Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday June 11 2007 - (813)

Monday June 11 2007 edition
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Breach Shows U.S. Borders Still Vulnerable 2007-06-11 01:39:20 U.S. authorities last week blamed tuberculosis carrier Andrew Speaker's illicit reentry to America on a single point of human error, faulting a Champlain, New York, inspector who failed to detain him as instructed by a computer alert. The episode underscored much broader gaps in border security that may persist as a result of actions taken by Congress and the Bush administration on passport and immigration policies in recent weeks, former U.S. officials, say analysts and government reports. In August, a congressional study said investigators who used fake identification documents and posed as American travelers reported breaching U.S. land border inspections 93 percent of the time in 2002 and 2003, succeeding in 42 of 45 tries. In 2006, testers got through on all 18 attempts. Read The Full Story GOP Loyalists Often Get Immigration Judgeships 2007-06-11 01:38:48 The Bush administration increasingly emphasized partisan political ties over expertise in recent years in selecting the judges who decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, despite laws that preclude such considerations, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. At least one-third of the immigration judges appointed by the Justice Department since 2004 have had Republican connections or have been administration insiders, and half lacked experience in immigration law, Justice Department, immigration court and other records show. Two newly appointed immigration judges were failed candidates for the U.S. Tax Court nominated by President Bush; one fudged his taxes and the other was deemed unqualified to be a tax judge by the nation's largest association of lawyers. Both were Republican loyalists. Read The Full Story BAE Investigation: Questions Over Secret Bank Transfers 2007-06-11 01:38:13 The British arms company BAE Systems used a secret payments system to transfer more than £13 million ($26 million) to a company linked to David Hart, the controversial former Conservative defense adviser, according to legal sources. He has acted as a lobbyist both for Britain's biggest arms company and also for the giant military manufacturer Boeing in the U.S. Hart, an Old Etonian who lives in a Suffolk mansion, became notorious in the 1980s for helping the then prime minster Margaret Thatcher break the miners' strike in an operation he ran from a luxury suite at Claridges hotel, in London. BAE is alleged to have paid the money into a previously unknown offshore company linked to Hart called Defense Consultancy Ltd (DCL). Read The Full Story Russia's Gazprom Hints At British Acquisition By End Of June 2007-06-11 01:37:12 The Russian gas monopoly Gazprom said Sunday it was about to close a deal that would increase its presence in Britain but did not name the company. Alexander Medvedev, Gazprom's deputy chief executive, said at an economic forum in St. Petersburg Sunday: "In the near future there will be a deal to further increase the customer base on the British market. Anyone who will be in London for the Wimbledon tennis tournament will know about it." Wimbledon starts at the end of this month. Gazprom has long been tipped to buy Centrica, the owner of British Gas, or other European companies as it seeks a greater presence in the markets for its gas and Medvedev's words may spark speculative interest in Centrica's shares Monday. Read The Full Story Scientists At A Loss To Explain Why Bees Are Vanishing 2007-06-10 12:56:41 The dead bees under Dennis vanEngelsdorp's microscope were like none he had ever seen. He had expected to see mites or amoebas, perennial pests of bees. Instead, he found internal organs swollen with debris and strangely blackened. The bees' intestinal tracts were scarred, and their rectums were abnormally full of what appeared to be partly digested pollen. Dark marks on the sting glands were telltale signs of infection. "The more you looked, the more you found," said VanEngelsdorp, the acting apiarist for the state of Pennsylvania. "Each thing was a surprise." VanEngelsdorp's examination of the bees in November was one of the first scientific glimpses of a mysterious honeybee die-off that has launched an intense search for a cure. Read The Full Story Microsoft Finds Legal Defender In U.S. Justice Dept. 2007-06-10 12:56:04 Nearly a decade after the government began its landmark effort to break up Microsoft, the Bush administration has sharply changed course by repeatedly defending the company both in the United States and abroad against accusations of anticompetitive conduct, including the recent rejection of a complaint by Google. The retrenchment reflects a substantially different view of antitrust policy, as well as a recognition of major changes in the marketplace. The battlefront among technology companies has shifted from computer desktop software, a category that Microsoft dominates, to Internet search and Web-based software programs that allow users to bypass products made by Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker. In the most striking recent example of the policy shift, the top antitrust official at the Justice Department last month urged state prosecutors to reject a confidential antitrust complaint filed by Google that is tied to a consent decree that monitors Microsoft’s behavior. Google has accused Microsoft of designing its latest operating system, Vista, to discourage the use of Google’s desktop search program, said lawyers involved in the case. Read The Full Story Gap In Atlantis' Thermal Blanket Studied 2007-06-10 00:32:54 With a 4-inch gap in the space shuttle Atlantis' heat-protecting blanket not appearing to be an urgent problem on Saturday, the crew readied themselves for what NASA called a delicate ballet with the international space station. Then the shuttle will enter a weeklong embrace Sunday with the orbital outpost. Atlantis' seven astronauts spent much of Saturday on a mandatory inspection of the shuttle's delicate heat tiles, outer edges and blankets for problems similar to the kind that caused the fatal Columbia accident in 2003. As of Saturday afternoon, no glaring problems were reported. Yet late Friday and early Saturday, the crew spent extra time using a robot arm to look at a gap in a thermal blanket on the left side of the shuttle. The gap, about 4 inches by 6 inches, appears to have been caused by air lifting the corner of the blanket up, John Shannon, chairman of the mission management team, said at a news conference. Read The Full Story 50,000 Years Of Resilience May Not Save Tribe 2007-06-10 00:32:12 One of the last remaining tribes of hunter-gatherers on the planet is on the verge of vanishing into the modern world. The transition has been long underway, but members of the dwindling Hadzabe tribe, who now number fewer than 1,500, say it is being unduly hastened by a United Arab Emirates royal family, which plans to use the tribal hunting land as a personal safari playground. The deal between the Tanzanian government and Tanzania UAE Safaris Ltd. leases nearly 2,500 square miles of this sprawling, yellow-green valley near the storied Serengeti Plain to members of the royal family, who chose it after a helicopter tour. Read The Full Story	CIA Plans Cutbacks, Limits On Contractor Staffing 2007-06-11 01:39:03 Acting under pressure from Congress, the CIA has decided to trim its contractor staffing by 10 percent. It is the agency's first effort since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to curb what critics have decried as the growing privatization of U.S. intelligence work, a circumstance that has sharply boosted some personnel costs. Contractors currently make up about one-third of the CIA workforce, but CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has said that their work has not been efficiently managed. Associate Deputy Director Michael Morell said in an interview that he does not think the CIA has become a revolving door, but "Director Hayden has said we don't want to become the farm team for contractors." Morell said reviews are underway "to identify which of our jobs here at CIA should be done by staff and which of our jobs should be done by contractors or a 'mix' of contractors and staff." Effective June 1, the agency also began to bar contracting firms from hiring former CIA employees and then offering the employees' services to the CIA within the first year and a half of their retirement from the agency - a practice known as "bidding back." Read The Full Story Michael Moore Rides To Rescue Of Nemesis Out To Discredit Him 2007-06-11 01:38:27 It's not easy being a nemesis. Particularly if your opponent is Michael Moore. Jim Kenefick has spent years trying to expose the documentary maker's "deceptions and half-truths" through his website, Moorewatch.com,under the mantra: "Watching Michael Moore's every move." What he hadn't counted on was that Moore would turn out to be his anonymous guardian angel, coming to his financial rescue with a check  for $12,000 (£6,000). The saga began last year when Kenefick was struggling to pay for healthcare for his wife, who was recovering from a neurological disorder and had no medical insurance. Kenefick, whose site is one of the most popular anti-Moore blogs, in desperation posted a note in which he pleaded for advice in words which he may live to regret: "If you can help, I will be in your debt for all of time." An operator like Moore doesn't miss such a chance. Particularly as he was making his latest film "Sicko" - a journey into the tragic, farcical world of U.S. healthcare. On May 1 last year Kenefick received a check from an anonymous individual for a lump sum equivalent to a year's medical fees for his wife. It was enough to ease the crisis and ensure the continuation of the website, so Kenefick banked the check and put up a thank you note to the person he called his "guardian angel". Read The Full Story French Right Poised For Landslide Election Win 2007-06-11 01:37:55 The French right are heading for a parliamentary landslide after an historic score in Sunday's first-round vote promised president Nicolas Sarkozy a majority to secure his economic