Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday April 7 2007 - (813)

Saturday April 7 2007 edition
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Gonzales Aide Monica Goodling Resigns 2007-04-06 19:43:45 The senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales submitted her resignation Friday, marking the second senior Gonzales aide to quit in connection with the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. Monica M. Goodling, who has been on leave for several weeks, has invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid providing testimony or an interview to congressional investigators. Democratic leaders complained earlier this week that Goodling's continued employment by the Justice Department posed a serious legal conflict, and made it impossible for Gonzales to follow through on promises to allow staffers to cooperate with Congress. Goodling sent a three-sentence letter to Gonzales saying she was "hereby submitting my resignation to the office of attorney general." Read The Full Story Sen. Durbin To Hold Hearings On Pet Food Poisonings, Recalls 2007-04-06 14:38:09 The recall of pet foods contaminated by tainted wheat gluten expanded yesterday to 20 additional varieties and Sunshine Mills dry dog biscuits. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Illinois) announced a congressional hearing on the Food and Drug Administration's investigation, and more than 200 pet owners sued the company that sold the pet food for fraud. The FDA also said Menu Foods, a major manufacturer of brand- and private-label wet pet foods, expanded its original recall to foods it made since Nov. 6, 2006, a month earlier than previously announced. Its products made after March 6 are safe, the firm said. Menu Foods, which recalled 60 million pet food cans and pouches on March 16, said in a statement that the 20 new varieties include Science Diet Feline Savory Cuts canned and Grreat Choice wet dog food. The recall list, totaling more than 100 foods, can be found at: http://www.fda.gov . Durbin, who is Senate majority whip, said he would hold an oversight hearing on the FDA's response perhaps as early as next week. Read The Full Story Chlorine Truck-Bomb Driver Kills 27 In Ramadi, Iraq 2007-04-06 14:37:31 A suicide bomber driving a truck loaded with TNT and toxic chlorine gas crashed into a police checkpoint in western Ramadi on Friday, killing at least 27 people and wounding dozens, police in the Anbar provincial capital said. In the deep south of the country, the Basra police commander said the type of roadside bomb used in an attack that killed four British soldiers on Thursday had not been seen in the region previously. Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Moussawi's description of the deadly weapon indicated it was a feared Iranian-designed explosively formed penetrator. Two more of the bombs were discovered planted along routes heavily traveled by U.S. and British diplomats in Basra. Weeks earlier, the American military had claimed Iran was supplying Shiite militia fighters in Iraq with the powerful weapons, known as EFPs. They hurl a molten, fist-sized copper slug capable of piercing armored vehicles. The bombing in Anbar province marked the ninth use of suicide chlorine bombs in the sprawling, mainly desert territory that has been a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. Read The Full Story International Red Cross Faults Human Rights 'Protection' At Guantanamo 2007-04-06 14:36:49 The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that the United States has inadequate procedures to protect the human rights of foreign detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and called for a "more robust" system to determine whether to release hundreds of men who probably will never face trial. Jakob Kellenberger said he is concerned that the processes set up at Guantanamo to assess whether detainees are enemy combatants and whether they should remain there indefinitely infringe on the rights of men who have no clear way of challenging their detentions. Kellenberger said he raised his concerns in meetings with senior Bush administration officials this week, and found them open to discussion. "I felt that the present safeguard mechanisms are really not strong enough," Kellenberger said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors, adding that the detainees should be able to appeal their detentions in a fashion similar to the use of habeas corpus. "These people are four or five years deprived of their freedom, and despite investigations, no crimes came about." Read The Full Story Billions In U.S. Rural Aid Goes To Urban Areas 2007-04-06 02:26:27 In a few weeks, artists, lawyers and bankers will begin arriving in Provincetown, Massachusetts, for the busy summer season on high-speed ferries that take 90 minutes to make the trip from Boston. They will land at a recently refurbished municipal dock that was built with the help of a $1.95 million low-interest loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A few blocks away, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum has used nearly $3 million in grants and loans from the Agriculture