Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday May 15 2007 - (813)

Tuesday May 15 2007 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Announces Resignation 2007-05-15 02:35:21 Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty announced his resignation yesterday after 18 months on the job, becoming the fourth senior Justice Department official to quit amid the controversy surrounding the dismissal of nine U.S.attorneys last year. In a one-page letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, McNulty said he will leave his post in late summer because of the "financial realities" brought on by "college-age children and two decades of public service." McNulty, 49, said in an interview that the political tumult over the prosecutor dismissals - including his role in providing inaccurate information to Congress - did not play a part in his decision. He said he has not lined up a job but is considering his options. Read The Full Story Strikes Paralyze Pakistani Cities After Street Violence 2007-05-15 02:34:51 Pakistan's biggest cities were brought to a virtual halt by an anti-government strike yesterday in the wake of the worst street violence the country has seen in 20 years, which killed more than 40 people over the weekend. There were empty streets across Karachi, a city of more than 12 million people which was the centre of the weekend's bloodshed in clashes between supporters and opponents of President Pervez Musharraf. "The city is totally paralysed. Shops are closed and very little public transport is on the roads. People are scared," Azhar Farooqi, Karachi's police chief, told Reuters news agency. The provincial authorities banned political rallies, or meetings of more than five people in a public place, and gave paramilitary troops orders to shoot anyone involved in serious street violence. Shops, markets and businesses were also closed by strike action in the second biggest city, Lahore, as well as Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Quetta. Read The Full Story Climate Change: Britain, Germany Push New Plan To Draw In Worst Polluters 2007-05-15 02:33:21 Tony Blair believes he is close to persuading George Bush to accept an ambitious plan to bring the world's greatest polluters into international partnership to fight climate change for the first time. The plan would involve setting up a network of carbon trading schemes and is one of five main proposals drawn up by the Germans and British ahead of the G8 summit next month. The concept of an international agreement involving the G8 industrialized nations, and some of the poorest but most polluting countries such as India and China, was first mooted by Blair at the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005. British officials believe they are now close to securing an outline agreement in time for the June summit in the German seaside resort of Heiligendamm. Blair wants an agreement before President Bush leaves the White House; they are due to hold talks tomorrow at the White House during the prime minister's last official visit to Washington. Read The Full Story Al-Qaeda: Stop Search For U.S. Soldiers 2007-05-14 16:45:15 An al-Qaeda front group that claims it has captured American soldiers warned the United States on Monday to stop searching for them and suggested it attacked the U.S. convoy as revenge for the rape and murder of a local teenager last year. The U.S. military also said for the first time it believes the three missing soldiers were abducted by al-Qaeda-linked militants after an attack that included three roadside bombs. "What you are doing in searching for your soldiers will lead to nothing but exhaustion and headaches. Your soldiers are in our hands. If you want their safety, do not look for them," the Islamic State of Iraq said on a militant Web site. "You should remember what you have done to our sister Abeer in the same area," the statement said, referring to five American soldiers who were charged in the rape and killing of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and the killings of her parents and her younger sister last year. Read The Full Story Husband Of U.S. Scholar Denies Iranian Claim That Wife Is A Spy 2007-05-14 16:44:44 The husband of noted American scholar Haleh Esfandiari Monday angrily denied allegations made in Iran's press during the weekend that the 67-year-old grandmother was trying to foment revolution inside Iran and was spying for both the United States and Israel. The unofficial charges were made in Tehran's Kayhan newspaper, which is closely tied to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reflects government views. The allegations against Esfandiari, who is director of the Middle East program at the Smithsonian Institution's Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars, offer the first indication of the case that Iran may be trying to craft against the Potomac resident. Although the Foreign Ministry finally confirmed her detention Sunday, no formal charges have been issued since she was imprisoned a week ago after more than four months under virtual house arrest and weeks of interrogations in Tehran. Asked about Esfandiari's case during a weekend visit to Abu Dhabi, Ahmadinejad said, "This is within the jurisdiction of Iran's judiciary, which will provide information about the issue in due course," Iran's Web site reported Monday. Read The Full Story Palestinian Official Killed As Strike Called In Karachi 2007-05-14 16:44:13 A senior official of Pakistan’s Supreme Court was shot dead by unidentified gunman early today, following political clashes in Karachi on Sunday that claimed 39 lives. Syed Hammad Raza, a registrar of the Supreme Court, was killed at around 4:30 a.m. local time at his home here in the capital. Mr. Raza was close to Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, the chief justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, who was removed from the bench in March by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, touching off protests and political violence. Shops were closed and public