Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday March 6 2007 - (813)

Tuesday March 6 2007 edition
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FTSE Dips Below 6000 As Turmoil From Asian Markets Spreads West 2007-03-06 01:03:21 The world's financial markets suffered more turmoil Monday as traders closed some of the riskier trades that have been driving markets in recent months. Wall Street bounced back late in the day, following the biggest fall in the Tokyo stock market for nine months. The pound suffered as dealers pushed up the yen sharply and unwound so-called "carry trades" while oil prices took fright at talk of a recession in the U.S. and shed two dollars a barrel. Asian markets kicked off the week with a torrid session - the Nikkei tumbled 575.68 points, taking it back below the 17,000 level to 16,642.2, a drop of 3.3%. Other Asian markets suffered losses of between 2% and 4%. That was sufficient to set off another morning of frantic selling in London. At its lowest point, London's FTSE 100 index of leading shares moved below the 6000 level to 5989. The second week of turbulent trading in London follows last week's fall of 319 points, sparked by a 9% collapse in the Chinese market and compounded by worries over the U.S. economy as the former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan warned that the U.S. economy could dip into recession later in the year. Read The Full Story Commanders Apologize For Walter Reed At Congressional Hearing 2007-03-06 01:02:52 Senior commanders of the Army offered profuse apologies Monday for the poor treatment accorded many soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, but lawmakers expressed skepticism that the generals had been unaware of the problems until they were spotlighted by the media two weeks ago. Congress opened a round of investigative hearings into the Walter Reed scandal only days after a major shakeup at the Army that followed Washington Post reports about squalid living conditions and bureaucratic tangles for soldiers receiving outpatient care. Walter Reed's commander, Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, and Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey lost their jobs, and the Bush administration has established several panels to investigate the care being provided to wounded soldiers. Senior commanders sounded more contrite Monday than they did when the scandal first broke. At one point during several hours of hearings in the auditorium at Walter Reed, Weightman turned to the soldiers and families behind him and apologized "for not meeting their expectations, not only in the care provided, but also in having so many bureaucratic processes." "I promise we will do better," said Weightman. Read The Full Story Michigan Man Confesses In Wife's Death 2007-03-06 01:01:57 A man captured after a night on the run in the snowy wilderness confessed to killing his wife in the couple's home while their children were there and later dismembering her, authorities said Monday. Stephen Grant, 37, was arrested over the weekend and treated for hypothermia after he spent 10 hours hiding in a park at the tip of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. He was discharged from a hospital Monday and brought back to Macomb County outside Detroit, where he was being held in jail. Sheriff Mark Hackel said Grant "gave a very lengthy confession, laying out exactly what took place" in the slaying of his wife, Tara. Prosecutor Eric Smith said investigators do not believe that the couple's two children - a 6-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy - witnessed the slaying. He said, "There's been no evidence about anything they were doing other than sleeping." Read The Full Story Britain's Cash-For-Honors Scandal: Document Names Lord Levy 2007-03-06 01:01:16 Detectives are investigating whether Lord Levy, the Labor Party's chief fundraiser, urged one of Tony Blair's most senior aides to shape the evidence she gave to Scotland Yard, the Guardian has learned. Police have been investigating whether Ruth Turner, the prime minister's director of external relations, was being asked by Lord Levy to modify information that might have been of interest to the inquiry. Officers have been trying to piece together details of a meeting they had last year. Turner gave an account of it to her lawyers and this has been passed to police. It is this legal document and the exchange between Turner and Lord Levy that has been at the heart of the inquiry in recent months, and which prompted the focus to shift from whether there was an effort to sell peerages to whether there has been a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. A spokesman for Lord Levy said he was unable to comment. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Read The Full Story Cheney Treated For Blood Clot In Leg 2007-03-06 00:59:02 Vice President Cheney is being treated for a blood clot that his doctor discovered in his left leg, his office announced Monday. Cheney's doctor at George Washington University discovered the clot during an examination Monday after the vice president experienced mild discomfort in his calf, spokeswoman Megan McGinn said. The doctor prescribed blood-thinning medication, which Cheney is to take for several months, she said. Cheney, who may have developed the clot during a recent trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Australia and elsewhere that involved extensive air travel, saw his doctor after delivering a speech Monday morning to the national legislative conference of the Veterans of