Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday April 30 2007 - (813)

Monday April 30 2007 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
Report: U.S. Rebuilding In Iraq Is Missing Key Goals 2007-04-30 02:25:21 The U.S. project to rebuild Iraq remains far short of its targets, leaving the country plagued by power outages, inadequate oil production and shortages of clean water and health care, according to a report to be issued Monday by a U.S. government oversight agency. The 232-page quarterly review by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction presents a sobering picture of the challenges of reconstruction in a war zone. It also says the Army has asked Parsons Corp., one of the largest contractors in Iraq, to explain why it should not be barred from pursuing government contracts for up to three years. In the Army's March letter, it questions "the effectiveness of [Parsons'] standards of conduct and internal control systems." Parsons has been the subject of previous inspector general audits and is best known for building only a small fraction of the health clinics planned to be built in Iraq and for building a police academy so flawed that human waste rained from the ceilings. Read The Full Story Down On The Pharm 2007-04-30 02:24:46 Intellpuke: A new breed of genetically modified crops could provide cheap drugs and vaccines for the developing world. There's only one problem, writes Guardian environment correspondent David Adam, what if they get into the food chain? Mr. Adam's article follows: In a windowless room on the roof of a hospital in south London, the air is being slowly sucked away. It's not enough to notice, but it keeps the sealed laboratory at a slightly lower pressure than the air outside. It's a security measure. The contents of this laboratory are highly controversial, and if anything escaped it would be a public relations disaster for the scientists who work here. The lab holds some of the most controversial plants in the U.K., which nearby residents would be less than happy to find drifting on the breeze through their back gardens. Open the door, and air rushes in, not out. The plants are tobacco, but they are not intended to be smoked. Instead, the scientists who work on them believe they could save lives. Each has been genetically engineered to carry a gene that is usually found in common algae. Inside its cells, the foreign DNA forces the tobacco plant to churn out a protein that is useless to it, but that happens to be a potent drug against HIV. The scientists say the drug, and others like it, could save millions of lives across the developing world. The technique has been dubbed pharmaceutical farming, or pharming, and it is emerging as the latest battleground in the war over genetic modification. Britain has rejected gentically modified (GM) plants once already - a media and consumer backlash persuaded most companies there was little market in the U.K. for crops that have had their genes tweaked to be resistant to pests or herbicides. With pharming the battle lines are less clearly defined, as protesters who trashed experimental GM corn plants in France discovered. The crops were making a protein that could be used to treat cystic fibrosis, and when patient groups angrily denounced the action, mainstream green campaigners were forced to deny involvement. Read The Full Story Inside The Struggle For Iran 2007-04-30 02:23:38 A grand coalition of anti-government forces is planning a second Iranian revolution via the ballot box to deny President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad another term in office and break the grip of what they call the "militia state" on public life and personal freedom. Encouraged by recent successes in local elections, opposition factions, democracy activists, and pro-reform clerics say they will bring together progressive parties loyal to former president Mohammad Khatami with so-called pragmatic conservatives led by Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani. The alliance aims to exploit the president's deepening unpopularity, borne of high unemployment, rising inflation and a looming crisis over petrol prices and possible rationing to win control of the Majlis in general elections which are due within 10 months. Read The Full Story Update: 4 Dead After Shootout In Kansas City 2007-04-30 02:21:08 A man driving a dead woman's car shot a police officer, then opened fire in a parking lot and a mall Sunday, authorities said. By the end of the day, four people, including the gunman, were dead. The chaos ended when police shot the gunman to death outside a Target store inside Ward Parkway Center in south Kansas City, said police spokesman Tony Sanders. The gunfire sent shoppers and employees scurrying for cover. Target employee Cassie Bradshaw, 19, of Kansas City was in a break room with two other people when they first heard shots. Then, her co-workers saw a man in his 50s with a rifle "shooting everywhere," she said. Read The Full Story Truck Explosion Collapses Overpass Between San Francisco, Oakland 2007-04-29 19:13:50 A fiery pre-dawn tanker truck accident caused the collapse of a heavily trafficked freeway overpass near downtown Sunday, sending hundreds of feet of concrete crashing onto a highway below and hobbling a vital Bay Area interchange. The driver of the truck, which was carrying 8,600 gallons of gasoline, was hospitalized with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported from the accident, which occurred at 3:42 a.m. But even as the fire smoldered, transit officials said the accident could complicate the lives of commuters for months. “It will make for a long trip,” said Will Kempton, the director of Cal Trans, the state transportation agency. Read The Full Story Iraq War Called Riskier Than Vietnam 2007-04-29 