Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday April 23 2007 - (813)

Monday April 23 2007 edition
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Iraqi Premier Al-Maliki Calls For U.S. To Halt Construction Of Baghdad Wall 2007-04-23 00:51:03 Iraq's premier, Nouri al-Maliki, Sunday called for a halt to the U.S. military's construction of a three-mile wall in Baghdad separating Sunni and Shia Muslims. Speaking in Egypt, he said: "I asked yesterday that it be stopped and that alternatives be found to protect the area ... I fear this wall might have repercussions which remind us of other walls, which we reject," he added, referring to misgivings that the wall would take on the symbolic status of similar barriers in Northern Ireland and the West Bank. Dubbed the Great Wall of Adhamiya by the U.S. soldiers who started building the 4-meter high (12-feet) barrier in six-ton sections under cover of darkness on April 10, it is designed to protect a mainly Sunni area in eastern Baghdad surrounded on three sides by Shia communities. U.S. military authorities said it would create one of several "gated communities". Read The Full Story Few Specifics Evident As Padilla Trial Nears 2007-04-23 00:50:15 The trial of Jose Padilla, the "dirty bomber" whose alleged plotting was used to justify extraordinary presidential power, will get underway next month, and the prosecution's case is rich in atmospherics. The evidence against Padilla and his two co-defendants includes wiretapped recordings in which the men seem to speak in code; someone spent $3,500 to buy "zucchini." They speak obliquely of travel to Kosovo, Chechnya and "the area of Usama." A "mujahideen data form" bearing Padilla's fingerprints and information was discovered at a reputed al-Qaedahideout in Afghanistan, said prosecutors. But for all its suggestion of jihadist intent, the indictment on charges of a "conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim" lacks anything about the defendants being involved in any particular plot in the United States or anywhere else. That absence of violent specifics - no who, what or when - is expected to be critical in the trial's outcome and is a reflection of troubles in the high-profile prosecution. Read The Full Story 2 Missing Australian Girls Found Hanged Together 2007-04-23 00:49:29 A week-long search for two teenage girls missing in Australia ended Sunday when their bodies were found hanging from a tree in bushland after an apparent suicide pact. Stephanie Gestier and Jodie Gater, both 16, were last seen alive the previous Sunday morning when they told their parents they were meeting friends to go shopping. Their families said they appeared to have no worries or personal problems. But it was later discovered that a MySpace entry from Jodie contained the line: "Let Steph n me b free", and she had recently recorded a worrying message on her mobile phone. Police confirmed Sunday that two bodies had been found by a man out walking in thick scrub in the Dandenong Ranges national park, east of Melbourne, about five miles from the suburb of Belgrave, where the girls lived. Read The Full Story Calif. Democratic House Member Millender-McDonald Dies Of Cancer 2007-04-22 20:00:25 Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-Calif., died early Sunday of cancer, an aide said. Millender-McDonald, who was 68, died at her home in Carson, Calif., said her chief of staff, Bandele McQueen. McQueen could provide no details on what form of cancer Millender-McDonald had. The congresswoman had asked for a four- to six-week leave of absence from the House last week to deal with her illness. Read The Full Story Commentary: Hand Gonzales, Wolfowitz Pink Slips 2007-04-22 19:42:57 Margaret Carlson - Guest Columnist - Seattle Post-Intelligencer In the real world, it takes about a week for someone who has disgraced himself like radio talk-show host Don Imus to lose his job. In Washington, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hang on to their jobs for what seems like forever. Wolfowitz was caught dissembling about how his girlfriend, World Bank employee Shaha Riza, got a raise that was double the size allowed and a guarantee of glowing reviews when she moved from the bank to the State Department to avoid cronyism charges. His legal team was unwilling to bend the rules, so he took it upon himself to dictate the terms. Petty corruption is never good but is particularly bad for Wolfowitz, who has made ending corruption in foreign countries his signature mission. Of course, nailing Wolfowitz for that is a little like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. Yet it's better than letting the architect of the war in Iraq and peddler of all its false pretenses get off scot-free and with a plum job to boot. After all, the Medal of Freedom was awarded to others incriminated in the Iraq debacle. Read The Full Story Miss America 1944 - Armed And Dangerous 2007-04-22 17:31:17 Miss America 1944 has a talent that likely has never appeared on a beauty pageant stage: She fired a handgun to shoot out a vehicle's tires and stop an intruder. Venus Ramey, 82, confronted a man on her farm in