Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday February 1 2007 - (813)

Thursday February 1 2007 edition
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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 Cameron Tells Blair: Quit Now 'In The National Interest' 2007-01-31 15:07:08 Tony Blair should quit as prime minister now "in the national interest", Tory Party leader David Cameron told members of Britain's Parliament in the House of Commons Wednesday. Aides said it was the first time the Tory leader had directly told Blair at prime minister's questions gathering that it was time for him to leave 10 Downing Street. Blair sought to shrug off the assault, insisting that the national interest lay in the Labor government continuing to pursue its policies. But Cameron told him to recognize the "reality staring" him in the face. "The government can't plan. Ministers are treading water. They are all waiting for the chancellor (Gordon Brown) and not listening to you," said the Tory leader. "Your authority is draining away. Why don't you accept what everybody knows: it is now in the national interest for you to go." Read The Full Story Ninth Suspected Arrested In U.K. Anti-Terror Investigation 2007-01-31 15:06:41 A ninth suspect was arrested in Birmingham, England, Wednesday as part of a major anti-terrorism investigation reportedly involving an alleged plot to kidnap a British soldier. West Midlands police said the suspect was detained on a motorway in Birmingham. Early this morning, eight men were held in dawn raids at a series of locations around Birmingham. The men were held at eight separate homes, Assistant Chief Constable David Shaw told a press conference. Four other commercial premises had been sealed off and were being searched, police said, with the process likely to take days. Read The Full Story Venezuela President Hugo Chavez Set To Gain Sweeping New Powers 2007-01-31 15:05:11 Hugo Chavez is poised to gain extended powers today, allowing him to make sweeping changes as he seeks to transform Venezuelan society. Members of Venezuela's National Assembly are scheduled to formally grant the Venezuelan president the authority to enact measures by presidential decree during an outdoor meeting at the Plaza Bolivar, next to the national assembly in Caracas, the nation's capital. The former paratroop commander has already said he will use the law to nationalize Venezuela's largest telecommunications company and the electricity sector. He also intends to impose new taxes on the rich and exert greater state control over oil and natural gas. Chavez plans to give "power to the people" through thousands of newly formed communal councils, in which Venezuelans will have a say on spending on neighborhood projects ranging from public housing to road repairs. Read The Full Story Scientists Criticize White House Stance On Climate Change Findings 2007-01-31 03:17:13 Under its new Democratic chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman, of California, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform took on the Bush administration’s handling of climate change science Tuesday, and even the Republicans on the panel had little good to say about the administration’s actions. The subject of the hearing was accusations of administration interference with the work of government climate scientists. Almost to a person, Republicans on the panel introduced themselves by proclaiming their agreement that the earth’s climate was warming and that the principal culprit was greenhouse gases generated by people and their machinery. And when witnesses spoke in defense of the administration, it was often to say only that there were still some scientists who doubted that climate view or that the administration’s approach was not unique. Read The Full Story Congress Seeks Consensus On Global Warming 2007-01-31 03:16:36 As 600 scientists meet this week in Paris to finalize the first worldwide assessment in six years of the evidence on global warming, lawmakers on Capitol Hill searched for a political consensus Tuesday on how to address climate change. In a prolonged Senate hearing that one senator compared to "open-mike night," several lawmakers spoke in passionate terms about a need to put a cap on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions before global warming's effects become irreversible, while others sketched out possible policy compromises on the contentious issue. In a separate House hearing, a bipartisan group of lawmakers questioned whether the Bush administration has been suppressing climate science. Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Delaware), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee who has pressed to regulate greenhouse gases for several years, said he did not want his children and grandchildren chastising him for inaction in decades to come. "I don't want them to say, 'What did you do about it? What did you do about it when you had an opportunity? Weren't you in the Senate?' " Carper asked, adding that he hoped to tell them, "I tried to move heaven and Earth to make sure we took a better course." Read The Full Story Miller's Testimony Hurts Libby's Defense 2007-01-31 03:15:29 Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller Tuesday helped the prosecutor who landed her in jail and forced her into the witness chair, providing potentially damaging information about the confidential administration source she tried to shield, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Deliberately and sometimes defensively offering her account in Libby's perjury trial, Miller told the jury that "a very irritated and angry" Libby told her in a confidential conversation on June 23, 2003, that the wife of a prominent critic of the Iraq war worked at the CIA. Libby had told investigators he believed he first learned that information from another journalist nearly three weeks later - the assertion at the core of the charges against him. Miller testified that Libby, then the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, shared this information as they talked alone in his office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and that he complained that the CIA and a former ambassador were unfairly trying to blame the White House for using faulty intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. He then mentioned that the wife of the ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV, worked at a bureau of the CIA. Read The Full Story Linden Labs Sends "Permit-and-Proceed" Letter To First Life 2007-01-31 01:22:27   Linden Labs, creators of "Second Life" issued the following "Permit and Proceed" letter to "Get A First Life", and parody  of Second Life.    