Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday June 1 2007 - (813)

Friday June 1 2007 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
Gates, U.S. General Back Long Iraq Stay, Similar To South Korea 2007-06-01 02:44:09 U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and a senior U.S. commander said yesterday that they favor a protracted U.S. troop presence in Iraq along the lines of the military stabilization force in South Korea. Gates told reporters in Hawaii that he is thinking of "a mutual agreement" with Iraq in which "some force of Americans ... is present for a protracted period of time, but in ways that are protective of the sovereignty of the host government." Gates said such a long-term U.S. presence would assure allies in the Middle East that the United States will not withdraw from Iraq as it did from Vietnam, "lock, stock and barrel." Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who oversees daily military operations in Iraq, supported the idea at a news conference in which he also said U.S. militaryunits are trying to reach cease-fire agreements with Iraqi insurgents. Read The Full Story Bush Kills Off Hopes For G8 Climate Change Plan 2007-06-01 02:43:34 George Bush Thursday threw international efforts to control climate change into confusion with a proposal to create a "new global framework" to curb greenhouse gas emissions as an alternative to a planned U.N. process. The proposal came less than a week before a G8 summit in Germany and appeared to hit European hopes that the world's industrialised nations would commit to halving their emissions by 2050. A U.N.-brokered meeting in Bali in December, at which it had been hoped to agree to keep climate change to a 2 degrees Celsius increase in temperature, is supposed to provide a successor to the Kyoto protocol. All that was thrown in doubt by the initiative announced Thursday by President Bush. "By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases. To help develop this goal, the United States would convene a series of meetings of nations that produced most greenhouse gas emissions, including nations with rapidly growing economies like India and China," said Bush. Read The Full Story Britain May Seek Iran's Help In Finding Hostages In Iraq 2007-06-01 02:42:49 Britain is considering a direct approach to Iran for help in discovering the whereabouts of four British security guards and a financial consultant abducted in Iraq and who was responsible for seizing them. The issue was raised Thursday at a meeting of Cobra, Whitehall's emergency committee, the Guardian has learned. Senior Iraqi officials said they were working on the theory that the gang behind the kidnapping was a rogue faction of the Mahdi army of the radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, possibly operating under the influence of Iranian intelligence. "We do not think that Sadr ordered this operation, but we are almost certain that some militia members who profess loyalty to him were involved," said a senior foreign ministry official. He said that "the lack of organization and discipline" within the Mahdi army's ranks had allowed the Iranians to move in and bring some of Sadr's fighters under their control. "They [the Iranians] want to show the U.S. that they have influence over the Mahdi army, and that the U.S. must come to them for help," he said. Read The Full Story Heavy Fighting Resumes In Lebanon 2007-06-01 02:41:59 Heavy fighting resumed Friday between the Lebanese army and Islamic militants at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Army tanks and armor massed outside the camp, apparently preparing to storm it. Under an artillery cover, about 50 armored carriers and tanks massed at the northern edge of the camp and drove toward the forward-most positions, according to an Associated Press Television News crew at the scene. But it was not clear whether the Lebanese troops were already making a push. Military officials would not comment. Read The Full Story Ex-Spy Lugovoi Claims British Government, MI6 Involved In Litvinenko Murder 2007-05-31 15:18:26 Andrei Lugovoi, the Russian businessman charged last week with the murder of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, today sensationally accused the British government and MI6 of being directly involved in his killing. In an extraordinary press conference in Moscow, Lugovoi claimed the British secret service had unsuccessfully tried to recruit him and said U.K. agents had either killed Litvinenko or allowed others to do it for them. He said Litvinenko was an MI6 agent and speculated that the London-based Russian exile Boris Berezovsky could have been involved in the murder after Litvinenko attempted to blackmail him. Asked by the Guardian whether he had evidence to in effect accuse the British government of Litvinenko's murder, Lugovoi said: "Yes, I do," but refused to give details. Read The Full Story The Dirty Water Underground 2007-05-31 15:17:56 Laura Allen's modest gray house in the Oakland flatlands would give a building inspector nightmares. Jerry-built pipes protrude at odd angles from the back and sides of the nearly century-old house, running into a cascading series of bathtubs filled with gravel and cattails. White PVC pipe, buckets, milk crates and hoses are strewn about the lot. Inside, there is