Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday February 3 2007 - (813)

Saturday February 3 2007 edition
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Bush To Request $245 Billion For Iraq, Afghanistan Wars 2007-02-03 02:47:06 President Bush will ask Congress for close to three-quarters of a trillion dollars in defense spending on Monday, including $245 billion to cover the cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and other elements of the "global war on terror," senior administration officials said Friday. Democrats said the gigantic spending request will precipitate "sticker shock" on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers were already planning to scrutinize White House war-spending requests more zealously. As expected, Bush will ask Congress for an additional $100 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan for the current fiscal year, to go with the $70 billion already approved. He will also seek an additional $145 billion for the wars in fiscal 2008, which begins Oct. 1, and administration officials warned that even more money probably will be needed. Those totals come on top of regular spending for the Pentagon, which officials say will be $481 billion in 2008, a 10 percent increase over this year's budget. Read The Full Story Brazilians' Arrest Focuses Scrutiny On Evangelical Groups In S. America 2007-02-03 02:46:30 Before a service at Reborn in Christ Church this week, a man hawked gospel CDs outside the front door. In the cavernous nave, volunteers placed envelopes soliciting cash donations on each of about 1,000 chairs, while cameramen working for the church's television network focused on the altar. Everything was ready, except the church's founders and spiritual leaders. Estevam Hernandes-Filho and his wife, Sonia - who oversee more than 1,000 churches in Brazil and several in Florida - were under house arrest in Miami, Florida, accused of carrying more than $56,000 in undeclared cash. Some of the money had been stuffed between the pages of their Bible, according to U.S. customs agents who detained the couple last month at the Miami airport. Read The Full Story 19 Killed As Deadly Storms Leave Trail Of Ruin In Florida 2007-02-03 02:45:14 As the family's double-wide began to vibrate amid an unearthly roar of wind, a mother gathered her three children around her on the floor, tried to hush the baby and cast a blanket across them all. "I said to myself, 'God, just save my kids,' " said Jean Rohrer, 31, a Wal-Mart clerk, who said she lay across her 4-month-old son so he wouldn't blow away. "Then we heard a whoosh and the roof came flying off. And then the walls blew away." Fifteen minutes later, there was nothing left upright. All of the family's belongings - clothes, furniture, toys - were strewn amid splintered two-by-fours, overturned pickups and other debris along Cooter Pond Road, a dirt lane in an area now dotted with the wreckage of mobile homes. The family would soon recognize how lucky they had been, relatively speaking. Read The Full Story Climate Change II: Fossil Fuel And Land Use Behind CO2 Rise 2007-02-03 01:36:47 The first volume of the fourth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been almost three years in the writing and brings together the work of 600 writers from 40 countries. More than 620 experts have reviewed the findings, and representatives of 113 governments have read and revised the key points. The report assesses our current knowledge of climate change and the reasons behind it, looks at how the climate has already changed and how a range of different scenarios may have an impact in the future. Story So Far According to the report there is evidence that the higher temperatures of the last half century are unusual compared with the at least the previous 1,300 years. As greenhouse gas levels have risen so have temperatures - global average air and ocean temperatures have been increasing and there has been widespread melting of snow and ice. Eleven of the last 12 years have ranked among the 12 warmest years since records began in 1850, and as a result, the 100-year trend in temperatures has been adjusted upwards since the 2001 report, from an increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius to 0.74 degrees Celsius by the end of 2005. Much of the increase was recorded over the last 50 years, when the temperature increased by an average of 0.13C a decade - almost twice as fast as over the previous 100 years. Read The Full Story Welcome, Cassandra Smythe 2007-02-02 17:33:04   As a proud father, I would like to introduce the newest member of our family, Cassandra Smythe.   Cassandra is a healthy baby girl, born on 01-Feb-2007 at 2:48pm.  She weighs 6 pounds, 12.4 ounces, and is 21" tall.  Read The Full Story Commentary: As U.S. Power Fades, It Can't Find Friends To Take On Iran 2007-02-02 17:26:50 Intellpuke: The following commentary is written by Jonathan Steele and posted on the Guardian Unlimited's website for Friday, February 2, 2007. In his commentary, Mr. Steele writes that the Bush Administration has exaggerated Tehran's capabilities and intentions in Iraq, leaving the administration confused and frustrated. Mr. Steele's commentary follows: The shadowy outlines of a new U.S. strategy towards Iran are exercising diplomats and experts around the Middle East and in the west. The U.S. says Iranian personnel are training and arming anti-U.S. forces inside Iraq, and it will not hesitate to kill them. It is sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf, doubling its force projection there. It is calling on Europeans to tighten sanctions on Iran until Tehran suspends its uranium enrichment program. Is the U.S. rattling the sabre in advance of an attack on Iran? Or is it merely rattling its cage, as it pretends still to be a power in the region in spite of being locked into an unwinnable war in Iraq? The only certainty is that Bush's strategy of calling for democratization in the Middle East is over. Washington has had to abandon the neocon dream of turning Iraq into a beacon of secular liberal democracy. It is no longer pressing for reform in other Arab states. On her recent trip to Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf, Condoleezza Rice said little about democracy. Her pitch was old-fashioned realpolitik as she tried to create a regional counterweight to Iran's influence. Gary