Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday April 15 2007 - (813)

Sunday April 15 2007 edition
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Military Study: Global Warming 'Presents Significant National Security Challenges' To U.S. 2007-04-15 01:26:08 The U.S. military is increasingly focused on a potential national security threat: climate change. Just last month the U.S. Army War College funded a two-day conference at the Triangle Institute for Security Studies titled "The National Security Implications of Global Climate Change." And tomorrow, a group of 11 retired senior generals will release a report saying that global warming "presents significant national security challenges to the United States," which it must address or face serious consequences. The 63-page report - which is being released a day before the U.N. Security Council holds its first-ever briefing on climate change - lays out a detailed case for how global warming could destabilize vulnerable states in Africa and Asia and drive a flood of migrants to richer countries. It focuses on how climate change "can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world," in part by causing water shortages and damaging food production. The study's authors, along with several other national security experts, confirmed last week that the military has begun studying possible future impacts of global warming with new intensity. Read The Full Story Sectarian Rivalries In Iraq Lead To Separate Spy Agencies 2007-04-15 01:25:20 Suspicious of Iraq's CIA-funded national intelligence agency, members of the Iraqi government have erected a "shadow" secret service that critics say is driven by a Shiite Muslim agenda and has left the country with dueling spy agencies. The minister of state for national security, a Shiite named Sherwan Waili, has built a spy service boasting an estimated 1,200 intelligence agents out of a second-tier ministry with a minimal staff and meager budget, say Western officials. "He has representatives in every province," said a Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "At the moment, it's a slightly shady parallel organization." Read The Full Story Kasparov Detained As Police In Moscow Overpower Anti-Kremlin Protest 2007-04-15 01:24:30 Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and at least 170 other anti-Kremlin activists were detained Saturday after hundreds of riot police sealed off Moscow's Pushkin Square and clubbed some protesters to prevent a banned opposition rally and march. "They are seizing people everywhere, so that any group of people that looks even the least bit suspicious is immediately arrested - not just blocked, but arrested, harshly," Kasparov said in a cellphone interview with the radio station Echo Moskvy after the arrest, his first. He waved to supporters from a police van before he was driven off. Police later broke up a demonstration outside the police station where he was being held. Protesters shouting "Freedom for political prisoners!" were kicked and clubbed by police. Kasparov was released late Saturday. Read The Full Story Einstein Was Right - Space And Time Bend 2007-04-14 22:04:24 Under his name in the Oxford English Dictionary is the simple definition: genius. Yet for decades physicists have been asking the question: did Albert Einstein get it wrong? After half a century, seven cancellations and $700 million, a mission to test his theory about the universe has finally confirmed that the man was a mastermind - or at least half proved it. The early results from Gravity Probe B, one of NASA's most complicated satellites, confirmed Saturday "to a precision of better than 1 per cent" the assertion Einstein made 90 years ago - that an object such as the Earth does indeed distort the fabric of space and time. But this - what is referred to as the "geodetic" effect - is only half of the theory. The other, "frame-dragging", stated that as the world spins it drags the fabric of the universe behind it. Francis Everitt, the Stanford University professor who has devoted his life to investigating Einstein's theory of relativity, told scientists at the American Physical Society it would be another eight months before he could measure the "frame-dragging" effect precisely. Read The Full Story 85 Percent Of Persian Gulf States Pursuing Nuclear Power 2007-04-14 12:41:42 Two years ago, the leaders of Saudi Arabia told international atomic regulators that they could foresee no need for the kingdom to develop nuclear power. Today, they are scrambling to hire atomic contractors, buy nuclear hardware and build support for a regional system of reactors. So, too, Turkey is preparing for its first atomic plant. And Egypt has announced plans to build one on its Mediterranean coast. In all, roughly a dozen states in the region have recently turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, for help in starting their own nuclear programs. While interest in nuclear energy is rising globally, it is unusually strong in the Middle East. “The rules have changed,” Jordan's King Abdullah II recently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Everybody’s going for nuclear programs.” Read The Full Story At Least 32 Killed, 158 Wounded By Car Bomb In Karbala 2007-04-14 12:40:55 A car bomb tore through a bus station and the surrounding area in Karbala, a Shiite holy city south of Baghdad, Saturday morning, killing