mysterious - and illegal - plumbing in every room. Ms. Allen, 30, is one of the Greywater Guerrillas, a team focused on promoting and installing clandestine plumbing systems that recycle gray water - the effluent of sinks, showers and washing machines - to flush toilets or irrigate gardens. To her, this house is as much an emblem of her belief system as a home. Although gray water use is legal in California, systems that conform to the state’s complicated code tend to be very expensive, and Ms. Allen and her fellow guerrilla, Cleo Woelfle-Erskine, are out to persuade the world that water recycling can be a simple and affordable option, as well as being a morally essential one. Read The Full Story U.S. Economy Stagnant In First Quarter 2007-05-31 15:17:18 U.S. economic growth came to a near standstill in the first three months of the year, as the housing market and a decline in exports and federal spending choked an already sputtering economy. Revised estimates from the first quarter of 2007 show the economy expanded at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 0.6 percent from January through March, less than half of the 1.3 percent rate of growth originally estimated for the period by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption remained a support, increasing at an annual rate of 4.4 percent as people raised spending across the board on long-term purchases such as furniture and autos, daily items such as food and clothing, and services like medical care and utilities. Read The Full Story Wachovia To Buy A.G. Edwards For $6.8 Billion 2007-05-31 15:16:37 Wachovia Corp. said Thursday it would buy A.G. Edwards Inc. for $6.8 billion, creating the second-largest U.S. retail brokerage in a bid to win more business from baby boomers as they grow older and wealthier. The acquisition is the latest in a series by Wachovia Chief Executive Ken Thompson as he builds one of the most powerful financial institutions in the United States. "We like the demographic backdrop: the aging of baby boomers, and the management of retirement assets," David Carroll, head of capital management at Wachovia, said in an interview. "We bring a richer product menu and larger capital markets capability." The terms value A.G. Edwards at $89.50 per share, a 16 percent premium over Wednesday's closing price. That equates to 19.5 times expected fiscal 2008 earnings and 3.2 times book value, levels that several analysts called fair. Read The Full Story Baghdad Lockdown As Troops Look For Kidnapped Britons 2007-05-31 01:48:08 Areas of Baghdad were under lockdown Wednesday as American and Iraqi troops searched for the five British men who were kidnapped in the city on Tuesday. There was speculation that the four security guards and the financial consultant they were protecting were taken hostage as an act of revenge for the British army's help in the killing of a Mahdi army militia leader. Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said Shia militia groups had taken the men, but a leading cleric with experience in hostage negotiation said he did not believe the Mahdi army was responsible. Sheikh Abdel al-Sattar al-Bahadli told the BBC Arab Service that Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi militia were not involved, and wanted to peacefully build a new Iraq. The four security guards, employed by GardaWorld, and their client, who works for the U.S. company BearingPoint, were abducted from inside the finance ministry building in Baghdad just before noon on Tuesday. They were driven away by men in police uniforms in the direction of Sadr City, the Shia district to the northeast. Read The Full Story Editorial: Injustice 5, Justice 4 2007-05-31 01:45:25 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Thursday, May 31, 2007. The Supreme Court struck a blow for discrimination this week by stripping a key civil rights law of much of its potency. The majority opinion, by Justice Samuel Alito, forced an unreasonable reading on the law, and tossed aside longstanding precedents to rule in favor of an Alabama employer that had underpaid a female employee for years. The ruling is the latest indication that a court that once proudly stood up for the disadvantaged is increasingly protective of the powerful. Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Gadsden, Alabama, sued her employer for paying her less than its male supervisors. At first, her salary was in line with the men’s, but she got smaller raises, which created a significant pay gap. Late in her career, Ms. Ledbetter filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A jury found that Goodyear violated her rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Goodyear argued that she filed her complaint too late and, by a 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court agreed. Title VII requires employees to file within 180 days of “the alleged unlawful employment practice.” The court calculated the deadline from the day Ms. Ledbetter received her last discriminatory raise. Bizarrely, the majority insisted it did not matter that Goodyear was still paying her far less than her male counterparts when she filed her complaint. Read The Full Story Ohio Company Used Melamine In Feed 2007-05-31 01:44:52 An Ohio company - Tembec BTLSR of Toledo - has long been adding the industrial toxin