Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday May 20 2007 - (813)

Sunday May 20 2007 edition
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U.S. Pays Pakistan Billions To Fight Terrorism, But Patrols Ebb 2007-05-20 01:20:59 The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country’s military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan,  even though Pakistan’s president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active. The monthly payments, called coalition support funds, are not widely advertised. Buried in public budget numbers, the payments are intended to reimburse Pakistan’s military for the cost of the operations. So far, Pakistan has received more than $5.6 billion under the program over five years, more than half of the total aid the United States has sent to the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, not counting covert funds. Some American military officials in the region have recommended that the money be tied to Pakistan’s performance in pursuing al-Qaeda and keeping the Taliban from gaining a haven from which to attack the government of Afghanistan. American officials have been surprised by the speed at which both organizations have gained strength in the past year. Read The Full Story Iraq's Sadr Overhauls His Tactics - And Image 2007-05-20 01:20:28 The movement of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has embarked on one of its most dramatic tactical shifts since the beginning of the war. The 33-year-old populist is reaching out to a broad array of Sunni leaders, from politicians to insurgents, and purging extremist members of his Mahdi Army militia who target Sunnis. Sadr's political followers are distancing themselves from the fragile Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which is widely criticized as corrupt, inefficient and biased in favor of Iraq's majority Shiites. And moderates are taking up key roles in Sadr's movement, professing to be less anti-American and more nationalist as they seek to improve Sadr's image and position him in the middle of Iraq's ideological spectrum. "We want to aim the guns against the occupation and al-Qaeda, not between Iraqis," Ahmed Shaibani, 37, a cleric who leads Sadr's newly formed reconciliation committee, said as he sat inside Sadr's heavily guarded compound here. Read The Full Story Ashcroft's Tenure At Justice Department Revisited 2007-05-20 01:19:28 As U.S. attorney general, John D. Ashcroft was the public face of an administration pushing the boundaries of the Constitution to hunt down terrorists, but behind the scenes, according to former aides and White House officials, he at times resisted what he saw as radical overreaching. Testimony last week that a hospitalized Ashcroft rebuffed aides to President Bush intent on gaining Ashcroft's approval of a surveillance program he had deemed illegal provided a rare view of the inner workings of the early Bush presidency and the depth of internal disagreement over how far to go in responding to the threat of terrorism after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. According to former officials, it was not the only time that the former Missouri senator chosen for the Bush Cabinet in part for his ties to the Christian right would challenge the White House in private. In addition to rejecting to the most expansive version of the warrantless eavesdropping program, the officials said, Ashcroft also opposed holding detainees indefinitely at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without some form of due process. He fought to guarantee some rights for those to be tried by newly created military commissions. And he insisted that Zacarias Moussaoui, accused of conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers, be prosecuted in a civilian court. Read The Full Story Brown Faces Protests Over Plan To Take Britain Nuclear 2007-05-19 19:30:15 Soon to be British prime minister, Gordon Brown is to face down the left-wing of his own party and give the go-ahead to a new wave of nuclear power stations which will be built across the U.K. by 2020. In a move immediately condemned by environmental organizations, the Prime Minister-elect will give the green light to the plans which will show that he is backing Tony Blair's support of the nuclear industry. Boosted by a new poll, which shows Brown pulling ahead of David Cameron on the issue of competence to run the country, the Chancellor will this week signal his support for a dramatic renewal of Britain's nuclear power program which will see the building of up to eight new stations within 15 years. Read The Full Story 3 German Soldiers Killed In Afghanistan 2007-05-19 19:29:14 In a rare attack in Afghanistan's relatively calm north, a suicide bomber detonated himself next to German soldiers shopping in a crowded market on Saturday, killing three of them, along with seven Afghan civilians, said officials. The attack in the city of Kunduz came after two German vehicles on a security patrol stopped in the market and soldiers got out on foot to do some shopping, said Kunduz provincial police chief Gen. Ayub Salangi. In addition to the three German soldiers killed, two were seriously wounded, said German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, who broke short a trip to Denmark to rush back to Berlin. He said the other seven soldiers and one policemen in the group received minor injuries. Seven Afghan civilians were also killed and 13 wounded, including seven seriously, said Azizullah Safer, the director of the provincial health department. Read The Full Story Data On Elderly Marketed To Thieves 2007-05-19 13:55:20 The thieves operated from small offices in Toronto and hangar-size rooms in India. Every night, working from lists of names and phone numbers, they called World War II veterans, retired schoolteachers and thousands of other elderly Americans and posed as government and insurance workers updating their files. Then, the criminals emptied their victims’ bank accounts. Richard Guthrie, a 92-year-old Army veteran, was one of those victims. He ended up on scam artists’ lists because his name, like millions of others, was sold by large companies to telemarketing criminals, who then turned to major banks to steal his life’s savings. Guthrie, who lives in Iowa, had entered a few sweepstakes that caused his name to appear in a database advertised by infoUSA, one of the largest compilers of consumer information. InfoUSA sold his name, and data on other elderly Americans, to known lawbreakers, regulators say. Read The Full Story Poisoned Toothpaste In Panama Believed To Be From China 2007-05-19 13:54:40 Diethylene glycol, a poisonous ingredient in some antifreeze, has been found in 6,000 tubes of toothpaste in Panama, and customs officials there said Friday that the product appeared to have originated in China. “Our preliminary information is that it came from China, but we don’t know that with certainty yet,” said Daniel Delgado Diamante, Panama’s director of customs. “We are still checking all the possible imports to see if there could be other shipments.” Some of the toothpaste, which arrived several months ago in the