Department to add gallery space and renovate a historic sea captain's house. A short drive back down the Cape, the department is financing a new actors theater in Wellfleet and recently awarded a grant to a garden center in Hyannis to build a windmill. Although Cape Cod is only a short trip from Boston and Providence, Rhode Island, and is home to some of the wealthiest beach towns in the United States, to the Agriculture Department it meets the definition of rural America. That means it qualifies for aid originally intended for farmland and backwoods areas that were isolated and poor, struggling to keep their heads above water. "Provincetown is many things to many people, and to USDA we're rural," said Keith A. Bergman, the town manager. "We'll take it." Read The Full Story Senate Judiciary Committee, Justice Dept. In Fight Over Papers On Attorney Firings 2007-04-06 02:25:37 The Justice Department is refusing to release hundreds of pages of additional documents related to the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, setting up a fresh clash with Capitol Hill in a controversy that continues to threaten Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales' hold on his position. The Senate Judiciary Committee, whose investigators have been allowed to view, but not obtain copies of, the records in question, is preparing subpoenas for those papers as well as for all e-mails or documents from the Justice Department and the White House connected to the dismissals of the prosecutors. The new sparring comes as Senate Democrats postponed a long-planned budgetary appearance by Gonzales that had been scheduled for next week. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (Maryland), chairman of the Appropriations Committee panel overseeing the Justice Department budget, Thursday blamed Gonzales' "leadership failures" for the postponement and demanded that the prosecutor controversy be settled before he makes his plea for a budget increase. Read The Full Story China Denies Role In U.S. Pet Deaths 2007-04-06 02:24:35 China has denied responsibility for several pet deaths in the United States which U.S. authorities blame on a batch of chemically contaminated wheat gluten from China, state media reported. But differing statements on whether China has even exported wheat gluten to the U.S. revealed confusion that points to serious problems in the regulation of China's exports and its dismal record on food safety. "China has nothing to do with the pet poisoning in the United States," said a report in the official newspaper of China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, which monitors the export of food, animals and farm products. The China Inspection and Quarantine Times said in a report on its Web site dated Tuesday that as of March 29, 2007, China had "never exported wheat or wheat gluten to ... the United States." This contradicted comments by two employees at the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co., this week who said the company had shipped wheat gluten to the United States. Read The Full Story	3 U.S. Attorneys Resign Posts 2007-04-06 19:43:32 Three lawyers in the U.S. Attorney's office in Minneapolis resigned their management posts, moves that gained national attention against the backdrop of claims top federal prosecutors elsewhere were fired for political reasons. U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose confirmed Friday that John Marti, a first assistant U.S. attorney, Erika Mozangue, head of the office's civil division, and James Lackner, who heads the office's criminal division, have decided to "go back to the line to be full-time prosecutors." She did not say why the three stepped down and indicated that she would have no further public comment. "We have work to do," her statement said. John Kelly, deputy director of the Justice Department's executive office of U.S. Attorneys, visited Minneapolis on Thursday to try to resolve the situation, according to two aides in Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The prosecutors stepped down after Kelly's visit. Read The Full Story Scientists Issue Bleak Forecast For Warming World 2007-04-06 14:37:55 Intellpuke: As expected, a number of news organizations throughout the world are reporting on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on global warming issued today. Because different news organizations tend to focus on different aspects of the IPCC reports when they are issued, I have selected three of these reports so Free Internet Press readers can read and compare them. Immediately following is the report by Britain's Guardian newspaper; that is followed by the New York Times' article on the IPCC report; and that is followed by the Associated Press' article. I did not post these articles in any order of preference. Here's the Guardian's report: The world's scientists Friday issued a grim forecast for life on earth in publishing their latest assessment of the impact of climate change. A warming world will place hundreds of millions of people at greater risk of food and water shortages and threaten the survival of thousands of species of plants and animals, said the scientists. Floods, heat waves, storms and droughts are all expected to increase, with people in poor countries suffering the worst effects. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the expert panel that published the report, said: "It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit." Martin Parry, who co-chaired the working group that produced the report, said there was evidence that climate change was having a direct effect on animals, plants and water. "For the first time, we are no longer arm-waving with models. This is empirical data, we can actually measure it." He said four areas of the world were particularly vulnerable: "The Arctic, where temperatures are rising fast and ice is melting; sub-Saharan Africa, where dry areas are forecast to get dryer; small islands, because of their inherent lack of capacity to adapt, and Asian mega-deltas, where billions of people will be at increased risk of flooding." Read The Full Story FBI Agent Accidentally Shot By Another Agent During New Jersey Shootout 2007-04-06 14:37:11 A veteran F.B.I. agent on a bank-robbery detail was fatally wounded Thursday morning, apparently when another agent’s weapon accidentally discharged during a confrontation with three gunmen outside a bank in a quiet town in central New Jersey, said the authorities. Two of the gunmen were captured almost immediately, and the man suspected of being the third gunman was caught this morning, the state police said.While the circumstances were still under investigation, a statement by the F.B.I. said that the agent, Barry Lee Bush, 52, of the bureau’s Newark office, “may have been fatally wounded as a result of the accidental discharge of another agent’s weapon during a dynamic arrest situation.” In the 99-year history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bush, who was married and the father of two grown children, was the 51st agent killed in the line of duty, and the first to be fatally shot in 10 years. He had worked for the bureau for almost 20 years, in Newark, New Jersey, Kansas City, Missouri, and elsewhere. Read The Full Story British Sailors, Marines Say They Were Confined, Subjected To Psychological Pressure 2007-04-06 14:36:02 British sailors and marines who were held captive by Iran for nearly two weeks said Friday they were seized in Iraqi waters, held in solitary confinement and subjected to intense psychological pressure, including fear at one point that they were about to be executed. Speaking publicly about their ordeal for the first time since the 15 Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines flew home from captivity Thursday, members of the group told a news conference that when they first arrived at a Tehran prison, they were lined up against a wall blindfolded and with their hands bound as Iranian guards audibly cocked their weapons. Royal Marine Capt. Chris Air, a spokesman for the group, said the guards stopped short of staging any mock executions, but that "some of us feared the worst" when they could hear weapons being cocked. The group disavowed statements they made while in captivity apologizing for having intruded into Iranian waters and asking "forgiveness" from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who announced Wednesday that the 15 were being released and chatted with them afterward. Read The Full Story Saddam Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted 2007-04-06 02:25:58 Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released Thursday. The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February. The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June. Read The Full Story Pentagon To Alert Several National Guard Brigades They're Going To Iraq 2007-04-06 02:25:08 Several National Guard brigades are expected to be notified soon that they could be sent to Iraq around the first of next year, according to a senior Defense Department official. If their assignment to Iraq is ultimately approved by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, it would be the first time full Guard combat brigades were sent back to Iraq for a second tour. The units would serve as replacement forces in the regular unit rotation for the war, and would not be connected to the recent military build-up for security operations in Baghdad. Gates is expected to sign the notices alerting the Guard troops shortly, said the official, who requested anonymity because the information has not yet been released. "You will start to see reserve component forces coming back into the rotation," said the official, adding that the notices are being done now in order to give the Guard units as much time as possible to prepare. Read The Full Story Former First Lady Betty Ford Hospitalized In California 2007-04-06 02:24:08 Former first lady Betty Ford was recovering Thursday from unspecified surgery, said the office of the late President Gerald Ford. The surgery occurred earlier in the week and she was "recovering well" at Eisenhower Medical Center, said the statement. No other information will be released for several days, said the statement. Mrs. Ford is 88. Her birthday is Sunday. Read The Full Story
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