Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday May 14 2007 - (813)

Monday May 14 2007 edition
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Al-Qaeda Claims It Has Captured 3 U.S. Soldiers 2007-05-14 02:07:15 Thousands of U.S. troops supported by helicopters and planes were last night searching for three soldiers captured by al-Qaeda near Baghdad as violence again hit dozens of ordinary Iraqis across the country. The Islamic State in Iraq - an al-Qaeda affiliate - said on its website that it was holding "crusader" soldiers after four others and an interpreter were confirmed killed in fighting on Saturday in the Mahmudiya area in the Sunni "triangle of death" south of the capital. Last June al-Qaeda captured two American soldiers at a checkpoint in nearby Yusufiya, then killed them before they mutilated and booby-trapped their bodies. Major-General William Caldwell, spokesman for the U.S. military, confirmed that three soldiers were missing. Read The Full Story Pope Assails Marxism And Capitalism 2007-05-14 02:06:36 Pope Benedict XVI blamed both Marxism and unbridled capitalism for Latin America's problems on Sunday, urging bishops to mold a new generation of Roman Catholic leaders in politics to reverse the church's declining influence in the region. Before boarding a plane for Rome at the end of a five-day trip to the most populous Catholic nation in the world, Benedict also warned that legalized contraception and abortion in Latin America threaten "the future of the peoples" and said the historic Catholic identity of the region is under assault. Like his predecessor Pope John Paul II, Benedict criticized capitalism's negative effects as well as the Marxist influences that have motivated some grass-roots Catholic activists. Read The Full Story Egyptian Dissident's Wife Blasts U.S. 2007-05-14 02:05:51 The wife of a prominent jailed dissident blasted the Bush administration on Sunday for failing to pressure Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak into making democratic reforms. Gamila Ismail, whose husband Ayman Nour is serving a five-year prison sentence after being convicted of fraud, also claimed Washington has turned a blind eye to her husband's case in favor of winning Mubarak's support for U.S. policies in the region. "The American priority is to make Mubarak help them impose the American hegemony on the region and not to safeguard democracy," she told the Associated Press. Ismail made her accusations as Vice President Dick Cheney was in Cairo to persuade Mubarak to do more to support the Iraqi government. Read The Full Story U.S. Attempts To Weaken G-8 Climate Change Statement 2007-05-13 02:23:40 Negotiators from the United States are trying to weaken the language of a climate change declaration set to be unveiled at next month's G-8 summit of the world's leading industrial powers, according to documents obtained Saturday by the Washington Post. A draft proposal dated April 2007 that is being debated in Bonn, Germany, this weekend by senior officials of the Group of Eight includes a pledge to limit the global temperature rise this century to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as an agreement to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The United States is seeking to strike that section, the documents show. Many scientists have warned that an increase of more than 3.6 degrees this century could trigger disastrous consequences such as mass extinction of species and accelerated melting of polar ice sheets, which would raise sea levels. Read The Full Story For Giuliani, 9/11 Turned To Riches 2007-05-13 02:23:00 On Dec. 7, 2001, nearly three months after the terrorist attack that had made him a national hero and a little over three weeks before he would leave office, New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani took the first official step toward making himself rich. The letter he dispatched to the city Conflicts of Interest Board that day asked permission to begin forming a consulting firm with three members of his outgoing administration. The company, said Giuliani, would provide "management consulting service to governments and business" and would seek out partners for a "wide-range of possible business, management and financial services" projects. Over the next five years, Giuliani Partners earned more than $100 million, according to a knowledgeable source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the firm's financial information is private. And that success helped transform the Republican considered the front-runner for his party's 2008 presidential nomination from a moderately well-off public servant into a globe-trotting consultant whose net worth is estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars. Read The Full Story Crews Still Battling Santa Catalina Blaze 2007-05-13 02:22:09 Cooler weather aided firefighters Saturday as they battled to surround a 4,200-acre wildfire in the rugged, unpopulated interior of Santa Catalina Island while a nearby resort town, no longer threatened, returned to life. The fire was about two-thirds contained and was expected to be encircled by Tuesday evening, said Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Andrew Olvera. One home and six businesses burned Thursday but no one had been seriously injured. Nearly 4,000 evacuated residents had started returning to the island, where damage was estimated at $2.1 million. Read The Full Story	Climate Change To Force Mass Migration Of 1 Billion People 2007-05-14 02:07:03 A