Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday March 15 2007 - (813)

Thursday March 15 2007 edition
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Bush Criticizes How Prosecutors' Dismissals Were Handled 2007-03-15 01:55:37 President Bush said Wednesday that he had confidence in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, but that he was “frankly not happy about” the way Gonzales had handled the dismissal of federal prosecutors, a move that has led to a Congressional investigation into whether the White House allowed politics to interfere with law enforcement. As Gonzales defended himself in television interviews, Bush, in Mexico on the last day of his Latin America trip, offered reporters his first explanation of his own role, saying that although he had relayed complaints to Gonzales about federal prosecutors, “I never brought up a specific case nor gave him specific instructions.” The president’s statement did little to tamp down speculation that Gonzales would be forced to resign. Nor did it settle the growing furor on Capitol Hill, where a Republican senator became the first in his party to call for  Gonzales to step down, and the new White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, met with lawmakers on the possible testimony of administration officials, including the chief political adviser, Karl Rove. Read The Full Story Pentagon Issues Dire Look At Iraq 2007-03-15 01:54:46 The Pentagon Wednesday released its bleakest assessment of Iraq yet, reporting record levels of violence and hardening sectarian divisions in the last quarter of 2006 as rival Sunni and Shiite militias waged campaigns of "sectarian cleansing" that forced as many as 9,000 civilians to flee the country each month. Weekly attacks in Iraq rose to more than 1,000 during the period and average daily casualties increased to more than 140, with Iraqi civilians bearing the brunt of the violence - nearly 100 killed or wounded a day, according to statistics in the Pentagon's latest congressionally required quarterly report on security in Iraq. Those figures may represent as little as half of the true casualties because they include only violence observed by or reported to the U.S.-led military coalition, the report acknowledged. It cited a United Nations estimate, based on hospital reports, that more than 6,000 Iraqi civilians were killed or wounded in December alone. Read The Full Story Venezuela's Hugo Chavez Is Tied To Giuliani Firm 2007-03-15 01:54:07 Rudolph W. Giuliani's law firm has lobbied for years on behalf of an oil company controlled by the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez,a strident critic of President Bush and American-style capitalism. Bracewell and Giuliani, the firm based in Houston that Giuliani joined as a name partner two years ago, handles lobbying in the Texas capital for the Citgo Petroleum Corporation of Houston, Texas. Citgo is the American subsidiary of Petroleos de Venezuela, the state-owned oil company that Chavez controls. Giuliani’s duties at his law firm do not include lobbying, but the financial relationship with a company affiliated with one of the most outspoken critics of the United States potentially exposes Giuliani to new scrutiny as he campaigns to become the Republican nominee for president in 2008. Read The Full Story Pentagon Officials Arrive In Ukraine To Discuss Missile Defense 2007-03-15 01:53:19 An American delegation headed by U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Agency director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering arrived in Kiev, Ukraine, Wednesday, where the Pentagon's representatives and the Ukrainian authorities are to discuss plans to expand America's ballistic missile defense system into Poland and the Czech Republic. In the face of the increasing number of opponents to the idea, including most of Western Europe, Washington has clearly decided to attempt to placate the naysayers by sending Gen. Obering to explain the situation. The Pentagon delegation's visit to Ukraine was organized on the initiative of the American side. In Kiev, the meetings lasted from early in the morning until late in the evening and included talks with Defense Minister Vitaly Gaiduk, presidential advisor Vladimir Gorbulin, deputies from the Upper Rada (the Ukrainian parliament), and representatives from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. At the Americans' request, the meetings were held behind closed doors, with General Obering appearing in public only at a final press conference to discuss what brought him to Kiev and the talks that he had with Ukrainian military and government officials. According to General Obering, the American anti-missile facilities that may soon be installed in Poland and the Czech Republic are necessary only to neutralize the threats posed by Iran and North Korea. He insisted that these facilities are not a threat to Russia and that the U.S. has no plans to establish a similar system in Ukraine or the countries of the