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

Friday March 2 2007 edition
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UPUDATE: Tornadoes Kill At Least 17 In Southeast U.S. 2007-03-02 03:51:07 Six more tornado-related deaths were reported in Georgia early Friday, bringing to 17 the number of fatalities blamed on a storm system that blasted the central and southeastern United States. The storms killed nine people in Georgia, seven in Alabama and one in Missouri. Details of the six newly reported fatalities in Georgia early Friday were not immediately available. In southeastern Alabama, a tornado Thursday afternoon killed seven people, five of them at Enterprise High School, said spokeswoman Tasamie Richardson. Read The Full Story Is Chinese Firm Interested In Chrysler? 2007-03-02 03:49:40 When Chery Automobile cars first appeared outside of China in 2001, they were ridiculed as a cheap attempt to trick purchasers into thinking they were buying Chevy vehicles instead of Chinese knockoffs. These days, however, when industry watchers talk about the future of the auto industry, Chery's name and its lines of cute, gas-efficient cars elicit excited talk. The company has done so well - it is now the No. 1 independent automaker and auto exporter in China, with business in 30 countries - that when DaimlerChrysler announced this month that it may be interested in selling off its flailing Chrysler unit, many analysts mentioned Chery as a potential suitor. Chery spokesman Wang Wei denied any such deal was in the works, and many industry analysts in China were skeptical about a merger, citing Chery's small size and potential political hurdles. Read The Full Story Stephen Hawking Gets Ready For The Ride Of His Life 2007-03-02 03:48:55 Stephen Hawking, the British cosmologist, Cambridge professor and best-selling author who has spent his career pondering the nature of gravity from a wheelchair, says he intends to get away from it all for a little while. On April 26, Dr. Hawking, surrounded by a medical entourage, is to take a zero-gravity ride out of Cape Canaveral on a so-called vomit comet, a padded aircraft that flies a roller-coaster trajectory to produce periods of weightlessness. He is getting his lift gratis, from the Zero Gravity Corporation, which has been flying thrill seekers on a special Boeing 727-200 since 2004 at $3,500 a trip. Peter H. Diamandis, chief executive of Zero G, said that “the idea of giving the world’s expert on gravity the opportunity to experience zero gravity” was irresistible. Read The Full Story UPDATE: At Least 8 Dead After Tornado Hits Alabama School 2007-03-01 20:34:09 At least eight people were killed and several injured when a tornado struck a high school in Alabama on Thursday afternoon, said emergency officials. "Kids are walking around dazed, cut," said Laren Allgood, a reporter for the Enterprise Ledger. Two other people - one in Missouri and another in Alabama - also died as a powerful weather system moving across the southern United States spawned severe weather and possible tornadoes. Students at Enterprise High School were taking cover in the hallways when it was hit. "The whole building just collapsed on everybody," said Chase Baldwin, a student at the school. "A bunch of people were trapped under cinder blocks, and people had their heads cut open." Read The Full Story Tornado Kills 7-Year-Old In Missouri, Twister Hits Alabama High School 2007-03-01 18:01:56 A tornado struck southern Missouri, killing a 7-year-old girl and damaging homes and businesses Thursday, and another apparent twister struck an Alabama high school, said authorities. Students were inside Enterprise High School at the time, and there were early reports of injuries, state and weather officials said. Police were trying to determine if any students were trapped, said state Rep. Terry Spicer. The school "appears to have been right in the path," said Paul Duval, meteorologist with National Weather Service in Tallahassee, Florida, which monitors southeast Alabama. "What we have learned so far is that there are injuries both in downtown Enterprise and the high school," he said. Read The Full Story FEC Ruling Assists Barack Obama 2007-03-01 18:01:10 Federal regulators ruled this morning that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois) will be permitted to collect money for a potential general election presidential campaign without foreclosing the possibility that he will still accept federal funds for that phase of the campaign. The ruling preserves the possibility, however slight, that presidential candidates who reach the general election will broker a deal to remain part of the public funding program created in the aftermath of the Watergate scandals. FEC Chairman Robert Lenhard said the commissioners reached their unanimous decision after recognizing that without this ruling, public financing would almost certainly be abandoned. "The reality is, the public financing system may no longer be viable," he said. Read The Full Story Putin Picks Security Chief To Lead Chechnya 2007-03-01 18:00:38 Russian President Vladimir V. Putin Thursday appointed Ramzan A. Kadyrov, a widely feared young official whose security forces have been accused of kidnappings, torture and other abuses, to be the