Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday May 16 2007 - (813)

Wednesday May 16 2007 edition
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Missing, Slain GI's Identified As Search Continues In Iraq 2007-05-16 01:58:25 The Pentagon on Tuesday released the names of seven soldiers from the Army's 10th Mountain Division who were captured or killed by insurgents in a sophisticated weekend ambush south of Baghdad. The three soldiers confirmed dead are Sgt. 1st Class James David Connell Jr., 40, of Lake City, Tennessee, Pfc. Daniel W. Courneya, 19, of Nashville, Michigan, and Pfc. Christopher E. Murphy, 21, of Lynchburg, Virginia. The Pentagon said they died in the village of Al Taqa "of wounds suffered when their patrol was attacked by enemy forces using automatic fire and explosives." Four soldiers were listed as "duty status whereabouts unknown," a term often used before a soldier is formally listed as missing. Of those four, however, one is known to be dead but was badly burned in the ambush that left the soldiers' Humvees ablaze, so the military must conduct forensic tests to determine his identity. The four are Sgt. Anthony J. Schober, 23, of Reno, Nevada,Spec. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts, Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, California, and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Michigan. All the soldiers were assigned to the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, N.Y. Read The Full Story GAO Report: Dept. Of Homeland Security Breaks Privacy Laws In Data Collection 2007-05-16 01:57:46 The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is breaking privacy laws by failing to tell the public all the ways it uses personal information to target passengers boarding flights entering or leaving the United States, according to a draft government report. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), in a report to be released Wednesday, says DHS's Customs and Border Protection agency has never publicly disclosed all the sources of data such as name, credit card number and travel history that it uses to detect passengers who may pose a security risk. "CBP's current disclosures do not fully inform the public about all of its systems for prescreening aviation passenger information, nor do they explain how CBP combines data in the prescreening process, as required by law," the report says. "As a result, passengers are not assured that their privacy is protected during the international prescreening process." Read The Full Story Sparks Fly At 2nd GOP Debate 2007-05-16 01:56:45 The leading Republican presidential candidates parried accusations from their rivals that they have strayed too far from their party's conservative philosophies on abortion, taxes and immigration in a debate that featured some of the most direct exchanges of the 2008 battle for the GOP nomination. The debate included sharp jabs as the candidates pledged tax cuts and all but one reaffirmed their support for the war in Iraq. The contenders also further exposed their party's divisions over social issues, including abortion and stem cell research, on a day when the Rev. Jerry Falwell's death cast a shadow over the campaign. The entire group appeared more relaxed and at ease than they were in their first meeting in Simi Valley, California,  two weeks ago. And some of the most memorable moments were the lighter ones, as when former Arkansas  governor Mike Huckabee joked that the Congress had "spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop," an allusion to reports that the Democratic candidate had paid $400 for a haircut. Read The Full Story Commentary: Washington's Worldwide Woes 2007-05-15 19:36:46 Intellpuke: In the following commentary, Guardian editor Simon Tisdall writes that George Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low, and this is reflected in declining U.S. power across the globe. Mr. Tisdall's commentary follows: American accusations that European countries have ganged up against the Bush administration in the Paul Wolfowitz row hide a deeper worry: that the rapidly declining power at home of the most unpopular, least respected president since Richard Nixon is encouraging multiple challenges to U.S. authority and interests around the world. Washington's insecurity is rooted in the collapse in George Bush's domestic support and an apparent accompanying failure of national confidence. The president's approval rating hit a new low of 28% earlier this month, according to a Newsweek poll. His aggregate figures have been stuck at 35% or less since last autumn - far below the norm for an incumbent half way through a second term. The "badness of King George", as Bush's fall from imperial grace has been dubbed, is creating a power vacuum around the White House. The earliest ever start to the election campaign to replace him is now being matched, according to many commentators, by the longest ever "lame duck" presidency. Read The Full Story Angry Wolfowitz In Four-Letter Tirade 2007-05-15 19:36:07 An angry and bitter Paul Wolfowitz poured abuse and threatened retaliations on senior World Bank staff if his orders for pay rises and promotions for his partner were revealed, according to new details published Monday  night. Under fire for the lavish package given to Shaha Riza, a World Bank employee and Wolfowitz's girlfriend when he became president, an official investigation into the controversy has found that Wolfowitz broke bank rules and violated his own contract - setting off a struggle between U.S. and European governments over Wolfowitz's future. Sounding more like a cast member of the Sopranos than an international leader, in testimony by one key witness Wolfowitz declares: "If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them, too." The remarks were published in a report detailing the controversy that erupted last month after the size of Ms. Riza's pay rises was revealed. The report slates Wolfowitz for his "questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self-interest", saying: "Mr. Wolfowitz saw himself as the outsider to whom the established rules and standards did not apply." Read The Full Story Conservative Evangelist Jerry Falwell Dies At 73 2007-05-15 19:35:34 Jerry Falwell, 73, a Southern Baptist preacher who as founder and president of the Moral Majority presided over a marriage of Christian religious belief and conservative political values - a bond that bore prodigious fruit for the Republican Party during the past 25 years - died May 15 of congestive heart failure after he was found unconscious in his office at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. According to a school spokesman, he was taken to Lynchburg General Hospital, where CPR efforts were unsuccessful. With his outspoken pronouncements on matters moral, political and religious, Falwell became not only one of the most polarizing religio-political figures in America but also one of the most powerful. He built one of the nation's first mega-churches, founded a cable television network and a growing Bible-based university, and was considered the voice of the religious right in the early 1980s. In 1983, U.S. News & World Report named him one of the 25 most influential people in America. Read The Full Story BREAKING NEWS: Rev. Jerry Falwell Dies At 73 2007-05-15 13:30:17 The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority and built the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73. Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. "CPR efforts were unsuccessful," he said. Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but he said Falwell "has a history of heart challenges." "I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast," Godwin said. "He went to his office, I went to mine, and they found him unresponsive." Read The Full Story White House Pushed Ashcroft On Wiretappings 2007-05-15 13:29:55 The White House three years ago briefly implemented a classified program, parts of which the Justice Department found to be illegal, overriding the objections of top department officials after failing to get a seriously ill attorney general John D. Ashcroft to sign off on it from his hospital bed, Ashcroft's former deputy told a Senate panel today. Former deputy attorney general James B. Comey testified under oath that Alberto R. Gonzales and Andrew H. Card, Jr., at the time President Bush's White House counsel and chief of staff respectively, went to see Ashcroft in intensive care at George Washington University Hospital in March 2004 in an effort to "do an end run" around Comey, who was then acting attorney general, and obtain recertification of the highly sensitive program. Under the presidential directive then in effect, the legality of the program was to be certified by the Justice Department every 45 days. Comey declined to identify the program, but members of the Senate Judiciary Committee indicated at Tuesday's hearing that it was the National Security Agency's controversial warrantless eavesdropping effort that the White House called the "terrorist surveillance program." Read The Full Story Tyco Paying $3 Billion To Shareholders 2007-05-15 13:29:23 Tyco International Ltd. said Tuesday it has agreed to pay about $3 billion to settle shareholder claims that arose after former Chief Executive Officer Dennis Kozlowski and other top officers were charged with looting the company and inflating its value. Tyco said it would set up a $2.975 billion cash fund to pay claims filed by former shareholders and turn over half of any money it recovers from ongoing lawsuits against Kozlowski, former Chief Operating Officer Mark Swartz and former board member Frank Walsh, said lawyers for the shareholders. ''With this settlement we are taking an important step to resolve our most significant remaining legacy legal matter,'' Tyco Chairman and Chief Executive Ed Breen said in a statement. ''Our balance sheet and cash flow remain strong and will allow us to readily absorb these costs while removing much of the uncertainty around legacy legal matters.'' 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	Bush Intervened In Dispute Over Eavesdropping 2007-05-16 01:58:03 President Bush intervened in March 2004 to avert a crisis over the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program after Attorney General John Ashcroft, Director Robert S. Mueller III, of the F.B.I. and other senior Justice Department aides all threatened to resign, a former deputy attorney general testified Tuesday. Bush quelled the revolt over the program’s legality by allowing it to continue without Justice Department approval, also directing department officials to take the necessary steps to bring it into compliance with the law, according to Congressional testimony by the former deputy attorney general, James B. Comey. Although a conflict over the program had been disclosed in the New York Times, Comey provided a fuller account of the 48-hour drama, including, for the first time, Bush’s role, the threatened resignations and a race as Comey hurried to Ashcroft’s hospital sickbed to intercept White House officials, who were pushing for approval of the N.S.A. program. Read The Full Story Factional Fighting Terrorizes Gaza 2007-05-16 01:57:09 Hamas gunmen riddled a Fatah police jeep with gunfire at close range Tuesday, killing eight policemen in the most ruthless round yet of factional fighting, pushing the Palestinian unity government closer to collapse. Gunmen