Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday June 15 2007 - (813)

Friday June 15 2007 edition
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Rising Interest Rates To Hurt Home Owners, Buyers And Company Profits 2007-06-15 02:30:07 The unusually low interest rates of the last three years have been an enormous boon to almost every corner of the American economy. They have provided consumers with dirt-cheap mortgages that fed the real estate boom. They have supplied easy credit to companies and investment firms, propelling stocks and corporate profits to record highs and fueling a buyout binge. Now that party may be coming to an end. Yields on the 10-year Treasury note - a benchmark that influences many long-term interest rates, including home mortgages - jumped sharply on Tuesday and are up significantly in the last month. The fallout is likely to be widespread, and felt most immediately by homeowners and people looking to buy a house. Read The Full Story Palestinian Split Deepens; Government In Chaos 2007-06-15 02:29:42 The Palestinian territories seemed headed Thursday to a turbulent political divide. Masked Hamas gunmen took control of the Gaza Strip and the Fatahpresident dissolved the 3-month-old unity government, declaring a state of emergency and plans for elections. An aide to President Mahmoud Abbas announced the decrees, including the firing of Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas, at a West Bank news conference after Hamas militias overran Fatah strongholds in Gaza, dragging men into the street and shooting them. The territories that President Bush said he wanted to see become a state before he left office appeared torn asunder. With Hamas controlling Gaza, it is not clear that Abbas had the power to carry out his decrees. A Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, dismissed them. “Prime Minister Haniya remains the head of the government, even if it was dissolved by the president,” said Zuhri. “In practical terms these decisions are worthless.” Read The Full Story Britain's BAE Bought $150 Million Airbus For Saudi Prince Bandar 2007-06-14 23:12:40 British defense contractor BAE gave Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia an airliner as part of Britain's al-Yamamah arms deal, and the arms firm is still paying the expenses of flying it, the Guardian newspaper reports in its Friday edition. The top of the range, four-engine Airbus 340, worth £75 million ($150 million), was painted in the silver and blue colours of Bandar's favorite American football team, the Dallas Cowboys, and is said to have been presented to him on his birthday in 1998. According to his most recent approved biographer William Simpson, the aircraft, described as Bandar's "private plane", is heavily used. He says the aircraft flight log includes such destinations as St. Lucia in the Caribbean, Rio de Janeiro, Casablanca, Cape Town and Honolulu. Prince Bandar's lawyers said last night the aircraft was purchased and fitted out by BAE for the Saudi Ministry of Defense "pursuant to the al-Yamamah program". It was part of the deal, they said, that "BAE continues to be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the plane". Read The Full Story U.S. Dept. of Justice Investigates If Gonzales Tried To Influence Aide's Testimony 2007-06-14 18:22:23 The Justice Department is investigating whether Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales sought to influence the testimony of a departing senior aide during a March meeting in Gonzales' office, according to correspondence released Thursday. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the two officials who are leading an internal Justice Department investigation of the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys last year said their inquiry includes the Gonzales meeting, which was revealed during testimony last month from former Gonzales aide Monica M. Goodling. "This is to confirm that the scope of our investigation does include this matter," wrote Glenn A. Fine, the inspector general, and H. Marshall Jarrett, counsel of the Office of Professional Responsibility. Read The Full Story Judge Orders Libby To Report To Jail 2007-06-14 18:21:59 A federal judge Thursday ordered I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to report to prison within weeks to begin serving a 30-month sentence for lying to federal investigators about his role in disclosing a covert CIA officer's identity to the media. In ruling that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff must begin his prison term, probably within six to eight weeks, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton rejected defense attorneys' request to allow Libby to remain free on bond while they appeal his conviction for perjury and obstructing justice. At the conclusion of a two-hour hearing today, Walton, who presided over Libby's trial, said he disagreed with defense attorneys' contention that Libby's trial had generated a series of close legal questions and judicial rulings that might well be reversed by higher courts. Libby's lawyers said they plan to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to issue an emergency order delaying the sentence. Read The Full Story FBI Finds It Frequently Overstepped In Collecting E-Mail, Phone And Financial Data 2007-06-14 13:14:37 An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism. The new audit covers just 10 percent of the bureau's national security investigations since 2002, and so the mistakes in the FBI's domestic surveillance efforts probably number several thousand, bureau officials said in interviews. The earlier report found 22 violations in a much smaller sampling. The vast majority of the new violations were instances in which telephone companies and Internet providers gave agents phone and e-mail records the agents did not request and were not authorized to collect. The agents retained the information anyway in their files, which mostly concerned suspected terrorist