13:31:45 President Bush recently said that "there's a lot of differences" between the current war in Iraq and the Vietnam War. As fighting in Iraq enters its fifth year, an increasing number of experts in foreign policy and national strategy are arguing that the biggest difference may be that the Iraq war will inflict greater damage to U.S. interests than Vietnam did. "In terms of the consequences of failure, the stakes are much bigger than Vietnam," said former defense secretary William S. Cohen. "The geopolitical consequences are ... potentially global in scope." About 17 times as many U.S. troops died in the Vietnam War - the longest war in U.S. history - as have been lost in Iraq, the nation's third-longest war. Also, despite widespread public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, the debate over it has not convulsed American society to the extent seen during the Vietnam conflict. However, Vietnam does not have oil and is not in the middle of a region crucial to the global economy and festering with terrorism, experts say, leading many of them to conclude that the long-term effects of the Iraq war will be worse for the United States. Read The Full Story 1 Million Turks Rally Against Government 2007-04-29 13:29:44 As many as one million people rallied in a sea of red Turkish flags in Istanbul on Sunday, accusing the government of planning an Islamist state and demanding it withdraw its presidential candidate. Despite the protests and a threat from the powerful army to intervene in the election, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, architect of Turkey's European Union membership drive, said he would remain the ruling AK Party's candidate for head of state. The protesters flooded the streets of Turkey's largest city, praising the army and denouncing Gul and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, whose AK Party enjoys a huge parliamentary majority, as a threat to a secular order separating state and religion. "Turkey is secular and will remain secular," and "government resign," they chanted. Read The Full Story Iraq Leader Warns Iran On Attacks Abroad 2007-04-29 13:28:55 Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told an Iranian envoy Sunday that the persistent attacks in Iraq are also a threat abroad, a pointed warning amid U.S. accusations that the government in Tehran is stoking the violence by supporting Shiite militias. Al-Maliki met with top Iranian envoy Ali Larijani in Baghdad as Iran agreed to attend a major U.S.-backed regional conference on Iraq set for this week in Egypt, raising hopes that bringing Iraq's neighbors together will help stabilize the country. "Terrorist operations targeting Iraq will affect all countries in the world that are supposed to be supporting the Iraqi government in its war against terrorism," al-Maliki said in a statement issued by his office, adding that the prime minister also thanked Iran for agreeing to participate in this week's conference in Sharm el-Sheik. Read The Full Story 82 Inmates Were Cleared But Are Still Held At Guantanamo Bay 2007-04-29 02:29:15 More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers. Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. Yett only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions. The delays illustrate how much harder it will be to empty the prison at Guantanamo than it was to fill it after it opened in January 2002 to detain fighters captured in Afghanistan and terrorism suspects captured overseas. Read The Full Story Pharmaceutical Industry Gifts, Contracts To Doctors Increasing 2007-04-29 02:28:02 Despite efforts to curb drug companies' avid courting of doctors, the industry is working harder than ever to influence what medicines they prescribe, sending out sales representatives with greater frequency and plying physicians with gifts, meals and consulting fees, according to several new papers. One study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week found that 94 percent of doctors have some type of relationship with the drug industry - most commonly accepting free food or drug samples, which about 80 percent of physicians did. More than one-third of the 1,662 physicians who responded to a survey conducted from November 2003 to June 2004 reported being reimbursed by the drug industry for costs of going to professional meetings or continuing medical education, and 28 percent said they had been paid for consulting, giving lectures or signing up patients for clinical trials. Two other papers examined in detail the strategies that pharmaceutical representatives, or "detailers," use and how effective the industry is at influencing doctors. Read The Full Story Buckingham Palace Warned Blair Aide About Investigator In Cash-For-Peerages Scandal 2007-04-29 02:26:42 Buckingham Palace was thrust into the center of the "cash for peerages" scandal Sunday as The Observer disclosed that the most senior courtier in Buckingham Palace expressed deep unease to Downing Street about the Metropolitan Police (also known as Scotland Yard) officer leading the investigation. In a move that highlights the royal household's discomfort with Assistant Commissioner John Yates, the courtier described him to an aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair as a relentless investigator who turned the royal household "inside out". The Observer understands that the warning was passed to Jonathan Powell, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, by Sir Robin Janvrin, the Queen's private secretary. Yates was appointed last year to investigate allegations that Downing Street offered peerages in exchange for loans to the Labor party. Powell was told in blunt terms of the palace's anger at Yates' handling of an earlier investigation that led to the trial of Paul Burrell, the former butler