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

Sunday March 4 2007 edition
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Stargazers Thrilled By Total Lunar Eclipse 2007-03-03 20:11:36 A dark red shadow crept across the moon, leaving only a silver, crescent-shaped sliver as a total lunar eclipse began late Saturday. Around the world, amateur stargazers and astronomers watched the first total lunar eclipse in three years. Partly visible on every continent, residents of Europe, Africa and the Middle East had the best view, weather permitting. About a dozen people gathered at the Croydon Observatory, in southeast London, to watch the start of the phenomenon. "It's starting to go!" said Alex Gikas, 8, a Cub Scout who was studying for his astronomy badge. "I've never seen anything like it before. I'm really excited." The eclipse was clearly visible, thanks to clear, crisp weather in southern England. Read The Full Story Anti-Kremlin Protesters Beaten By Police 2007-03-03 20:10:44 Police clubbed protesters and dragged them into waiting buses on Saturday in response to a defiant demonstration against the Kremlin in the heart of President Vladimir Putin's hometown. Several thousand members of liberal and leftist groups chanted "Shame!" as they marched down St. Petersburg's main avenue to protest what they said was Russia's rollback from democracy. The demonstration, called the "March of Those Who Disagree", was a rare gathering of the country's often fractious opposition. It was at least the third time police have moved in to break up an anti-Kremlin protest in recent months. St. Petersburg authorities had prohibited the march, only granting permission for a rally far from the city center, but the activists defied the ban and marched down Nevsky Prospekt, the city's main street, blocking traffic. The mayor called the protesters extremists trying to destabilize the city ahead of local elections. Read The Full Story After Tornado, An Alabama School Tallies The Grief 2007-03-03 04:09:28 After the sudden pitch-black darkness, there was chaos, then screaming. And when that subsided, the students of Enterprise High School recalled on Friday, some young men and women they had grown up with were nowhere to be found, while others climbed shakily to their feet. Eight students were killed here on Thursday afternoon, quick victims of a tornado that tore apart their school soon after they were told to hit the floor. Concrete from a collapsed interior wall rained down on them as they huddled together for safety, said the authorities. Officials defended their decision not to evacuate the school earlier, saying the impending tornadoes would have made it too dangerous. On Friday, dazed survivors - teachers and students - recounted their luck as they toured the perimeter of the painful ruins, the building’s spilled-out insides visible even from the great distance at which the authorities kept onlookers. Read The Full Story U.S. Selects Design For New Nuclear Warhead 2007-03-03 04:08:59 The National Nuclear Security Administration has selected a design from Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national laboratories that could become the basis for the first new nuclear warhead produced by the United States in more than 20 years. The purpose of the new Reliable Replacement Warhead is to provide, beginning in 2012, a new generation of secure nuclear warheads - initially for submarine-launched missiles - that would provide a credible deterrent well into the mid-21st century. "RRW will take advantage of today's science to ensure long-term confidence in the future stockpile" of nuclear warheads, Thomas P. D'Agostino, the NNSA's acting administrator, said Friday. The Livermore design beat out one submitted by Los Alamos National Laboratory because there was a "higher confidence" that it could be certified without underground nuclear testing, said D'Agostino. He added that the Los Alamos design has some "highly innovative" features that will be developed "in parallel with the Livermore effort." The design team will work with the Navy over the next 10 months to define a cost schedule and a production plan. The NNSA's 2008 budget includes $88 million for the RRW, though Congress could limit that funding and slow the program. Read The Full Story In Wake Of Walter Reed Scandal, Bush Orders Review Of Service Members' Care 2007-03-03 04:08:24 Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates fired the secretary of the Army Friday and President Bush vowed to investigate allegations of substandard treatment of wounded soldiers as the administration scrambled to contain fallout from the scandal over squalid housing and bureaucratic delays in outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The Army named Maj. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker as the new commander of Walter Reed only a day after picking Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who had previously commanded the medical center, as the temporary chief. Kiley's selection had angered soldiers and family groups - and, more important, Gates - because of their belief that he had been aware of problems at the hospital and done little to address them. Kiley is the current Army surgeon general. Gates made little secret of his dismay when he appeared before reporters Friday to announce the resignation of Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey. Pentagon officials indicated that Harvey was forced to resign because Gates was angry with how the Army handled allegations of poor care detailed in a series of Washington Post reports. The facility's commander, Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, was dismissed this week, and a captain and several lower-level soldiers were reassigned. Read The Full Story New Orleans Sues U.S. Army Corps Of Engineers Over Katrina 2007-03-03 04:07:51 New Orleans has filed a claim for $77 billion (£40 billion) in damages against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for building levees incapable of withstanding Hurricane Katrina, leading to the devastation of large parts of the city. The city council met Thursday night's deadline to file the suit, which allows it to sue the engineering corps at a later date. It is thought that up to 30,000 individual claims could also be made against the corps. According to the daily New Orleans Times-Picayune, potential claimants descended on the corps's New Orleans office in their tens of thousands. The city's bankrupt energy board and water and sewerage agency are between them suing for more than $1 billion. The filing frenzy was unleashed by a district court ruling last month that the corps could be sued over problems caused by its navigation projects. Until then it had been assumed that the agency was protected from lawsuits by federal legal immunisation for its flood-control work. The claimants argue that it was the failure of the corps to develop a river outlet into the outlying wetlands that destroyed ecosystems and turned the shipping channel into a funnel for surging waters when Katrina struck on August 29, 2005. Read The Full Story Stolen Norman Rockwell Painting Turns Up In Director Spielberg's Collection 2007-03-03 04:07:06 A Norman Rockwell work stolen from suburban St. Louis, Missouri, more than three decades ago was found in Steven Spielberg's art collection, the FBI announced Friday. The painting, Rockwell's "Russian Schoolroom," was snatched during a late-night burglary at a gallery in Clayton, Missouri, on June 25, 1973. The Oscar-winning filmmaker purchased the painting in 1989 from a legitimate dealer and didn't know it was stolen until his staff spotted its image last week on an FBI Web site listing stolen works of art, the bureau said in a statement. After Spielberg's staff brought it to the attention of authorities, an FBI agent and an art expert from the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino inspected the painting at one of Spielberg's offices and confirmed its authenticity Friday morning. Early FBI estimates put the painting's value at $700,000, officials said. Read The Full Story	U.S. Airstrikes Hit Al-Qaeda Post In Iraq 2007-03-03 20:11:24 The United States military said Saturday that an airstrike north of Baghdad had killed several insurgents with al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia who were using heavy artillery and machine guns to fire at American helicopters. The strike occurred Friday west of Taji, where several American helicopters were shot down in recent weeks, and the American assault destroyed at least two pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman in Baghdad. He said the strike did not appear to eliminate the threat to American aircraft because other weapons had been used against helicopters in Falluja and other parts of the country. Read The Full Story Ex-Envoy Casts Doubt On Iraq Conference 2007-03-03 20:10:25 The former Arab League envoy to Baghdad said in an interview Saturday that he did not believe the upcoming conference of Iraq's neighbors would calm and stabilize the country. Mokhtar Lamani, who resigned last month, spoke as the Arab League prepared to send envoys to the conference next Saturday in the Iraqi capital, which will bring together representatives from Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the United States and other Western powers. Lamani said he was skeptical about the conference and that he did not think the parties at the gathering would agree to put sufficient pressure on various Iraqi armed groups for a cease-fire. ''The only way to solve the Iraqi crisis is to push the Iraqis to reach an accord among themselves,'' said Lamani, who during his year in Baghdad met with all warring factions, including the insurgents. Read The Full Story White House Backed U.S. Attorney Firings, Say Officials 2007-03-03 04:09:13 The White House approved the firings of seven U.S. attorneys late last year after senior Justice Department officials identified the prosecutors they believed were not doing enough to carry out President Bush's policies on immigration, firearms and other issues, White House and Justice Department officials said Friday. The list of prosecutors was assembled last fall, based largely on complaints from members of Congress, law enforcement officials and career Justice Department lawyers, administration officials said. One of the complaints came from Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-New Mexio), who specifically raised concerns with the Justice Department last fall about the performance of then-U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, according to administration officials and Domenici's office. Iglesias has alleged that two unnamed New Mexico lawmakers pressured him in October to speed up the indictments of Democrats before the elections. Domenici has declined to comment on that allegation. Read The Full Story Anadarko Petroleum Sues To Avoid Royalty Payments 2007-03-03 04:08:46 One of the nation’s biggest oil producers in the Gulf of Mexico is pressing ahead with a lawsuit that could, if successful, allow energy companies to avoid as much as $60 billion in royalties to the government over the next two decades. Anadarko Petroleum, based in Houston, is suing the Interior Department to overturn regulations that force companies that drill in publicly owned waters to pay full royalties on oil and gas they produce during times of high energy prices. Anadarko, which earned $4.8 billion in profit last year on sales of $10.2 billion, is arguing that Congress guaranteed oil companies a special incentive for drilling in deep water under which the companies could avoid paying the standard royalty on much of what they produced in the Gulf of Mexico. The Interior Department has adamantly argued that the incentives were never supposed to apply when oil prices climbed above about $34 a barrel. Read The Full Story CO2 Emissions From Shipping Is Twice That Of Airlines 2007-03-03 04:08:03 Carbon dioxide emissions from shipping are double those of aviation and increasing at an alarming rate which will have a serious impact on global warming, according to research by the industry and European academics. Separate studies suggest that maritime carbon dioxide emissions are not only higher than previously thought, but could rise by as much as 75% in the next 15 to 20 years if world trade continues to grow and no action is taken. The figures from the oil giant BP, which owns 50 tankers, and researchers at the Institute for Physics and Atmosphere in Wessling, Germany, reveal that annual emissions from shipping range between 600 and 800 million tons of carbon dioxide, or up to 5% of the global total. This is nearly double Britain's total emissions and more than all African countries combined. Carbon dioxide emissions from ships do not come under the Kyoto agreement or any proposed European legislation and few studies have been made of them, even though they are set to increase. Read The Full Story 14 Iraqi Police Found Dead After Call For Retribution In Rape Case 2007-03-03 04:07:27 In the photos, the 18 men were blindfolded, their hands tied behind their backs. They appeared Friday on the Web site of a Sunni insurgent group that said it had kidnapped the men to avenge the alleged rape of a Sunni woman by members of Iraq's Shiite-dominated police force. The Islamic State of Iraq said on its site that it had demanded Thursday that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki hand over the accused policemen and free all female prisoners within 24 hours. On Friday, officials found the bodies of 14 policemen in Diyala province east of Baghdad. All had been shot in the head. "The government did not give any importance to their blood," the Islamic State of Iraq said. A government official said he doubted the dead were the men in the photos. Read The Full Story BBC Gagged Over Cash-For-Honors Investigation 2007-03-03 04:06:47 The BBC was banned Friday night from broadcasting fresh allegations in the cash for honors investigation. Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, obtained an injunction to stop the BBC proceeding with a news story for the 10 O'Clock News after a two-hour hearing in chambers at the royal courts of justice in London. The BBC could only say last night that it had been prevented from broadcasting a story which it believed was a "legitimate matter of public interest" about an hour before the bulletin went on air. The cash for honors inquiry was sparked in March last year by complaints to the Metropolitan police by members of Parliament from the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru that honors appeared to have been offered in return for financial support to the major parties. Read The Full Story
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