Foreign War. He then returned to the White House and continued to work. "He's right here now working," said McGinn. "He's fine." Read The Full Story Correction: This Could Become A Crash After All 2007-03-05 03:20:15 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott, writing from London, England. In his column, Mr. Elliott writes that, as traders brace for fresh economic turmoil, soothing words may simply be hiding reality. Mr. Elliott's column follows: With his low opinion poll ratings, George Bush needs a crash on Wall Street like a hole in the head. The days are ticking away towards the end of his presidency and the Pentagon is warning that unless the "surge" in Iraq works the United States could be heading for another Vietnam. Little wonder, then, that Washington did its best to rubbish any suggestion that last week's turbulence on the financial markets amounted to anything more than a little temporary difficulty. In this, the Bush administration was ably supported by the great and good of New York - or at least that part of the financial elite that wasn't banged up for alleged insider trading last week by the securities and exchange commission. As ever, the same reassuring story was spun. Like a hypnotist faced with a sceptical member of the audience, the words were repeated over and over again. Listen, this is a correction not a crash. Relax, the fundamentals of the global economy are strong. Are you listening to me? There will be no recession in the U.S. Did you hear what I said? There will be no recession in the U.S. Read The Full Story Basra Raid On Intelligence Ministry Finds Prisoners With Signs Of Torture 2007-03-05 03:19:21 Iraqi special operation forces and British troops swept into an Iraqi intelligence ministry building Sunday morning in the southern city of Basra and found prisoners with signs of torture, said British officials. All 30 prisoners escaped during the surprise raid, which was triggered by information gleaned from suspects arrested hours earlier in another sweep, a British military spokesman said Monday morning. "It is unclear how it occurred, but what is clear is that the Iraqi forces did not let them escape," said Maj. David Gell, who called the escape "regrettable". In a statement, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called the raid an "unlawful and irresponsible act". He ordered an investigation of the raid, but did not comment on the allegations of torture at the facility that was the Basra headquarters of the National Iraqi Intelligence Agency. The spokesman for the Shiite-led Interior Ministry, which controls the agency, could not be reached. Read The Full Story Scientists: U.K. Plans To Cut CO2 Emissions Is Doomed To Fail 2007-03-05 03:18:15 An independent scientific audit of the U.K.'s climate change policies predicts that the government will fall well below its target of a 30% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 - which means that the country will not reach its 2020 milestone until 2050. The report condemns government forecasts on greenhouse gas emissions as "very optimistic" and projects that the true reduction will be between 12 and 17%, making little difference to current CO2 emission levels. The report is based on an analysis of the government's attempts to meet climate change targets. The authors argue that because much policy is based on voluntary measures, the predicted outcomes cannot be relied upon. It is released on the day the environment minister, David Miliband, delivers a speech on the U.K.'s transition to a "post-oil economy". Read The Full Story Asian Arms Races Feared As China Raises Military Spending 2007-03-05 03:17:05 International concerns about China's growing military power and a spiralling global arms race intensified Sunday when Beijing announced its biggest defense budget increase for more than 10 years. Weeks after China stunned the world by test-firing its first anti-satellite missile, the government said it will increase spending by 17.8% this year. The sharp rise - almost double the pace of economic growth - will be used to modernize the People's Liberation Army. With 2.3 million troops, the PLA has long been the world's biggest military force, but it is only in recent years that it has started to acquire sophisticated weaponry. Extra spending on missile systems, electronic warfare and other hi-tech items will push up the declared budget to 350.9 billion yuan (£23 billion or $46 billion), an increase of 53 billion yuan on 2006. Western defense analysts say the true figure could be two to three times that because so much defense spending is concealed. Read The Full Story	Russian Journalist Who Angered Military Falls To Death - Colleagues Scoff At Suicide Theories 2007-03-06 01:03:05 A senior Russian journalist who embarrassed the country's military establishment with a series of exclusive stories has been found dead outside his apartment in mysterious circumstances. The body of Ivan Safronov, 51-year-old defense correspondent for the newspaper Kommersant, was discovered on Friday. He allegedly fell from a fifth-floor window. Although prosecutors say they suspect that Safranov committed suicide, his colleagues Monday insisted that he had no reason to kill himself. They said he was the latest in a long line of Russian journalists to die in unexplained circumstances. "Nobody believes he could have committed suicide. He had no reason to kill himself," his colleague Sergei Dupin told the Guardian last night. Safranov - a married father of two - had a happy family life and a successful career, he said. Several