melamine to animal feed ingredients, and those feeds have been eaten by livestock and fish meant for human consumption, officials with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday. The company used the chemical as a binding agent to hold feed granules in pellet form, in contrast to the recent pet food scandal, which involved imported ingredients that were spiked with melamine to provide a false measure of protein content, said officials. As with the pet food scandal, they said, the levels of melamine involved appear to be too low to harm humans who may have eaten animals that consumed the tainted feed. Read The Full Story	Senate Panel Question CIA Detentions 2007-06-01 02:43:49 The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday questioned the continuing value of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret interrogation program for terrorism suspects, suggesting that international condemnation and the obstacles it has created to criminal prosecution may outweigh its worth in gathering information. The committee rejected by one vote a Democratic proposal that would essentially have cut money for the program by banning harsh interrogation techniques except in dire emergencies, a committee report revealed. “More than five years after the decision to start the program,” the report said, “the committee believes that consideration should be given to whether it is the best means to obtain a full and reliable intelligence debriefing of a detainee.” Read The Full Story China's Energy Rush Shatters Village 2007-06-01 02:43:16 Chen Xiao'e was home alone and fast asleep, she recalled, when the windows started to shatter for no apparent reason, like a scene out of a horror movie. "I was frightened out of my wits," said Chen. That scary night was only the beginning. Pretty soon cracks appeared in the walls, some several inches wide. Then the floor buckled. Ultimately, Chen and her family had to move out and seek shelter elsewhere. Their three-year-old brick home became too dangerous to live in. The house joined a growing list of buildings in Da Antou that have slumped to one side and split apart over the last several years because of what is happening beneath them. The mountain atop which the village was built has been so honeycombed with underground coal mining that the crust of the earth is giving way. "The earth below us is hollow because of the coal mining," said Li Xiaozhi, the village paramedic, who has been forced to move his family out of three houses since 2003 and now stays in the local clinic. "Almost every house has cracks now. The only difference is how big they are." Read The Full Story Guantanamo Detainee Found Dead Trained With U.S. Forces 2007-06-01 02:42:19 A detainee found dead in his cell at Guantanamo Bay on Wednesday was a Saudi army veteran who trained with U.S. forces before fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, according to military hearing records. Abdul Rahman Ma'ath Thafir al-Amri had been imprisoned at the military detention facility in Cuba since February 2002 without meeting with a lawyer or being charged with a crime, according to a legal defense group - a circumstance that the group said could explain his apparent suicide. U.S. officials said he was not on suicide watch at the time guards found him unresponsive Wednesday afternoon, but they have declined to provide details or evidence of his cause of death. Amri's body will be prepared for repatriation to Saudi Arabia after an autopsy, the officials said Thursday. Saudi officials Thursday identified the detainee as Amri, 34, who told his U.S. captors that he was essentially a foot soldier in Afghanistan because he felt a duty to fight jihad. U.S. Southern Command officials characterized Amri as a mid-level al-Qaeda operative who ran safe houses and fought against the United States in November 2001. Read The Full Story Bush Tells Iraq President U.S. Firm On Iraq Aid 2007-06-01 02:41:44 President Bush on Thursday assured Iraqi President Jalal Talabani that he is "fully committed" to aiding the Iraqi government and dispatched a top aide to Baghdad to help leaders there make good on their promises. Talabani, whose visit to the United States has included medical treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, looked hearty as he sat in the Oval Office and defended his country's progress. "I told the president that I'm fully committed to helping the Iraqi government achieve important objectives," said Bush.  "We call them benchmarks - political law necessary to show the Iraqi citizens that there is a unified government willing to work on the interest of all people," he said. Read The Full Story Prolific Spammer Arrested (And There Was Much Rejoicing) 2007-05-31 15:18:14 A 27-year-old man described as one of the world's most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail. Robert Alan Soloway is accused of using networks of compromised "zombie" computers to send out millions upon millions of spam e-mails. "He's one of the top 10 spammers in the world," said Tim Cranton, a Microsoft Corp. lawyer who is senior director of the company's Worldwide Internet Safety Programs. "He's a huge problem for our customers. This is a very good day." A federal grand jury last week returned a 35-count indictment against Soloway charging him with mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. Read The Full Story Bush Wants Polluters To Set Greenhouse Gas Reductions 2007-05-31 15:17:33 George Bush Thursday called on the world's biggest polluters to set goals on curbing greenhouse gases, in the U.S. president's clearest admission yet of the threat posed by climate change. The U.S. would also cut tariff barriers to sharing environmental technology, said Bush. The president was speaking in Washington, D.C., ahead of next week's G8 summit in Germany, where climate change will be a major issue. The U.S. strategy calls for a consensus on long-term goals for reducing the greenhouse gases that lie behind global warming, but not before the end of 2008, said the White House. Read The Full Story Canadian Government Sued Over Kyoto Failure 2007-05-31 15:16:56 The Canadian government is facing legal action over its failure to meet its Kyoto targets on emissions. The environmental group Friends of the Earth Canada this week filed a lawsuit at the federal court in Ottawa alleging that, in failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently, the government is violating Canadian law. Friends of the Earth said that, although the country had signed up to reduce emissions by 6% on 1990 levels, emissions were now 28% above that level. A target announced by the Canadian government last month, which would see emissions cut by 20% on 2006 levels by 2020, would still leave the country 39% over its Kyoto target for 2008-2012, said the group. Read The Full Story Rice, Russian Foreign Minister Clash Over Kosovo Plan, Defense Missile Shield 2007-05-31 01:48:21 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday tangled fiercely over U.S. proposals to grant Kosovo independence and build a missile defense shield. Lavrov accused the United States of starting a new arms race with its plan to install a radar system in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland. On Kosovo, Lavrov all but threatened a veto if Western nations attempted to pass a U.N. National Security Council resolution backing a plan for Kosovo's independence, saying he hoped such a response would not be necessary. "This is an issue on which our positions are diametrically opposed," he said. "At the moment I don't see any chance of the positions moving towards each other." The disputes, laid bare at a news conference following a meeting of the Group of Eight foreign ministers, signaled that rising U.S.-Russia tensions could dominate next week's G-8 summit on the Baltic Coast. Read The Full Story Iran Warns Academics: Talk To Foreigners, We Will View As A Spy 2007-05-31 01:47:49 Iran's powerful intelligence ministry has stepped up its war of nerves with the west by telling the country's academics they will be suspected of spying if they maintain contact with foreign institutions or travel abroad to international conferences. The blunt warning has been issued by the ministry's counter-espionage director in an atmosphere of rising suspicion and paranoia as Iran claims to have cracked a CIA-backed spy ring and has charged three American citizens with spying. In a briefing with Iranian journalists, the official - whose identity was not disclosed - accused western intelligence agencies of using academic contacts to lure scholars into an espionage network against Iran. He said seminars inside and outside the country were used. Read The Full Story Student Loan Scandal Deepens 2007-05-31 01:45:12 A former financial aid director at Johns Hopkins University who cultivated a national reputation as a stickler for ethics accepted more than $130,000 from eight lending industry companies during her tenure, twice as much money as previously disclosed, according to documents and interviews. In 18 years at Johns Hopkins, Ellen Frishberg advised the federal government on rules for officials dealing with the student loan industry and lectured peers on the need to avoid perceived conflicts of interest. "Appearance of impropriety is as important as impropriety itself," she said in a 2000 presentation to California aid administrators. This month, Frishberg resigned after the university concluded that she failed to comply with ethics policies by accepting $65,000 from a lending company she had urged students to use. But her financial ties to the industry were more extensive than Hopkins or Frishberg have publicly said, amounting to at least $133,695, according to hundreds of pages of financial records, contracts and e-mails the Washington Post obtained from Senate investigators. Read The Full Story Thompson Says He'll Run For U.S. President 2007-05-31 01:43:38 Hollywood actor Fred Thompson said in an interview that he plans to run for U.S. president in 2008, joining a crowded field of Republican candidates. "I can't remember exactly the point I said, 'I'm going to do this,"' Thompson said of his planned presidential run in Thursday's edition of USA Today. "But when I did, the thing that occurred to me: 'I'm going to tell people that I am thinking about it and see what kind of reaction I get to it."' Thompson, a 64-year-old social conservative, said he was planning a campaign that will use blogs, video posts and other Internet innovations to reach voters turned off by "politics-as-usual" in both parties, USA Today said. 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