Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday March 23 2007 - (813)

Friday March 23 2007 edition
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U.S. Struggles To Avert Turkish Military Intervention In Northern Iraq 2007-03-23 02:14:11 The U.S. is scrambling to head off a "disastrous" Turkish military intervention in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq that threatens to derail the Baghdad security surge and open up a third front in the battle to save Iraq from disintegration. Senior Bush administration officials have assured Turkey in recent days that U.S. forces will increase efforts to root out Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) guerrillas enjoying safe haven in the Qandil mountains, on the Iraq-Iran-Turkey border. But Abdullah Gul, Turkey's foreign minister, members of the Turkish parliament, military chiefs and diplomats say up to 3,800 PKK fighters are preparing for attacks in southeast Turkey - and Turkey is ready to hit back if the Americans fail to act. "We will do what we have to do, we will do what is necessary. Nothing is ruled out," said  Gul. "I have said to the Americans many times: suppose there is a terrorist organization in Mexico attacking America. What would you do?... We are hopeful. We have high expectations. But we cannot just wait forever." Read The Full Story Gates Argued For Closing Guantanamo Prison 2007-03-23 02:13:42 In his first weeks as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates repeatedly argued that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantanamo would be viewed as illegitimate, according to senior administration officials. He told President Bush and others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible. Gates’ appeal was an effort to turn Bush’s publicly stated desire to close Guantanamo into a specific plan for action, the officials said. In particular, Gates urged that trials of terrorism suspects be moved to the United States, both to make them more credible and because Guantanamo’s continued existence hampered the broader war effort, said administration officials. Gates’ arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, said administration officials. Read The Full Story Liberals Relent On Iraq War Funding 2007-03-23 02:12:49 Liberal opposition to a $124 billion war spending bill broke last night, when leaders of the antiwar Out of Iraq  Caucus pledged to Democratic leaders that they will not block the measure, which sets timelines for bringing U.S. troops home. The acquiescence of the liberals probably means that the House will pass a binding measure Friday that, for the first time, would establish tough readiness standards for the deployment of combat forces and an Aug. 31, 2008, deadline for their removal from Iraq. A Senate committee also passed a spending bill Thursday setting a goal of bringing troops home within a year. The developments mark congressional Democrats' first real progress in putting legislative pressure on President Bush to withdraw U.S. forces. Read The Full Story Edwards To Continue Campaign Despite Wife's Cancer 2007-03-22 12:32:33 John Edwards, the North Carolina Democrat, said today that his wife’s cancer had returned, but that his bid for the presidency “goes on strongly.” “The campaign goes on, the campaign goes on strongly,” he said, with his wife, Elizabeth, at his side. Edwards said he learned earlier this week that the cancer had reappeared in his wife’s rib cage and that the couple recognized that it was no longer curable, though it could be managed with treatment. The announcement came a day after Edwards cancelled a campaign appearance in Iowa to rush home to join his wife at a visit with doctors who are monitoring her treatment for breast cancer. He attended a fund-raising picnic here Wednesday night. Read The Full Story U.S. Judge Blocks 1998 Online Porn Law 2007-03-22 12:32:06 A federal judge on Thursday dealt another blow to government efforts to control Internet pornography, striking down a 1998 U.S. law that makes it a crime for commercial Web site operators to let children access "harmful" material. In the ruling, the judge said parents can protect their children through software filters and other less restrictive means that do not limit the rights of others to free speech. "Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection," wrote Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed, Jr., who presided over a four-week trial last fall. The law would have criminalized Web sites that allow children to access material deemed "harmful to minors" by "contemporary community standards." The sites would have been expected to require a credit card number or other proof of age. Penalties included a $50,000 fine and up to six months in prison. Read The Full Story Oil Prices Rise Above $61 A Barrel 2007-03-22 12:31:10 Oil prices rose more than $1 a barrel Thursday, a day after the government reported more robust refinery usage for the first time in weeks - a sign that refiners have begun to ramp up production ahead of the summer driving season. Traders also appeared to interpret a decision by the U.S. Federal Reserve to leave its benchmark interest rate unchanged as positive for the market. A barrel of light, sweet crude for May delivery jumped $1.87 to $61.48 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.  Oil last settled above $61 a barrel on March 8. The Brent crude contract for May rose $1.64 to $62.41 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London. Read The Full Story Prosecutor Says Bush Officials Interfered With Tobacco Case 2007-03-22 01:27:49 The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said Wednesday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government's racketeering case. Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers. She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony. And they ordered Eubanks to read verbatim a closing argument they had rewritten for her, she said. "The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said," Eubanks said. "And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public." Read The Full Story Substandard Conditions At V.A. Centers Noted 2007-03-22 01:27:09 A review by the Department of Veterans Affairs of 1,400 hospitals and other veterans care facilities released yesterday has turned up more than 1,000 reports of substandard conditions - from leaky roofs and peeling paint to bug and bat infestations - as well as a smaller number of potential threats to patient safety, such as suicide risks in psychiatric wards. The investigation, ordered March 7 by V.A. Secretary Jim Nicholson, found problems such as rugs loaded with bacteria from patient "accidents," ceiling and floor tiles with asbestos that needs to be removed, as well as exposed pipes and other fixtures from which mental patients could hang themselves. "We are committed to being upfront in identifying issues, and we are managing to correct them," said Louise Van Diepen, chief of staff of V.A.'s Veterans Health Administration. "I am pleased that we are managing it aggressively, and most represented wear-and-tear issues, as opposed to the Walter Reed situation," Van Diepen said, referring to the squalid conditions at an outpatient-care building at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which prompted the V.A. review. Read The Full Story NASA Grounds Its Ideas Factory For Lack Of Funds 2007-03-22 01:26:35 In almost 20 years of research, it has been the home of some of the most daring ideas to aid exploration: space elevators, crops that could grow on Mars and a shield to protect our planet from global warming. But now NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) has fallen victim to a very down-to-earth problem - a lack of money. The U.S. space agency is set to close its futuristic ideas factory as part of a cost-cutting exercise which it hopes will help pay for ambitious plans to explore the moon and Mars. Bobby Mitchell, who works at NIAC's headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, told the Guardian: "From what I understand, NASA are out of money. We haven't got an official notice yet but we have heard from NASA that they are going to discontinue funding." Former NASA scientist Keith Cowing said the decision to close NIAC was "just plain stupid". Writing on his NASA Watch website, he directed comments to NASA's administrator, Mike Griffin: "Advanced spacesuits .. will open the surface of the moon - and then Mars - to meaningful and productive human exploration. Where are you going to get all of the things you need to put on those Ares rockets so as to allow their crews to carry out their missions, Mike? Or do you 'just need a good map'? Explorers without the right tools die - or turn around - and head back home. Wrong answer, Mike." Read The Full Story Charts Found In Bookshop Cast Doubt On Britain's Claim To Discovering Australia 2007-03-22 01:25:48 When James Cook thought he had discovered Australia and claimed it for the crown in the 18th century, he was late to the party. Another English explorer had been decades ahead in sighting the great southern land, while Dutch explorers had been charting the continent even earlier. New evidence has emerged to suggest that neither the English nor Dutch were the first Europeans to reach the continent during the great era of epic sea adventure and global circumnavigation. A set of maps unearthed in Australia appear to show that Captain Cook was predated by a little known Portuguese explorer, Cristovao Mendonca, who charted parts of the coastline 250 years earlier. Drawn in the early 16th century, the charts bear a close resemblance to Australia's coastline, and this coastline is marked with locations given names in Portuguese. An Australian journalist, Peter Trickett, claims he stumbled on the hand-crafted documents while browsing in a Canberra bookshop eight years ago, and says they are an accurate depiction of headlands and bays along the east coast, thus proving that Mendonca navigated the area in the 1520s. Read The Full Story	GAO Faults Military, Says Insurgents Took Unsecured Explosives 2007-03-23 02:13:59 The U.S. military's faulty war plans and insufficient troops in Iraq left thousands and possibly millions of tons of conventional munitions unsecured or in the hands of insurgent groups after the 2003 invasion - allowing widespread looting of weapons and explosives used to make roadside bombs that cause the bulk of U.S. casualties, according to a government report released Thursday. Some weapons sites remained vulnerable as recently as October 2006, according to the Government Accountability Office report, which said the unguarded sites "will likely continue to support terrorist attacks throughout the region." For example, it said hundreds of tons of explosives at the Al Qa Qaa facility in Iraq that had been documented by the International Atomic Energy Agency were lost to theft and looting after April 9, 2003. The powerful explosives missing from the Al Qa Qaa complex became a controversy on the eve of the 2004 presidential election, and the Pentagon said then that a U.S. Army demolition unit had destroyed up to 250 tons of explosives at the site. Read The Full Story Jamaican Authorities: Coach Woolmer Was Murdered 2007-03-23 02:13:18 A huge murder hunt was launched last night after Jamaican police confirmed that Bob Woolmer, the coach of the Pakistan cricket team, was strangled in his hotel room by one or more killers in circumstances which investigators described as "extraordinary and evil". The official pathologist report following a post mortem gave the cause of death as asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation. The result throws the world of international cricket into its greatest crisis in recent memory, though the ICC vowed to press on with the World Cup. Mark Shields, the former Scotland Yard chief superintendent who is leading the investigation, appealed to Woolmer's killer or killers to come forward, vowing to track them down if they failed to do so. He said he would investigate every possible motive for the murder, including match-fixing and the involvement of betting syndicates, which has been widely speculated. Read The Full Story FEC Democrats Say Bush Violated Campaign Spending Limits 2007-03-23 02:12:34 The three Democrats on the Federal Election Commission revealed yesterday that they strongly believe President Bush exceeded legal spending limits during the 2004 presidential contest and that his campaign owes the government $40 million. Their concerns spilled out during a vote to approve an audit of the Bush campaign's finances, which is conducted to make sure the campaign adhered to spending rules after accepting $74.6 million in public money for the 2004 general election. Republican commissioners defended the way the Bush campaign billed the cost