Sick, a former National Security Council expert, argues that Washington's return to balance-of-power considerations is designed to create an informal anti-Iranian alliance of the U.S., Israel and the Sunni Arab states. The aim is partly to divert attention from the catastrophe of Iraq. It also reduces Israel's isolation by suggesting Sunni Arab states have a common interest in confronting Iran, whatever their disagreements over Palestine. Read The Full Story Federal Judge Allows Katrina Lawsuit Against Corps Of Engineers 2007-02-02 17:26:15 Residents whose homes were flooded during Hurricane Katrina can sue the Army Corps of Engineers over claims the agency ignored warnings about defects in a nearby navigation channel, a federal judge ruled Friday. The ruling, one of the first significant decisions in a set of cases over what caused the flooding, may force the Corps to hand over documents about the management of the channel. ''Now we will have an opportunity to see what goes on behind closed doors,'' said Joe Bruno, a trial lawyer for the plaintiffs. Read The Full Story Blackwater, Inc. And The Privatization Of The Bush War Machine 2007-02-02 16:50:37 As President Bush took the podium to deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday, there were five American families receiving news that has become all too common: Their loved ones had been killed in Iraq. But in this case, the slain were neither “civilians,” as the news reports proclaimed, nor were they U.S. soldiers. They were highly trained mercenaries deployed to Iraq by a secretive private military company based in North Carolina - Blackwater USA. The company made headlines in early 2004 when four of its troops were ambushed and burned in the Sunni hotbed of Fallouja - two charred, lifeless bodies left to dangle for hours from a bridge. That incident marked a turning point in the war, sparked multiple U.S. sieges of Fallouja and helped fuel the Iraqi resistance that haunts the occupation to this day. Now, Blackwater is back in the news, providing a reminder of just how privatized the war has become. On Tuesday, one of the company’s helicopters was brought down in one of Baghdad’s most violent areas. The men who were killed were providing diplomatic security under Blackwater’s $300-million State Department contract, which dates to 2003 and the company’s initial no-bid contract to guard administrator L. Paul Bremer III in Iraq. Current U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who is also protected by Blackwater, said he had gone to the morgue to view the men’s bodies, asserting the circumstances of their deaths were unclear because of “the fog of war.” Read The Full Story U.N. IPCC Report: World To Keep Getting Warmer, Human Activity Responsible 2007-02-02 15:38:31 Scientists from 113 countries issued a landmark report Friday saying they have little doubt that recent global warming has been caused by man, and predicting that hotter temperatures and rises in sea level will “continue for centuries” no matter how much humans control their carbon emissions. A top U.S. government scientist, Susan Solomon, said “there can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases are dominated by human activities.” Environmental campaigners urged the United States and other industrial nations to significantly cut their emissions of greenhouse gases in response to the long-awaited report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “It is critical that we look at this report .. as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity, whether the science is sufficient, to what on earth are we going to do about it,” said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program. “The public should not sit back and say ‘There’s nothing we can do’,” said Steiner. “Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible.” Read The Full Story 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	Facebook Flexes Political Muscle, Get Thousands Of College Students To Back Obama Presidential Bid 2007-02-03 02:46:48 At his first rally since announcing his presidential exploratory committee, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois) appealed Friday for support from the young people who had mobilized for the event online. The gathering of several thousand students at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, underscored the potential power of online communities in the 2008 campaign. Its genesis was a group created last summer on Facebook.com, a Web site frequented by college students who post profiles and assemble virtually. Barack Obama for President in 2008 now has more than 50,000 members, and its founders have created an offline presidential draft committee, Students for Barack Obama. Read The Full Story U.S. Army Helicopter Crashes In Iraq 2007-02-03 02:46:03 A U.S. Army helicopter crashed Friday in a hail of gunfire north of Baghdad, police and witnesses said - the fourth lost in Iraq in the last two weeks. The U.S. command said two crew members were killed, and the top U.S. general conceded that insurgent ground fire has become more effective. An al-Qaeda-affiliated group claimed responsibility and said its fighters had "new ways" to attack American planes. A brief U.S. military statement gave no reason for the crash and did not identify the type of aircraft. A Pentagon official said it was an Apache attack helicopter, which carries two crew members. Read The Full Story Climate Change I: Worse Than We Thought 2007-02-03 01:37:05 Intellpuke: Guardian correspondent David Adam reports from Paris, France, on the U.N. IPCC report on climate change released Friday. This is the first of three reports by Guardian correspondents on the IPCC report. There are some interesting, and alarming, findings in Mr. Adams' article, which follows here: The world's scientists Friday gave their starkest warning yet that a failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions will bring devastating climate change within a few decades. Average temperatures could increase by as much as 6.4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century if emissions continue to rise, with a rise of 4 degrees Celsius most likely, according to the final report of an expert panel set up by the U.N. to study the problem. The forecast is higher than previous estimates, because scientists have discovered that Earth's land and