Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday March 18 2007 - (813)

Sunday March 18 2007 edition
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Despite Concerns, FBI Used Flawed Procedures To Obtain Phone Records 2007-03-18 01:56:23 FBI counterterrorism officials continued to use flawed procedures to obtain thousands of U.S. telephone records during a two-year period when bureau lawyers and managers were expressing escalating concerns about the practice, according to senior FBI and Justice Department officials and documents. FBI lawyers raised the concerns beginning in late October 2004 but did not closely scrutinize the practice until last year, FBI officials acknowledged. They also did not understand the scope of the problem until the Justice Department launched an investigation, said FBI officials. Under pressure to provide a stronger legal footing, counterterrorism agents last year wrote new letters to phone companies demanding the information the bureau already possessed. At least one senior FBI headquarters official - whom the bureau declined to name - signed these "national security letters" without including the required proof that the letters were linked to FBI counterterrorism or espionage investigations, said an FBI official. Read The Full Story Hagel, McCain - Different Paths From Vietnam To Iraq 2007-03-18 01:55:48 U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel spent 13 months as a lowly grunt in the Mekong Delta in the deadliest period of the Vietnam War. He saw the horror of war from the bottom up - men sheared in half by explosives, half-decapitated by sniper fire, bleeding to death in the gloomy swelter of the jungle. Thirty years later, he came to believe he had been used. Senator John McCain was shot down 3,500 feet above Hanoi on a bombing run one month into his tour. He spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war; he was held in solitary confinement, tortured, beaten until he could not stand. An admiral’s son and a Navy pilot, he came to believe, like many pilots, that the war had been winnable, if only it had been fought right. Memories of Vietnam haunt the public debate on the war in Iraq. They also lurk in the private thoughts of a generation in Congress - men like Senators Hagel and McCain, who lived through the earlier war, vote on the current one and, despite their shared past, now disagree profoundly on what the United States should do next. Read The Full Story Reports Detail State Of Press Freedom 2007-03-18 01:52:37 Some leftist governments in Latin America have become increasingly intolerant of criticism, while journalists in the United States have come under growing pressure to identify their sources, delegates at a regional newspaper industry meeting said Saturday. The Miami-based Inter American Press Association received reports on press freedoms from members across the Western Hemisphere at the start of a four-day meeting in the Colombian city of Cartagena. IAPA represents more than 1,300 newspapers in the region. The U.S. report called for a federal "shield" law barring judges and prosecutors from obliging reporters to reveal sources they have pledged to protect. More than 30 U.S. states have such laws. "Today perhaps more than ever there is pressure for journalists to identify the people who talk with them - including when the information discussed in those conversations wasn't even published," Milton Coleman, deputy managing editor of the Washington Post, told the gathering. Read The Full Story 3 Children Killed In Thailand School Attack 2007-03-18 01:51:52 Three Muslim schoolchildren were killed and seven injured in an attack by suspected insurgents at an Islamic school in restive southern Thailand, police said Sunday. The attack occurred late Saturday evening at the Bamrungsart Pohnor school, a Muslim boarding school in Songkhla province, said police Col. Thammasak Wasaksiri. Attackers hurled explosives onto the school grounds and opened fire with assault rifles into the sleeping quarters of the school, said Thammasak. Read The Full Story Mortgage Troubles Killing 'American Dream' Of Home Ownership 2007-03-17 14:25:40 Perhaps the American dream of homeownership is not for everyone. That may sound at odds with a bedrock notion of society promoted by presidents for decades, but many experts say it is a message that can be drawn from the rising troubles with mortgages provided to home buyers with weak credit. Several large mortgage companies have stopped making new loans, and others have tightened lending standards. Hundreds of thousands of families who bought houses in the last two years - using loans with low teaser interest rates and no down payments - are now losing them. Their short tenure as homeowners calls into question whether the nation’s long drive to increase homeownership -  pushed by both public policy and financial innovations - has overstepped some boundary of demographic and economic sense. Read The Full Story At Least 10 Killed, 350 Injured In Chlorine Bomb Attacks In Iraq 2007-03-17 14:22:02 Three trucks rigged with chlorine bombs exploded in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar province Friday, in the latest efforts by insurgents to use the toxic chemical to boost the lethal power of their attacks, U.S. military officials announced Saturday. The U.S. officials said at least 350 people and seven U.S. soldiers were injured and two policemen were killed in the attacks. As many as 10 civilians may have been killed in two of the blasts near Fallujah, said Col. Sami Jabara, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior. The first in the trio of chemical-releasing bombs detonated shortly after 4 p.m. at a checkpoint near Ramadi, west of Baghdad. It injured one American soldier and one Iraqi civilian. Read The Full Story 11 Detainees Escape From British Detention Center In Basra 2007-03-17 14:21:06 Ten Iraqis being held in a British military detention center in Basra carried out an audacious escape plan over the past several days: they switched places with visitors, British authorities said Friday. An 11th detainee was missing, but no one appeared to have been substituted for him, British authorities said. The detention center is at a British base on the outskirts of Basra. The escape came to light on