newspapers pointed to Safranov's track record of breaking stories about Russia's nuclear program. Last December he revealed that the experimental Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile, hailed by President Vladimir Putin as the basis for Russia's future nuclear might, did not work. It had failed to launch for the third consecutive time, he wrote. His exclusive infuriated military commanders, who continue to deny problems with the missile. They launched an internal investigation and threatened Safranov with legal action. "For some reason, it is those journalists who are disliked by the authorities who die in this country," the mass-selling daily Moskovsky Komsomolets observed Monday. "Ivan Safronov was one of those. He knew a lot about the real situation in the army and the defense industries, and he reported it." Read The Full Story U.S. Airstrike In Kabul Kills 9 Members Of The Same Family 2007-03-06 01:02:25 Afghan confidence in western military forces was further frayed Monday when an American airstrike on a house near Kabul killed nine people spanning four generations of the same family. American warplanes dropped two 2,000-lb. bombs on the house in Kapisa province, just north of Kabul, hours after an attack on a nearby U.S. base. The apparent mistake came a day after American Special Forces opened fire on civilians on a busy road in eastern Afghanistan, killing up to 10 and wounding many more. The mounting death toll is causing an uproar in a country that has suffered many civilian casualties since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001. Last December President Hamid Karzai wept as he pleaded with western troops to avoid unnecessary deaths. Reporters at the scene of the Kapisa bombing said the bombs had pulverized the main house in a compound of five buildings. Gulam Nabi, a relative of the victims, said four children aged between six months and five years had been killed. Read The Full Story Commentary: An Insult To Our War Dead 2007-03-06 01:01:32 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the Russian Duma. In his column, which appears in the Guardian edition for Tuesday, March 6, 2007, Mr. Kosachev writes that Estonia now permits SS rallies, but plans to pull down memorials to those who died fighting fascism. Mr. Kosachev's column follows: The marks of the second world war can be seen all over Europe, in restored buildings, destroyed neighborhoods, war cemeteries, painful memories and memorials to the millions who died in the war against nazism. In almost all countries the memorials are treated with respect. In Normandy fallen British and German soldiers lie in adjacent cemeteries. Their graves are well kept, so that families may visit their last resting place, and new generations be reminded of the horrors of war. But in Estonia a new law threatens the very principle of the sanctity of the war dead. The War Graves Protection Act will allow the memorial that stands in the centre of the capital, Tallinn, to be dismantled, and the bodies of unknown soldiers beneath it to be disinterred and reburied elsewhere. While Estonia's President Toomas Ilves has for now vetoed on technical grounds the part of the act that obliges the government to demolish Soviet war memorials within 30 days, he has waved through another law permitting the reburial of the remains of Soviet soldiers who died fighting the Nazis. The Russian government is deeply concerned as this plan threatens to upset relations between Estonians and Russians living in the country and hopes of improving our friendship as independent, neighbouring states. The children and grandchildren of men and women who fought fascism will no longer have a place in central Tallinn where they can honour those heroes. Meanwhile in Estonia, as in Latvia, it has become permissible for veterans of the Hitlerite SS not only to form associations, but to hold rallies in city centers. Read The Full Story Ambassador Pleads For Help In Search For Kidnapped Britons 2007-03-06 00:59:22 Britain's ambassador to Ethiopia made an emotional appeal for information about the five Britons snatched from a remote border area last night as efforts to negotiate their safe release were stepped up. Foreign Office officials said that progress was being made in the search for two women and three men who were kidnapped at the end of a adventure tour on Thursday, with senior diplomats engaged in round the clock talks with the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments. All five victims - who cannot be named due to a government reporting restriction - are members of staff from the British embassy in Addis Ababa, relatives of diplomats or officials from the Department for International Development. Speaking Monday as investigators examined the group's shrapnel-damaged vehicles, the ambassador, Bob Dewar, said there were local people who were "willing and able to facilitate their safe return." Read The Full Story Veterans: 'It's Not Just Walter Reed' 2007-03-05 03:20:36 Soldiers Share Troubling Stories Of Health Care Across U.S. Ray Oliva went into the spare bedroom in his home in Kelseyville, California, to wrestle with his feelings. He didn't know a single soldier at Walter Reed, but he felt he knew them all. He worried about the wounded who were entering the world of military health care, which he knew all too well. His own V.A. hospital in Livermore was a mess. The gown he wore was torn. The wheelchairs were old and broken. "It is just not Walter Reed," Oliva slowly tapped out on his keyboard at 4:23 in the afternoon on Friday. "The VA hospitals