to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, on charges that he stole some of her artifacts. The palace felt badly bruised by the trial, which collapsed in 2002 after the Queen recalled a conversation with Burrell in which he said he was keeping some of the princess' effects. Read The Full Story	Sexual Threats Stifle Some Female Bloggers 2007-04-30 02:25:08 A female freelance writer who blogged about the pornography industry was threatened with rape. A single mother who blogged about "the daily ins and outs of being a mom" was threatened by a cyber-stalker who claimed that she beat her son and that he had her under surveillance. Kathy Sierra, who won a large following by blogging about designing software that makes people happy, became a target of anonymous online attacks that included photos of her with a noose around her neck and a muzzle over her mouth. As women gain visibility in the blogosphere, they are targets of sexual harassment and threats. Men are harassed too, and lack of civility is an abiding problem on the Web. But women, who make up about half the online community, are singled out in more starkly sexually threatening terms - a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere, said experts and bloggers. A 2006 University of Maryland study on chat rooms found that female participants received 25 times as many sexually explicit and malicious messages as males. A 2005 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the proportion of Internet users who took part in chats and discussion groups plunged from 28 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2005, entirely because of the exodus of women. The study attributed the trend to "sensitivity to worrisome behavior in chat rooms". Read The Full Story Maliki's Office Is Seen Behind Purge Of Military, Police Officers 2007-04-30 02:24:26 A department of the Iraqi prime minister's office is playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias, according to U.S. military officials in Baghdad. Since March 1, at least 16 army and national police commanders have been fired, detained or pressured to resign; at least nine of them are Sunnis, according to U.S. military documents shown to the Washington Post. Although some of the officers appear to have been fired for legitimate reasons, such as poor performance or corruption, several were considered to be among the better Iraqi officers in the field. The dismissals have angered U.S. and Iraqi leaders who say the Shiite-led government is sabotaging the military to achieve sectarian goals. "Their only crimes or offenses were they were successful" against the Mahdi Army, a powerful Shiite militia, said Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard, commanding general of the Iraq Assistance Group, which works with Iraqi security forces. "I'm tired of seeing good Iraqi officers having to look over their shoulders when they're trying to do the right thing." Read The Full Story Israeli War Inquiry 'Rebukes Olmert Over Military Errors' 2007-04-30 02:21:27 The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and defense minister, Amir Peretz, faced further calls for their resignation Sunday after leaks of a report into their management of last summer's Lebanon war which suggests they made a series of errors. The Winograd report, to be published Monday, directs strong criticism at the government's conduct in the first days of the war, according to leaks in the Israeli media Sunday. In particular, Olmert and Peretz are rebuked for not seeking proper consultation and for accepting the army's recommendations without question. The politicians' lack of experience in military matters, the report says, meant they accepted the belief of Dan Halutz, the former chief of staff, that the war could be won by air power alone. The report also criticizes Olmert for setting out his war aims - which were broadly to free two captured Israeli soldiers and expel Hezbollah from southern Lebanon - without checking to find if they were attainable. Aides of both men said they had no intention of resigning but the lack of confidence in the politicians may leave them no choice. Read The Full Story BREAKING NEWS: 3 Killed In Shooting At Kansas City Mall 2007-04-29 19:14:02 A shooting at a Kansas City, Missouris, shopping center Sunday afternoon left three people dead, including the gunman, said police. Two people were shot about 3:30 p.m. in the parking lot of the Ward Parkway Center, according to police. Then, the gunman went inside the mall and fired more shots, wounding at least two people, said police spokesman Tony Sanders. The man was shot to death inside the mall, Sanders said. Police fired shots, but it was not immediately clear if he was killed by police, the Associated Press reports. Read The Full Story At Least 56 Killed As Karbala Suffers 2nd Car Bombing 2007-04-29 13:32:11 At least 56 people were killed Saturday in the second major car bombing in two weeks in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, police said, and the U.S. military reported the deaths of seven soldiers and two Marines in other attacks. Three of the soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing southeast of Baghdad on Saturday, and one was killed in a bombing south of the capital, the military said. Three soldiers were wounded in the attacks. On Friday, three soldiers and two Marines were killed in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the military reported. The blast in Karbala shook the nearby Imam Abbas shrine, one of two famed mosques that attract thousands of Shiite Muslim pilgrims each year to the city, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Vehicles burned, enshrouding a nearby marketplace in smoke. Iraqi television showed a man carrying the charred body of an infant above his head as he fled