Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday April 4 2007 - (813)

Wednesday April 4 2007 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
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 Hurricane Forecaster Sees 'Very Active' Season, As Many As 17 Storms 2007-04-03 13:53:42 The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season should be “very active,” with 17 named storms, a top storms forecaster said Tuesday. Those named storms are expected to include five intense or major hurricanes, according to forecaster William Gray’s team at Colorado State University. Gray said there is a 74 percent probability of a major hurricane hitting the U.S. coast. The team’s forecasts are based global oceanic and atmospheric conditions. Last year, Gray's forecast - as well as government forecasts - was higher than what the Atlantic hurricane season produced. Gray's team said the reason was a late El Nino that altered oceanic conditions. Read The Full Story Muslim Radicals Build Strength In Serbia 2007-04-03 13:53:20 The discovery of a mountain cave packed with plastic explosives, masks and machine guns - and the recent arrests of men devoted to radical Islam - have fueled fears that extremists are trying to carve out a stronghold in this remote corner of Europe. Police in southern Serbia's Sandzak region last month arrested six local Muslims and accused them of belonging to a fundamentalist Wahhabi sect - an austere brand of Sunni Islam promoted by extremists, including the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda fighters. Recently leaked Western intelligence reports allege that the tense, impoverished area, along with Muslim-dominated regions in neighboring Bosnia, are rich ground for recruiting so-called "white al-Qaeda" -  Muslims with Western features who could easily blend into European or U.S. cities and carry out attacks. Read The Full Story Somalis Flee Capital As Official Warns Of New Offensive 2007-04-03 13:52:38 A Somali government official warned exhausted Mogadishu residents Monday that another military offensive against insurgents was on the way, as more people joined the exodus from the capital. In a local radio interview, Deputy Defense Minister Salad Ali Jelle told civilians to get out while there was still time, and hundreds if not thousands did, streaming out of the oceanside city in cars and battered buses, on foot, on donkeys, even by wheelchair. Abdullahi Ahmed, 75 and infirm, planned to pay a man to push him out of the capital. He lost his wife, his daughter and four relatives in fighting that has consumed this city since a popular Islamic movement was ousted in December. "I will go to Afgoye," he said at Medina Hospital in Mogadishu, referring to a town about 30 miles away, where he hopes to find welcoming relatives. "I don't have a car." Read The Full Story Iranian Diplomat Seized In Iraq Returns Home 2007-04-03 13:49:42 An Iranian diplomat detained in Iraq for the last two months has been released, returning Tuesday to Iran. Jalal Sharafi, who was the second secretary of Iran’s Embassy in Iraq, was abducted in Baghdad on Feb. 4 by men wearing Iraqi military uniforms and with official identification. Iran immediately held the United States responsible for his safety and demanded his release, but at the time, an American military spokesman said the military had no knowledge of the event. Sharafi arrived at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport and was greeted by the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, and other ministry officials, reported the Iranian news agency IRNA. “We were informed that the Iranian diplomat was released yesterday,” said Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Labeed Abbawi. Read The Full Story BREAKING NEWS: Shots Fired In CNN Building 2007-04-03 13:38:26 Gunfire was heard inside the building complex that houses CNN's headquarters, and at least one person was carried out on a stretcher. CNN reported that the offices of its Internet operations, CNN.com, were evacuated and that a suspect was in custody. Video footage showed police pointing guns at a man lying on the floor inside a building. An announcement over the complex's public-address system said there had been gunfire "with potential casualties by the escalators" near the main entrance, facing Centennial Olympic Park. Read The Full Story McCain Wrong On Iraq Security, Iraqi Merchants Say 2007-04-03 02:31:09 A day after members of an American Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain pointed to their brief visit to Baghdad’s central market as evidence that the new security plan for the city was working, the merchants there were incredulous about the Americans’ conclusions. “What are they talking about?” Ali Jassim Faiyad, the owner of an electrical appliances shop in the market, said Monday. “The security procedures were abnormal!” The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees - the equivalent of an entire company - and attack helicopters circled overhead, said a senior American military official in Baghdad. