Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday April 5 2007 - (813)

Thursday April 5 2007 edition
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British Marines, Sailors Flying Home From Iran 2007-04-05 01:02:04 The 15 British service members held in Iranian custody for nearly two weeks flew out of Tehran Thursday aboard a British Airways plane bound for London, Iran's state-run IRIB network reported, according to Reuters. Britain's ambassador to Iran and other members of the British embassy were at Mehrabad Airport to see them off, IRIB reported. The flight departed shortly after 8 a.m. Thursday (12:30 a.m. ET). Earlier, the group shook hands and made small talk with Ahmadinejad Wednesday, thanking him shortly after he announced their pardon. Read The Full Story V.A. Removes Wrong Testicle From Patient 2007-04-05 01:01:30 An Air Force veteran has filed a federal claim after an operation at a Veterans Administration hospital in which a healthy testicle was removed instead of a potentially cancerous one. Benjamin Houghton, 47, was to have had his left testicle removed June 14 at the West Los Angeles V.A. Medical Center because there was a chance it could harbor cancer cells. It also was atrophied and painful. But doctors mistakenly removed the right testicle, according to medical records and the claim, which seeks $200,000 for future care and unspecified damages. He still hasn't had the other testicle removed. "At first I thought it was a joke," Houghton told the Los Angeles Times. "Then I was shocked. I told them, 'What do I do now?'" Read The Full Story Obama Raises $25 Million For Presidential Campaign 2007-04-04 17:32:23 Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois) raised at least $25 million for his presidential campaign in the first quarter of the year, putting him just shy of Sen. Hillary Clinton,the Democratic frontrunner, who made a splash with her announcement Sunday that she had drawn a record-breaking $26 million. Obama appears to have surpassed Clinton in several ways: He reported donations from 100,000 people, double the 50,000 people who gave to the New York senator's campaign. He raised $6.9 million through donations over the Internet, more than the $4.2 million that Clinton raised online. And of Obama's overall receipts, $23.5 million is eligible for use in the primary contests. Clinton officials have declined to disclose how much of her cash is available for the primaries - rather than designated for the general election and therefore blocked off unless she wins the nomination - raising suspicions that she raised less for the primaries than Obama did. Read The Full Story U.N. Study Shows Likely Impact Of Global Warming 2007-04-04 17:31:54 The latest United Nations assessment of the role of humans in global warming has found with “high confidence” that greenhouse gas emissions are at least partly responsible for a host of changes already under way, including longer growing seasons and shrinking glaciers. A summary of the working draft of the report, to be released Friday in Brussels, was provided to the New York Times Wednesday by several people involved in reviewing it. It is a detailed follow-up to a February report by the United Nations group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was the fourth assessment since 1990 of the basic science that points to a human hand on the planet’s thermostat. That report said there was at least a 90 percent chance that most warming since 1950 had resulted from a continuing buildup of heat-trapping emissions in the atmosphere. The new report describes the specific effects of climate changes on people and ecology; identifies those species and regions at greatest risk; and describes options for limiting risks. Read The Full Story No Longer Waiting For Rain, U.S. West Takes Action 2007-04-04 02:05:34 A Western drought that began in 1999 has continued after the respite of a couple of wet years that now feel like a cruel tease. But this time people in the driest states are not just scanning the skies and hoping for rescue. Some $2.5 billion in water projects are planned or under way in four states, the biggest expansion in the West’s quest for water in decades. Among them is a proposed 280-mile pipeline that would direct water to Las Vegas from northern Nevada. A proposed reservoir just north of the California-Mexico border would correct an inefficient water delivery system that allows excess water to pass to Mexico. In Yuma, Arizona, federal officials have restarted an idled desalination plant, long seen as a white elephant from a bygone era, partly in the hope of purifying salty underground water for neighboring towns. Read The Full Story Commentary: Fox-in-the-Henhouse Government 2007-04-04 02:04:43 Intellpuke: The following commentary is by Washington Post columnist Ruch Marcus. Her column appears in the Post's edition for Wednesday, April 4, 2007. The Bush administration's House of Straw seems to be blowing apart, buffeted by alternating gusts of scandal and incompetence. The tornado of disastrous headlines - a Pentagon that can't take proper care of its wounded, a Justice Department that can't be trusted to follow the law or tell the truth to Congress, a top White House aide who lied to a grand jury -- has been so overpowering that the day-to-day outrages of life in the Bush administration tend get overlooked. So it's worth pausing to pay attention to some recent events that similarly underscore the failings of this administration and illuminate one of their root causes: a contemptuous attitude toward government itself. These episodes illustrate the administration's fox-guarding-the-henhouse personnel plan, the disdain of its appointees for the laws they are sworn to enforce and their spoils-of-war attitude toward the government they are entrusted with overseeing: -- The president's amazing-even-for-this-crowd choice to oversee the federal family planning program, Eric