south-central Kentucky last week after she saw her dog run into a storage building where thieves had previously made off with old farm equipment. Ramey said the man told her he would leave. "I said, 'Oh, no you won't,' and I shot their tires so they couldn't leave," Ramey said. Read The Full Story Israeli Troops Clash With Palestinians In West Bank, Hamas Calls For 'Resistance' 2007-04-22 15:18:38 Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinians Sunday in separate incidents in the West Bank, prompting Hamas officials to call on their movement's military wing to respond "with all possible means of resistance." Following the most violent day between Israelis and Palestinians in weeks, Israeli soldiers killed two wanted men in Nablus during a morning arrest operation after troops came under fire, said military officials. Hours later, soldiers mortally wounded a Palestinian teenager near Ramallah after a crowd hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at the patrol. Military officials said the 17-year-old boy was shot as he prepared to throw a Molotov cocktail at the troops, but Palestinian witnesses said he was throwing rocks. The killings brought to nine the number of Palestinians killed over the weekend, most if not all of them members of armed groups. Read The Full Story French Voters Will Choose Between Royal, Sarkozy In Presidential Runoff 2007-04-22 15:17:55 Conservative leader Nicolas Sarkozy finished first in the opening round of France's presidential election Sunday and will meet Socialist rival Segolene Royal in a runoff vote, official exit polls said. Figures from the French Interior Ministry had Sarkozy on 30.50%, Ms. Royal on 24.34%, centrist Francois Bayrou in third place on around 18.22% and Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front on 11.51%. Projections by four polling institutions showed Sarkozy leading the field with 29.63% of the vote, Royal in second place on around 25% and centrist Bayrou in third place on around 18.7%. The far-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who stunned France by coming second in the 2002 election, finished a distant fourth with 11%, according to the basket of polls. Read The Full Story Russian Contractor, Iran Sign Protocol On Nuclear Pact 2007-04-22 15:17:06 The Russian contractor building Iran's Bushehr nuclear power station said Sunday the two sides had signed a protocol outlining what measures should be taken to guarantee payments for the project. Russia is Iran's closest major power ally and has helped water down international sanctions over its nuclear program, but the two have clashed over payments for Bushehr. Iran resumed payments last month but some were still outstanding. "If this plan is implemented, a part of the issues linked to the financing of Iran's first atomic station will be resolved,"  Irina Yesipova, spokeswoman for the Russian company Atomstroiexport, said after talks in Moscow. She did not elaborate on what remained to be resolved and said another round of talks was due to be held in Tehran in May. Read The Full Story Britain's Prince Harry Is 'Mother Of All Targets' In Iraq 2007-04-22 00:02:51 Britian's Prince Harry was left under no illusions of his value as a scalp for Iraqi insurgents. Even so, senior military officers could never have predicted the sheer scale of and nature of the threats lying in wait. Iraqi militia groups have already hatched detailed plans to seize him as a hostage when he arrives in Iraq next month. In a remarkable series of interviews, some of the most notorious paramilitary factions in southern Iraq claim that informants placed inside British military barracks in Iraq have received orders to "track" the movements of the third in line to the throne. The claims again question the Ministry of Defense's (MoD) decision to allow Harry to serve in Iraq where he and his unit will be seen as a valuable target to those attacking U.S. and British forces. Saturday night a Ministry of Defense spokesman said: "We have not concealed the fact that he is going out there and the bad guys know that he's coming and we expect that they will consider him a high-profile scalp." Despite the threats, Whitehall officials ruled out the possibility of the prince not being sent to Maysan, the most volatile province in southern Iraq, where attacks against British forces are mounting. Read The Full Story Update: Blue Angel Pilot Dies In Crash At Airshow 2007-04-22 00:02:08 A Navy Blue Angel fighter jet crashed during an air show Saturday, plunging into a neighborhood of small homes and trailers and killing the pilot, said the county coroner. It was the first death of a Blue Angel pilot since 1999. Witnesses said the Navy aerial-demonstration team, made up of six planes, was flying in formation at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, in South Carolina, when one jet dropped below the tree line and crashed, sending up clouds of smoke. It was not immediately known whether anyone on the ground was injured. Raymond Voegeli, a plumber, was backing out of a driveway when the plane ripped through a grove of pine trees, dousing his truck in flames and debris. He said the wreckage hit "plenty of houses and mobile homes." At least one home was set on fire. Read The Full Story	Congressional Critics Say FDA Unable To Protect U.S. Food Supply 2007-04-23 00:50:46 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show. Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents. Congressional critics and consumer advocates said both episodes show that the agency is incapable of adequately protecting the safety of the food supply. Read The Full Story Democrats Craft New Tax Rules To Shift Burden To The Wealthy 2007-04-23 00:49:53 House Democrats, aiming to seize taxes from Republicans as a political issue, have come up with a plan to shift the burden of the hated alternative minimum tax onto the shoulders of the nation's richest households. The proposal, still in its preliminary stages, would attempt to restore the original purpose of the parallel tax structure, which was created in 1969 to nab 155 super-rich tax filers who were using loopholes and deductions to wipe out their tax bills. Because it was not indexed for inflation, the AMT delivered a significant tax increase to an estimated 3 percent of households this year. Unless the law is changed, it is projected to strike nearly 20 percent of taxpayers when they file returns next spring, many earning as little as $50,000 a year. House Democrats are trying to craft legislation that would spare those households while providing relief to many current AMT payers. Under a proposal presented last week to Democrats on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, families making less than $250,000 a year - about 98 percent of taxpayers - would be exempt from the tax. Those earning between $250,000 and about $500,000 would see lower AMT bills, according to Democratic sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan is not final. Read The Full Story Jordanian Security Agents Seize Al-Jazeera Tape 2007-04-23 00:49:09 Jordan's pro-western government is embroiled in an embarrassing row with al-Jazeera television after Amman confiscated the videotape of an interview in which the former crown prince attacked the United States and Saudi Arabia for pursuing "destructive" Middle East policies. The Qatar-based satellite channel protested an infringement of media freedoms after its Beirut, Lebanon, bureau chief, Ghassan Ben Jeddou, filmed an interview with Prince Hassan, uncle of King Abdullah and previous heir to the throne, for the channel's Open Dialogue program. Prince Hassan was asked about allegations in a recent article by the New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh, suggesting that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were bankrolling Sunni Muslim groups - some with links to al-Qaeda - to counterbalance the weight of Hezbollah, the Shia political and paramilitary organization based in Lebanon and backed by Iran and Syria. The prince is said to have commented, characteristically: "If this is true, we have a big problem." But even this anodyne response was deemed too explosive for an Arab audience. The 60-year-old prince is an engaging and highly articulate intellectual who is active on the international conference circuit, but no longer has any real power. Read The Full Story Sunnis denounce neighborhood wall - Iraqi Prime Minister Halts Construction 2007-04-22 19:55:09 Iraq's prime minister said Sunday that he has ordered a halt to the U.S. construction of a barrier separating a Sunni enclave from surrounding Shiite areas in Baghdad after fierce criticism over the project at home. The challenge to the U.S. initiative came as Nouri al-Maliki began a regional tour to shore up support from mostly Sunni Arab nations for his Shiite-dominated government as sectarian violence persists despite a nearly 10-week-old security crackdown. Read The Full Story Bad Advertisments? Help Us Get Rid Of Them! 2007-04-22 18:31:18   It has come to our attention that some of the advertisements on Free Internet Press may be construed as tasteless or offensive.    Advertisements as marked by the "Ads by Google" are automatically placed on Free Internet Press, based on the content of the story.  We have very little control over what is shown, but we do have the ability to filter out unwanted advertisers.    If you see an advertisement that you believe is tasteless or offensive, please email us at editor@freeinternetpress.com with the following information. 1)  Make the subject of your message "Bad Ads!" 2) Send us the full text of the ad.  Copy & paste it into your email. 