Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday February 2 2007 - (813)

Friday February 2 2007 edition
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Chavez: Venezuela Claims Major Oil Stake, Firms That Don't Like It Can Leave 2007-02-02 03:06:22 The Venezuelan government will take majority control of oil projects in the Orinoco River basin by May 1 and any foreign oil company that resists can leave, President Hugo Chavez said Thursday as he elaborated on his sweeping nationalization plans. Chavez told a news conference that his government is "not posing any conflict" to oil companies British Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Total SA and Statoil ASA that are upgrading heavy oil in the Orinoco. Chavez, who a day earlier was given power by congress to issue laws by decree in energy and other areas, said he was ready to sign a decree for the nationalization of the four Orinoco projects by May 1. He said that state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), would take a stake of "no less than 60 percent." Read The Full Story Scientist: U.N.'s Climate Report Too Conservative On Temperature Rise 2007-02-02 02:41:58 United Nations predictions of a rise in global temperatures would be a disaster for all life on earth, resulting in widespread extinction of many species, says Australian of the Year Tim Flannery. The respected scientist said the U.N.'s prediction of a three degree Celsius temperature rise is conservative and in fact could be double that figure resulting in "truly catastrophic" conditions for all life on earth. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases its report in Paris tonight, with its strongest warning yet that human activities are causing global warming that may bring more drought, heatwaves and rising seas. Read The Full Story China's New Regulations Spawn Fears Of Economic Nationalism 2007-02-02 02:40:38 "I know you don't know that you don't know." Those insulting words, thrown out by a Chinese man to a Westerner, are the punchline of an Internet commercial that ends with a beautiful Chinese bride jilting her confused Western fiance for the Chinese hero. The wildly popular video was created by Baidu, a Chinese search engine, to poke fun at its U.S. competitor, Google. It is but one of the growing signs that China is rethinking its stance on foreign companies and investment within its borders. Since the mid-1990s, China has aggressively courted foreign investment, crediting capital from abroad with helping it become a world economic power. In recent months, however, the Chinese government, saying it needs to protect homegrown companies from unfair competition, has thrown a multitude of new regulations at foreign firms seeking to do business in China. Read The Full Story Bush Administration's Immigration Policy Strains Border Resources 2007-02-02 02:39:50 Ringed by barbed wire, a futuristic tent city rises from the Rio Grande Valley in the remote southern tip of Texas, the largest camp in a federal detention system rapidly gearing up to keep pace with Washington's increasing demand for stronger enforcement of immigration laws. About 2,000 illegal immigrants, part of a record 26,500 held across the United States by federal authorities, will call the 10 giant tents near Raymondville, Texas, home for weeks, months and perhaps years before they are removed from the United States and sent back to their home countries. The $65 million tent city, built hastily last summer between a federal prison and a county jail, marks both the success and the limits of the government's new policy of holding captured non-Mexicans until they are sent home. Previously, most such detainees were released into the United States before hearings, and a majority simply disappeared. Read The Full Story Russian Authorities Issue Warning On Yellow-Orange Snow Falling In Siberia 2007-02-02 02:38:39 Russia's emergency situations ministry says it is dispatching experts to a Siberian province to find out why yellow and orange snow has been falling in several villages, the ITAR-TASS news agency has reported. "A chemical test unit will be sent to Omsk ... it's main task will be to investigate pollution in the region and establish the degree of danger represented by the anomalous snow fall," the agency quoted an unnamed official from the ministry as saying. Snow ranging in colour from light yellow to orange and carrying a distinctive "musty" odor was observed on Wednesday in five districts of Omsk province, which lies in western Siberia and borders Kazakhstan, said the  ITAR-TASS news agency. "Residents are advised not to use snow for their household or technical needs and to limit walking, either by people or their pets, in this area," said the official. Read The Full Story Putin Considers OPEC-Like Cooperation With Iran On Natural Gas 2007-02-01 21:52:46 Even as the United States intensifies its efforts to isolate Iran, President Vladimir V. Putin said Thursday that Russia would consider OPEC-like cooperation with Tehran on sales of natural gas. He stopped short of endorsing price-fixing, however, saying he was concerned only with insuring stable supplies for consuming nations. Putin reiterated Russia’s opposition to Iran’s acquiring nuclear weapons, but his remarks underscored a widening rift with the United States and its allies over how to force Tehran to comply with United Nations Security Council  resolutions. “We think that the people of Iran should have access to modern technologies, including nuclear ones,” he said, adding that “they should choose a variant that will guarantee Iran access to nuclear energy” while complying with Tehran’s commitment