Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday February 4 2007 - (813)

Sunday February 4 2007 edition
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Bush's Medicare Budget Would Raise Premiums 2007-02-04 03:28:32 More and more Medicare beneficiaries would have to pay higher premiums for coverage of prescription drugs and doctors’ services under President Bush’s 2008 budget, to be unveiled on Monday. Single people with annual incomes over $80,000 and married couples with incomes over $160,000 already have to pay higher premiums for the part of Medicare that covers doctors’ services. The income thresholds rise with inflation. Budget documents show that Bush will propose a similar surcharge on premiums for Medicare’s new prescription drug benefit. In addition, the president will ask Congress to “eliminate annual indexing of income thresholds,” so that more people would eventually have to pay the higher premiums. Read The Full Story Authors Of Bush's Iraq Plan Say It May Fail 2007-02-04 03:27:51 The success of the Bush administration's new Iraq strategy depends on a series of rapid and dramatic political and economic reforms that even the plan's authors have little confidence will work. In the current go-for-broke atmosphere, administration officials say they are aware that failure to achieve the reforms would result in a repeat of last year's unsuccessful Baghdad offensive, when efforts to consolidate military gains with lasting stability on the ground did not work. This time, they acknowledge, there will be no second chance. Among many deep uncertainties are whether Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is up to the task and committed to spearheading what the administration foresees as a fundamental realignment of Iraqi politics; whether Maliki's Shiite-dominated government and its sluggish financial bureaucracy will part with $10 billion for rapid job creation and reconstruction, at least some of it directed to sectarian opponents; and whether the U.S. military and State Department can calibrate their own stepped-up reconstruction assistance to push for action without once again taking over. Read The Full Story Commentary: We Cannot Let The Kyoto Debacle Happen Again 2007-02-04 03:26:56 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by David King, the British government's chief science advisor,  for the Sunday, Feb. 4, 2007, edition of The Observer. In his commentary Mr. King writes genuine international action on climate change is a necessity. Mr. King's column follows: Open any newspaper and the chances are you'll find an item on climate change. Friday saw yet another flurry of coverage with the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth assessment report on the science of climate change. What makes this report stand out from others? The IPCC is a global body established in 1988 to provide independent, scientific advice on climate change. Friday's report is not new research, but, rather, a stock-take of the entire body of knowledge that exists on climate change. It builds on three previous reports and incorporates results from a further six years of research. The report is the first of three to be published by the IPCC this year. Later reports will focus on the impacts of climate change and on the actions required to address the problem. This process has involved more than 2,500 scientists and 130 countries. Read The Full Story British Commander Calls For More Troops In Afghanistan 2007-02-04 03:26:08 General David Richards, the British general who has been commanding NATO forces in Afghanistan has called for a major reinforcement of the multinational coalition efforts in Afghanistan, saying he has "always been without the resources [he] would wish for" during his nine months in charge and calling a crucial battle against the Taliban last autumn "a damned near-run thing". Interviews from the most senior to the most junior levels in Afghanistan by The Observer have revealed a chronic lack of troops, which will be only partially allayed by the dispatch of extra NATO soldiers announced by American, British and Polish governments in recent days. A series of European governments have refused to send more troops and the U.K. has only enhanced the 6,000-strong British deployment by around 350 troops. Though a new battalion of 850 British infantry are being dispatched - in the face of strong opposition by the British Treasury Ministry, according to senior defense sources - 500 headquarters staff are being withdrawn. Read The Full Story U.S. Eco-Millionaire's Land Grab Prompts Anger In Argentina 2007-02-04 03:25:14 Douglas Tompkins calls himself a "deep ecologist". He is a millionaire on a quest to preserve some of Argentina's last frontier lands from human encroachment by buying them and turning them into ecological reserves. Yet Argentina may not permit him such philanthropy. Opponents are branding him a new-age "imperialist gringo"  and claim he has a secret aim: to help the U.S. military gain control of the country's natural resources. Tompkins, who sold his Esprit clothing firm in 1989 for a reported $150 million to devote his time and wealth to ecology, takes such attacks in his stride. "Land