Keroack, resigned after Medicaid officials in Massachusetts, where he had a private medical practice, questioned his billings. Keroack's suitability for the family planning post, in which he was responsible for overseeing the distribution of contraceptives to low-income women? He was director of a group that finds contraception "demeaning to women" and won't distribute it - even to married women. Read The Full Story Four Years In Guantanamo - The Man Who Said No To Britain's MI5 2007-04-04 02:03:54 British resident Jamil el-Banna, 44, knew Abu Qatada, a cleric accused of being al-Qaeda's spiritual leader in Europe. In 2002, Banna, a father of five from London, was seized by the CIA and secretly flown to Guantanamo Bay, after MI5 wrongly told the Americans that his travelling companion was carrying bomb parts on a business trip to Gambia. On Friday, his companion, Bisher al-Rawi, was released without charge after four years in the U.S. detention camp, after it emerged that he had helped MI5 keep track of Qatada. But Banna's incarceration in Cuba continues. It has now emerged that only days before Banna's arrest, MI5 visited him at his home and attempted to recruit him as an informer, with the lure of a new identity, relocation and money. The Guardian has obtained this MI5 document in which the intelligence officer details, in his own words, that encounter. Note For File date 31 October 2002 Subject Meeting with Abu Anas [an Arabic version of Jamil el-Banna's name] Summary Unannounced visit to Anas at home by [blacked out name of MI5 agent] and MPSB D/Sgt [name of Metropolitan police special branch detective sergeant]. Anas welcoming and apparently friendly; denies any involvement in extremist activity; concerned about being arrested or turned back when leaving for Gambia, or being excluded once outside the country; asks about progress of application for British nationality and possibility of a return of personal items seized during police raid last year, shows no interest in resettlement package in return for cooperation. Read The Full Story Putin Accused Over Death Of Litvinenko 2007-04-04 02:01:57 The controversy surrounding the death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who died from radioactive poisoning in London last year, was reignited Tuesday when his wife and friends accused Vladimir Putin and the Russian government of "state-sponsored terrorism". Speaking at the launch of the Litvinenko Justice Foundation, Litvinenko's wife, Marina, said she would not rest until her husband's killers were found, describing how she had watched from his bedside as his condition deteriorated. "It's not easy for me ... It was not just one moment. I saw him over one month and three days ... He just wasted away." Flanked by Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky at the Royal United Services Institute in central London, Mrs. Litvinenko said she had written to President Putin telling him she would continue her campaign until her husband's killers had been brought to justice. "What I do, I do for the murder of my husband, his memory. I don't want it to happen to somebody else ... I want justice for Sasha, for his son." Read The Full Story	U.S. Lets Red Cross See Seized Iranians 2007-04-05 01:01:49 The U.S. military has allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit five Iranian officials who were detained in Iraqnearly three months ago on suspicion of plotting against American and Iraqi forces. A Red Cross delegation that included one Iranian citizen visited the detainees, and a request for a formal consular visit with them is "being assessed at this time" by the U.S. military, said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. In a briefing for reporters Wednesday, Caldwell did not say when the visit took place or whether it was connected to the case of the 15 British sailors and marines detained by Iran on March 23; Iran subsequently announced that they would be released. (Editor: There are news reports that the British Marines and Sailors are now enroute back to Britain. You can read a separate article on this elsewhere on Free Internet Press' mainpage today.) The Iraqi government has called for the release of the five Iranians, who were captured during a U.S. military raid in January on an office providing consular services in the Kurdish city of Irbil. Read The Full Story Iran To Release British Sailors Thursday 2007-04-04 17:32:36 Fifteen British marines and sailors held captive in Iran for almost a fortnight are expected to fly home Thursday  morning after the country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced their release as a "gift" to the U.K. In a surprise announcement during a news conference at the presidential palace in Tehran, Ahmadinejad said the 14 men and one woman would be "going back home" in a move marking the birthday of the prophet Muhammad last Saturday and acknowledging Easter. Iran's IRNA state news agency said later the Britons would leave Tehran Thursday at 8 a.m. (5:30 a.m. U.K. time) on a flight to London. Immediately after the news conference, Iranian television showed footage of the naval crew effusively thanking  Ahmadinejad on the steps of the palace. Read The Full Story U.S. House Speaker Pelosi Meets With Syrian President Assad 2007-04-04 17:32:12 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Syria's president in a hilltop palace Wednesday in a visit to Damascus that came despite the Bush administration's objections and appeared to underline Syria's gradual emergence from years of international isolation. Pelosi (D-California), the highest-ranking U.S. government figure to visit Syria since 2003, said President Bashar al-Assad assured her of his willingness to engage in peace talks with Israel. The pledge appeared to diverge little from past public statements by Syria. The visit's more lasting impact may be the symbolic import of Syria's return to the center of the region's diplomacy after