Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday May 5 2007 - (813)

Saturday May 5 2007 edition
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5 U.S. Soldiers Killed In Iraq Friday 2007-05-04 23:46:03 American forces broke up a Shiite militant cell believed to be smuggling an armor-piercing Iranian weapon responsible for killing an increasing number of Americans and Iraqis, the military said. Separately, the U.S. announced the deaths of five American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter. Roadside bombs were responsible for three of the American deaths announced today and have long been the No. 1 killer of U.S. and Iraqi forces in Iraq, but the use of the Iranian explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, is rising. The weapons, which hurl a fist-sized lump of molten copper, can pierce even U.S. armored vehicles newly designed to deflect roadside bombs. In Sadr City, the Baghdad slum that is home to Shiite militias allied with radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, coalition raids rounded up 16 suspected members of a militant cell that brought in the Iranian weapons, as well as militants seeking terrorist training, the U.S. said. Intelligence reports also indicate the cell is linked to kidnappings in Iraq, the statement said. Read The Full Story U.N. Scientists Warn Time Is Running Out To Deal With Global Warming 2007-05-04 23:45:32 Governments are running out of time to address climate change and to avoid the worst effects of rising temperatures, an influential U.N. panel warned Friday. Greater energy efficiency, renewable electricity sources and new technology to dump carbon dioxide underground can all help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the experts said. But there could be as little as eight years left to avoid a dangerous global average rise of 2 degrees Celsius or more. The warning came in a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published Friday in Bangkok, Thailand. It says most of the technology needed to stop climate change in its tracks already exists, but that governments must act quickly to force through changes across all sectors of society. Delays will make the problem more difficult, and more expensive. Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the IPCC, said the report would underpin negotiations to develop a new international treaty to regulate emissions to replace the Kyoto protocol when it expires in 2012. Read The Full Story U.S. Troops At Odds With Ethics Standards 2007-05-04 23:44:00 More than one-third of U.S. soldiers in Iraq surveyed by the Army said they believe torture should be allowed if it helps gather important information about insurgents, the Pentagondisclosed Friday. Four in 10 said they approve of such illegal abuse if it would save the life of a fellow soldier. In addition, about two-thirds of Marines and half the Army troops surveyed said they would not report a team member for mistreating a civilian or for destroying civilian property unnecessarily. "Less than half of Soldiers and Marines believed that non-combatants should be treated with dignity and respect," the Army report stated. About 10 percent of the 1,767 troops in the official survey - conducted in Iraq last fall - reported that they had mistreated civilians in Iraq, such as kicking them or needlessly damaging their possessions. "They looked under every rock, and what they found was not always easy to look at," S. Ward Casscells, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said of Army researchers who conducted the survey. The report noted that the troops' statements are at odds with the "soldier's rules" promulgated by the Army, which forbid the torture of enemy prisoners and state civilians must be treated humanely. Read The Full Story TSA Hard Drive With Employee Data Reported Stolen 2007-05-04 23:43:22 The FBI and the Secret Service have opened a criminal investigation into the apparent theft of a computer hard drive containing the personal, payroll and bank information of 100,000 current and former workers of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), including airport security officers and federal air marshals, the TSA said Friday. In a written statement released after business hours, the TSA said it learned Thursday that the drive was missing from a secure area of its human resources office at its Crystal City, Virginia, headquarters. The TSA employs about 50,000 people, including 43,000 airport guards and thousands of air marshals, who are federal law enforcement officers. Read The Full Story Former, Current Alaska Lawmakers Charged With Accepting Bribes 2007-05-04 23:42:41 One current and two former Alaska legislators pleaded not guilty Friday to charges they accepted bribes -  including cash and a job offer in Barbados for one man - to support legislation for an oil services company. Rep. Victor Kohring of Wasilla, Pete Kott of Eagle River and Bruce Weyhrauch of Juneau, all Republicans, were arrested Friday. Prosecutors allege the scheme unfolded as lawmakers weighed a new petroleum profits tax structure and a new contract for a natural gas pipeline last year. Kott explicitly linked his support of the pipeline and the company's preferred version of the tax proposal to benefits during a teleconference with company officials, according to the indictment. Read The Full Story Venezuela's Chavez Threatens To Nationalize Private Banks 2007-05-04 15:10:10 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Friday opened up possible new fronts in his nationalization program by threatening to take over the country's private banks and its biggest steel firm. The leftist leader nationalized utility firms earlier this year and took