Caucasus. Read The Full Story Global Stocks Tumble Again 2007-03-14 19:27:29 The world's financial markets suffered another day of turbulence and heavy losses as the global investment community fretted that the crisis engulfing the U.S. sub-prime mortgage market could finally tip the world's largest economy into recession. In London, the FTSE 100 index of leading shares lost 2.6%, or 160.5 points, to close at 6,000.7. Other European exchanges suffered similar falls with the French CAC 40 and German Dax 30 off about 2.5%. As the FTSE closed, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 100 points at 11,975 - the first time it had fallen below 12,000 since November - following Tuesday's 240 point loss. By 6:45 p.m. U.K. time it had rebounded to be up 28.44 points at 12,104.4. Read The Full Story Mortgage Woes Cause Dow To Drop Below 12,000 2007-03-14 13:50:45 Stocks fell Wednesday, pulling the Dow Jones industrials through the psychological 12,000 barrier for the first time since Nov. 6 as concerns about faltering subprime mortgage lenders extended a broad selloff in stocks. The Dow first crossed the 12,000 mark in October. The market showed its continuing nervousness about soured loans among subprime lenders. H&R Block Inc.  added to the uneasiness by announcing after the closing bell Tuesday its fiscal third-quarter losses would rise because of a $29 million writedown at its mortgage arm. The anxiety over mortgage lenders, particularly the subprime lenders that make loans to people with poor credit, pushed the Dow down by more than 240 points Tuesday, its second-biggest drop in nearly four years. The pullback resembled a 416-point drop in the Dow seen two weeks ago that began in part after a nearly 9 percent drop in stocks in Shanghai and amid concerns about subprime mortgages. Read The Full Story Analysis: Bush Finds Trouble Harder Shrug Off 2007-03-14 13:50:20 As President Bush toured ancient Mayan ruins and exchanged toasts with the new Mexican president Tuesday, his aides furiously worked the telephones back to Washington. Another administration official was out, and the attorney general was deflecting calls for his own ouster as well. The cascade of controversies that followed Bush to Latin America has left a president familiar with weathering crises in uncharted territory. For the first time since taking office, Bush confronts political furors on multiple fronts and an opposition Congress armed with the subpoena power to investigate them. The response to the dispute over dismissed federal prosecutors underscores the inexperience of a White House accustomed to having its own party in control on Capitol Hill. After first brushing aside suggestions from a Congress that had been reluctant to exercise oversight for the past six years that the firings may have been improper, officials then sought to minimize White House involvement in the mass ouster. Tuesday's release of e-mails documenting the role of key administration figures in the decision to dismiss the prosecutors provoked outrage on both sides of the aisle. In the past, questions about its actions might have died down without the internal administration e-mails being made public. Now the White House is in the position of explaining why it has repeatedly changed its story. Read The Full Story Plasma Physicists Make 'Unprecedented' Measurement Of Earth's Magnetic Field 2007-03-14 13:49:44 Plasma physicists have made an unprecedented measurement in their study of the Earth's magnetic field. Thanks to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Cluster satellites they detected an electric field thought to be a key element in the process of "magnetic reconnection".   Thanks to these measurements, obtained by the eight PEACE electron sensors onboard the four spacecraft, scientists now have their first insight into magnetic reconnection's detailed behavior. Magnetic reconnection is a process that can occur almost anywhere that a magnetic field is found. In a reconnection event, the magnetic field lines are squeezed together somehow and spontaneously reconfigure themselves. This releases energy. When it occurs near the surface of the Sun, such an event powers giant solar flares that can release thousands of millions of tons of electrically charged particles into space. Read The Full Story E-Mail Shows Loyalty To Bush, Gonzales Was Factor In Prosecutors' Firings 2007-03-14 01:43:33 Late in the afternoon on Dec. 4, a deputy to Harriet E. Miers, then the White House counsel and one of President Bush’s most trusted aides, sent a two-line e-mail message to a top Justice Department aide. “We’re a go,” it said, approving a long-brewing plan to remove seven federal prosecutors considered weak or not team players. The message, from William K. Kelley of the White House counsel’s office to D. Kyle Sampson, the chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, put in motion a plan to fire United States attorneys that had been hatched 22 months earlier by Miers. Three days later, the seven prosecutors