in black ski masks took up positions in the streets and terrified residents huddled in their homes. Israel,  too, was briefly drawn into the battle. "I don't know when it's going to end and what the future will bring," said Salman Abu Arafeh, 42, a Gaza City interior decorator who was pinned down by gunfire in his apartment for hours, along with his wife and two children. A total of 15 people were killed in Tuesday's fighting. Read The Full Story White House Edits To Privacy Board's Report Spur Resignation 2007-05-15 19:37:01 The Bush administration made more than 200 revisions to the first report of a civilian board that oversees government protection of personal privacy, including the deletion of a passage on anti-terrorism programs that intelligence officials deemed "potentially problematic" intrusions on civil liberties, according to a draft of the report obtained by the Washington Post. One of the panel's five members, Democrat Lanny J. Davis, resigned in protest Monday over deletions ordered by White House lawyers and aides. The changes came after the congressionally created Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board had unanimously approved the final draft of its first report to lawmakers, renewing an internal debate over the board's independence and investigative power. Some of the changes sought by the administration ultimately were reversed, and some members of the panel said they were not opposed to the others. Read The Full Story A Ghostly Halo Could Unlock Dark Secret Of The Universe 2007-05-15 19:36:34 A halo detected around a distant cluster of galaxies is the strongest evidence yet for dark matter, the cosmic scaffold around which the planets and stars form, astronomers said Tuesday. The discovery is a milestone in a 70-year search for a substance that has never been seen, yet accounts for nearly all of the mass in the universe. Because it does not reflect or emit radiation, dark matter has proved impossible to observe directly, even with the most advanced telescopes. The discovery was announced Tuesday at a NASA press conference in Washington, D.C. Read The Full Story White House Softens Support For Wolfowitz 2007-05-15 19:35:50 The Bush administration softened its support for World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz this morning, signaling a willingness to replace him if the bank's executive board does not fire him and accepts some blame for the ethics controversy engulfing the institution. "All options are on the table," said White House spokesman Tony Snow, addressing reporters at a morning briefing. "Members of the board, Mr. Wolfowitz need to sit down and figure out what is in fact going to be best for this bank." The shift at the White House is a blow to Wolfowitz's struggle to save his job. It came a day after a bank investigating committee concluded that Wolfowitz broke ethics rules and damaged the integrity of the institution by engineering a large raise for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, while keeping legal and human-resource officers out of the loop. Read The Full Story Bush Fills New 'War Czar' Position 2007-05-15 19:35:15 President Bush has chosen Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the Pentagon's director of operations, to oversee the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a "war czar" after a long search for new leadership, administration officials said Tuesday. In the newly created position, Lute would serve as an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, and would also maintain his military status and rank as a three-star general, according to a Pentagon official. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Bush had not yet made an announcement. Read The Full Story Military Blocks Popular Websites - YouTube, MySpace Among Them 2007-05-15 13:30:07 The U.S. Defense Department began blocking access on its computers to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other Web sites Monday, severing some of the most popular ties linking U.S. troops in combat areas to their far-flung relatives and friends, and depriving soldiers of a favorite diversion from the boredom of overseas duty. The banned Web sites include some of the Internet's most popular destinations for social networking and sharing photographs, videos and audio recordings. Soldiers and their families frequent the sites to exchange notes, swap pictures and share recorded messages - a form of digital communication that, along with e-mail, has largely replaced the much-anticipated mail call of previous wars. Senior officers said they enacted the worldwide ban out of concern that the rapidly increasing use of these sites threatened to overwhelm the military's private Internet network and risk the disclosure of combat-sensitive material. Read The Full Story At Least 25 Killed In Peshawar Suicide Bombing 2007-05-15 13:29:41 A suicide bomber with a warning to spies for America taped to his leg attacked a crowded restaurant Tuesday near the Afghan border, killing at least 25 people days after a relative of theTaliban's slain commander was arrested there, officials said. The explosion deepened instability in a country still reeling from deadly political riots over the weekend in its commercial capital, Karachi. The attack appeared unrelated to that unrest, but rather the work of an Islamic militant. Provincial police chief Sharif Virk said the message taped to the severed leg of the bomber said spies for America would meet the same fate as those killed and included the Persian word ''Khurasan'' - often used in militant videos to describe Afghanistan. Read The Full Story 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
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