not to build weapons under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Read The Full Story Last-Minute Battles Being Fought Over U.N. Global Warming Report 2007-02-01 21:52:20 Hundreds of climate scientists and government officials from around the world have worked all week behind closed doors and frequently darkened windows in a United Nations building here to summarize the factors behind global warming in a report to be released Friday. The doors and drapes may as well be wide open. The senior authors of the report, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. body convened every five years or so, have been inundated with e-mail messages and calls from some of the 650 other authors and outside experts eager to see findings tweaked in one direction or another. Read The Full Story Florida Moves To End Touch-Screen Voting, Return To Paper Ballots 2007-02-01 21:51:39 Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans Thursday to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of Florida's largest counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election, instead adopting a statewide system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines. Voting experts said Florida’s move, coupled with new federal voting legislation expected this year, could largely signal the death knell for the paperless electronic machines. If as expected the Florida Legislature approves the $32 million cost of the change, in fact, it will be the nation’s biggest repudiation yet of touch-screen voting, which was widely adopted after the 2000 recount as a state-of-the-art means of restoring confidence that everyone’s vote would count. Several counties around the country, including Cuyahoga in Ohio and Sarasota in Florida, have exchanged touch-screen machines for others that provide a paper trail, but Florida could become the first state that invested heavily in recent rush to touch screens to reject them so sweepingly. “Florida is like a synonym for election problems; it’s the Bermuda Triangle of elections,” said Warren Stewart, policy director of VoteTrust USA, a nonprofit group that has advocated optical scanners as more reliable than touch screens. “For Florida to be clearly contemplating moving away from touch screens to the greatest extent possible is truly significant.” Read The Full Story British Police Questioned Blair A Second Time Over Cash-For-Honors Scandal 2007-02-01 21:50:53 British detectives investigating the cash-for-honors affair demanded that prime minister Tony Blair maintain total secrecy over their decision to conduct a second interview with him to see if they could expose Lord Levy, Labor's chief fundraiser, giving misleading or contradictory evidence. Blair was interviewed as a witness for 45 minutes last Friday, four days before Lord Levy was arrested and questioned on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. No. 10 Downing St. only revealed Thursday that Blair had also been seen again, 24 hours after police gave it clearance to do so. The demand for secrecy reveals the degree to which trust between No. 10 - and its allies - and the Metropolitan police has eroded. It also suggests the police believe it is possible to pin charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice against some of Blair's closest allies. Read The Full Story ExxonMobil Posts Record 2006 Earnings Of $39.5 Billion 2007-02-01 16:18:34 Record prices for crude oil. Record prices for gasoline. Record earnings for ExxonMobil Corp. Concluding the most profitable year in the history of American capitalism, the oil giant this morning reported that it earned profits just shy of $40 billion in 2006 - a year when the unprocessed oil pumped from the ground topped $78 a barrel and the refined gas pumped into cars hit $3 a gallon in much of the country. Prices have moderated substantially since those summertime peaks, and Exxon's earnings for the past three months of 2006 dipped slightly from the year before. For the last quarter of 2006, Exxon reported profit of $10.25 billion, down from the $10.71 billion the company notched at the end of 2005 when it had the most profitable quarter ever for a U.S. corporation. For the full year, Exxon reported profit of $39.5 billion - about $108 million a day, a figure bound to stoke debate about the country's dependence on petroleum at a time when interest in alternative fuels has moved further into the mainstream. The issue was a focus of President Bush's recent State of the Union speech and is a priority among Democrats who now control Congress. Read The Full Story Columnist Molly Ivins Dies Of Cancer At 62 2007-02-01 16:16:47 Molly Ivins, 62, an unabashedly liberal columnist and best-selling author whose wicked wit and good ol' girl-style Texas humor regularly skewered conservative politicians and targeted the pomposities of elected officials regardless of political stripe, died Jan. 31 at her home in Austin of cancer. More than 400 newspapers subscribed to her nationally syndicated column, which had its base in Texas but dealt more often than not with national issues, particularly after former Texas governor George W. Bush ascended to the White House. Her books included "Nothin' but Good Times Ahead" (1993), "You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You: Politics in the Clinton Years" (1998), "Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush" (2000), "Bushwhacked" (2003) and "Who Let the Dogs In?" (2004). Six feet tall, with a mane of red hair when she was younger, Ms. Ivins was large even in a place that has known its share of outsize personalities. With an earthy laugh and the husky, drawling voice of