control of the last privately run oil operation earlier this week as he stepped up his battle with Washington, D.C. He spoke about a new wave of nationalization in a speech Friday, prompting renewed concerns from investors, Reuters reported. Chavez accused the private banks and steelmaker Ternium-Sidor of unscrupulous practices, but added that they could avoid nationalization if they changed their businesses to better account for the "national interest". Read The Full Story Scottish National Party Wins Historic Election Victory 2007-05-04 15:09:32 One of the most dramatic and chaotic postwar British elections reached a climax tonight when the Scottish National Party (SNP) became the largest party in Scotland. Alex Salmond's party pipped Labor by one seat, putting the country on an uncertain course towards independence. Nineteen hours after the polls had closed, and following see-sawing results, a disconsolate Labor conceded that the SNP had secured 47 seats to its 46 - a desperate setback for Gordon Brown in his backyard as he prepares to take over as prime minister. Salmond staked his claim to become first minister, saying: "It is very clear indeed which party has lost this election, and the Labor party no longer has any moral authority left to govern Scotland. Read The Full Story U.S. Job Report Weaker Than Expected 2007-05-04 14:31:46 Employers added just 88,000 jobs in April - the smallest number in more than two years, the Labor Department reported Friday. In the monthly report on national employment, the job market showed weakness across many industries, from banking and retail to construction and manufacturing. It was a suggestion that after months of holding up well, the labor market was beginning to cool as the economy slowed. Wages, after rising at a solid clip in the middle of last year, are now growing more slowly than inflation, causing many workers to take an effective pay cut. In April, rank-and-file workers - a group that makes up 80 percent of the labor force - made $17.25 an hour on average, down from about $17.30 in October, in inflation-adjusted terms. In addition, the report said that job growth in March and February was not as strong as the government first estimated. The Labor Department overcounted those months by a total of 26,000 jobs. Read The Full Story	How Karl Rove Helped Shape Testimony On Prosecutor Firings 2007-05-04 23:45:47 Two months ago, he helped coach Justice Department officials on how to testify about the U.S. attorneys’ firings. Was that a harmless part of his job, or an inappropriate attempt to mislead Congress? Deputy chief of staff Karl Rove participated in a hastily called meeting at the White House two months ago. The subject: The firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year. The purpose: to coach a top Justice Department official heading to Capitol Hill to testify on the prosecutorial purge on what he should say. Now some investigators are saying that Rove’s attendance at the meeting shows that the president’s chief political advisor may have been involved in an attempt to mislead Congress - one more reason they are demanding to see his emails and force him to testify under oath. At the March 5, 2007 meeting, White House aides, including counsel Fred Fielding and deputy counsel William Kelley, sought to shape testimony that principal associate deputy attorney general William Moscella was to give the next day before the House Judiciary Committee. Read The Full Story Record Numbers Of Britons Become Insolvent As Personal Debt Soars 2007-05-04 23:45:15 Record numbers of people in Britain declared themselves insolvent in the first three months of the year as they buckled under the weight of their debts, government data showed Friday. The Insolvency Service said a total of 30,075 people went bankrupt or took out an individual voluntary arrangement (IVA) between January and March - the first time that a quarterly total has broken the 30,000 mark. That marked an increase of 1.2% over the previous quarter and a hefty 24% from the same period last year. The figures showed that 16,842 people went bankrupt while 13,233 opted for an IVA. The growth was mainly in IVAs which were up almost 50% on the year while bankruptcies rose 10% on the year. The Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor, Vince Cable, said: "This increase in personal insolvencies to a staggering quarterly record, alongside the equally dramatic rise in home repossession claims, demonstrates the severity of Britain's personal debt crisis. "These figures equate to more than 300 people being declared insolvent every day. But these are not freak figures. Sadly, they are likely to get even worse, especially ... when interest rates almost certainly rise next week." Read The Full Story Cloudy Germany A Powerhouse In Solar Energy 2007-05-04 23:43:38 When it opened here in 2004 on a reclaimed mining dump, the Geosol solar plant was the biggest of its kind in the world. It is so clean and green that it produces zero emissions and so easy to operate that it has only three regular workers: plant manager Hans-Joerg Koch and his two security guards, sheepdogs Pushkin and Adi. The plant is part of a building boom that has made gloomy-skied Germany the unlikely global leader in solar-generated electricity. Last year, about half of the world's solar electricity was produced in the country. Of the 20 biggest photovoltaic plants, 15 are in Germany, even though it has only half the number of sunny days as countries such as Portugal. The reason is not a breakthrough in the economics or technology of solar power but a law adopted in 2000. It requires the country's huge old-line utility companies to subsidize the solar upstarts by buying their electricity