free trade zone next to the Panama Canal, was re-exported to the Dominican Republic in seven shipments, said customs officials. A newspaper in Australia reported Friday that one brand of the toothpaste had been found on supermarket shelves there and had been recalled. Read The Full Story New Hydrogen Fuel Method Developed - Clean Running Cars At $3/gallon 2007-05-19 08:52:19 Pellets made out of aluminum and gallium can produce pure hydrogen when water is poured on them, offering a possible alternative to gasoline-powered engines, U.S. scientists say. Hydrogen is seen as the ultimate in clean fuels, especially for powering cars, because it emits only water when burned. U.S. President George W. Bush has proclaimed hydrogen to be the fuel of the future, but researchers have not decided what is the most efficient way to produce and store hydrogen. In the experiment conducted at Purdue University in Indiana, "The hydrogen is generated on demand, so you only produce as much as you need when you need it," said Jerry Woodall, an engineering professor at Purdue who invented the system. Read The Full Story	Concerns Mount Over Tainted Chinese Imports 2007-05-20 01:20:40 Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical. Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics. Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria. Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides. These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines. For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught - many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry. Read The Full Story Lebanese Troops Battle Islamic Militants In Tripoli 2007-05-20 01:20:01 Lebanese forces fought Islamic militants with alleged links to al-Qaeda in the northern city of Tripoli and an adjacent Palestinian refugee camp early Sunday, causing casualties on both sides, said security officials and witnesses. The fighting between troops surrounding the refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared and fighters from the Fatah Islam militant group began after a gunbattle raged in a neighborhood of Tripoli, Lebanon's second-largest city. Witnesses said Fatah Islam gunmen seized Lebanese army positions at the entrance to the camp, capturing military vehicles. The army brought in reinforcements and fired on Fatah-Islam positions. The clashes in the camp began shortly after police raided an apartment in Tripoli that was occupied by armed militants who resisted arrest and sparked a gunbattle that spread to surrounding streets. Read The Full Story Report: Global Warming Threatens State Flowers 2007-05-20 01:19:09 Imagine the Sunflower State without sunflowers. That's one of the dire predictions contained in a new report on global warming released by the National Wildlife Federation, which says the Kansas state flower could move north to other states in a few decades. Increasingly warm temperatures also could mean the end of the state tree, the eastern cottonwood, according to "The Gardener's Guide to Global Warming." "Everything being equal, these plants won't thrive and will shift north," said Patty Glick, the report's author and the federation's senior global warming specialist. Read The Full Story 8 Russian Reporters Resign In Protest 2007-05-19 19:29:30 Eight correspondents have resigned from a Russian broadcast news agency to protest the pro-Kremlin management's decision to withhold stories in line with a new policy that half its coverage must portray the government in a "positive"  light, said journalists. The reported policy by the Russian News Service, which provides news broadcasts to Russia's most popular radio network and runs its own station, heightens concerns over President Vladimir Putin's moves to increasingly bring mass media under state control or influence. In another case highlighting the concerns, the Russian Union of Journalists is protesting an order that it vacate its offices in a building that houses state media operations. The union said it received the order from the state property agency to make space for Russia Today, an English-language satellite TV channel that critics see as little more than a Kremlin propaganda tool. The union said the order was dated April 18, but delivered only on Tuesday. Read The Full Story Blair Admnistration Hiding Blood Scandal Facts 2007-05-19 19:28:48 An independent public inquiry into how thousands of haemophiliacs contracted HIV or hepatitis C from contaminated blood discovered last night that Downing Street [Britain's equivalent to the White House] is withholding crucial information about how hundreds of relevant documents were shredded. More than 1,700 patients died and many more are now terminally ill as a result of one of the biggest medical disasters of recent times, when haemophiliacs were given infected blood clotting products during the late Seventies and early Eighties. The products came from American prisoners who were allowed to sell their blood even though there were fears about the risks of contamination. It has since emerged that many of the files detailing the scandal were shredded by civil servants in the Nineties. This week, the second hearing of the contaminated blood inquiry, chaired by the former British Solicitor-General, Lord Archer of Sandwell, will ask why the results of an internal inquiry into the destruction of crucial files are being withheld. Read The Full Story In Closed Meeting, Prosecutors Express Their Dismay With Gonzales 2007-05-19 13:54:59 Even as he came under renewed political pressure in Washington this week, U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales faced sharp criticism from many of his own U.S. attorneys at a private meeting in San Antonio, Texas,  said prosecutors who were there. At an executive session Wednesday during the Justice Department's annual U.S. attorneys conference, Gonzales met with most of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys to apologize for the controversy over the firings of nine prosecutors last year and to attempt to shore up sagging morale. More than a dozen U.S. attorneys spoke during the morning session, most of them expressing concern to Gonzales about the scandal's impact on their own offices and the overall image of the department, said several participants. Read The Full Story Both Sides Escalate Violence In Gaza 2007-05-19 13:54:19 The Israeli Army struck a Palestinian rocket-launching cell near Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday, first with tank shells and then from the air, killing one, an army spokesman said. Hours later, the Palestinian faction Hamas claimed responsibility for firing an antitank missile at an Israeli Army bulldozer that was accompanying tanks stationed in Gaza, close to the border with Israel. One soldier was lightly injured, the army spokesman said. The two events represented an escalation by each side. Inside Gaza, factional fighting between Hamas and Fatah entered its second week, despite the declaration of an internal cease-fire by political leaders on Saturday afternoon - the fifth such declaration in the past week. Read The Full Story
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