a barroom bawd, she was usually the focal point of any gathering of folks who enjoyed telling tales and trading political gossip. Read The Full Story At Least 45 Killed, 150 Injured In Iraq Suicide Bomber Attacks 2007-02-01 16:15:08 Two suicide bombers detonated explosives wrapped around their belts Thursday evening outside a bazaar in the southern Iraqi city of Hilla, killing at least 45 people and injuring more than 150, said a police spokesman. The two bombs exploded near the center of the city, which has a predominantly Shiite population, and follows the pattern of a deadly spate of bombs detonated in recent weeks in areas that Shiites congregate. Women and children were among the casualties, said Capt. Muthana Ahmed, a spokesman for the Babil provincial police department. Hilla is the capital of Babil. Read The Full Story Harry Potter's Final Volume Set For July 21 Release 2007-02-01 16:13:46 J.K. Rowling, the author of the record-setting Harry Potter series, announced today that the seventh - and last -  book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” will be published on July 21. Millions of fans around the world are fiercely anticipating this latest installment. But the end of the series, in which Rowling has hinted she may kill off one of the main characters, comes as a bittersweet finale not only for readers but also for the publishing companies, booksellers and licensees who have cashed in on the international phenomenon since it began more than nine years ago with “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” It is hard to imagine how the publishing industry will ever replace the sensation that spawned midnight parties and all-night lines to get the books the moment they went on sale. When “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth in the series, was published in July 2005, it sold 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours. Scholastic, Rowling’s American publisher, which represents about 40 percent of Harry’s global sales, is clearly on the hot seat as it prepares for life after the boy magician. “It’s the question that everybody asks about,” said Frederick Searby at J. P. Morgan, an equity analyst who follows Scholastic’s stock. “What happens to Scholastic after Harry Potter?” Read The Full Story Commentary: U.S. Troops Will Stay In Iraq And The War Will Get Much Worse 2007-02-01 02:59:56 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Ed Harriman and appears in the Guardian edition for Thursday, Feb. 1, 2007. Mr. Harriman writes on Iraq for the London Review of Book and made the documentary film "Secrets of the Iraq War" for ITV. His commentary follows: The war in Iraq is intensifying. More American combat troops are arriving. They are in more battles with insurgents. And from Washington there is a crescendo of briefings accusing the Iranians of flooding Iraq with money and weapons and even of arming Sunni insurgents. We shouldn't be surprised - this is what George Bush and his war planners intended. Even the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, in its report before Christmas, said it could support a short-term "surge" to try to regain control of Baghdad. The bottom line is that the president, the study group and most Washington policy-makers want to get as many U.S. combat troops as they can out of Iraq by the U.S. presidential elections in 2008. But that doesn't mean pulling out. Consider the study group's "solution", which is widely considered "realistic" and is common ground with the administration. If the official Iraqi army and police can somehow be miraculously turned into efficient, disciplined, and loyal fighting forces, then U.S. troops can leave and Iraqis will be left to kill each other. That would nicely reduce both the estimated $8 billion a month cost of the war, and U.S. casualties. Read The Full Story Commentary: Not Very Admirable 2007-02-01 02:59:20 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Spencer Ackerman, a senior correspondent at the American Prospect. His national-security journalism has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the Nation, the New Republic, Men's Journal, the Washington Monthly, Slate, Salon, the Austin American-Statesman, Survival, Congressional Quarterly, and other publications. He lives in Washington, D.C. In his commentary, Mr. Ackerman writes that Admiral Bill Fallon, Bush's pick to command all U.S. troops in the Middle East, may be a "blithering idiot". Mr. Ackerman's commentary follows: It's not a nice thing to say. But Admiral Bill Fallon, whom President Bush has nominated to become the overall commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, might be a blithering idiot. Admittedly, this is an improbable scenario. Fallon is a distinguished Naval officer with nearly four decades of highly-respected service. His command assignments have taken him from the first Gulf War to NATO's planning office to his current billet as commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific - the most prestigious command posting in the entire U.S. Navy. His ramrod-straight bearing immediately earns him the respect of even casual observers. Even his aides are courteous and toothy - and even to nettlesome reporters. It's unlikely (with a few exceptions) that a simpleton could have advanced so rapidly and sustained such impressive heights. And yet, for nearly four hours Tuesday morning in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, I watched Fallon say not a single thing of substance about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a prospective conflict with Iran, Iranian influence throughout the Middle East, al-Qaeda, the