3) Click the link, and provide us with the page that loads after you've clicked the link. Read The Full S! tory Insurgent Tactics Raising U.S. Death Toll In Diyala 2007-04-22 15:18:59 The pale blue light inside the Chinook helicopter cast a faint glow on the young soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, tensed for battle. They crossed themselves and bowed their heads. The battalion was flying in the middle of the night toward an Iraqi village, one unexplored by American troops and believed to be dominated by Sunni insurgents. The troops had heard the stories - militant camps hidden in palm groves, underground torture prisons, sniper teams on rooftops - and were ready for a fight. As a lone soldier had roared on the tarmac amid the thudding rotors: "Battle hard!" But when the 600 soldiers descended on Buhriz al-Barra with machine guns and night-vision lenses early Monday, they found the village largely devoid of men. Soldiers fanned out from the rocky field where they had landed, combing riverbanks, palm groves and hundreds of concrete and cinder-block homes, only to find many abandoned and others inhabited only by nervous women and children. Read The Full Story Infant Deaths Climb In U.S. South 2007-04-22 15:18:22 For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death but, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states. The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and, many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds. “I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Mississippi, and past president of the National Perinatal Association. Read The Full Story Britain Said To Seek 3 Russians In Litvinenko's Death 2007-04-22 15:17:27 British detectives are set to issue arrest warrants for three Russians they suspect killed former Russian agent Alexander V. Litvinenko,  The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported. The police have told sources close to Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, that they intend to charge the three men with murder and poisoning, the Mail said on its front page. Andrei K. Lugovoi, Dmitri V. Kovtun and Vyacheslav G. Sokolenko, all wealthy businessmen and former agents in the K.G.B., the defunct secret police and spy agency, met Litvinenko three weeks before his agonizing death from radiation poisoning in London last year. They have denied any wrongdoing. The Mail said the issuing of warrants in the coming weeks would further damage relations between Britain and Russia, which would almost certainly block any request for their arrest and extradition. Read The Full Story Millions Face Famine As Crop Disease Rages 2007-04-22 00:03:11 Scientists say millions of people face starvation following an outbreak of a deadly new strain of crop disease which is spreading across the wheat fields of Africa and Asia. The disease, known as black stem rust, has already destroyed harvests in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia. Now researchers report that stem rust spores have blown across the Red Sea into the Arabian peninsula and infected wheat fields in Yemen. Spores have also blown northwards into Sudan. Experts believe the disease - Puccinia graminis - will spread to Egypt, Turkey, the Middle East and finally India and Pakistan, which would lead to the destruction of the principal source of food for more than a billion people. Some observers warn that the disease could reach Egypt, which is heavily dependent on wheat, before the end of this year. "This thing has immense potential for social and human destruction," the international agriculture expert and Nobel prize-winner Norman Borlaug warned this month. Read The Full Story Congress Skeptical Of Bush's Nuclear Warhead Plan 2007-04-22 00:02:29 Congressional hearings over the past several weeks have shown that the Bush administration's plan to move ahead with a new generation of nuclear warheads faces strong opposition from House and Senate members concerned that the effort lacks any strategic underpinning and could lead to a new nuclear arms race. Experts inside and outside the government questioned moving forward with a new warhead as old ones are being refurbished and before developing bipartisan agreement on how many warheads would be needed at the end of what could be a 30-year process. Several, including former senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), suggested linking production of a new warhead with U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a move the Bush administration has opposed. Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio), who originated what has become the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, wants the number of warheads in the current U.S. stockpile declassified as "the first step for an honest dialogue on nuclear weapons." Including warheads that are deployed, inactive and in reserve, the total is assumed to be above 6,000. Read The Full Story Iran: U.N. Has No Right To Stop Enrichment Plans 2007-04-22 00:01:40 Iran's foreign minister said on Saturday the U.N. Security Council, which has passed two sanctions resolutions on Iran since December, had no right to stop it enriching uranium. Iran has been upping the ante in a standoff with the Security Council, which has demanded a halt to enrichment over fears Tehran is seeking to build nuclear bombs. "We don't accept Iran's case being passed from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the U.N. Security Council," Manouchehr Mottaki said through an interpreter at a news conference while visiting Managua,  Nicaragua. "The Security Council has no right to take this right away from the people," he said, referring to Iran's enrichment of uranium. Read The Full Story
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