were summarily dismissed. An eighth had been forced out in the summer. The documents provided by the Justice Department add some new details to the chronicle of the fired prosecutors but leave many critical questions unanswered, including the nature of discussions inside the White House and the level of knowledge and involvement by the president and his closest political aide, Karl Rove. The White House said Monday that Bush and Rove had raised concerns about lax voter fraud prosecutions with the Justice Department. And several of the fired attorneys told Congress last week that some lawmakers had questioned them about corruption investigations, inquiries the prosecutors considered inappropriate. The documents do not specifically mention either topic. Read The Full Story KBR's $400 Million Iraq Question 2007-03-14 01:43:06 There's a $400 million question facing the Pentagon's largest contractor, KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary responsible for more than 50,000 personnel in Iraq and billions in government contracts: Will the mammoth corporation be forced to repay the government nearly half a billion dollars because it hired private security forces in Iraq, including Blackwater USA, when the Army itself was supposed to be providing it with protection? It's a scandal that has been brewing for more than two years, kept alive largely through the efforts of Representative Henry Waxman. The California Democrat has been on a warpath against Halliburton and KBR almost since the Bush Administration took power in 2000. But it was actually an incident involving the private military company Blackwater USA that sparked the current controversy, which could result in the hefty KBR repayment to the government. It began with one of the most iconic incidents of the Iraq War: the March 31, 2004, ambush of four Blackwater contractors in the Sunni city of Falluja. The men were burned, dragged through the streets and strung from a bridge. For many in Congress-and the broader population-it was the first they had heard of private soldiers operating in the war zone. Finding out who exactly they were working for in Falluja that day would take nearly three years. Read The Full Story	U.S. Mortgage Problems: How Bad Will It Get? 2007-03-15 01:55:20 The big question is: How bad will it get? So far, the rising mortgage defaults that panicked markets this week have been concentrated in areas of the country already reeling from layoffs in the automobile industry and in hurricane-stricken states on the Gulf Coast. In Mississippi and Louisiana, about 1 in 10 homeowners are failing to make their payments, fresh data show. Ohio, Michigan and Indiana, the nation's industrial heartland and the states suffering the country's highest unemployment, aren't far behind. Yet the repayment of mortgages is holding up well on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in other parts of the country, including those that saw huge run-ups in property values in recent years. Read The Full Story Chiquita To Pay $25 Million Fine For Doing Business With Terrorist Group 2007-03-15 01:54:28 Cincinnati, Ohio-based Chiquita Brands International Inc. said on Wednesday that it would plead guilty to one count of doing business with a terrorist group, ending a three-year U.S. government probe into payments made by the banana company's former Colombian unit. Chiquita, one of the world's largest banana producers, said it would pay a fine of $25 million as part of the settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice. The Justice Department filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., a document detailing the payments made to a group called the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a violent right-wing group that has been designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization. In all, the company made more than 100 payments to the group from 1997 through February 2004 totaling more than $1.7 million, according to the court document. That included more than 50 payments exceeding $825,000 after the group was designated a foreign terrorist organization in September of 2001. Read The Full Story California Judge Dismisses Charges In Hewlett-Packard Case 2007-03-15 01:53:40 A California judge on Wednesday dismissed charges against Patricia C. Dunn, the former chairwoman of Hewlett-Packard, in a corporate spying case that gained national attention and prompted Congressional hearings on the protection of personal telephone records. Judge Ray Cunningham of the Santa Clara County Superior Court also agreed to dismiss a reduced misdemeanor charge against three other defendants in the case once they each perform 96 hours of community service. Dunn and the three others had initially been charged with four felony counts for their participation in a cloak-and-dagger investigation inside H.P., the world’s largest computer company. That investigation was set in motion when officials at Hewlett-Packard, including Dunn, sought to ferret out the identity of