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, said witnesses, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit. “They paralyzed the market when they came,” Faiyad said during an interview in his shop on Monday. “This was only for the media.” He added, “This will not change anything.” Read The Full Story Editorial: The Surpeme Court Rules On Warming 2007-04-03 02:30:12 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Tuesday, April 3, 2007. It would be hard to overstate the importance of Monday’s ruling by the Supreme Court that the federal government has the authority to regulate the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by motor vehicles. It is a victory for a world whose environment seems increasingly threatened by climate change. It is a vindication for states like California that chose not to wait for the federal government and acted to limit emissions that contribute to global warming. And it should feed the growing momentum on Capitol Hill for mandatory limits on carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas. The 5-to-4 ruling was a rebuke to the Bush administration and its passive approach to the warming threat. The ruling does not require the government to regulate greenhouse gases. But it instructs the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate emissions, urges it to pay attention to the scientific evidence and says that if it takes the same stance, it has to come up with better reasons than its current “laundry list” of excuses. The ruling also demolishes President Bush’s main justification for not acting - his argument that because the Clean Air Act does not specifically mention greenhouse gases, the executive branch has no authority to regulate them. The president has cited other reasons for not acting, including costs. But his narrow reading of the Clean Air Act has always been his ace in the hole. Read The Full Story Congressmen Urge Bush To Fire NASA Official 2007-04-03 02:29:10 NASA's inspector general created a hostile and dysfunctional workplace with his "aggressive management style" and compromised his independence by appearing to be close to former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe, two lawmakers said Monday after reading an investigative report on his conduct. In a letter to President Bush, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida) and Rep. Brad Miller (D-North Carolina) said that the investigators who reviewed complaints against Robert W. Cobb unanimously "believed that disciplinary action up to and including removal could be appropriate." The legislators urged Bush to fire Cobb immediately, saying that his role in ensuring the safety of the space shuttle and other NASA missions resulted in "an untenable situation that cannot be allowed to continue." 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 UPDATE: One Person Confirmed Dead After Shooting At CNN Building 2007-04-03 14:00:24 One person has died following a shooting Tuesday at the CNN Center complex, in what Atlanta police called a "domestic situation." A woman was shot and the gunman was then shot by a Turner security officer, said Turner security. The man and the woman were taken to Grady Memorial Hospital, said Atlanta police spokesman James Polite. It is unclear which person died. A witness who is a CNN employee saw the man shoot the woman twice in a street-level lobby area at the northeast end of the building. Read The Full Story Millions Of Toys Recalled For Lead Dangers 2007-04-03 13:53:30 About 4 million Groovy Grabber children’s bracelets, manufactured by A&A Global Industries, have been recalled because the paint on the metallic part of the bands contains high levels of lead, which is toxic for children and can cause adverse health effects if ingested. The flexible bracelets are made from metal bands wrapped in plastic covers that are decorated with a variety of colors and designs. The designs include smiley faces, Chinese symbols, dogs, cats, aliens, checker boards and flames. They were sold at vending machines in department, grocery and discount stores, as well as shopping malls around the country between November 2005 and March 2007. Separately, about 396,000 metal key chains, imported by Dollar General Merchandising, Inc., have been recalled because they also contain high levels of lead. The recall includes three styles of key chain: A flip flop, a single letter and dangling charms. The flip flop chains came in purple, yellow and aqua blue, with a flower on top of the flip flop. The letter key chains have a single, silver English letter. The dangling charms key chains feature small objects including a cross, flower, shamrock and heart hanging from a silver chain. The packaging for all three styles has “Key Chain” and “Dollar General $1.25” printed on the front. Read The Full Story At Least 28 Dead, Thousands Homeless After Tsunami 2007-04-03 13:53:04 Some of the thousands left homeless by a tsunami ventured back into the devastated Solomon Islands town of Gizo Tuesday, picking their way through rickety buildings in search of food and water. Most were still too scared to leave the hillside, where they have been camped out since a powerful undersea earthquake sent waves up