ownership is a political act; it arouses passions," he says. Tompkins, 63, holds to a very severe brand of environmentalism and is fond of reminding listeners that, unless runaway consumerism is halted, "we humans will be building ourselves a beautiful coffin in space called planet Earth". Read The Full Story Japan's Foreign Minister Calls U.S. Iraq Policy 'Immature' 2007-02-04 03:24:23 Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso has criticized U.S. policy in Iraq, saying American actions following the initial fighting in 2003 have been "immature," Japanese media reports said on Sunday. The comments follow remarks by Japan's defense minister last month saying President Bush had been wrong to start the Iraq war, and may damage ties with Washington ahead of a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney on February 20-22. "Rumsfeld went ahead and did it, but the operation after occupation was very immature and did not work so well, so that's why there's still trouble now," the financial daily Nikkei quoted Aso as saying in a speech on Saturday, referring to former U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Read The Full Story At Least 107 Killed, 200 Injured As Truck Bomb Explodes In Baghdad Market 2007-02-03 13:38:23 More than 100 people were killed and more than 200 injured when a truck bomb exploded at a central Baghdad market late Saturday afternoon, authorities said. The explosives were concealed under piles of vegetables and bags of groceries in the back of a pick-up truck, said Interior Ministry officials. At least 107 people were killed in the bombing and 212 injured, said Brig. Adnan Abdul al-Kareem, a ministry spokesman. He said the bomb, which detonated shortly before 5 p.m., caused a large fire that engulfed nine vehicles, at least 18 commercial shops and five houses. Read The Full Story Bird Flu Hits Turkey Farm In Britain 2007-02-03 13:37:55 Britain scrambled to contain its first outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu in domestic poultry on Saturday after the virus was found at a farm run by Europe's biggest turkey provider. Some 2,500 turkeys have died since Thursday at the Bernard Matthews farm near Lowestoft in eastern England. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said all 159,000 turkeys on the farm would be culled. "We're in new territory," National Farmers' Union Poultry Board chairman Charles Bourns told Reuters. "We've every confidence in DEFRA but, until we know how this disease arrived, this is a very apprehensive time for all poultry farmers." 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	Tax Dollars Spent On Government Contracting Almost Doubles Under Bush 2007-02-04 03:28:16 In June, short of people to process cases of incompetence and fraud by federal contractors, officials at the General Services Administrationresponded with what has become the government’s reflexive answer to almost every problem. They hired another contractor. It did not matter that the company they chose, CACI International, had itself recently avoided a suspension from federal contracting; or that the work, delving into investigative files on other contractors, appeared to pose a conflict of interest; or that each person supplied by the company would cost taxpayers $104 an hour. Six CACI workers soon joined hundreds of other private-sector workers at the G.S.A., the government’s management agency. Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does. Read The Full Story Security Contracts To Continue In Iraq 2007-02-04 03:27:29 The Defense Department plans to continue hiring private contractors to provide security at reconstruction projects in Iraq and to train U.S. and Iraqi military officers in counterinsurgency, despite problems with past contracts for such jobs that traditionally have been done by military personnel. The contracting out of these wartime activities comes at a time when the United States is stretching its resources to provide the additional 21,500 troops in Iraq that are needed under President Bush's new strategy, which involves stepped-up counterinsurgency operations in Baghdad and the expansion of economic reconstruction activities. During an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new top commander in Iraq, said he counts the "thousands of contract security forces" among the assets available to him to supplement the limited number of U.S. and Iraqi troops to be used for dealing with the insurgency. A former senior Defense Intelligence Agency expert on the Middle East, retired Army Col. W. Patrick Lang, said last week that contracting out intelligence collection and security for Army units and their contractors "results from actual military forces being too small." He added: "I can't remember a subordinate commander considering mercenaries as part of his forces." Read The Full Story Cheney's Shadow Looms At Libby Trial 2007-02-04 03:26:27 Vice President Cheney's press officer, Cathie Martin, approached his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on Air Force Two on July 12, 2003, to ask how she should respond to journalists' questions about Joseph C. Wilson IV. Libby looked over one of the reporters' questions