or espionage activities. Read The Full Story Space Station's Computers Fail 2007-06-14 13:14:14 Three Russian computer systems essential to the operation of the International Space Station failed last night, leading NASA to begin making contingency plans that include potentially abandoning the $100 billion facility. NASA officials said this morning that the situation appeared to be improving and that some computer communication had been restored to the Russian system. The computers appeared to be stuck in a rebooting cycle. The computer systems - which began to have problems the day after a new array of solar panels was unfurled, creating an additional source of electric power, control four gyroscopes that are needed to keep the station properly oriented. They are also essential for the oxygen-production and carbon-dioxide scrubbing systems for the air the astronauts breathe. Read The Full Story Editorial: A Failure To Protect Our Troops 2007-06-14 13:13:46 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Thursday, June 14, 2007. The Bush administration and military leaders in Washington are always claiming that they will do anything to support American troops fighting in Iraq. That makes it all the more infuriating to learn that, for more than two years, the Pentagon largely ignored urgent requests from field commanders for better armor-protected vehicles that could have saved untold lives and limbs. Improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, can blast through the flat underbelly of the military’s standard Humvees, maiming and killing the soldiers within. These devices, a low-tech response to America’s overwhelming military power, are now causing 70 percent to 80 percent of the American combat deaths in Iraq. More than two years ago, according to newly disclosed documents, Marine commanders in Al Anbar Province, a center of the Sunni insurgency, submitted an urgent request for more than 1,100 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles, or MRAPs, that have V-shaped bottoms able to deflect blasts from below. For reasons yet to be satisfactorily explained, military officials initially sat on the request and then ordered relatively few. Read The Full Story Hamas Fighters Take Over Fatah Security Building 2007-06-14 13:12:58 President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah faced the further collapse of his power in Gaza today as fierce fighting continued and Hamas fighters took over the headquarters of Fatah’s Preventive Security forces in Gaza City. Aides to Abbas say he is expected to announce an “important decision” later Thursday. He is under pressure from within Fatah and from his Western allies to suspend participation in the so-called unity government with Hamas, which began in March, or to declare a full state of emergency. Hamas forces consolidated their control over much of Gaza on Wednesday, taking command of the main north-south road and blowing up a Fatah headquarters in Khan Yunis, in the south. Read The Full Story	It Lives! Immigration Bill Has New Life In Senate 2007-06-15 02:29:54 Senate leaders, under pressure from pro-immigration groups and facing a determined push by President Bush,  agreed Thursday night to bring a controversial overhaul of the nation's immigration laws back to the Senate floor as early as next week. The bipartisan negotiators working on the immigration bill whittled hundreds of amendments down to a package of 11 amendments from Republicans and another 11 from Democrats and then presented their compromise to Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nevada). Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (Mississippi) indicated earlier that he could produce enough GOP votes to clear the 60-vote threshold to get the bill back to the floor and push it to a final vote. With Reid's demands satisfied, he and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) issued a terse statement: "We met this evening with several of the Senators involved in the immigration bill negotiations. Based on that discussion, the immigration bill will return to the Senate floor." Read The Full Story Analysis: Hamas Takeover Shows Failure Of Bush's Mideast Vision 2007-06-14 23:13:01 Intellpuke: There are two articles here relating the Hamas takeover or coup d'etat, if you prefer, of Gaza Thursday. The first article is a Washington Post news analysis of what this event means in regard to George W. Bush's Middle East policy. Following that, is a news article by Britain's Guardian newspaper. Here's the Washington Post analysis: Five years ago this month, President Bush stood in the Rose Garden and laid out a vision for the Middle East that included Israel and a state called Palestine living together in peace. "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror," the president declared. The takeover this week of the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group, dedicated to the elimination of Israel, demonstrates how much that vision has failed to materialize, in part because of actions taken by the administration. The United States championed Israel's departure from the Gaza Strip as a first step toward peace and then pressed both Israelis and Palestinians to schedule legislative elections, which Hamas unexpectedly won. Now Hamas is the unchallenged power in Gaza. After his reelection in 2004, Bush said he would use his "political capital" to help create a Palestinian state by the end of his second term. In his final 18 months as president, he faces the prospect of a shattered Palestinian Authority, a radical Islamic state on Israel's border and increasingly dwindling options to turn the tide against Hamas and create a functioning Palestinian state. "The two-state vision is dead. It really is," said Edward G. Abington, Jr., a former State Department official who was once an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Read The Full Story More Bad News For Downgraded Pluto 2007-06-14 23:12:28 Astronomers have announced yet more bad