Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday January 17 2007 - (813)

Wednesday January 17 2007 edition
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Reform Bill Avoids Lobbyist Spouses Of Congress Members 2007-01-17 02:49:30 When Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-North Dakota) rose to the Senate floor last summer and passionately argued for keeping the federal estate tax, he left one person with an interest in retaining the tax unmentioned. The multibillion-dollar life-insurance industry, which was fighting to preserve the tax because life insurers have a lucrative business selling policies and annuities to Americans for estate planning, has employed Dorgan's wife as a lobbyist since 1999. A few months earlier, Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-North Carolina) had pleaded for restraint as she urged colleagues to avoid overreacting to the news that the Bush administration had let a United Arab Emirates company take over operations at six U.S. ports. At the same time, her husband, Robert J. Dole, a former senator and presidential nominee, was registered to lobby for that company and was advising it on how to save the deal from the political firestorm. At least half a dozen congressional spouses have jobs as registered lobbyists and several more are connected with lobbying firms, but reining in the practice to prevent potential conflicts or the appearance of them has not been a priority among congressional leaders. Even modest proposals such as banning wives and husbands from lobbying their spouses or using their spouses' floor privileges for lobbying have gone nowhere. Read The Full Story Senate Finance Committee Targets Executive Pay 2007-01-17 02:48:54 The Senate Finance Committee is considering a proposal to sharply limit the earnings corporate executives and other highly paid employees can place tax-free into deferred compensation plans, one of the most popular executive benefits in corporate America. Under the proposal, expected to be discussed today by committee members, an individual taxpayer could defer no more than $1 million annually in compensation, beginning this year. The shift in tax policy would be likely to affect top executives at hundreds of corporations and would raise taxes on some of the nation's wealthiest workers by an estimated $806 million over 10 years. The proposal tracks rhetoric that some Democrats employed during the midterm elections, when they portrayed the Republicans who controlled Congress as being too close to special interests and the wealthy. It also offers a response to controversies that have erupted over executive pay in recent months, including scandals over backdated stock options and multimillion-dollar compensation packages paid to current and former corporate chieftains. Read The Full Story Pentagon Official Apologizes To Detainees' Lawyers 2007-01-17 02:48:08 A Pentagon official who criticized American law firms for defending detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay apologized in a letter to the editor published in the Washington Post on Wednesday. Charles "Cully" Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, said last week in a Washington radio interview he found it "shocking" that major U.S. law firms would agree to represent Guantanamo detainees pro bono. He suggested they would suffer financially when corporate clients learned of their involvement in Guantanamo cases. Read The Full Story French Abort Visit To Iran To Avoid Diplomatic Faux Pas 2007-01-17 02:47:19 At a time when most world powers have forged a united front against Iran because of its nuclear program, President Jacques Chiracarranged to send his foreign minister to Tehran to talk about a side issue, then abruptly canceled the visit earlier this month in embarrassing failure. Chirac’s troubles stemmed from his deep desire to help resolve the crisis in Lebanon before his term runs out in May. To that end, he decided to seek the support of Iran, which, along with Syria, backs the radical Shiite organization Hezbollah, three senior French officials said in describing the effort. So he planned to send Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy to Tehran, only to call off the trip two days before it was to have taken place, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly on diplomatic issues. Read The Full Story Russia Warns Citizens Of Possible Terrorist Attack 2007-01-17 02:46:33 Russian intelligence officials placed the country on an unusual high alert on Tuesday night, appealing to citizens for vigilance and saying that the government had been informed by “foreign partners” of a possible terrorist act. The warning was at once detailed and vague. Issued at the end of a 9 p.m. national news broadcast, it said that the National Antiterrorist Committee was checking information about a possible attack on public ground transportation or subway systems, but it did not specify in what city an attack was feared, or when. It also did not identify the “foreign partners” who had provided the information. The National Antiterrorist Committee is led by Nikolai P. Patrushev, the director of the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., Russia'sdomestic successor to the K.G.B. Read The Full Story Iran President Sends Note To Saudi King Urging Cooperation On Iraq 2007-01-17 02:46:03 Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that he sent a message to Saudi King Abdullah proposing that they cooperate in helping stabilize Iraq. Ahmadinejad's comments came as Washington is trying to rally its Arab allies and isolate Iran. "We, Saudis and other neighboring countries can help the Iraqi people to take the lead to consolidate their government's capability to stabilize and maintain security in their country," Ahmadinejad told the Saudi-owned satellite television channel. Read The Full Story U.S.: Attacks Surging In Afghanistan 2007-01-16 16:23:50 Senior American officials said Tuesday that they had seen a threefold surge in insurgent attacks in Afghanistan in recent months, caused by militants coming across the border with Pakistan, and they vowed to hold new talks with Pakistani officials on curbing the influx. Of particular concern, the officials said, has been rise in attacks by Taliban and other militants launched from remote and largely ungoverned remote tribal areas in Pakistan into eastern Afghanistan, where most American combat forces are based. “The border area is a