and told Martin: "Well, let me go talk to the boss and I'll be back." On Libby's return, Martin testified in federal court last week, he brought a card with detailed replies dictated by Cheney, including a highly partisan, incomplete summary of Wilson's investigation into Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction program. Libby subsequently called a reporter, read him the statement, and said - according to the reporter - he had "heard" that Wilson's investigation was instigated by his wife, an employee at the CIA, later identified as Valerie Plame. The reporter, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, was one of five people with whom Libby discussed Plame's CIA status during those critical weeks that summer. After seven days of such courtroom testimony, the unanswered question hanging over Libby's trial is, did the vice president's former chief of staff decide to leak that disparaging information on his own? Read The Full Story Indonesia Floods Leave More Than 145,000 Homeless 2007-02-04 03:25:48 Floods that have crippled much of Indonesia's capital worsened Sunday, inundating scores of districts and leaving about 145,000 homeless, said officials and witnesses. Overnight rains caused more rivers to burst their banks across Jakarta, sending muddy water up to six feet deep into more residential and commercial areas in the densely packed city of 12 million people. "Jakarta is now on the highest alert level," said Sihar Simanjuntak, an official monitoring water levels at key rivers across the city. Two days of incessant rain over Jakarta and hills to its south triggered the city's worst floods in recent memory Friday, highlighting Indonesia's infrastructure problems as it tries to attract badly needed foreign investment. Read The Full Story News Analysis: Iran's Boast On Uranium Enrichment Put To Test 2007-02-04 03:25:01 After decades of largely clandestine efforts, Iran is expected to declare in coming days that it has made a huge leap toward industrial-scale production of enriched uranium - a defiant act that the country’s leaders will herald as a major technical stride and its neighbors will denounce as a looming threat. For now, many nuclear experts say, the frenetic activity at the desert enrichment plant in Natanz may be mostly about political showmanship. The many setbacks and outright failures of Tehran’s experimental program suggest that its bluster may outstrip its technical expertise. The problems help explain American intelligence estimates that Iran is at least four years away from producing a nuclear weapon. After weeks of limited access inside Iran, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.)  have reported that Tehran has succeeded in manufacturing parts for about 3,000 centrifuges, the devices that can spin uranium into reactor fuel - or bomb fuel. In recent days, the Iranians have begun installing the machines and supporting gear in a cavernous plant at Natanz, which would be a potential target if the United States or one of its allies decided that diplomacy would never keep Iran from getting the bomb. What the Iranians are not talking about, experts with access to the atomic agency’s information say, is that their experimental effort to make centrifuges work has struggled to achieve even limited success and appears to have been put on the back burner so the country’s leaders can declare that they are moving to the next stage. Read The Full Story 4 Florida Counties Declared Disaster Areas 2007-02-03 13:38:38 Search efforts resumed amid fresh rain Saturday across a swath of central Florida devastated by tornado-bearing thunderstorms that killed at least 20 people, including a high school girl struck by a tree as she lay in bed. President Bush declared four counties disaster areas, freeing federal aid for recovery from the storms that struck Friday, spawning at least one tornado that ripped roofs and walls off single family homes and threw mobile homes off their foundations. The twister hit between 3 and 4 a.m., when few people were awake to hear the tornado warnings broadcast just minutes in advance. Few communities in the region have warning sirens. The storms blew a tree into 17-year-old Brittany May's bedroom, killing her, her stepmother said Saturday. Read The Full Story At Least 18 Palestinians Killed In Gaza Factional Fighting 2007-02-03 13:38:12 At least 18 Palestinians, including two children, were killed in heavy factional fighting across the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, leaving a truce reached this week in ashes. The street battles between gunmen from the rival Fatah and Hamas movements brought the two-day death toll among Palestinians to at least 24. The two groups have been locked for the past year in a political struggle for control of the Palestinian Authority. More than 220 people were injured in the fighting, described by witnesses in Gaza as some of the most sustained since Hamas took day-to-day control of the Palestinian government 10 months ago. In terms of casualties, the violence ranks among the worst in a year. Read The Full Story 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
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