Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday March 24 2007 - (813)

Saturday March 24 2007 edition
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Britain To Iran: Free Our Sailors 2007-03-24 01:31:39 Britain Friday demanded the return of 15 sailors and marines seized by the Iranian navy in a channel separating Iraq and Iran. Iran's ambassador to London, Rasoul Movahedian, was summoned to the Foreign Office and asked for an explanation of the incident, in which a British patrol conducting a routine search of traffic in the Shatt al-Arab waterway was surrounded by Iranian vessels and detained. Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, said the British patrol had been inside Iraqi waters "in support of the government of Iraq to stop smuggling" and that the Iranian envoy "was left in no doubt that we want them back". Read The Full Story 9 Die As Assassins' Blasts Wound Iraq's Deputy Premier 2007-03-24 01:31:14 An assassination attempt on one of Iraq's deputy prime ministers, a Sunni in the Shiite-dominated government, left nine people dead Friday and was another in the mounting number of cases of Sunni-on-Sunni violence. The deputy prime minister, Salam al-Zubaie, received chest wounds from shrapnel when one of his Sunni guards blew himself up as Zubaie led midday prayers in a prayer room attached to his house. Within minutes, a car bomb blew up outside Zubaie’s house, apparently part of a twofold attempt on his life, according to an account by Interior Ministry officials and members of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni political group. Read The Full Story Detectives On Woolmer Murder Case Investigate Match-Fixing Theory 2007-03-24 01:30:38 Detectives investigating the murder of Pakistan's cricket coach, Bob Woolmer, say they are actively pursuing the possibility that match-fixing of one or more of the World Cup games may have provided the motive for his killing. They confirmed last night that they are collaborating with a senior official from the International Cricket Council's anti-corruption unit to investigate speculation that Woolmer may have been intending to expose foul play. They are also investigating rumors that the coach was involved in a dispute with some of his players on their return from Saturday's Ireland game and said they would be interviewing security personnel who had been on the team bus. Read The Full Story France Releases 1,600 UFO Files 2007-03-23 12:26:18 On an August day in 1967, two children tending a herd of cows outside a village in central France reported seeing "four small black beings" fly from the ground and slip headfirst into a sphere that shot skyward in a flash of light and trail of sulfuric odors. The alleged extraterrestrial sighting, described by the French government as "one of the most astonishing observed in France," is among 1,600 UFO case files spanning the last half-century that the country's space agency opened to the public for the first time Thursday. The voluntary decision by France's National Center for Space Studies to dump more than 100,000 pages of witness testimony, photographs, film footage and audiotapes from its secret UFO archives onto its Internet site, http://www.cnes.fr , for worldwide viewing is an unprecedented move among Western countries. Most of them, the United States included, consider such records classified matters of national security. Within three hours of posting the first cases Thursday morning, the French space agency's Web server crashed, overwhelmed by the flood of viewers seeking the first glimpses of official government evidence on a subject long a target of both fascination and ridicule. Read The Full Story Rat Poison Found In Pet Food, Says Official 2007-03-23 11:58:22 Rat poison has been found in pet food blamed for the deaths of at least 16 cats and dogs, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Agriculture and Markets said Friday. Spokeswoman Jessica Chittenden would not identify the chemical or its source beyond saying it was a rodent poison. The Food and Drug Administration has said the investigation was focusing on wheat gluten in the food. Wheat gluten itself would not cause kidney failure, but the common ingredient could have been contaminated by heavy metals or mold toxins, said the FDA. State agriculture officials scheduled a news conference Friday afternoon to release laboratory findings from tests on the pet food conducted this week. 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	Gonzales Met With Top Aides On Firings 2007-03-24 01:31:30 Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales met with senior aides on Nov. 27 to review a plan to fire a group of U.S. attorneys, according to documents released last night, a disclosure that contradicts Gonzales' previous statement that he was not involved in "any discussions" about the dismissals. Justice Department officials also announced last night that the department's inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility have launched a joint investigation into the firings, including an examination of whether any of the removals were improper and whether any Justice officials misled Congress about them. The hour-long November meeting in the attorney general's conference room included Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and four other senior Justice officials, including the Gonzales aide who coordinated the firings, then-Chief of Staff D. Kyle Sampson, records show. Documents detailing the previously undisclosed meeting appear to conflict with remarks by Gonzales at a March 13 news conference in which he portrayed himself as a CEO who had delegated to Sampson responsibility for the particulars of firing eight U.S. attorneys. Read The Full Story Judge Rules Agains Vonage On Patents 2007-03-24 01:30:59 A federal judge Friday dealt a potentially fatal blow to Vonage Holdings, the Internet-phone service that offers one of the few alternatives to traditional carriers, by ordering it to stop using a technology that connects its network to the public telephone system. U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton approved the request by Verizon Communications for a permanent injunction two weeks after a jury in Alexandria, Virginia, found that three of its patents had been infringed by Vonage, including one for the technology allowing the Internet company's 2.2 million customers to call regular phones. Hilton said the ban would not take effect before he holds another hearing in two weeks on Vonage's request for reprieve through a stay. The company said customers will not be affected by the court's decision, although analysts are skeptical the company will be able to sustain service if the ruling is not overturned. Read The Full Story Russia Supreme Court Bans Liberal Party, Eliminating Opposition To Putin 2007-03-24 01:30:06 Russia's next parliament is likely to have no genuine opposition after a court in Moscow Friday banned a leading liberal party from standing in elections. Russia's supreme court announced that it had liquidated the small Republican party, claiming that it had violated electoral law by having too few members. The party is one of very few left in Russia that criticizes President Vladimir Putin. The move against Russia's opposition came as pro-democracy activists prepared for the latest in a series of anti-government rallies that have infuriated Russia's hardline authorities. Hundreds of demonstrators are expected to gather Saturday in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's fourth biggest city. The protesters from The Other Russia, a coalition of opposition groups, are expected to march despite attempts by pro-Kremlin officials to prevent them from demonstrating. Read The Full Story 15 British Sailors Seized By Iran 2007-03-23 11:58:35 An Iranian naval patrol seized 15 British marines and sailors who had boarded a vessel suspected of smuggling cars off the coast of Iraq, said military officials. The British government immediately demanded the safe return of its troops and summoned Tehran's London ambassador to explain the incident. The Royal Marines and ordinary naval officers were believed to have been apprehended by up to six ships from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy who claimed they had violated Iranian waters. British naval officials said the sailors, using small boarding craft, had completed an inspection of a merchant vessel in Iraqi waters when the Iranians arrived. Read The Full Story 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
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