new president of the battered southern republic of Chechnya. The appointment, while expected, cemented Kadyrov’s position as the dominant political figure in Chechnya, where Russian and Chechen forces have largely quashed a separatist movement after two wars, beginning in 1994. Putin announced his decision at his residence outside Moscow during a meeting with Kadyrov. In Chechnya Thursday, Europe’s senior human-rights official, Thomas Hammarberg, attended a human rights conference organized by the government and denounced “a real widespread pattern of serious ill-treatment and many cases of torture against those who have been arrested,” the BBC reported. Read The Full Story Iranian President To Visit Saudi Arabia 2007-03-01 17:59:32 Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will make his first official visit to Saudi Arabia on Saturday for a summit with King Abdullah intended to tackle the burgeoning sectarian and political battles throughout the Middle East, Saudi and Iranian officials said Thursday. “The two heads of state will discuss issues of the Islamic world, bilateral ties and the situation in the Middle East,” Mohammad Hosseini, Iran’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told the Iranian news agency IRNA. He did not say when the trip would be made, but other news agencies reported that it would take place this weekend. “When the views of the two countries get closer, they can play an influential role in the chaotic situation of the Islamic world and the Middle East,” said Hosseini. “Unrest is increasing in the Middle East and if the situation continues, it will become a threat for all the countries in the region,” he said. Read The Full Story Top Officials Knew Of Neglect At Walter Reed 2007-03-01 03:08:03 Top officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, including the Army's surgeon general, have heard complaints about outpatient neglect from family members, veterans groups and members of Congress for more than three years. A procession of Pentagon and Walter Reed officials expressed surprise last week about the living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares faced by wounded soldiers staying at the Washington, D.C., medical facility; but as far back as 2003, the commander of Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now the Army's top medical officer, was told that soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were languishing and lost on the grounds, according to interviews. Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, said he ran into Kiley in the foyer of the command headquarters at Walter Reed shortly after the Iraq war began and told him that "there are people in the barracks who are drinking themselves to death and people who are sharing drugs and people not getting the care they need." "I met guys who weren't going to appointments because the hospital didn't even know they were there," Robinson said. Kiley told him to speak to a sergeant major, a top enlisted officer. Read The Full Story Kennedy Insider Arthur Schlesinger Dies At 89 2007-03-01 03:06:34 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Kennedy insider who helped define mainstream liberalism during the Cold War and remained an eminent public thinker into the 21st century, has died, his son said. He was 89. Schlesinger suffered a heart attack while dining out with family members Wednesday night in Manhattan, Stephen Schlesinger said. He was taken to New York Downtown Hospital, where he died. Among the most famous historians of his time, Schlesinger was widely respected as learned and readable, with a panoramic vision of American culture and politics. He received a National Book Award for ``Robert Kennedy and His Times'' and both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer for ``A Thousand Days,'' his memoir/chronicle of President Kennedy's administration. He also won a Pulitzer, in 1946, for ``The Age of Jackson,'' his landmark chronicle of Andrew Jackson's administration. With his bow ties and horn-rimmed glasses, Schlesinger seemed the very image of a reserved, tweedy scholar. But he was an assured member of the so-called Eastern elite, friendly with everyone from Mary McCarthy to Katherine Graham and enough of a sport to swim fully clothed in the pool of then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Read The Full Story McCain Announces Bid For Presidency ... On Letterman 2007-03-01 03:05:13 Setting aside any doubt, Republican Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, announced Wednesday he would seek the presidential nomination. McCain, who had a presidential exploratory committee, made the declaration on the "Late Show with David Letterman," taped earlier Wednesday. "We are going to formally announce it in early April," John Weaver, a top adviser to McCain, told CNN. Read The Full Story	How The President Saw The Light And Changed Foreign Policy 2007-03-02 03:50:45 It is being called George Bush's Come to Jesus moment. As in the midlife realisation that led Mr Bush to give up alcohol and embrace Christianity, the president in his sixth year in the White House has undergone another radical conversion, abandoning an ideological foreign policy for a more pragmatic approach, foreign policy experts say. Within