problem,” said Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is making his first visit to Afghanistan since taking office. He told reporters after meeting with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, that more attacks were “coming across the border,” including some from al-Qaeda networks. Read The Full Story Baghdad Explosions Kills Dozens, Wound Scores 2007-01-16 15:57:38 A series of explosions amid crowds of college students outside a university in Baghdad today killed dozens of people and wounded scores of others on the day a U.N. report said that more than 34,000 civilians have been violently killed in Iraq during the past year - an average of nearly 100 a day. The U.S. military also announced that four U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in the northwestern province of Ninevah, where the Iraqi city of Mosul is located. The military said the U.S. servicemen were with Task Force Lightning. The sequential explosions rocked the area outside Mustansiriya University near Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad at about 4 p.m. as students gathered outside after school. The blasts prompted Baghdad's Kindy hospital to put out a city-wide appeal for blood donations to deal with the scores of injured, according to Iraqi officials and witnesses. Read The Full Story Saudi Prince Calls Iraq A 'Morass', Gives Rice Lukewarm Support 2007-01-16 15:56:59 Saudi Arabia's foreign minister on Tuesday offered only lukewarm support for President Bush's new plan for stabilizing Iraq, saying it was up to the Iraqi government to show it could end sectarian violence and unite the fractured nation. Prince Saud al-Faisal described the situation in Iraq as a "morass" which he said "serves no one. It serves no neighboring country or regional power or no international power." He added: "Iraq is an old historic country with a civilization that goes backs thousands of years. I cannot for the life of me conceive that a country like that will commit suicide." Read The Full Story Baker Panel Report Criticizes British Petroleum Safety 2007-01-16 15:56:10 British oil company BP failed to emphasize safety at its U.S. refineries before the 2005 Texas City explosion that killed 15, according to a report released Tuesday by an independent panel led by former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III. The panel, in a statement summarizing its 300-plus page report on BP PLC's operations, said the company had made strides in personal accident prevention but came up short on the bigger picture. "The panel maintains a central theme that prior to the Texas City tragedy BP emphasized personal safety and had achieved significant improvements in personal injury rates, but the company did not emphasize process safety," the statement said. "BP mistakenly interpreted improving personal injury rates as an indication of acceptable process safety performance at its U.S. refineries." Read The Full Story 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. Justice Department Names New Prosecutors, Forcing Some Out 2007-01-17 02:49:14 The Justice Department is removing several United States attorneys from their jobs, among them Carol C. Lam, the top federal prosecutor in San Diego, California, who led the corruption prosecution of former U.S.Representative Randy Cunningham. Justice Department officials said Tuesday that Lam’s dismissal had nothing to do with the prosecution of  Cunningham, Republican of California, but was based on her overall record in prosecuting firearms violations and crimes along the California border with Mexico. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said that Lam and Kevin V. Ryan, the United States attorney from San Francisco, among others, were being pushed out “without cause”. Ryan’s office has been investigating the backdating of stock options granted to corporate executives. Read The Full Story Israeli Army Chief Of Staff Resigns 2007-01-17 02:48:33 Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz turned in his resignation, the military reported early Wednesday, yielding to demands that he pay the price for Israel's flawed summer war in Lebanon. Halutz's decision to step aside ratcheted up the pressure on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, whose roles during Israel's largest military operation since 1982 also have been assailed. Halutz stepped down at the end of an already turbulent day for Olmert: Hours earlier, the Justice Ministry ordered police to launch a criminal investigation into his conduct in the sale of Israel's second-largest bank before he became prime minister last year. Troops, bereaved families and even members of Israel's tightly knit military elite have been calling for Halutz's head ever since the monthlong war against Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas ended on Aug. 14. Read The Full Story Homes Burned, Tourists Evacuated As Firefighters Battle Wildfires In South Australia 2007-01-17 02:47:44 Firefighters battled Wednesday to contain a wildfire that razed a number of homes in southern Australia amid soaring temperatures and warnings that the worst is yet to come. Two fires in southern Victoria state destroyed a number of homes late Tuesday, including one west of the capital, Melbourne, and three in the state's northeast, where a massive blaze has blackened nearly 67,000 acres over the past two days, according to the Victoria Country Fire Authority. Authorities earlier reported that eight houses had burned down, but revised the figure after firefighters were able to enter the charred areas and inspect the damage. Read The Full Story U.N. Clashes With Iraq On Civilian Death Toll 2007-01-17 02:46:51 The United Nations said Tuesday that the civilian death toll in Iraq last year was 34,452 - much higher than previous estimates - as an explosion outside a Baghdad university killed a further 65 people. The bomb at al-Mustansiriya university went off as students were queuing for minivans to take them home at the end of their day's study. About 138 were wounded. Within an hour, gunmen opened fire in a mainly Shia neighbourhood, killing 11 people and wounding five. The attacks came after 109 bodies were found overnight in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. Four U.S. soldiers were also killed Tuesday by a roadside bomb in the northwest of the country. The U.N. report put the death toll for last year much higher than the 12,357 figure released earlier this month by Iraq's interior ministry and