Typically in the business world, companies are very threatened by competition, and offended by anyone who would make fun of their product, company, or staff.  In this case, the good folks at Linden Labs, who apparently have a good sense of humor, issued exactly the opposite.   They've invited the folks at Get A First Life to continue, as well as selling products bearing their parody logo.    This is a refreshing change.  The full text of the letter follows. 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 January Set To Be Second Hottest On Record In U.K. 2007-01-31 15:06:56 This January will be the second hottest on record for the U.K. after temperatures reached "ridiculously warm" heights, forecasters said Wednesday. London's Met Office figures suggest what early cherry blossoms and wide-awake hedgehogs have already led us to suspect - this month has been much warmer than average. Across the U.K., temperatures this year have so far averaged 5.9 degrees Celsius - 2.5 degrees Celsius above the long-term norm for January, said the Met Office. It has already predicted that 2007 will be the hottest ever year with a global average temperature of 14.5 Celsius (about 55 degrees Fahrenheit), following last year's record-breaking year. Read The Full Story Germany Issues Arrest Warrants For Suspected CIA Agents 2007-01-31 15:06:31 German prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for 13 suspected CIA agents over their alleged kidnapping three years ago of a German citizen, authorities said Wednesday. The unidentified agents are being sought on suspicion of the wrongful imprisonment of Khaled al-Masri and of causing him serious bodily harm, said Munich prosecutor Christian Schmidt-Sommerfeld. He said the warrants were issued in the last few days. Al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was abducted in December 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonian border and flown by the CIA to a detention center in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was abused. He says he was released in Albania in May 2004 after the CIA discovered they had the wrong person. Read The Full Story I Was Poisoned By Russians, Says Human Rights Judge 2007-01-31 15:04:55 The former president of the European Court of Human Rights Wednesday claimed he was poisoned during a visit to Russia in late October - three days before the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned in London. Luzius Wildhaber, who retired last month as Europe's most senior judge, told a Swiss newspaper that he had fallen violently ill after a three-day trip to Moscow. The judge has been the subject of persistent criticism from Russia for upholding a series of complaints by Chechen human rights campaigners. Read The Full Story Millions Paid To Iraq Contractors Squandered On Unauthorized Work 2007-01-31 03:16:57 The U.S. government has squandered millions of dollars intended for police training programs in Iraq because of rampant problems overseeing contractors, according to federal reviews released Tuesday. In one case, contractors building a camp for American trainers constructed an Olympic-size swimming pool that hadn't been ordered. In another, human waste reportedly continues to leak from plumbing fixtures at a barracks for Iraqi police recruits, a year after the problem was first identified and despite assurances from the contractor that the problem was being fixed. Together, the reports offer a revealing glimpse at one aspect of the $38 billion American-led reconstruction effort. The police training program has been repeatedly flagged by U.S. officials as particularly crucial to the war effort, given the need for effective Iraqi security forces to take over from the U.S. military. While Tuesday's reports by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction do not address the training itself, they do find major flaws with how both the government and its contractors attempted to build the program's facilities. The flaws, auditors concluded, all had common roots: The government's failure to monitor how contractors were spending taxpayer money. Read The Full Story Ancient Settlement Unearthed Near Stonehenge 2007-01-31 03:15:48 New excavations near the mysterious circle at Stonehenge in southern England have uncovered dozens of homes where hundreds of people lived - at roughly the same time that the giant stone slabs were being erected 4,600 years ago. The finding strongly suggests that the monument and the settlement nearby were a center for ceremonial activities, with Stonehenge probably a burial site, while other nearby circular earthen and timber "henges" were devoted to feasts and festivals. The small homes and personal items found beneath the grounds of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site are the first of their kind from that late Stone Age period in Britain, and they suggest a surprising level of social organization and ceremonial behavior to complement the massive stonework nearby. The excavators said their discoveries, about two miles from Stonehenge itself, together constitute an archaeological treasure. Read The Full Story Sheriff's Wife Among 4 Dead In Shooting 2007-01-31 03:15:03 The wife of a rural Panhandle sheriff, a deputy and two suspects were killed Tuesday evening in shootings outside the sheriff's home in Marianna, Florida. The violence began when Mellie McDaniel, wife of the Jackson County Sheriff, arrived home, said State Attorney Steve Meadows. After pulling into her driveway, the two suspects shot and killed the sheriff's wife, said authorities. A deputy was shot and killed moments later. Deputies and other officers - including the sheriff, John McDaniel - arrived and killed the two suspects in an exchange of gunfire, said Meadows. The names of the deputy and the two suspects were not released. Read The Full Story
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