of more than $80 million in television ads, which were the source of the dispute. Read The Full Story FDA Limits Role Of Advisers Tied To Medical Industry 2007-03-22 12:32:21 Expert advisers to the government who receive money from a drug or device maker would be barred for the first time from voting on whether to approve that company’s products under new rules announced Wednesday for the F.D.A.’s powerful advisory committees. Indeed, such doctors who receive more than $50,000 from a company or a competitor whose product is being discussed would no longer be allowed to serve on the committees, though those who receive less than that amount in the prior year can join a committee and participate in its discussions. A “significant number” of the agency’s present advisers would be affected by the new policy, said the F.D.A. acting deputy commissioner, Randall W. Lutter, though he would not say how many. The rules are among the first major changes made by Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach since he was confirmed as commissioner of food and drugs late last year. Read The Full Story U.S. Senate Panel Follows House, OKs Subpoenas For White House Staffers 2007-03-22 12:31:30 A Senate panel, following the House's lead, has authorized subpoenas for White House political adviser Karl Rove and other top aides involved in the firing of federal prosecutors. The Senate Judiciary Committee decided by voice vote to approve the subpoenas as Republicans and Democrats sparred over whether to press a showdown with President Bush over the ousters of eight U.S. attorneys. Democrats angrily rejected Bush's offer to grant a limited number of lawmakers private interviews with the aides with no transcript and without swearing them in. Republicans counseled restraint. A House Judiciary subcommittee authorized subpoenas in the matter Wednesday, but none has been issued. Read The Full Story Pentagon Investigating Veterans' Home 2007-03-22 12:30:25 Reports of a rising death rate and rooms spattered with blood, urine and feces at the Armed Forces Retirement Home prompted the Pentagon Wednesday to begin investigating conditions at the veterans facility in Northwest Washington, D.C. The Government Accountability Office warned the Pentagon this week that residents of the home "may be at risk" in light of allegations of severe health-care problems. Residents have been admitted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center with "the most serious type of pressure sores" and, in one case, with maggots in a wound, according to a GAO letter sent to the Defense Department. Timothy Cox, the chief operating officer for the retirement home, said Wednesday that the accusations are "without merit," and he blasted the GAO for making "inflammatory allegations" without investigating them. The reports came from medical personnel who treat residents at the historic veterans home, formerly known as the U.S. Soldiers' and Airmen's Home. The facility, run by an independent federal agency under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense, is home to more than 1,100 enlisted retirees, many of them veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Read The Full Story Inspector General Details Failures Of Iraq Reconstruction 2007-03-22 01:27:32 The U.S. government was unprepared for the extensive nation-building required after it invaded Iraq, and at each juncture where it could have adjusted its efforts, it failed even to understand the problems it faced, according to the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. In a stinging, wide-ranging assessment of U.S. reconstruction efforts, Stuart W. Bowen, Jr., said that in the days after the invasion, the Defense Department had no strategy for restoring either government institutions or infrastructure. And in the years since, other agencies joined the effort without an overall plan and without a structure in place to organize and execute a task of such magnitude. Lines of authority remained unclear in the reconstruction effort. With a demand for speed and a shortage of government personnel, much of the oversight was turned over to the contractors doing the work. There was little coordination among the various agencies. The result was a series of missed opportunities to address the unraveling situation, said Bowen. Read The Full Story Tamiflu Warning In Japan After Child Suicides And Injuries 2007-03-22 01:26:55 Concerns about the anti-flu drug Tamiflu deepened Wednesday after doctors in Japan were warned against prescribing it to teenagers because of several cases in which young patients committed suicide or harmed themselves. Japan's health ministry decided to act after a boy and a girl, both 14, fell to their deaths in suspected suicides last month and two 12-year-old boys suffered minor injuries after falling from buildings. The move is likely to fuel anxieties about Tamiflu, which is being stockpiled around the world as the best available drug to combat a bird flu epidemic. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration studied the evidence on deaths linked to the drug last November. Despite concluding that the drug should continue to be used, the U.S. and Canada have asked its manufacturer, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, to warn in its labelling that Tamiflu may cause abnormal behavior. The possible side effects came to light in 2005, when 12 children died and 32 exhibited abnormal behavior, including running on to the road and falling from buildings. Read The Full Story Alaska Offers Wolf-Kill Cash 2007-03-22 01:26:15 The state is offering cash for people to kill wolves in an effort to boost a predator control program that has not met expected numbers, officials said. The incentives include offering 180 volunteer pilots and aerial gunners $150 for turning in legs of freshly killed wolves, Gov. Sarah Palin's office announced Tuesday. The state will use the left forelegs of wolves as biological specimens, said Denby Lloyd, commissioner for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, in a statement. The program, now in its fourth year and operating in five areas of the state, is designed to increase moose and caribou numbers by reducing the number of predators. Previously, the only reward was a wolf pelt that could sell for $200 to $300, a wildlife official told the Anchorage Daily News. Read The Full Story
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