Thursday, when it became apparent that “one person was not who he said he was,” said a spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity. The military began to investigate and found that nine other detainees were also substitutes. The real ones had walked out the door, apparently after swapping clothes with their willing stand-ins, said British officials. The substitutions were carefully plotted, and the imposters “were remarkably well prepared,” said the spokesman. Read The Full Story 7 Killed, 23 Injured In Russian Passenger Jet Crash 2007-03-17 14:19:24 A Russian passenger jet crash-landed in heavy fog Saturday in the central Russian city of Samara, killing seven people and injuring 23 among the 57 people on board, officials from the Emergency Situations Ministry said. The Tupolev-134 plane was arriving from the city of Surgot, about 1,000 miles to the east, when one of its wings struck the runway as it was landing, officials said. The plane broke into two large parts, and debris was scattered across the airfield in Samara, which is about 550 miles southeast of Moscow. Officials said that three of those who were hurt had life-threatening injuries. Read The Full Story White House Never Investigated Leak Of Plame As CIA Agent 2007-03-17 00:27:03 Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, told a congressional committee today that he was aware of no internal investigation or report into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. The White House had first opposed Knodell testifying but after a threat of a subpoena from the committee yesterday he was allowed to appear today. Knodell has testified that those who had participated in the leaking of classified information were required to attest to this and he was aware that no one, including Karl Rove, had done that. He said that he had started at the White House in August 2004, a year after the leak, but his records show no evidence of a probe or report there: "I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office," he said. Read The Full Story	U.S. Animal Owners Panic Over Pet Food Recall 2007-03-18 01:56:00 Pet owners were worried Saturday that the pet food in their cupboards could be deadly after millions of containers of dog and cat food sold at major retailers across North America were recalled. Menu Foods, the Ontario-based company that produced the pet food, said Saturday it was recalling dog food sold under 48 brands and cat food sold under 40 brands including Iams, Nutro and Eukanuba. The food was distributed throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico by major retailers such as Wal-Mart, Kroger and Safeway. An unknown number of cats and dogs had suffered kidney failure and about 10 died after eating the affected pet food, the company said. Meanwhile, two other companies - Nestle Purina PetCare Co. and Hill's Pet Nutrition Inc. - announced Saturday night that as a precaution they were voluntarily recalling some products made by Menu Foods. Read The Full Story Commentary: Why Pakistan Is Crucial To The World's Stability 2007-03-18 01:55:34 Intellpuke: The following commentary is written by Denis Macshane, and appears in The Observer edition for Sunday, March 18, 2007. A Labor Party member of the British Parliament, representing Rotherham, Macshane  served as a minister at Britain's Foreign Office until 2005. Mr. Macshane's commentary follows: Anyone who wants political power in Pakistan, so say the street pundits, must hold three aces - America, the army and Allah. As Pakistan plans its 60th birthday celebrations this year, it may hope for a future less in thrall to its military, to its mullahs and to Washington. President Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a bloody 1999 coup, is facing a crisis. Far from being NATO's calm eastern ally, a new front in the fight against terrorism, Islamabad's streets feel shaky, divided and waiting for the worst. Pakistan is neither dictatorship nor democracy. Its newspapers are louder in criticism of their President than the anti-Blair or anti-Bush press in the West. Its intellectuals roam the world, trashing their country. Opposition politician, Cambridge-educated billionaire, Benazir Bhutto, is free to return home when she wants. But General Musharraf and his army are in charge. The house arrest of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, after he refused Musharraf's demand to resign, has caused outrage. In a nation that reveres high office, the manhandling of the judge shocked even the most cynical of Pakistani politicians. Pakistan urgently needs a return to democratic civilian rule even if its elected leaders in the Nineties became bywords for corruption, encouraging the Taliban and the madrassas, as well as the long-bearded, turban-wearing politicians who insist the law should be subordinate to theocracy. Democracy requires compromise between the military and the politicians. Instead there may be a slow drift towards increased authoritarianism under Musharraf, further alienating Pakistan. Read The Full Story Gang Mayhem Grips Los Angeles 2007-03-18 01:52:14 Intellpuke: A bloody conflict between Hispanics and black gangs is spreading across Los Angeles, California. Hungreds are dying as whole districts face the threat of ethnic cleansing, writes The Observer's correspondent Paul Harris from the epicenter of America's new urban warfare. Mr. Harris' article follows: Father Greg Boyle keeps a grim count of the young gang members he has buried. Number 151 was Jonathan Hurtado, 18 - fresh out of jail. Now the kindly, bearded Jesuit mourns him. "The day he got out I found him a job. He never missed a day. He was doing really well," says Boyle. But Hurtado made a mistake: he went back to his old neighborhood in east Los Angeles. While sitting in a park, Hurtado was approached by a man on a bike who said to him: "Hey, homie, what's up?" He then shot Hurtado four times. "You can't come back. Not even for a visit," says Boyle, who has worked for two decades against L.A.'s gang culture. Father Boyle's Los Angeles, where daily slaughter is a grim reality, is a world away from the glamorous Hollywood hills, Malibu beaches and Sunset Strip - the celebrity-drenched city that David Beckham and Posh Spice will soon make their home. Read The Full Story 2 Earthquakes Rattle