recent invasion of Somalia, the stability of the world oil supply, or any other issues that a polite but occasionally incredulous Senate Armed Services Committee put to him. On question after question, Fallon pled ignorance, assuring senators that he intends to "study" the matters before him. Only the matters before him are, well, several deteriorating wars. It's not too much to expect a prospective commander to have read a report on them every now and again. Start with Iraq. The biggest question facing Washington is whether Bush's plan to surge 21,500 U.S. troops to lock down Baghdad has a prayer of working. The outgoing chief of Central Command, Army General John Abizaid, has consistently opposed a troop increase on the grounds that it will create dependency on U.S. forces. What's Fallon's view? "What we've been doing is not working," the admiral told Senator Carl Levin, the panel's chairman. "We need to do, it seems to me, something different." Read The Full Story Former Israeli Justice Minister Guilty Of Sexual Misconduct 2007-02-01 02:58:34 Israel's former justice minister Haim Ramon was convicted Wednesday of sexual misconduct for forcibly kissing a young female soldier, the latest in a string of government scandals. Ramon, who resigned from his post in August after he was charged, will be sentenced this month at Tel Aviv magistrates court and faces up to three years in jail. It is one of several high-profile cases to have damaged the reputation of the government. The attorney general has said he has enough evidence to charge the president, Moshe Katsav, with rape and other sexual offenses, and another high-profile politician, Tzahi Hanegbi, has been charged with fraud, bribery and perjury. Read The Full Story	U.S. Intelligence Report: Iraq At Risk Of Further Strife 2007-02-02 02:42:14 A long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq, presented to President Bush by the intelligence community Thursday, outlines an increasingly perilous situation in which the United States has little control and there is a strong possibility of further deterioration, according to sources familiar with the document. In a discussion of whether Iraq has reached a state of civil war, the 90-page classified NIE comes to no conclusion and holds out prospects of improvement, but it couches glimmers of optimism in deep uncertainty about whether the Iraqi leaders will be able to transcend sectarian interests and fight against extremists, establish effective national institutions and end rampant corruption. The document emphasizes that although al-Qaeda activities in Iraq remain a problem, they have been surpassed by Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence as the primary source of conflict and the most immediate threat to U.S. goals. Iran, which the administration has charged with supplying and directing Iraqi extremists, is mentioned but is not a focus. Read The Full Story Democrats Urge FCC To Impose Tighter Controls On Media Ownership 2007-02-02 02:41:13 Senate Democrats pressed the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission Thursday to slap tighter controls on media ownership, public-interest broadcasting and television violence. Several Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee warned the agency not to try to relax limits on the number of media outlets one company can own, as the FCC did in 2003 only to have a federal court stay the action. Recent FCC policies on media ownership, said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-North Dakota), have been "a spectacular failure". He railed against rules that allow one entity to own eight radio stations in a large city and against proposals to allow one owner to have three TV stations in a city. "More concentration means less competition," said Dorgan.  "The public-interest standards have been nearly completely emasculated." Read The Full Story Terror Acquittal Seen As Defeat For Justice Department 2007-02-02 02:40:09 A federal jury in Chicago, Illinois, acquitted two men Thursday of charges that they were part of a long-running conspiracy to finance Hamas activities in Israel - marking the latest defeat for the Justice Department in cases involving support for radical Palestinian groups. Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 48, a former Howard University professor who lives in Springfield, and Muhammad Salah, 53, a former grocer from suburban Chicago, were found not guilty of racketeering conspiracy. The charge was the most serious allegation against them and could have drawn life sentences for each. The two men were found guilty of lesser charges: Ashqar was convicted of obstruction of justice and criminal contempt for refusing to testify in front of a grand jury, while Salah was convicted of obstruction for providing false answers in a civil lawsuit. Read The Full Story CIA Travel Logs Aid Germans' Kidnap-Special Rendition Investigation 2007-02-02 02:39:08 If not for the pit stops on a Mediterranean resort island, where they relaxed in four-star hotels and went to the spa for a massage, the CIA operatives who now face arrest on kidnapping charges in Germany would have remained safely in the shadows, according to German prosecutors. German investigators said they received detailed records of the intelligence agents' stopovers on the Spanish island of Palma de Mallorca from Spanish police last year. The documents, which included the operatives' passport numbers, hotel bills and aviation records, enabled prosecutors to identify a CIA abduction crew that allegedly kidnapped Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen, in a bungled counterterrorism operation in