at marked-up rates that make it easy for the newcomers to turn a profit. Their cleanly created power enters the utilities' grids for sale to consumers. Read The Full Story Paris Gets The Pokey For 45 Days 2007-05-04 23:43:02 A judge sentenced Paris Hilton to 45 days in county jail Friday for violating her probation, putting the brakes on the hotel heiress' famous high life. Hilton, who parlayed her name and relentless partying into worldwide notoriety, must go to jail by June 5 and she will not be allowed any work release, furloughs, use of an alternative jail or electronic monitoring in lieu of jail, Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer ruled after a hearing. The judge, saying "there's no doubt she knew her license had been suspended," ruled that she was in violation of the terms of her probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case. "I'm very sorry and from now on I'm going to pay complete attention to everything. I'm sorry and I did not do it on purpose at all," she told the judge before he announced the sentence. Read The Full Story Slowing Climate Change Is A Price Worth Paying 2007-05-04 15:10:22 The IPCC has already told us global warming is our fault and listed the damage it will do unchecked. Now the United Nations experts offer some hope and spell out how to tackle the problem. This report, the third from the panel this year, contains few surprises - by definition the IPCC must base its conclusions on already published material - but it still has the power to shock. Even the most strident and expensive action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the report says, will see global temperatures still increase by at least 2 degrees Celsius, defined by the European Union as "dangerous". We are heading for hostile territory. To limit that rise to 2.4C, the report says, our emissions must peak by 2015 - an unlikely scenario, particularly given they are increasing at record levels in many parts of the world. Peaking just five years later in 2020 would bring an extra 0.4C rise; by 2030 that climbs further to a full 3C over pre-industrial levels. Read The Full Story Iran Blames U.S. For Iraq Chaos 2007-05-04 15:09:55 The Iranian foreign minister Friday said the U.S. had to take responsibility for the terrorism in Iraq because of its occupation of the country. Manouchehr Mottaki's comments came at a summit on the future of Iraq, taking place in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik. They have dented hopes that the two-day conference could stage the first high-level talks between Iran and the U.S. since 1979. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is attending the summit and the Iraqi government has been urging her to meet Mottaki for bilateral talks. The Guardian's Ian Black reported that such a meeting is now very unlikely. Read The Full Story U.N. Climate Panel Reaches Consensus On Need To Reduce Harmful Emissions 2007-05-04 14:32:19 Intellpuke: There are two articles here on the final report by the U.N.'s  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The first article is by the New York Times and, below it, is the Associated Press' take on the IPCC report. The world’s established and emerging powers will need to divert substantially from today’s main energy sources within a few decades, to limit centuries of rising temperatures and seas driven by the buildup of heat-trapping emissions in the air, the top body studying  climate change has concluded. In an all-night session capping four days of talks, economists, scientists, and government officials from more than 100 countries agreed in Bangkok early today on the last sections of a report outlining ways to limit such emissions, led by carbon dioxide, an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal and oil. The final report, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said prompt slowing of emissions could set the stage later in the century for stabilization of the concentration of carbon dioxide. Now at about 380 parts per million, the concentration has risen by more than one-third since the start of the industrial revolution, and could easily double from pre-industrial level within decades. The report concluded that significant progress could be made toward halting the increase in the next 25 years using known technologies and policy changes, setting the stage for what would have to be a century-long transition to energy sources that have no impact on the climate. Read The Full Story Blair's Labor Party Battered In Vote 2007-05-04 14:31:22 Voters handed Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party a string of embarrassing defeats in local elections, seen Friday as a rebuke to the outgoing leader in his waning days in office. Overall, Labour lost fewer seats than some expected, but the contest in Scotland - where Labor has won every election for 50 years - remained tight. The Scottish National Party, which has pledged a referendum on independence by 2010 if it wins power, appeared to be gaining ground as officials continued to count ballots. Around 10,000 local council seats were contested in Thursday's elections in areas of England outside London. In Scotland, voters chose their local representation as well as the Scottish Parliament, which sits in Edinburgh and deals with Scotland-only issues. And in Wales, voters elected their national assembly, located in Cardiff. Blair, who has said he will formally announce next week he will resign as prime minister, has claimed three national poll victories since 1997. Some activists concede the unpopular Iraq war and a domestic cash-for-honors scandal have made him an liability. Read The Full Story
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