the 22,950 reported by the Washington Post last week apparently based on Iraqi health ministry statistics. Read The Full Story Arab Group Signals Iran To Quit Meddling In Iraq 2007-01-17 02:46:19 A group of eight Arab nations on Tuesday joined the United States in issuing a veiled warning to Iran against interfering in Iraq's affairs but offered only tepid support for President Bush's new plan for stabilizing Iraq. The statement was written in diplomatic jargon and did not mention Iran by name or even cite concerns about Iran's nuclear program. It warned against "destabilization" of the Persian Gulf, expressed support for the "principle of noninterference" and said it did not want Iraq to become "a battleground for regional and international powers," code for Iran and the United States. The statement welcomed Bush's speech as expressing "a commitment by the United States" to saving Iraq, but made no mention of Bush's proposed troop buildup. Read The Full Story Commentary: Surge Is ... Umm ... Surging 2007-01-16 17:23:56 by Intellpuke Today, the New York Times ran an article with a headline talking about the surge of attacks in Afghanistan, which got me to thinking. Have you noticed the recent surge in the use of the term "surge" in the U.S.? It's there. Ever since Bush announced a surge in troops for Iraq, surge has been surging into articles, columns, headlines and, I predict, it will only be another day or two before surge surges it's way into Americans' every day speech. It's a perfect term for the public to pick up and use. It is short and to the point AND has the benefit of being only one syllable - no wonder Bush used it, eh? - so it easily surges off the tongue. Besides, surge has been around quite a while, but until Bush proposed a surge in troops to Iraq, thus starting The Great Surge Debate in Congress and across America, the term saw limited use, primarily in weather reports ("A significant storm surge came in behind Katrina.") or in reports on power outages ("Dude, a power surge just killed my computer."). Thanks to Dubya, however, we can expect a new surge in surge usage. It won't be long before you will hear people saying, "I'm going to surge on down to the mall to see what's happenin' " or "I'm surging to the search engine right now to do some googling" or maybe even "The bride and groom surged down the aisle after the ceremony". Read The Full Story Chemical Train Explosion In Kentucky Forces Evacuations 2007-01-16 16:23:25 A train derailment south of Louisville, Kentucky, ignited an explosion today that forced the evacuation of area homes and a school, according to Kentucky emergency officials. The CSX train derailed about 9 a.m. in Brooks, Kentucky, bursting into flames that consumed 14 train cars and sent dense black clouds of smoke billowing into the air. Officials shut down more than 20 miles of nearby Interstate 65 and closed airspace over the fire as a precaution, said Yvette Smith, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management. State emergency officials ordered the evacuation of all homes within a mile radius of the fire and asked all residents of Bullitt County, which is directly south of Louisville, to stay inside, shut their windows and bring pets inside, said Smith. Maj. Lisa Rudzinski of the State Police said 11 people had sought medical attention. Read The Full Story Barack Obama Forms Presidential Exploratory Committee 2007-01-16 15:57:19 Illinois U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, one of the Democratic Party's brightest young stars, jumped into the 2008 race for the White House Tuesday, establishing a presidential exploratory committee that is expected to lead immediately into a full-blown campaign for president. Obama has electrified Democratic audiences around the country, generating pressure for him to seek the presidency despite having been elected to the Senate just two years ago. Recent national polls show him challenging Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-New York), who is seen as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. "Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions," Obama wrote in an e-mail message to supporters released this morning. "And that's what we have to change first. We have to change our politics, and come together around our common interests and concerns as Americans." Obama said he would spend the next several weeks in conversation with people around the country. He said he would make a formal announcement of his plans on Feb. 10 in Chicago. Read The Full Story Oil Prices Drop $2 A Barrel On Saudi OPEC Comments 2007-01-16 15:56:35 Oil prices dropped by $2 a barrel to new 19-month lows Tuesday on a report that OPEC powerhouse Saudi Arabia said there's no need for further production cuts. Crude oil is now trading below $51 a barrel at a level not seen since May 2005. The commodity has fallen more than 16 percent this year in a sell-off triggered by a historically warm winter in the Northern United States and sustained by large funds taking short positions in the market, or bets that prices will fall. Some market participants believe that another production cut by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries could halt the price drop, but until that happens, there's little to stop prices from sliding further. "It doesn't feel like it's run it's course yet. It will probably fall below $50 a barrel - then the Saudis may be more amenable to an emergency meeting," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates in Galena, Illinois. Read The Full Story Newspaper Ownership In U.S. Is Changing 2007-01-16 15:55:47 A quarrelsome newspaper family, fed up with its papers' poor performance, puts the company up for sale. Private-equity bidders step in, letting the unhappy family members cash out with millions of dollars. In the wake of their exit, the papers face buyouts and other cost-cutting measures as they struggle to keep readers. The scene sounds like the one playing out at the once-mighty Tribune Co., where a boardroom fight has forced the company onto the block and led to the firings of the editor and publisher of its largest property, the Los Angeles Times. The events described actually began playing out three years ago and 45 minutes south of Los Angeles down Interstate 5, at the Orange County Register and its parent company, Freedom Communications. 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
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