early 2004. On Wednesday, prosecutors in Munich announced that a German court had issued arrest warrants for 13 people it named as CIA operatives involved in the Masri kidnapping. While most of the people used aliases and their true identities remain unclear, German authorities said the Spanish records provided a critical break and kept the investigation alive. Read The Full Story 46 Escape As Muslim Rebels Attack Philippines Jail 2007-02-02 02:38:15 Suspected Muslim rebels stormed a jail in the southern Philippines early on Friday with grenades and rockets, blasted a hole in its wall and helped 46 prisoners escape, said authorities. Some of those who escaped were men arrested for bomb blasts in the volatile Mindanao region of the south, where at least four Islamic separatist groups operate. At least 25 heavily-armed men attacked the jail in Kidapawan City, 960 kilometers (600 miles) south of Manila, and freed the prisoners in a 15-minute operation, said Federico Dulay, police chief of the North Cotabato province. Forty-six of the 789 prisoners housed there escaped, he said. Two people were wounded, including a jail guard. "We were caught with our pants down," said provincial governor Emmanuel Pinot. "I have ordered police to shoot these very dangerous people if they will resist arrest. They are better dead than a menace to our communities." Read The Full Story Oil Lobby Offered Scientists Cash To Dispute U.N. Global Warming Study 2007-02-01 21:52:33 Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published Friday. Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasize the shortcomings of a report from the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered. The U.N. report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment. Read The Full Story U.S. Issues Guidelines In Event Of Flu Pandemic 2007-02-01 21:51:57 Cities should close schools for up to three months in the event of a severe flu outbreak, ball games and movies should be canceled and working hours staggered so subways and buses are less crowded, the federal government advised today in issuing new pandemic flu guidelines to states and cities. Health officials acknowledged that such measures would hugely disrupt public life, but they argued that these measure would buy the time needed to produce vaccines and would save lives because flu viruses attack in waves lasting about two months. “We have to be prepared for a Category 5 pandemic,” said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in releasing the guidelines. “It’s not easy. The only thing that’s harder is facing the consequences. That will be intolerable.” Read The Full Story Sacre Bleu! Chirac: Nuclear Armed Iran Would Not Be Very Dangerous 2007-02-01 21:51:22 French President Jacques Chirac Thursday sparked a diplomatic controversy after saying that a nuclear-armed Iran would not be "very dangerous" and Tehran would be "razed" if it launched a nuclear strike on Israel. He later issued a humiliating retraction. The French president's comments to journalists prompted speculation as to whether Chirac, aged 74 and in the waning months of his second - and probably his last term - was losing his political touch or even his mental vigor. Some also questioned whether Chirac had simply voiced a fear that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a foregone conclusion. Chirac prides himself on being an international statesman and is popular in France for his stance against the war in Iraq. He is determined to prove himself on the world stage before the April and May elections, but the international community was astounded by his comments which appeared on U.S. front pages. Read The Full Story Gen. Casey Tells Senate 'Surge' Of Fewer Troops Could Win In Iraq 2007-02-01 16:18:53 The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq today disputed charges that the policy he has helped to implement has failed, and he insisted that the war is "winnable" if the United States shows patience and will. Army Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., who has been nominated to become the next Army chief of staff, made the statements as he came under tough questioning today at his Senate confirmation hearing. Among his sharpest questioners was the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain, of Arizona, who challenged what he called Casey's "unrealistically rosy" previous assessments and expressed "strong reservations" about his nomination. Casey, who has served for two-and-a-half years as the top American commander in Iraq, defended his decision to request additional U.S. troops in Baghdad after having previously opposed such a deployment. He also acknowledged that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not request the 21,500 troops that President Bush has decided to send and said Maliki generally opposes increasing the U.S. military presence in his country. Read The Full Story Libby Judge Expresses Doubt On Defense's 'Scapegoat' Argument 2007-02-01 16:18:19 A federal judge presiding over the perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff expressed doubt this morning about defense arguments that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was made a scapegoat by the White House in 2003 as the furor grew over the leak of a CIA officer's identity to the media. On the seventh day of testimony in Libby's trial, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said that argument was dramatically undercut by a key piece of evidence in the case - that former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, at Cheney's direction, publicly exonerated Libby in the fall of 2003 of any role in leaking