are not good either except for the staff who work so hard. It brings tears to my eyes when I see my brothers and sisters having to deal with these conditions. I am 70 years old, some say older than dirt but when I am with my brothers and sisters we become one and are made whole again." Oliva is but one quaking voice in a vast outpouring of accounts filled with emotion and anger about the mistreatment of wounded outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Stories of neglect and substandard care have flooded in from soldiers, their family members, veterans, doctors and nurses working inside the system. They describe depressing living conditions for outpatients at other military bases around the country, from Fort Lewis in Washington state to Fort Dix in New Jersey. They tell stories - their own versions, not verified - of callous responses to combat stress and a system ill equipped to handle another generation of psychologically scarred vets. Read The Full Story Shell Safety Record In North Sea Takes Hammering 2007-03-05 03:19:57 Shell has been repeatedly warned by Britain's Health and Safety Executive about the poor state of its North Sea platforms, according to information obtained by the Guardian newspaper. The company's dismal record undermines Shell's public commitment to improve its performance after a fatal explosion on the Brent field in the North Sea in 2003 and raises further concerns about Britain's ageing oil and gas equipment. As recently as November 13, Shell - one of Britain's largest companies - was served with a rebuke and a legal notice that it was failing to operate safely. "Shell have failed to implement a suitably resourced maintenance regime to achieve compliance with their maintenance strategy. This has led to an excessive backlog of maintenance activities for safety critical equipment," says the HSE's improvement notice number 300463514, covering the Clipper 48 platform in the southern North Sea. Read The Full Story Official Report Says U.S. CO2 To Rise By 20% 2007-03-05 03:18:33 A draft report prepared by the Bush administration admits that emissions of greenhouse gases by the United States will rise by 2020 to 20% above 2000 levels, flying in the face of warnings from scientists that drastic action to cut emissions is needed if environmental catastrophe is to be averted. The internal administration report, which has been obtained by the Associated Press, should have been handed to the United Nations more than a year ago as part of the world body's monitoring of climate change, but its publication has been delayed. The draft estimates that U.S. emissions of so-called greenhouse gases, largely from the burning of oil, coil and natural gas, will rise from 7.7 billion tons in 2000 to 9.2 billion tons in 2020 - an increase of 19.5%. The growth is in line with expectations, but underlines how out of kilter the U.S. government is with world opinion and efforts to tackle climate change. The Kyoto protocol, which the Bush administration has refused to ratify partly on the grounds that it would damage the U.S. economy, demands of most developed countries that they reduce their 1990 emissions levels by 5% by 2012. The U.S. produces about a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide and other gases believed responsible for warming the world's atmosphere. Environmentalists and green groups say that if irreversible global warming is to be avoided far more stringent targets should be set than even those proposed under the Kyoto protocol, which came into force two years ago. On April 14 campaigners will be demonstrating in cities across the U.S. to call for 80% cuts by 2050. Read The Full Story Nuclear Expert: Attack On Iran Would Backfire 2007-03-05 03:17:27 Any military action against Iran's atomic program is likely to backfire and accelerate Tehran's development of a nuclear bomb, a report Monday by a British former nuclear weapons scientist warns. In his report, Frank Barnaby argues that air strikes, reportedly being contemplated as an option by the White House, would strengthen the hand of Iranian hardliners, unite the Iranian population behind a bomb, and would almost certainly trigger an underground crash program to build a small number of warheads as quickly as possible. "As soon as you start bombing you unite the population behind the government," Dr. Barnaby told the Guardian. "Right now in Iran, there are different opinions about all this, but after an attack you would have a united people and a united scientific community." Read The Full Story 'Space Weather' Forecasting Gets A Cosmic Boost 2007-03-05 03:16:45 Weather forecasting just isn't what it used to be. With thousands of satellites orbiting Earth, with astronauts living in the international space station and perhaps venturing later to the moon and Mars, and with nations utterly dependent on space-based assets for their communications, navigation and spying, those responsible for the safety of all these moving parts need to know about a whole new world of weather conditions. How are the solar winds blowing? Are very-high-energy particles from eruptions or flares on the sun heading toward Earth? Will related geomagnetic storms disrupt Earth's magnetic field? Might X-rays from the sun cause radio blackouts? These questions and more must constantly be answered to keep astronauts safe, to keep essential satellites from having their computer memories and power systems fried and to prevent damaging surges in Earth's elaborate electric grids. Read The Full Story
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