oceans are becoming less able to absorb carbon dioxide. An average global temperature rise of 4C would wipe out hundreds of species, bring extreme food and water shortages in vulnerable countries and cause catastrophic floods that would displace hundreds of millions of people. Warming would be much more severe towards the poles, which could accelerate melting of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets. Read The Full Story Climate Change III: Q And Q, The IPCC Report On Global Warming 2007-02-03 01:36:30 The report the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published Friday in Paris, France, was almost three years in the making. It is the first volume of three, which will be drawn together later in the year to make the fourth of the IPCC's assessments. The authors have reached some pretty depressing conclusions: that human activity has contributed to climate change, and that even if we change our behavior today, the planet will become a more dangerous place. What is the background to the report? The U.N.'s Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization established the IPCC in 1988. It does not do its own research, but rather assesses published data to provide regular updates on the state of our knowledge about climate change. It last published an assessment in September 2001. On April 6, the IPCC will report on the impact of climate change and the adaptation and vulnerability of people and wildlife; and on May 4, it will report on potential ways to mitigate the problem. Read The Full Story Afghanistan: Former British Patrolled Town 'Falls To Taliban' 2007-02-02 17:27:00 Taliban militants have reportedly overrun a southern Afghan town that British troops pulled out of last year after a local peace agreement was reached. A resident of Musa Qala said 200-300 Taliban fighters seized the town, took weapons from police and destroyed a government compound late Thursday. Colonel Tom Collins, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said an "unknown number" of militants had apparently entered Musa Qala and that NATO had conflicting reports about tribal elders temporarily being taken hostage. Asadullah Wafa, the governor of Helmand province, said the militants came into the town Wednesday, disarmed the police force and then returned Thursday and destroyed part of the compound housing the district's governor and police. Read The Full Story Viacom Asks YouTube To Remove Clips 2007-02-02 17:26:27 Media company Viacom Inc., which owns the cable networks MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and the Paramount Pictures movie studio, asked YouTube on Friday to remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips from its hugely popular video-sharing site. Viacom said in a statement that after several months of talks with YouTube and its corporate parent, the online search leader Google Inc., "it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement that would make Viacom content available to YouTube users". Viacom said that YouTube and Google had failed to deliver on several "filtering tools" to control unauthorized video from appearing on the hugely popular site. The company was now asking YouTube to take the clips down, but stopped short of filing a lawsuit. Read The Full Story Defense Dept. Attorney Resigns Over Detainee Remarks 2007-02-02 17:25:52 A senior Pentagon official resigned Friday over controversial remarks in which he criticized lawyers who represent terrorism suspects, said the Defense Department. Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Charles ''Cully'' Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, told him on Friday that he had made his own decision to resign and was not asked to leave by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Stimson said he was leaving because of the controversy over a radio interview in which he said he found it shocking that lawyers at many of the nation's top law firms represent detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba. "He believed it hampered his ability to be effective in this position," Whitman said of the backlash to Stimson's comments. Read The Full Story Boston Hoax Attack By 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force' 2007-02-02 16:44:06 More than 10 blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston  threw a scare into the city in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. The devices depict a character making an obscene gesture. Boston police said Wednesday night that one person had been arrested, and authorities scheduled a news conference later in the evening to provide details. Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River  were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless. "It's a hoax - and it's not funny," said Gov. Deval Patrick, who said he will speak to the state's attorney general "about what recourse we may have." Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc. and parent of Cartoon Network, said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball. "They have been in place for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Parent company Turner Broadcasting is in contact with local and federal law enforcement on the exact locations of the billboards. We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger." Read The Full Story Tornadoes Kill Least 14 In Florida 2007-02-02 15:03:16 Suspected tornadoes killed at least 14 people early Friday in central Florida, leaving catastrophic destruction in their wake, said a Lake County official. "We have complete devastation of homes, businesses, religious institutions," said Christopher Patton of the Lake County Emergency Operations Center. "It was unlike perhaps even the hurricanes of 2004." Awaking residents hours before dawn, the storms also walloped Volusia and Sumter counties, toppling trees and power lines and sending tractor-trailers careering off Interstate 4. The disaster prompted Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to declare a state of emergency in those counties and Lake and Seminole counties. "Our priority today is search and rescue," Crist said at a news conference. "We want to make sure that anybody who's in the affected area, that we make sure we get them out, we get them out safely." 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
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