at least 32 people, said police and hospital officials. The blast turned the busy commuter bus station and nearby market into a tableau of devastation, with bloody survivors evacuating the wounded in rickety wooden vegetable carts. The car exploded about 200 yards from the gold-domed shrine of Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Mohammed, one of holiest sites for Shiites outside Mecca and a destination for Iraqi and Iranian pilgrims, some of whom were among the dead. Khalid Adnan, director of the al-Hussein Hospital in Karbala said at least 32 people were killed and 158 other were wounded. Eighty percent of the wounded were in critical condition, he said. A police spokesman put the death toll at 41, including many women and children. Read The Full Story North Korea Misses Deadline For Shutting Down Nuclear Reactor 2007-04-14 12:40:17 North Korea missed a Saturday deadline for shutting down its main nuclear reactor, and a key U.S. negotiator said the country must keep the disarmament program from foundering. The United States and other governments involved in six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear programs said the slipping of the 60-day deadline was significant, but not yet fatal to a two-month-old agreement that laid out a timetable for disarmament. "It's time for the North Koreans to get moving on their issues," Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator, told reporters after meeting in Beijing with his Chinese counterpart. Read The Full Story Iraq Sunni Factions Split With Al-Qaeda Group 2007-04-14 02:09:54 Key Sunni militant groups are severing their association with al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group that claims allegiance to the organization led by Osama bin Laden. The split could help isolate a primary foe of the United States in Iraq but could also further splinter the Sunni insurgency and make it even harder to control, according to insurgent leaders and Iraqi and U.S. officials. In the Sunni heartland of Anbar and other provinces, Sunni groups are accusing al-Qaeda in Iraq of killing, kidnapping and torturing dozens of their fighters, clerics and followers. One leading Sunni extremist organization, the Islamic Army, says al-Qaeda has killed more than 30 fighters from different armed factions in recent weeks. Last weekend, the Islamic Army posted on insurgent Web sites a nine-page letter urging bin Laden to stop those killing in his name. "He should rise up for his faith and assume religious and organizational responsibility for al-Qaeda and search for the truth," the letter said. "It is not enough to disown those actions, but it is imperative to correct the path." Read The Full Story Gas Hits $3 A Gallon Before Peak Summer Driving Season 2007-04-14 02:09:08 Autistic children and adults in Montgomery County are getting rides to Olney for crafts, dancing and other forms of occupational therapy only three evenings a week, instead of the usual five. Because of soaring gasoline prices, the organization that runs the programs has had to cut back on their visits. "We're having to make some hard choices," said Christopher Drayton, transportation director for Community Services for Autistic Adults and Children, a nonprofit organization that continues to ferry people to jobs and school programs. Drivers across the region are making tough decisions about spending on gasoline as pump prices have skyrocketed. In two months, the cost of gas has risen 60 cents a gallon. At some stations, it's now above $3. Read The Full Story British, Russian Police Investigate Berezovsky's 'Revolution' Claim 2007-04-14 02:08:07 Police in Britain and Russia launched separate inquiries into the multimillionaire Boris Berezovsky Friday after he disclosed to the Guardian newspaper that he is plotting a "revolution" to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin. In Moscow, where investigators said they were opening a criminal investigation into the tycoon's calls for the use of force to secure regime change, infuriated government ministers demanded that he be stripped of his refugee status and extradited to stand trial. In London, detectives from Scotland Yard's counterterrorism command began studying recordings of the Berezovsky interview after they were posted on the Guardian Unlimited website. They are looking to see whether he has committed any offense and to establish whether there are grounds to revoke his refugee status. In Washington, D.C., U.S. State Department officials were also known to be studying the businessman's repeated assertions that force must be used to get rid of Putin. Read The Full Story Google Buys DoubleClick For $3.1 Billion 2007-04-14 02:07:20 Google agreed to its largest acquisition yesterday, reaching a deal to purchase DoubleClick, the online advertising company, from two private equity firms for $3.1 billion in cash, almost double what it paid for YouTube last year. And perhaps just as important, the deal kept DoubleClick from the hands of Microsoft. For Google, the purchase is another step in its transformation from a search engine into an advertising powerhouse. DoubleClick, which is based in New York City, specializes in software for display advertising and has close relationships with Web publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies. “It’s the two juggernauts in search and display getting together,” said Martin Reidy, president