news for the much-lamented former planet Pluto. Kicked out of the club of planets last year into a new category of dwarf planet, it is not even the biggest of those, scientists have found. The same object that began Pluto's problems, a 1,500-mile-wide dwarf planet called Eris, has been confirmed as bigger and heavier than Pluto. Using the Hubble space telescope and the Keck observatory in Hawaii, scientists used measurements of the orbit of Dysnomia, one of the satellites of Eris, to calculate that Eris is 27% heavier than Pluto. "This is sort of Pluto's last stand," said Emily Schaller, of the California Institute of Technology, part of the research team that publishes its results Friday in the journal Science. Read The Full Story Bush Calls For $4 Billion In Border Funds In Attempt To Revive Immigration Bill 2007-06-14 18:22:13 President Bush called for $4.4 billion in accelerated funding for "securing our borders and enforcing our laws at the work site" Thursday, as his administration and key senators struggled to revive controversial immigration legislation. "We're going to show the American people that the promises in this bill will be kept," Bush said, two days after launching a personal rescue mission. The measure's most controversial feature envisions eventual citizenship for many of the estimated 12 million immigrants now in the country unlawfully. At the same time, it calls for greater border security and a crackdown on the hiring of illegal employees. Bush made his remarks a few blocks from the Capitol, where the bill's supporters said they were closing in on a tentative agreement that could clear the way for the measure's revival within two weeks. Read The Full Story BREAKING NEWS: Abbas Dissolves Palestinian Government, Hamas Claims Control Of Presidential Compound 2007-06-14 17:23:52 Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Palestinian unity government Thursday and declared a state of emergency as the surging Islamic forces of the rival Hamas movement nearly completed their military conquest of the Gaza Strip. [Intellpuke: Hamas, meanwhile, is claiming its fighters have taken control of Abbas' presidential compound and several other key sites formerly controlled by forces with Abbas' Fatah organization. According to various breaking news reports, Hamas claims control of most of the Gaza strip, saying it is now under Islamic control, a key step to declaring an Islamic state, according to reports by CNN and Al Jazeera that have not been independently verified.] In a presidential decree, Abbas fired Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of Hamas, and suggested he would "return to the people" with new national elections in the future. His decision ends the four-monthpower-sharing arrangement between his Fatah movement and Hamas, the two largest Palestinian political parties. Sami Abu Zouhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said, "In practical terms these decisions are worthless." "Prime Minister Haniyeh remains the head of the government even if it was dissolved by the president," Abu Zouhri told the Reuters news agency. Read The Full Story Home Foreclosures Reach Record High 2007-06-14 13:14:22 The number of U.S. mortgages entering foreclosure reached an all-time high in the first three months of the year, led by homeowners with blemished credit histories, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a report Thursday. The rate of loans entering foreclosure was 0.58 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis, up from the previous record 0.54 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006. So-called subprime loans, made to risky borrowers, entered foreclosure at a rate of 2.43 percent, up from 2 percent the previous quarter. There was also an uptick in new foreclosures on prime loans, those made to people deemed more creditworthy - from 0.24 percent last quarter to 0.25 percent this quarter, the association reported. Falling housing prices have driven the spike in foreclosures by making it difficult for borrowers who cannot make their payments to sell their homes or refinance their loans, said Doug Duncan, chief economist for the Washington-based association. Read The Full Story Scientists Find That DNA Handles More Information Than Previously Thought 2007-06-14 13:14:02 The first concerted effort to understand all the inner workings of the DNA molecule is overturning a host of long-held assumptions about the nature of genes and their role in human health and evolution, scientists reported yesterday. The new perspective reveals DNA to be not just a string of biological code but a dauntingly complex operating system that processes many more kinds of information than previously appreciated. The findings, from a project involving hundreds of scientists in 11 countries and detailed in 29 papers being published today, confirm growing suspicions that the stretches of "junk DNA" flanking hardworking genes are not junk at all. But the study goes further, indicating for the first time that the vast majority of the 3 billion "letters" of the human genetic code are busily toiling at an array of previously invisible tasks. Read The Full Story Gas Prices Help Raise Wholesale Inflation 2007-06-14 13:13:17 The biggest jump in gasoline prices in six months helped push inflation at the wholesale level higher in May although inflation outside of energy remained well-behaved. The Labor Department reported that wholesale prices rose by 0.9 percent last month, worse than the 0.6 percent advance that analysts were expecting. The price surge was led by a 10.2 percent jump in gasoline prices, the biggest one-month increase since last November. However, food prices declined for the first time in seven months and, outside the volatile food and energy sectors, core inflation posted a moderate 0.2 percent increase. That was slightly better than the 0.3 percent advance that analysts were expecting. Read The Full Story
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