transportation was shut down in all the country’s major cities, including Karachi, today after opposition parties called a general strike and the authorities responded by banning demonstrations and declaring a public holiday, Reuters reported. It was the first time since Gen. Musharraf took power that a strike call had been so widely observed. Read The Full Story 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	Al-Qaeda Tells U.S.: End Hunt For Troops Or Else 2007-05-15 02:35:05 An al-Qaeda-led group demanded Monday that the U.S. military end its massive search for three missing American soldiers. "Your soldiers are in our grip. If you want the safety of your soldiers then do not search for them," the Islamic State in Iraq said in a statement on a website. The group, which claimed responsibility for an ambush on a U.S. patrol south of Baghdad on Saturday that killed four of the seven American soldiers and an Iraqi translator, did not elaborate, but its statement implied that the men were alive. Thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops backed by helicopters and jets combed through lush palm groves, searched cars and went from door-to-door looking for signs of the missing soldiers in an area known as the "triangle of death". Read The Full Story World Bank Committee: Wolfowitz Undermined Integrity Of Organization 2007-05-15 02:34:34 A World Bank investigating committee sharply rebuked President Paul D. Wolfowitz, concluding that he broke ethics rules and undermined the integrity of the institution in engineering a hefty pay raise for his girlfriend. "These actions manifest a lack of understanding for and a disregard for the institution as a public international organization," declared the committee's report, which was distributed to the bank's executive directors yesterday and released publicly last night. It calls on the executive board to assess "whether Mr. Wolfowitz will be able to provide the leadership needed to ensure that the bank continues to operate to the fullest extent possible." In a written response, Wolfowitz maintained that he acted in good faith in seeking to resolve an obvious conflict of interest. He accused the bank's ethics committee of forcing him to oversee the raise for his longtime companion, Shaha Riza, as compensation for her transfer to a different job. The ethics panel was afraid to confront her, said Wolfowitz, because its members knew she was "extremely angry and upset." Read The Full Story Thomson And Reuters Agree On Terms For Merger 2007-05-15 02:32:44 Reuters Group PlC and Thomson Corp. said Tuesday that they have agreed on terms for a merger to create one of the world's largest financial news providers. The cash and shares transaction values Reuters at $17.2 billion. Thomson, formally based in Toronto, Canada, but with its operational head office in Stamford, Connecticut, would control about 70 percent of the shares in the new company, Thomson-Reuters PLC. The company will be headed by Tom Glocer, 47, who is now chief executive of Reuters. Read The Full Story Atomic Agency: Iran Stepping Up Enrichment Work 2007-05-14 16:45:00 Inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency have concluded that Iran appears to have solved most of its technological problems and is now beginning to enrich uranium on a far larger scale than before, according to the agency’s top officials. The findings may change the calculus of diplomacy in Europe and in Washington, which aimed to force a suspension of Iran’s enrichment activities in large part to prevent it from learning how to produce weapons-grade material. In a short-notice inspection of Iran’s operations in the main nuclear facility at Natanz on Sunday, conducted in advance of a report to the United Nations Security Council due early next week, the inspectors found that Iranian engineers were already using roughly 1,300 centrifuges and were producing fuel suitable for nuclear reactors, according to diplomats and nuclear experts here. Read The Full Story Top Palestinian Security Official Quits 2007-05-14 16:44:28 The top Palestinian security official quit in exasperation Monday after street battles killed four more people, including a truck driver delivering bread. The 2-month-old Hamas-Fatah unity government stood by helplessly as Gaza again descended toward chaos. Residents frightened by two days of intense firefights holed up in their homes, leaving Gaza City's streets largely deserted while rival security forces took up positions on rooftops and hundreds of gunmen in black ski masks put up checkpoints and stopped cars. In what appeared to be a largely symbolic decision, the Cabinet urged the two sides to halt the violence and asked rival security forces to work under a joint command. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas called a meeting of rival factions late Monday to discuss the situation. With eight dead and some 70 wounded in fighting Sunday and Monday, Interior Minister Hani Kawasmeh resigned and accused leaders on both sides of thwarting his efforts to halt the violence. Read The Full Story Cerberus To By Chrysler For $7.4 Billion 2007-05-14 16:43:22 Chrysler, the Big Three automaker that struggled after its merger with the manufacturer of the luxury Mercedes Benz line, will emerge as an independent company and be placed in private hands under a $7.4 billion deal announced today. German-based DaimleChrysler said it would sell its Chrysler Group to Cerberus Capital Management, unraveling one of the most prominent mega-mergers of the 1990s and highlighting the growing influence of private equity on American business. Cerberus will get an 80 percent stake in the Detroit automaker, making Chrysler the only one of the Big Three to be privately owned. Chrysler, which recently slipped to fourth behind Toyota in the U.S. market and is undergoing an extensive round of restructuring and job cuts, manufactures cars and trucks under the Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler brands. 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
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