the chaos. At least 158 people were injured, according to police and health department officials. Read The Full Story Saudi King Refuses To See Iraqi Prime Minister 2007-04-29 13:31:24 In a serious rebuff to U.S. diplomacy, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has refused to receive Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on the eve of a critical regional summit on the future of the war-ravaged country, Iraqi and other Arab officials said Saturday. The Saudi leader's decision reflects the growing tensions between the oil-rich regional giants, the deepening skepticism among Sunni leaders in the Middle East about Iraq's Shiite-dominated government, and Arab concern about the prospects of U.S. success in Iraq, the sources said. The Saudi snub also indicates that the Maliki government faces a creeping regional isolation unless it takes long-delayed actions, Arab officials warn. For the United States, the Saudi cold shoulder undermines hopes of healing regional tensions between Sunni- and Shiite-dominated governments and producing a new spirit of cooperation on Iraq at the summit, to be held Thursday and Friday in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the sources warn. Read The Full Story 7 Chinese, 2 African Kidnapped Oil Workers Freed In Ethiopia 2007-04-29 13:29:23 Seven Chinese oil workers and two Africans kidnapped during a rebel attack on a Chinese-run oil field near the Somali border were released Sunday, said the Red Cross. Patrick Megevand, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Ethiopia, confirmed the release but declined to provide details. The Red Cross was taking the men to a safe location to be turned over the Ethiopian and Chinese authorities, he added. The Ogaden National Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the attack on the Chinese-owned oil exploration field in eastern Ethiopia on April 24 that left 65 Ethiopians and nine Chinese workers dead. The group said six Chinese workers "were removed from the battlefield for their own safety." Ethiopian and Chinese officials said seven Chinese workers were missing. Read The Full Story Alleged Madam Abhors 'Injustice' 2007-04-29 13:28:35 "Miz Julia" doled out a steady stream of advice, both practical and philosophical. From her California home, she e-mailed tips to the 132 women who worked across the Washington, D.C., area for the firm Pamela Martin & Associates. Her newsletters, now excerpted in court records, were a virtual how-to manual for avoiding all kinds of trouble in a business said to specialize in erotic fantasies. "One never quite knows where evil, i.e., the vice squad is lurking in this business," read one arch entry from 1995. "The misogynists get a real kick out of surprising (shocking) you girls, when you give them the opportunity!!! . . . Therefore, you are to lock, double lock, triple lock all doors!!! ... Figure it out, before they 'get cha'!!!" Miz Julia was the pseudonym for Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the woman at the center of a sex scandal that has caused a deputy secretary of state to resign and has lawyers calling around town trying to keep their clients' names out of public view. A one-time law student, Palfrey ran for 13 years what she insists was a legal escort service. Federal prosecutors allege she was providing $300-an-hour prostitutes, and a grand jury indicted her in February on federal racketeering charges. Read The Full Story Bush Administration Ignored Most Foreign Aid To Help Katrina Victims 2007-04-29 02:28:56 As the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina were receding, presidential confidante Karen Hughes sent a cable from her State Department office to U.S. ambassadors worldwide. Titled "Echo-Chamber Message" - a public relations term for talking points designed to be repeated again and again - the Sept. 7, 2005, directive was unmistakable: Assure the scores of countries that had pledged or donated aid at the height of the disaster that their largesse had provided Americans "practical help and moral support" and "highlight the concrete benefits hurricane victims are receiving." Many of the U.S. diplomats who received the message, however, were beginning to witness a more embarrassing reality. They knew the U.S. government was turning down many allies' offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international cash assistance for Katrina's victims. Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash, but only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent. Read The Full Story Gonzales Heckled At Harvard Reunion 2007-04-29 02:27:37 A small group of student protesters, including one wearing a black hood and an orange jumpsuit, heckled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as he posed with old classmates Saturday during their 25-year Harvard Law School reunion. "When the photographer was getting everybody set up and having people say 'cheese', the protesters yelled: 'say torture, instead', 'resign' and 'I don't recall'," said Nate Ela, a protester and third-year student. Law school spokesman Mike Armini said the impromptu protest was so small that some of those attending the photo shoot did not notice it. Read The Full Story British Defense Ministry Admits Soldiers' Body Parts Sent Home In Wrong Coffins 2007-04-29 02:26:25 Body parts of British soldiers who died on operations in Afghanistan have been mixed up and placed in the wrong coffins. The government has admitted that the remains of at least one serviceman, who died in Britain's worst military disaster in the war, ended up inside another victim's coffin. The issue came to light only when the personal belongings from one of the dead were given by RAF officials to a family who said they were not his. Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php