reforms. Pro-Sarkozy parliament members could win up to 470 seats in the 577-seat national assembly, according to predictions by polling firm CSA. The divided Socialist opposition was forecast to lose between 60 and 140 parliament members, according to pollsters. The "blue tide" of conservative seats across the country was expected to confirm Sarkozy's high public support since his election last month. Strong parliamentary backing would allow him to immediately begin his "economic revolution", slashing taxes, loosening the 35-hour week, limiting strike powers and cutting the numbers of public sector workers. Read The Full Story Iran's Crackdown On Dissidents Intensifies 2007-06-10 12:57:09 The government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in the midst of one of the most intensive crackdowns on domestic dissent in the last two decades, targeting groups as diverse as banks and labor unions, students and civic organizations. In the United States, attention has focused on the detention of four Iranian American dual nationals, three of whom have been charged by the government in Tehran with endangering Iran's national security. According to human rights activists and ordinary Iranians who described the events, the effect of the crackdown has been far more widespread at home. The first extensive detentions came in April aimed at people wearing clothes deemed not to comply with Islamic strictures. Security forces swarmed streets in Tehran and grabbed people wearing skimpy head scarves, short overcoats or tight shirts. By the end of the month, about 150,000 had been stopped or detained, said the chief of the national police. Most were held only briefly. Since then, the campaign has widened. Student and union leaders have been arrested, and scholars have been harassed for refusing to sign statements denouncing Israel, human rights groups say. Private banks have come under attack for their interest rates. Read The Full Story Colin Powell: Guantanamo Should Be Closed 2007-06-10 12:56:18 Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay for foreign terrorism suspects should be immediately closed and its inmates moved to the United States. Powell, who in a 2003 speech to the U.N. Security Council made the case for war against Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction that were never found, said the controversial prison in Cuba had become a "major problem" for the United States' image abroad and done more harm than good. "Guantanamo has become a major, major problem ... in the way the world perceives America and if it were up to me I would close Guantanamo not tomorrow but this afternoon ... and I would not let any of those people go. I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system," Powell told NBC's Meet the Press. Read The Full Story U.S. Military Envisions 'Post-Occupation' Force 2007-06-10 00:33:10 U.S. military officials officials here (in Baghdad) are increasingly envisioning a "post-occupation" troop presence in Iraq that neither maintains current levels nor leads to a complete pullout, but aims for a smaller, longer-term force that would remain in the country for years. This goal, drawn from recent interviews with more than 20 U.S. military officers and other officials here, including senior commanders, strategists and analysts, remains in the early planning stages. It is based on officials' assessment that a sharp drawdown of troops is likely to begin by the middle of next year, with roughly two-thirds of the current force of 150,000 moving out by late 2008 or early 2009. The questions officials are grappling with are not whether the U.S. presence will be cut, but how quickly, to what level and to what purpose. One of the guiding principles, according to two officials in Baghdad, is that the United States should leave Iraq more intelligently than it entered. Military officials, many of whom would be interviewed only on the condition of anonymity, say they are now assessing conditions more realistically, rejecting the "steady progress" mantra of their predecessors and recognizing that short-term political reconciliation in Iraq is unlikely. A reduction of troops, some officials argue, would demonstrate to anti-American factions that the occupation will not last forever while reassuring Iraqi allies that the United States does not intend to abandon the country. Read The Full Story Supplier Expands Beef Recall Over E. Coli Concerns 2007-06-10 00:32:33 A meat supplier has expanded a ground beef recall to include about 5.7 million pounds of fresh and frozen meat because they may be contaminated with E. coli. David Goldman, acting administrator of the federal Food Safety and Inspection Service, announced on Saturday that the recall would be expanded to include products with sell-by dates from April 6 to April 20. The beef was distributed by United Food Group LLC, based in California. Goldman said that none of the latest batch of suspect beef was in stores now because the product would be well past its expiration date, but that consumers might still have some of the meat at home. Read The Full Story
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