information about the officer, Valerie Plame. "That Mr. McClellan did this because the requests were being made by Mr. Libby and the vice president's office, it does undermine that there was this effort by the White House to sacrifice Mr. Libby," Walton told attorneys for both sides after the jury had been excused during a morning session. "To my mind, there hasn't really been any substantial evidence to suggest that [scapegoating] was in play." Read The Full Story Biden Stumbles Out Of The Starting Gate 2007-02-01 16:15:25 Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., (D-Delaware) joined the 2008 race for the White House Wednesday, declaring that he has the right skills and experience to extricate the United States from Iraq without destabilizing the Middle East;  but he spent much of the day extricating himself from a controversy over his comments about Sen. Barack Obama, (D-Illinois), and he eventually issued a statement of regret. Biden, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in 1988, is staking his presidential hopes on more than three decades of experience in the Senate, where he has risen to become chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and one of the Democratic Party's leading spokesmen on national security and foreign policy. Biden said he believes he has the unique set of attributes to get the United States out of the most divisive conflict since the Vietnam War without further damaging U.S. interests around the world. "The next president of the United States, because of the policies of this president, is going to have no margin for error," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America," adding, "I think I have the most experience there." Read The Full Story Senators Unite On Challenge To Bush's Troop Buildup Plan 2007-02-01 16:14:46 Democratic and Republican opponents of President Bush's troop-buildup plan joined forces last night behind the nonbinding resolution with the broadest bipartisan backing: a Republican measure from Sen. John W. Warner, of Virginia. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nevada) announced the shift, hoping to unite a large majority of the Senate and thwart efforts by the White House and GOP leaders to derail any congressional resolution of disapproval of Bush's decision to increase U.S. troop levels in Iraq by 21,500. Although the original Democratic language was popular within the party, it had little appeal among Republicans. Warner's proposal drew support from both sides, and it was retooled last night to maximize both Democratic and Republican votes. Read The Full Story Study: Polluted Air Increases Heart Risks In Women 2007-02-01 03:00:11 The fine grit in polluted air boosts the risk of heart disease in older women much more powerfully than scientists realized, a big federally funded study has found, raising questions of whether U.S. environmental standards are strict enough. The Environmental Protection Agency tightened its daily limit for these tiny specks, known as fine particulates, in September, but it left the average annual limit untouched, allowing a concentration of 15 millionths of a gram for every cubic meter of air. In this study of 65,893 women, the average exposure was 13 units, with two-thirds of the subjects falling under the national standard, but every increase of 10 units, starting at 0, lifted the risk of fatal cardiovascular disease by about 75 percent. That is several times higher than in a study by the American Cancer Society. "There was a lot of evidence previously suggesting that the long-term standard should be lower, and this is adding one more study to that evidence," said Douglas Dockery, a pollution specialist at the Harvard School of Public Health. Read The Full Story Blair Forced U.K. Attorney General To Drop Charges Against BAE 2007-02-01 02:59:42 Britain's attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, changed his mind about whether there was enough evidence to bring corruption charges against the arms company BAE after pressure from Downing Street, legal sources have told the Guardian. In emergency meetings before Christmas, Lord Goldsmith initially agreed with lawyers and prosecutors that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) could bring charges against the former head of BAE Sir Dick Evans. The allegations involved backdoor gifts to the then head of the Saudi air force, Prince Turki-bin-Nasser. Having reviewed the SFO's files, Lord Goldsmith agreed that BAE could, in effect, be offered a plea bargain in which investigators would drop further potentially politically embarrassing inquiries if the company agreed to plead guilty to these relatively minor charges. But within 48 hours the agreement was countermanded after decisions taken in Downing St., said Whitehall sources. Read The Full Story Mexico Won't Deport 11 Iraqi Christians 2007-02-01 02:58:54 The head of Mexico's Immigration Institute said Wednesday the government won't deport or repatriate 11 Iraqi Christians detained Jan. 20 in the northern city of Monterrey. Cecilia Romero said the detainees may be granted asylum or simply be freed and allowed to go where they want. The group of nine men, one woman and a two-year-old girl had said they were trying to reach California, where there is a sizable community of Iraqi Chaldean Christians. "The situation in Iraq, as we all know, is a conflict situation," Romero told reporters. "The most recent group that arrived in Nuevo Leon were fleeing the war in their country, so we couldn't simply say to them 'go,' without raising the question, where?" Read The Full Story
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