company insiders leaking information to the news media. Read The Full Story Right Extremist Le Pen Joins Volatile Race For France's President 2007-03-15 01:53:04 Jean-Marie Le Pen, the anti-immigration politician who stunned France and the world by finishing second in this country's 2002 presidential contest, formally placed his name on this year's ballot Wednesday, adding new uncertainty to an increasingly volatile campaign. Barely six weeks from the April 22 vote, the French election has become close and unpredictable. The two longtime front-runners - Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, candidate of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement party, and Socialist Party nominee Segolene Royal, who is vying to become the first female president of France - are facing a challenge from the surging campaign of Francois Bayrou of the Union for French Democracy. Polls indicate Bayrou is sapping support from both Sarkozy and Royal and has transformed the election into a three-way contest. In a survey published Sunday by the weekly newspaper Journal du Dimanche, Sarkozy was favored by 28 percent of the respondents, Royal and Bayrou by 23 percent each, and Le Pen by 13 percent. Read The Full Story Military Says 9/11 Mastermind Confessed In Guantanamo Hearing 2007-03-14 19:27:12 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, confessed to that attack and a string of others during a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a transcript released Wednesday by the Pentagon. Mohammed claimed responsibility for planning, financing, and training others for bombings ranging from the 1993 attack at the World Trade Center to the attempt by would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes. In all, Mohammed said he was responsible for planning 29 individual attacks, including many that were never executed. The comments were included in a 26-page transcript released by the Pentagon, which also blacked out some of his remarks. Read The Full Story FDA Orders Warnings On Sleeping Pills 2007-03-14 13:50:33 All sleeping pills, including the blockbusters Ambien and Lunesta, may sometimes cause a bizarre but dangerous side effect - sleep-driving, the Food and Drug Administration warned Wednesday. It's like sleepwalking but behind-the-wheel: driving while not fully awake after using a sleeping aid - with no memory of doing so. The FDA ordered the makers of 13 products to strengthen warnings on their labels about two rare but serious side effects: -- Sleep-driving, along with other less dangerous "complex sleep-related behaviors" - like making phone calls or fixing and eating food while still asleep. -- And life-threatening allergic reactions, as well as severe facial swelling, both of which can occur the first time the pills are taken. Read The Full Story Cassini Space Probe Spots Seas On Saturn Moon Titan 2007-03-14 13:50:01 Scientists have discovered what appear to be sea-size bodies of liquid, probably methane or ethane, on the surface of Saturn's largest moon. The discovery by the international Cassini spacecraft was welcomed by researchers, who have long theorized that Titan possessed hydrocarbon seas because of methane and other organic compounds in its thick, largely nitrogen atmosphere. Until now, Cassini had spotted only clusters of small lakes on the planet-size moon. "They're very obvious. There's nothing subtle about them," said Cassini scientist Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona, Tucson. Researchers using visual and radar imaging uncovered evidence of at least two seas on Titan's hazy north pole. Read The Full Story Record Sales Drive BMW Profits 2007-03-14 13:49:09 BMW, the world's largest premium carmaker, expects record car sales and more efficiency gains to help 2007 pretax profit surpass last year's level adjusted for a one-off gain, it said on Wednesday. "The current year should be the best year in the company's history in operating terms," Chief Executive Norbert Reithofer said at the firm's annual news conference in Munich. BMW posted a pretax profit of 4.12 billion euros ($5.43 billion) in 2006 that included extraordinary income of 372 million euros from a Rolls-Royce convertible bond. Read The Full Story Asian Stock Markets Nose-Dive After Wall St. Losses 2007-03-14 01:43:19 Asian stocks plunged Wednesday after Wall Street chalked its second-biggest point drop in four years and rattled already nervous markets worldwide. The tumble extended a couple weeks of international trading turmoil rooted in concerns about overheated global markets and slower growth in the U.S. economy, a major export market for Asian companies. Worries about U.S. sub-prime lenders and lackluster retail sales sent the Dow Jones industrials down 1.97 percent Tuesday, sparking selloffs across Asia. Stocks in Japan, South Korea, India, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia and the Philippines were all down more than 2 percent. Read The Full Story
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