of Modem Media, an ad agency in the Publicis Groupe. Read The Full Story	Bush Administration Seeks To Expand Surveillance Law 2007-04-15 01:25:44 The Bush administration Friday asked Congress to make more non-citizens subject to intelligence surveillance and to authorize the interception of foreign communications routed through the United States. Currently, under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, individuals have to be associated with a foreign terrorism suspect or a foreign power to fall under the auspices of the FISA court, which can grant the authority to institute federal surveillance. The White House proposes expanding potential targets to include non-citizens believed to possess, transmit or receive important foreign intelligence information, as well as those engaged in the United States in activities related to the purchase or development of weapons of mass destruction. The proposed revisions to FISA would also allow the government to keep information obtained "unintentionally," unrelated to the purpose of the surveillance, if it "contains significant foreign intelligence." Currently such information is destroyed unless it indicates threat of death or serious bodily harm. Read The Full Story U.S. Holds 18,000 Detainees In Iraq 2007-04-15 01:24:52 In the past month, as a new security crackdown in Baghdad began, U.S. forces arrested another 1,000 Iraqis, bringing to 18,000 the number of detainees jailed in two U.S.-run facilities in that country. The average stay in these detention centers is about a year, but about 8,000 of the detainees have been jailed longer, including 1,300 who have been in custody for two years, said a statement provided by Capt. Phillip J. Valenti, spokesman for Task Force 134, the U.S. Military Police group handling detainee operations. "The intent is to detain individuals determined to be true threats to coalition forces, Iraqi Security Forces and stability in Iraq," said Valenti. "Unlike situations in the past, these detainees are not conventional prisoners of war." Instead, he said, they are "diverse civilian internees from widely divergent political, religious and ethnic backgrounds who are detained on the basis of intelligence available at the time of capture and gathered during subsequent questioning." Valenti said 250 of those in custody are third-country nationals, including some high-value detainees. Read The Full Story Researchers: EPA Helping To Hide Tons Of Toxic Waste 2007-04-14 22:43:12 This year, Californians will live alongside over half a million pounds of newly hidden toxic waste, thanks to recent changes in the national system for reporting releases of hazardous chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency's revisions to the federal reporting system known as the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) dramatically raised the threshold at which industrial facilities must explicitly disclose how much toxic material they release or dispose of. According to an investigation by the national watchdog organization Environmental Working Group (EWG), the move will obscure data on an estimated nearly 600,000 pounds of dangerous chemicals that would have been exposed under the old rules - in California alone. EWG released the study to complement a bill recently introduced in the California Assembly that would restore previous toxics-reporting guidelines for the state. Read The Full Story FIP RSS Feed Broken - Fixed 2007-04-14 19:08:31 ----------------------------------------------------- From:  Mark To: editor@freeinternetpress.com Subject: Problem with your RSS feed Your RSS feed XML format isn't quite valid, making it unusable with Mozilla Firefox.  Here's the error message you get: XML Parsing Error: xml declaration not at start of external entity Location: http://www.freeinternetpress.com/rss.php Line Number 3, Column 1:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> ^ According to the XML specs, the <?xml..> tag must be located at the very beginning of the file.  Your rss.php script is outputting 2 blank lines before the <?xml ..> tag, making it invalid XML. -----------------------------! ------------------------ Editor: Mark,  Thanks for bringing this to our attention.  (and yes, a personal email was sent to you also) As always, we thank our readers for bringing problems to our attention.  Sometimes things slip through the cracks. Read The Full Story U.S. Northeast Readies For Heavy Rain, Snow As Storm Blows Through Plains, Gulf States 2007-04-14 12:41:13 A severe weather system blamed for two deaths plowed eastward Saturday, rattling the Gulf states with strong thunderstorms as the Northeast prepared for possible coastal flooding. The storm blew across the southern Plains on Friday, piling snow a foot deep in Kansas and raking Texas with high wind. "I felt my house start shaking like the wind and I ran in here and grabbed my little girl," Amanda Rymer, 21, said in Haltom City, Texas. "As soon as I moved her, the roof fell in right where she was standing." The storm tore roofs off houses in Rymer's neighbor and destroyed porches and garages. About a dozen tractor-trailer rigs were blown onto their sides. Read The Full Story Suicide Bombers Strike Near U.S. Cultural Center In Casablanca 2007-04-14 12:40:30 Two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the gates of an American cultural center in the Moroccan port city of