgery, prompting much speculation and rumor in the country and around the world. Read The Full Story Website To Allow Anonymous Postings Of Government Documents 2007-01-15 15:12:06 You're a government worker in China, and you've just gotten a memo showing the true face of the regime. Without any independent media around, how do you share what you have without landing in jail or worse? Wikileaks.org is a Web-based way for people with damning, potentially helpful or just plain embarrassing government documents to make them public without leaving fingerprints. Modeled on the participatory, online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the site is expected to go live within the next two months. Organizer James Chen said that while its creators tried to keep the site under wraps until its launch, Google references to it have soared in recent days from about eight to more than 20,000. "Wikileaks is becoming, as planned, although unexpectedly early, an international movement of people who facilitate ethical leaking and open government," he said. Read The Full Story Death Toll From Ice Storm Rises To 36 2007-01-15 15:11:27 The death toll from a powerful winter storm rose to 36 across six states Monday as utility crews labored to restore service to hundreds of thousands of Missouri households and businesses enduring cold weather without electricity for heat and lights. The crews hoped to take advantage of moderate weather expected Monday - with only a few lingering snow showers and flurries - before temperatures plunged back to the single digits Monday night. However, some people won't be back online until late Wednesday, said the utility Ameren. Power outages spread to other states Monday as the remains of the storm system streamed across New England. Read The Full Story Fire Under Control At Richmond, California, Oil Refinery 2007-01-15 15:08:19 Fire broke out at an oil refinery Monday morning, injuring one employee and briefly prompting an order for residents to stay indoors, authorities said. The fire began at about 5:24 a.m. at Chevron's Richmond Refinery, said Contra Costa County Hazardous Materials specialist Maria Duazo. The fire was under control by daybreak and the worker's injury was minor, Chevron spokesman Dean O'Hair said. About 1,200 employees were in the refinery at the time, but they were cleared to return to their jobs after the blaze was contained to the pump where it started, a plant spokeswoman said. Read The Full Story U.S., Iraqi Government Officials Wrangling Over War Plans 2007-01-15 02:39:02 Just days after President Bush unveiled a new war plan calling for more than 20,000 additional American troops in Iraq, the heart of the effort - a major push to secure the capital - faces some of its fiercest resistance from the very people it depends on for success: Iraqi government officials. American military officials have spent days huddled in meetings with Iraqi officers in a race to turn blueprints drawn up in Washington into a plan that will work on the ground in Baghdad. With the first American and Iraqi units dedicated to the plan due to be in place within weeks, time is short for setting details of what American officers view as the decisive battle of the war. The signs so far have unnerved some Americans working on the plan, who have described a web of problems -  ranging from a contested chain of command to how to protect American troops deployed in some of Baghdad's most dangerous districts - that some fear could hobble the effort before it begins. Read The Full Story Commentary: Next Stop For Bush Is Tehran 2007-01-15 02:01:34 Intellpuke: The following column by Dan Plesch appears on the Guardian Unlimited's website edition for Monday, January 15, 2007. In it, Mr. Plesch, a research associate at the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy's  School of Oriental and African Studies, writes that all the signs are that Bush is planning for a neo-con inspired military assault on Iran. Mr. Plesch's column follows: The evidence is building up that President Bush plans to add war on Iran to his triumphs in Iraq and Afghanistan - and there is every sign, to judge by his extraordinary warmongering speech in Plymouth on Friday, that Tony Blair would be keen to join him if he were still in a position to commit British forces to the field. "There's a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue - in the country and the world - in a very acute way," said NBC TV's Tim Russert after meeting the president. This is borne out by the fact that Bush has sent forces to the Gulf that are irrelevant to fighting the Iraqi insurgents. These include Patriot anti-missile missiles, an aircraft carrier, and cruise-missile-firing ships. Many military analysts see these deployments as signals of impending war with Iran. The Patriot missiles are intended to shoot down Iranian missiles. The naval forces, including British ships, train to pre-empt Iranian interference with oil shipments through the straits of Hormuz. Read The Full Story Iraq's Foreign Minister Seeks Release Of Iranians 2007-01-15 02:00:29 Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari called Sunday for the release of five Iranians detained by U.S. forces in what he said was a legitimate diplomatic mission in northern Iraq, but he stressed that foreign intervention to help insurgents would not be tolerated. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein's half brother and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court were hanged before dawn Monday, said Prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon. It was just over two weeks ago that the former Iraqi dictator was executed in a chaotic scene that has drawn worldwide criticism. (Editor: You can read the full article on the executions elsewhere on Free Internet Press' mainpage today.) Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, had been found guilty along with Saddam of in the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt on the former leader in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari's statement highlighted the delicate balance facing the Iraqi government as it tries to secure Baghdad with the help of American forces while maintaining ties with its neighbors, including U.S. rivals Iran and Syria. Read The Full Story Study: Low Cholesterol Levels Linked To Parkinson's Disease 2007-01-15 01:59:42 Scientists are to investigate why people with low cholesterol levels appear to be more likely to develop Parkinson's disease, following concerns that statins - given to control cholesterol - could cause an increase in the numbers of people with the illness. About 2.3 million adults in the U.K. take statins to help control their cholesterol levels; the American scientists have found that those with lower levels of cholesterol are more likely to develop the degenerative neurological disorder of Parkinson's disease. The link between statins and Parkinson's is not yet understood, and health charities last night urged caution. But the scientists behind the research warn that if they get confirmation of the finding, in their follow-up study of 16,000 people, there could be a surge in Parkinson's diagnoses in the next five years as the effects of the drug set in. The initial study compared 124 people diagnosed with Parkinson's with a control group of 112. They found that the people with low levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol were in excess of three times more likely to be in the Parkinson's group than those with high cholesterol. Read The Full Story
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