billion people - one in seven people on Earth today - could be forced to leave their homes over the next 50 years as the effects of climate change worsen an already serious migration crisis, a new report from Christian Aid predicts. The report, which is based on latest United Nations population and climate change figures, says conflict, large-scale development projects and widespread environmental deterioration will combine to make life unsupportable for hundreds of millions of people, mostly in the Sahara belt, south Asia and the Middle East. According to the development charity, the world faces its largest movement of people forced from their homes. "Forced migration is now the most urgent threat facing poor nations," said John Davison, the report's lead author. "Climate change is the great, frightening unknown in this equation." Read The Full Story Cerberus Likely To Buy Chrysler 2007-05-14 02:06:11 DaimlerChrysler is closing in on the sale of Chrysler to the private financial firm Cerberus Capital Management in a deal expected to be announced as early as Monday. The sale would unravel a mega-merger of the 1990s and highlights the growing influence of private equity on American business. Dieter Zetsche, DaimlerChrysler chairman, put Chrysler on the block in April, opening a high-stakes bidding war for the third-largest U.S. automaker. Chrysler is the kind of company that private-equity firms like to target: a distressed operation with strong cash flow and potential for turnaround. Any agreement that places Chrysler in the hands of private equity is likely to unsettle Chrysler's U.S. labor unions, which have repeatedly denounced private-equity ownership as the "worst-case" scenario for the company. Read The Full Story Death Toll Mounts In Pakistan On Second Day Of Clashes 2007-05-14 02:05:31 Clashes between government supporters and opposition activists flared for a second day Sunday in the country's largest city, bringing the weekend death toll to about 40. The clashes in the southern city of Karachi were prompted by a judicial crisis that has gripped the country since March 9, when the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, suspended Pakistan's chief justice for alleged abuses of office. Since then, protesters have frequently taken to the streets to rally against what they see as an attempt by Musharraf to snuff out fledgling democratic institutions and ease his way to another term. On Saturday, the judge, Iftikhar Mohammed Chudhry, who denies the charges against him, was scheduled to speak at a rally in Karachi. But he was prevented even from leaving the airport. The protests soon turned violent as members of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a coalition partner of Musharraf's known as MQM, exchanged fire with anti-Musharraf demonstrators. Although the fighting Sunday was less intense than it had been on Saturday, as many as six more people were killed. Read The Full Story Army Career Behind Him, Gen. Batiste Speaks Out On Iraq 2007-05-13 02:23:23 John Batiste has traveled a long way in the last four years, from commanding the First Infantry Division in Iraq to quitting the Army after three decades in uniform and, now, from his new life overseeing a steel factory here, to openly challenging President Bush on his management of the war. “Mr. President, you did not listen,” General Batiste says in new television advertisements being broadcast in Republican Congressional districts as part of a $500,000 campaign financed by VoteVets.org. “You continue to pursue a failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps. I left the Army in protest in order to speak out. Mr. President, you have placed our nation in peril. Our only hope is that Congress will act now to protect our fighting men and women.” Those are powerful, inflammatory words from General Batiste, a retired major general who spent 31 years in the Army, a profession sworn to unflinching loyalty to civilian control of the military. Many senior officers say privately that talk like this makes them uncomfortable; when you pin that first star on your shoulder, they say, your first name becomes “General” for the rest of your life. Read The Full Story Report: Taliban's Top Operational Commander Killed 2007-05-13 02:22:36 The Taliban's top operational commander, Mullah Dadullah, has been killed in a clash in southern Afghanistan,  security officials said on Sunday. "Mullah Dadullah has been killed and his body is in Kandahar," said Saeed Ansari, spokesman for the intelligence department. "Yes, he was killed last night and right now I have his body before me," Kandahar's governor Assadullah Khalid told Reuters by phone. He said Dadullah was killed in neighboring Helmand province. Read The Full Story Katrina Victims Files Rash Of Lawsuits 2007-05-13 02:21:43 Ever since the floodwaters receded, the idea that the U.S. government was to blame for the Katrina catastrophe has possessed and angered its victims. A legion of lawn signs, posted in front of many wrecked homes, wagged a finger at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for the flood works: "Hold the Corps accountable!" Turns out it was more than mere talk. After a massive deadline filing rush recently that is still being sorted through, the United States is facing legal claims from more than 250,000 people here demanding compensation because, they allege, the Corps negligently designed the waterworks that permeate the city. Read The Full Story
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