Casablanca on Saturday, injuring a bystander but causing no other casualties. Moroccan police arrested a third bomber as he ran away from the scene as well as two other suspects in the vicinity of Dar America, the cultural center, which is located in an upscale neighborhood in Casablanca and close to a U.S. consulate. The attacks came four days after three suicide bombers died in a confrontation with police in another part of Casablanca. Moroccan security officials said the attackers were all part of the same cell, which they had been hunting since another member blew himself up March 11 at a Casablanca internet cafe. Read The Full Story Chaplains' Complaints Of Bias Increase At National Institute Of Health 2007-04-14 02:10:16 The spiritual ministry department of the National Institutes of Health, which serves patients being treated in the nation's premier research hospital, is in disarray and battling a lawsuit and discrimination complaints that allege bias against Jewish and Catholic chaplains. In February, a federal panel ordered the hospital to reinstate a Catholic priest who was wrongfully fired in 2004. In January, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had found that he was the target of "discriminatory and retaliatory animus". Three other former chaplains have said that they also were wrongfully terminated. They have accused O. Ray Fitzgerald, a Methodist minister and the former head of the spiritual ministry department, of anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism. They say that NIH retaliated against them when they spoke up and invented reasons for terminating them. Fitzgerald was demoted from the chief chaplain's post two weeks ago after the EEOC, which cited the "animus," and the Merit Systems Protection Board ordered the rehiring of and back pay for the priest, the Rev. Henry Heffernan. NIH officials "endorsed intolerance, and they reinforced intolerance with intolerance," said Rabbi Reeve Brenner, who testified last year in support of the priest and was fired as a hospital chaplain in February. He has filed a complaint with the Merit Board, an agency that hears federal personnel disputes, saying that he was removed by NIH as retribution for his testimony. Read The Full Story Gonzales Floated Insiders Names To Replace Attorneys Months Before They Were Fired 2007-04-14 02:09:34 The attorney general's former top aide identified five Bush administration insiders as potential replacements for sitting U.S. attorneys months before those prosecutors were fired, contrary to repeated suggestions from the Justice Department that no such list had been drawn up, according to documents released Friday. E-mails sent to the White House in January and May of 2006 by D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, name potential replacements for U.S. attorneys in San Diego and San Francisco, California, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The disclosures contrast with previous statements from Sampson and other Justice officials. They have said that only Tim Griffin, a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove who was later appointed the top federal prosecutor in Little Rock, had been identified as a replacement candidate before the dismissals of the sitting U.S. attorneys. "These documents uncover one of the most central and disconcerting contradictions we've seen so far," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York). "We have been told that there were no backups in mind to replace the fired U.S. attorneys, and these documents make it clear that there were." Read The Full Story Afghan Report On Civilian Killings Says Marines Used Excessive Force 2007-04-14 02:08:32 A platoon of elite Marine Special Operations troops reacted with "excessive force" after an ambush in Afghanistan last month, opening fire on pedestrians and civilian vehicles along a 10-mile stretch of road and killing 12 people - including a 4-year-old girl, a 1-year-old boy and three elderly villagers - an investigation by an Afghan human rights commission alleges. The investigation, based on dozens of eyewitness interviews, found that Marines in a convoy of Humvees continued shooting at at least six locations along the road, miles beyond the site where they were ambushed by a suicide bomber in a van. They fired at stationary vehicles, passersby and others who were "exclusively civilian in nature" and had made "no kind of provocative or threatening behavior," according to a draft report of the investigation obtained by the Washington Post. In addition to the 12 Afghans killed, including at least two women, 35 were wounded, and one Marine was injured by shrapnel. Read The Full Story U.S. Embassy Warns Of Possible Algiers Attacks On Saturday 2007-04-14 02:07:37 Attackers may be planning to strike in Algiers on Saturday, three days after twin suicide bombs killed 33 people in the Algerian capital, the U.S. embassy said citing what it called unconfirmed information. In a warden notice issued to U.S. expatriates in the early hours of Saturday, the embassy said: "According to unconfirmed information, there may be attacks planned for April 14, 2007 in areas that may include the Algiers Central Post Office located in Rue Emir El Khettabi, and Algerian State Television Headquarters (ENTV), located on Boulevard des Martyrs, among others." Read The Full Story
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