to 30 feet high crashing into the South Pacific country’s islands. At least 28 people had been confirmed dead in the Solomons from Monday’s tsunami and quake, measured at a revised magnitude of 8.1 by the U.S. Geological Survey. The victims included a bishop and three worshippers killed when a wave hit a church on the island of Simbo and a New Zealand man who drowned trying to save his mother, who remains missing. Another five unconfirmed deaths were reported in neighboring Papua New Guinea. Officials said the total was likely to rise once communication with surrounding villages on the island is restored. Read The Full Story Mitt Romney Leads GOP Pack In Fundraising 2007-04-03 13:50:15 Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney provided a jolt to the Republican presidential contest yesterday, reporting a haul of $21 million in the first three months of the year, as Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, posted a lackluster third-place finish that even his campaign manager called a disappointment. As campaigns release their first meaningful fundraising figures in what appears certain to become the most expensive presidential campaign in history, McCain's $12.5 million total also put him behind former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who leads the Republican field in public polls and reported taking in $15 million in the first quarter. Among Democrats, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York) has set the pace for the field so far, reporting Sunday that she had raised $26 million in combined primary and general election funds and transferred an additional $10 million from her Senate campaign account. Her total was followed by that of former North Carolina senator John Edwards, who raised $14 million. Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois, has so far declined to release figures for his campaign. The totals of the major contenders easily surpassed the record $8.9 million raised by Al Gore in the first three months of 1999. Read The Full Story French Train Breaks Speed Record, Hits 357 MPH! 2007-04-03 13:49:22 A French high-speed train broke the world speed record on rail Tuesday, reaching 357 miles (574.8 kilometers) an hour in a much publicized test in eastern France, exceeding expectations to travel at 150 meters per second, or 540 kilometers an hour. The train, code-named V150, is a research prototype meant to demonstrate the superiority both of the TGV high speed train and of its likely successor, the AGV, which is also manufactured by the French engineering group Alstom. The performance on Tuesday came close to but did not break the world speed record for any train, set by an electromagnetic train in 2003. The French railroad company SNCF and Alstom publicized the event as a test of “French excellence,” building on national pride for the 25-year-old bullet train. Read The Full Story How A Bogus Letter Became A Case For War In Iraq 2007-04-03 02:31:33 It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous - later retracted - 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa? Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong. Nonetheless, the uranium claim would become a crucial justification for the invasion of Iraq that began less than two months later. When occupying troops found no nuclear program, the 16 words and how they came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war. Read The Full Story The Climate Divide: Reports From Four Fronts In The War On Warming 2007-04-03 02:30:40 Over the last few decades, as scientists have intensified their study of the human effects on climate and of the effects of climate changeon humans, a common theme has emerged: in both respects, the world is a very unequal place. In almost every instance, the people most at risk from climate change live in countries that have contributed the least to the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases linked to the recent warming of the planet. Those most vulnerable countries also tend to be the poorest. And the countries that face the least harm - and that are best equipped to deal with the harm they do face - tend to be the richest. To advocates of unified action to curb greenhouse gases, this growing realization is not welcome news. Read The Full Story 6.2 Magnitude Earthquake Shakes Afghanistan 2007-04-03 02:29:33 A 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit a remote and mountainous area of northeastern Afghanistan Tuesday morning, shaking buildings in the capital, Pakistan, Tajikistan and India. The earthquake in Badakhshan province was about 200 miles northeast of the capital, Kabul, where residents felt shaking buildings and some windows were shattered. There were no immediate casualty reports. "It was a very strong earthquake," said Agha Noor Kemtoz, the provincial police chief of Badakhshan, which shares a border with Pakistan, Tajikistan and China. "My room was shaking and the light was swinging back and forth." The U.S. Geological Survey said the 6.2-quake was centered 40 miles south of Faizabad and hit at 8:05 a.m. 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