the space of two weeks, the Bush administration has made dramatic steps towards diplomatic engagement of two countries once shunned as part of the Axis of Evil - agreeing to contacts with Iran and opening the door to recognition of North Korea. In Washington, the shift was seen Thursday as a belated acknowledgement that the administration's approach to the world - on Iraq, nuclear weapons proliferation, and Middle East peace - was not just ineffective, but dangerous. "The main thing was that there was a sense that American foreign policy was spinning out of control. The administration was looking at one series of failures after another and these were really beginning to damage national security," said James Steinberg, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration and now heads the Lyndon Johnson school of public affairs in Texas. Read The Full Story U.S. Paper Mills Want To Limit Chinese Imports 2007-03-02 03:49:21 For years the residents of this economically distressed hollow in the Appalachians have watched textile mills, glass factories and tire makers close down one after the other. Now its lone remaining big factory - “the last man standing,” as the production manager at the paper mill here put it - is threatened by imports of cheaper paper made in China. “We’re still the economic engine for this whole area,” said Scott Graham, the production manager, referring to the river valley and forested hills surrounding the mill. “But our operations cannot compete with these below-cost imports.” It is a familiar story in the struggle of the American industrial base to cope with globalization, but this one may have a different ending. The problems of paper mills here and elsewhere around the country have become a test case for a possible new confrontation between the United States and China, which many industry officials and members of Congress hope could lead to new tariffs on imports not only of Chinese-made paper but also of steel, furniture, textiles and plastics. Read The Full Story New Computer Virus Threatens Biz Nets 2007-03-01 23:31:21 A disgruntled hacker with a personal grudge against Symantec, which provides anti-virus software to leading Fortune 500 companies, could be behind a new, crippling computer virus that's already hit a division of at least one big U.S. corporation on Thursday. If it spreads, technology experts warn the latest strains of the insidious RINBOT computer virus could hijack network systems of businesses worldwide. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant with Boston-based IT security firm Sophos, said his company has been aware of "a number" of new versions of the RINBOT or DELBOT virus produced since Feb. 15. Read The Full Story U.S. National Guard Rated At Low Readiness 2007-03-01 18:02:08 Nearly 90 percent of Army National Guard units in the United States are rated "not ready" - largely because of shortfalls in equipment worth billions of dollars - jeopardizing the Guard's ability to respond to crises at home and abroad, according to a congressional commission that released a preliminary report today on the state of U.S. military reserve forces. The commission found that heavy deployments of the National Guard and Reserves since 2001 for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other anti-terrorism missions have deepened shortages, forced the military to cobble together units and hurt recruiting. The problems threaten to undermine the nation's 830,000-strong selected reserves, said the commission. "We can't sustain the [National Guard and Reserve] on the course we're on," said Arnold L. Punaro, chairman of the 13-member Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, established by Congress in 2005. "The Department of Defense is not adequately equipping the National Guard for its domestic missions," the commission report said. It faulted the Pentagon for a lack of budgeting for "civil support" for domestic emergencies, criticizing what it called the "flawed assumption" that as long as the military is prepared to fight a major war, it is ready to respond to a disaster or emergency at home. Read The Full Story Former Taliban Defense Minister Arrested In Pakistan 2007-03-01 18:01:29 The Taliban's former defense minister, Mullah Obeidullah, who has remained one of the most senior leaders in the insurgent movement, was arrested in Pakistan on Monday, the day of Vice President Dick Cheney's visit, two government officials said Thursday. Mullah Obeidullah is the most important Taliban member to be arrested since the invasion of Afghanistan by American forces in 2001. He is one of the inner core of the Taliban leadership around the Mullah Muhammad Omar who are believed to operate from the relative safety of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province, where Mullah Obeidullah was arrested. It is not clear whether he was picked up before, during or after Cheney’s visit. But the timing may be significant since Pakistan has come in for rising criticism for not doing enough to stem the Taliban insurgents who have used Pakistan as a sanctuary. Read The Full Story Australian David Hicks Faces U.S. Terror Charges 2007-03-01 18:00:58 The Bush administration filed charges Thursday against David Hicks, an Australian suspected of aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan and the first terrorism-war era detainee to be charged under the new law for military commissions. The decision was made even though officials of Australia already had asked the United States not to bring such charges. Australia has been a steadfast ally to the Bush administration in its war on terrorism. Hicks, whose case has drawn international attention, is a former kangaroo skinner captured in Afghanistan in December 2001. He has been held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for more than five years without trial. Read The Full Story Walter Reed General Relieved Of His Command 2007-03-01 18:00:22 The Army Thursday relieved the commander of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, saying it had "lost trust and confidence" in his leadership in the wake of a scandal over outpatient treatment of wounded veterans at the Washington, D.C., hospital complex. Army Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, commanding general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and of the Walter Reed center, was relieved of command by the secretary of the Army, Francis J. Harvey, at 10 a.m. Thursday, the Army announced in a news release. It said the action was under consideration for the past several days and that a decision was made yesterday. "Maj. Gen. Weightman was informed this morning that the senior Army leadership had lost trust and confidence in the commander's leadership abilities to address needed solutions for soldier-outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center," the statement said. It said Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who serves as surgeon general of the Army and commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command, will take over temporarily as commander of Walter Reed "until a general officer is selected for this important leadership position." Read The Full Story U.S. Commanders Admit: We Face A Vietnam-Style Collapse 2007-03-01 03:08:20 An elite team of officers advising the U.S. commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat. The officers - combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency - are charged with implementing the "new way forward" strategy announced by George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial "surge" of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province. The team, known as the "Baghdad brains trust" and ensconced in the heavily fortified Green Zone, is struggling to overcome a range of entrenched problems in what has become a race against time, according to a former senior administration official familiar with their deliberations. "They know they are operating under a clock. They know they are going to hear a lot more talk in Washington about 'Plan B' by the autumn - meaning withdrawal. They know the next six-month period is their opportunity. And they say it's getting harder every day," he said. Read The Full Story Fired U.S. Attorney Says Lawmakers Pressured Him 2007-03-01 03:07:43 A political tempest over the mass firing of federal prosecutors escalated Wednesday with allegations from the departing U.S. attorney in New Mexico, who said that two members of Congress attempted to pressure him to speed up a probe of Democrats just before the November elections. David C. Iglesias, who left Wednesday after more than five years in office, said he received the calls in October and believes that complaints from the lawmakers may have led the Justice Department to fire him late last year. Iglesias also responded to allegations from Justice officials that he had performed poorly and was too often absent, citing positive job reviews and data showing increasing numbers of prosecutions. He also noted that he is required to serve 40 days a year in the Navy Reserve. Iglesias declined to name the lawmakers who called him, but he said in an interview: "I didn't give them what they wanted. That was probably a political problem that caused them to go to the White House or whomever and complain that I wasn't a team player." Read The Full Story Italian Senate Gives Prodi Confidence Vote 2007-03-01 03:06:13 Romano Prodi last night pulled his centre-left government through the gravest emergency of its nine months in office, winning a senate vote of confidence. The former European Union commission president needed 160 votes and won 162 in Italy's upper house, with 157 senators voting for Silvio Berlusconi's rightwing opposition. Prodi's victory, ending seven days of uncertainty, was made possible only by the defection of two conservative senators, one being Marco Follini, a Christian Democrat and former deputy prime minister under Mr Berlusconi, who was loudly booed by his erstwhile colleagues when his vote was declared. Berlusconi accused Follini of "distorting the outcome" of last April's general election. The government also benefited from a last-minute decision by a life senator, Giulio Andreotti, 88, and former Christian Democrat prime minister, whose abstention in a lost vote on the government's foreign policy helped provoke the crisis; he announced he would not take part in the ballot. Prodi was "very satisfied" with the result. Read The Full Story
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