finding itself as estranged from the United States and Europe as it has been at any time in a generation. "Syria tries to read the American tea leaves very closely, and this type of signal is read as very significant in Damascus," said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. "The way they understand the United States is that U.S. policy changes dramatically. And generally they wait it out until there's a change and then try to recoup their losses." Pelosi met Assad at his palace overlooking the Syrian capital, then joined him for lunch at a restored house in Damascus's historic district, news agencies reported. During the talks, Pelosi said she conveyed a message to Assad from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Israel was ready to resume peace talks that collapsed in March 2000. She reiterated U.S. demands that Syria stop the passage of insurgents across Syria into Iraq and stop supporting militant groups. Read The Full Story Ukraine's Yushchenko: 'I Won't Back Down' 2007-04-04 17:31:41 President Viktor Yushchenko Wednesday accused his opponents of "political corruption" and of bringing Ukraine to the brink of violent confrontation after they refused to fulfil his order to dissolve parliament. Speaking to the Guardian at his offices in Kiev, Yushchenko said the behavior of his arch-rival, prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, threatened to cause a repeat of the armed stand-off between executive and legislature in Russia in 1993. Events in Moscow led to the then Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, ordering tanks to fire on barricaded members of the Duma, Russia's national legislature. "The process which the pro-government coalition has formulated in recent months is equally dangerous to democratic values," said Yushchenko. He vowed to prevent violence, saying he had instructed the army and security forces to prevent "a single armed person from getting on to the streets of Kiev". Read The Full Story Palm Oil: The Biofuel Of The Future Driving An Ecological Disaster Now 2007-04-04 02:05:09 The numbers are damning. Within 15 years 98% of the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia will be gone, little more than a footnote in history. With them will disappear some of the world's most important wildlife species, victims of the rapacious destruction of their habitat in what conservationists see as a lost cause. Yet this gloomy script was supposed to have included a small but significant glimmer of hope. Oil palm for biofuel was to have been one of the best solutions in saving the planet from greenhouse gases and global warming. Instead the forests are being torn down in the headlong rush to boost palm oil production. More startling is that conservationists believe the move to clear land for this "green fuel" is often little more than a conspiracy, providing cover to strip out the last stands of timber not already lost to illegal loggers. In one corner of Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, a mere 250,000 hectares or 1,000 square miles - almost twice the size of Greater London - of the 6 million hectares of forest allocated for palm oil by the government have actually been planted. "When you look closely the areas where companies are getting permission for oil palm plantations are those of high-conservation forest," said Willie Smits, who set up SarVision, a satellite mapping service that charts the rainforest's decline. "What they're really doing is stealing the timber because they get to clear it before they plant. But the timber's all they want; hit and run with no intention of ever planting. It's a conspiracy." Read The Full Story News Analysis: For Bush, Fighting Democrats, And Doubts 2007-04-04 02:04:24 He strode alone into the Rose Garden and complained that "it has now been 57 days" since he asked Congress for more money for the Iraq war and still has not gotten it. For President Bush, the fight over war-spending legislation has become the only talking point - an opportunity, his strategists hope, to demonstrate strength and turn the tables on a Democratic Congress that may be overreaching. But as he answered questions yesterday before heading off for an Easter break, Bush was confronted with another narrative, this one about friends and voters losing faith in his leadership. He is not, he said in response to a question, more "isolated from his own party in Congress" than any president of the past half-century, as one conservative columnist wrote. He has not, he said, lost his "gut-level bond with the American public," as the chief strategist of his 2004 campaign wrote. Instead, Bush presented himself as an unwavering leader trying to avoid the "cauldron of chaos" he believes Iraq would become if Democrats succeed in forcing him to withdraw U.S. troops. He sees the broader threat that others overlook and will do what needs to be done to defend against it, the president said, even though he knows his path is tormenting the country. Read The Full Story Thousands Of Anti-Musharraf Protesters Rally Outside Court To Defend Judge 2007-04-04 02:02:16 Thousands of boisterous opposition supporters massed outside Pakistan's supreme court Tuesday in the largest show of support yet for the beleaguered Chief Justice, Muhammad Iftikhar Chaudhry. Activists from across the political spectrum massed outside the imposing marble building as Chaudhry faced disciplinary hearings inside. The crowd of thousands hurled colorful insults at President Pervez Musharraf, chanting "Musharraf, dog" and "America has a pet, it wears a uniform". Musharraf is facing his greatest test since coming to power in a bloodless coup eight years ago. His clumsy attempt to fire Chaudhry three weeks ago sparked widespread public revulsion and became a lightning rod for broader discontent, in particular over his friendship with President Bush. Read The Full Story
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