Indonesia 2007-03-18 01:51:26 Two earthquakes hit eastern Indonesian regions on Sunday, but there were no reports of casualties or damage, said a meteorological official. A moderate earthquake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale struck Papua province at 11:24 a.m. (0224 GMT), said an official at the National Meteorology and Geophysics Agency. It was centered 147 kilometers (91 miles) northwest of the provincial capital, Jayapura, at a depth of 78 kilometers, said the official. Read The Full Story Thousands Of War Protesters Gather In D.C. For March 2007-03-17 14:22:29 Thousands of protesters, marking the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq, began gathering this morning for a march to the Pentagon, but many of them were met by a peaceful rally of veterans groups and war supporters near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It was a classic example of grass-roots politics in Washington, D.C., and of the strong emotions that the Vietnam War still exerts more than 30 years after fighting there ended. The organizers of the march to the Pentagon have modeled the protest after a key 1967 demonstration along the same route that denounced the U.S. military campaign in Southeast Asia. Saturday's counter-demonstration, organized by a group called the Gathering of Eagles, drew people from around the country who said they came to voice support for the war and for the troops in Iraq and to make sure that the Vietnam memorial, near the war protest's starting place, is not desecrated. Many were veterans of the Vietnam war or relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq. Read The Full Story Thousands Rally As Moqtada al-Sadr Urges Followers To Resist U.S. Forces 2007-03-17 14:21:38 Firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Friday called upon followers inside his stronghold of Sadr City to resist U.S. forces who are trying to stabilize the capital. Officials in his organization said the cleric was advocating a peaceful uprising. "Raise your voices, all of you loving your brothers and united against your enemy saying as your leader taught you, 'No America, no Israel, no, no Satan,' by standing and demonstrating that way," Sadr said in a message distributed at the Kufa mosque in southern Iraq, according to a translation by the Washington-based SITE Institute, which tracks militant groups. In recent weeks, Sadr has appeared to cooperate with U.S. and Iraqi troops as they implement a month-old security plan in Baghdad and other parts of the country, even as he has continued to criticize the American presence in Iraq. On Friday, thousands of Sadr's followers demonstrated in several parts of Iraq, including Sadr City, to protest the U.S. role. They denounced the neighborhood security outposts and garrisons being set up under the plan and demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Read The Full Story Mexican President Criticizes 'Absurd' U.S. Border Policy 2007-03-17 14:20:06 Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Friday that U.S. border policies are marred by many "absurd" paradoxes that hurt the Mexican economy and force more Mexicans to migrate illegally to the United States. In an interview en route from Mexicali, Mexico, to Mexico City on his presidential jet, Calderon criticized construction of more border fencing and accused U.S. border agents of slowing the flow of commerce between the countries by sometimes failing to staff enough crossing booths. He also argued against plans to line with concrete the massive All-American Canal, which connects the Colorado River to farms in California. Calderon said the project would cut off groundwater that flows into Mexico and possibly hurt the businesses of Mexican farmers enough that they would need to migrate illegally to make a living. Read The Full Story Palestinian Lawmakers Back New Hamas-Fatah Coalition Government 2007-03-17 14:19:02 The new Hamas-Fatah coalition won overwhelming parliamentary approval Saturday, clearing a final formal hurdle before taking on the challenge of persuading a skeptical world to end a crippling yearlong boycott of the Palestinian government. After the 83-3 vote was announced, lawmakers jumped up for a standing ovation. In all, parliament has 132 members, but 41 are in Israeli detention. Hours later, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swore in the 25-member Cabinet. Presenting the government's program ahead of the vote, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said the coalition wants to set up a Palestinian state in the lands Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast War. He said the Palestinians affirm the right to resist occupation, but will also seek to expand a truce with Israel. The platform fell short of international conditions for acceptance, including explicit recognition of Israel and renunciation of violence. Read The Full Story Rove? Bush? Gonzales? Accounts Of Prosecutors' Dismissals Keep Shifting 2007-03-17 00:26:50 More than two weeks after a New Mexico U.S. attorney alleged he was fired for not prosecuting Democrats, the White House and the Justice Department are still struggling to explain the roles of President Bush, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and other key officials in the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors last year. Friday, the White House retreated from its four-day-old claim that former counsel Harriet E. Miers started the process two years ago by proposing the firing of all 93 U.S. attorneys. "It has been described as her idea ... but I don't want to vouch for origination," said press secretary Tony Snow. "At this juncture, people have hazy memories." In addition, D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned as Gonzales's chief of staff Monday, disputed the reasons given for his departure in a statement issued through his attorney Friday night. "The fact that the White House and Justice Department had been discussing the subject for several years was well-known to a number of other senior officials at the department, including others who were involved in preparing the department's testimony to Congress," according to the statement by Sampson's lawyer, Bradford A. Berenson. Read The Full Story
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