Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday June 25 2007 - (813)

Monday June 25 2007 edition
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Audit Of KBR Iraq Contract Faults Records For Fuel, Food 2007-06-25 02:07:43 KBR, the government contracting firm formerly under Halliburton, did not keep accurate records of gasoline distribution, put its employees in living spaces that may be larger than warranted and served meals that appeared to cost $4.5 million more than necessary under a contract to perform work in Iraq, according to an audit by a government oversight agency. The report, to be released today by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, addresses a sliver of a $22.5 billion contract that KBR won to provide services for the U.S. military. The inspector general's office focused on four services that KBR was paid to provide in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone: supplying gasoline, food services, and housing and various morale and recreation services. The inspector general faulted the U.S. government for not closely monitoring KBR. As a result, the report said, "KBR's operations may have resulted in excessive government costs and high risk that government resources could have been used improperly." Read The Full Story Drug-Resistant MRSA Strain May Be Spreading From Pigs To Humans 2007-06-25 02:07:14 Campaigners Monday called for urgent tests on the U.K.'s farm animals after the emergence of a new strain of MRSA which has spread rapidly among farmers in Europe, causing an array of serious infections. The drug-resistant bug is thought to have arisen in pigs fed antibiotics to protect them against farm-borne diseases and boost their growth. The emergence of the new strain backs up fears voiced by some experts that the heavy use of antibiotics in farm animals could lead to a drug-resistant bug capable of infecting humans. The strain of staphylococcus aureus, known as ST398, is resistant to commonly used antibiotics and has caused skin infections and rare heart and bone infections in patients in the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Germany. A report published Monday by the organic farming organization, the Soil Association, says the superbug represents a new threat to human health. It urged the government to introduce immediate screening of national livestock and strict testing of imported meat products and animals from affected regions, to prevent the superbug spreading to Britain. The report reveals the swift spread of the new MRSA strain, which tested positive in 39% of pigs at nine abattoirs in the Netherlands last year. A further survey identified the strain in 13% of Dutch calves. Read The Full Story Alaska Wilfire Wreaks Havoc 2007-06-25 02:06:39 With dozens of homes and cabins already destroyed by wildfire, crews worked Sunday to protect hundreds of others tucked in the hills of the scenic Kenai Peninsula. The fire has burgeoned to 81 square miles since Tuesday, consuming 35 far-flung cabins in the Caribou Hills, state fire information officials said. Forty other structures, including sheds and outhouses, were also lost in the popular hunting and snowmobiling area about 80 miles south of Anchorage. The blaze is carving easily through wide swaths of spruce killed by beetles, and crews are finding it hard to maneuver in the warren of footpaths and gravel roads crisscrossing the hills, said fire information officer Elaine Hall. The fire threatens another 600 residences and cabins, said Hall. An evacuation order has been in effect since Friday, but fire officials said an unknown number of residents have refused to budge. Read The Full Story Video Shows Kidnapped BBC Journalist Wearing Explosives Belt 2007-06-25 02:06:10 The British Foreign Office has condemned a video of the kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston which shows him with a belt of explosives strapped around his waist. News of the video emerged in a speech by the deposed Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza, in which he criticized the kidnapping as a threat to Palestinian interests. Haniyeh said: "In the past they showed him in an orange uniform. Today they showed him with an explosives belt round his waist." The one-minute 42-second tape, titled "Alan's Appeal", was posted by a group calling itself the Army of Islam, which has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, on a site often used by militants. Looking nervous and stressed, Johnston says: "Captors tell me that very promising negotiations were ruined when the Hamas movement and the British government decided to press for a military solution to this kidnapping. The situation now is very serious. As you can see I have been dressed in what is an explosive belt which the kidnappers say will be detonated if there was any attempt to storm this area," he adds. Read The Full Story 5 U.N. Peacekeepers Killed In Lebanon 2007-06-24 16:47:03 Five United Nations peacekeepers were killed Sunday and three others wounded in an explosion targeting U.N.  troops in southern Lebanon, said Spain's defense minister and Lebanese military officials. Spanish Defense Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said the five included three Colombians and two Spanish peacekeepers. The three injured troops were also from Spain, he told reporters in Madrid. “The mostly likely cause of this attack has been an explosion of a car bomb or device activated by remote control. It has been a premeditated attack,” he said, ruling out that a land mine caused the blast. Read The Full Story 'Mile-Wide UFO' Spotted By British Airline Pilot 2007-06-24 15:47:43 One of the largest UFOs ever seen has been observed by the crew and passengers of an airliner over the Channel Islands off the British coast. An official air-miss report on the incident several weeks ago appears in Pilot magazine. Aurigny Airlines captain Ray Bowyer, 50, flying close to Alderney first spotted the object, described as "a cigar-shaped brilliant white light". As the plane got closer the captain viewed it through binoculars and said: "It was a very sharp, thin yellow object with a green area. Read The Full Story Coal Fuels A Debate Over Obama 2007-06-24 13:26:43 In 2004, as a state legislator running for the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama came 300 miles from Chicago to the small town of Benton to pledge support for southern Illinois' struggling coal country. More than just an obligatory visit to the more conservative and rural part of the state, it was a chance for Obama to affirm his reputation as the rare politician who could see both sides of an issue and form alliances across traditional divides. "It doesn't matter if you are a Republican or Democrat, you've got to be able to work with people to accomplish some common-sense policies and make people's lives a little bit better," he said from the steps of the county courthouse. Three years later, with Obama now a candidate for president, his embrace of southern Illinois and its dominant industry is showing signs of strain. Obama finds himself caught between his advocacy of huge federal subsidies for liquefied coal for transportation fuel, a technology that the Illinois coal industry views as a salvation, and environmental groups that reject it as a boondoggle that would set back efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the fight against global warming. Read The Full Story 'Chemical Ali' Sentenced To Death By Hanging 2007-06-24 13:26:17 Three senior aides to Saddam Hussein, including the one known as "Chemical Ali," were found guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Iraqi High Tribunal on Sunday and sentenced to death by hanging for their roles in the mass slaughter of as many as 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq in the late 1980s. The most infamous of the convicted defendants was Ali Hassan al-Majeed - commonly known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering the use of deadly mustard gas and nerve agents against the Kurds, who received five death sentences. Ali, 66, was a cousin of Hussein, the former dictator who was executed last year for ordering the killings of 148 men and boys in the town of Dujail, 35 miles north of Baghdad, after a failed assassination attempt against him there in 1982. Hussein originally was a defendant in the case that concluded Sunday, which focused on the so-called Anfal campaign that his regime waged against the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq in 1987 and 1988, and which included the systematic round-up, torture and execution of Kurds and the razing of their towns. Tens of thousands of people continue to bear the physical and emotional scars of the offensive. Read The Full Story Ex-Surveillance Judge Faults Warrantless Taps On Americans 2007-06-24 02:03:59 A federal judge who used to authorize wiretaps in terrorism and espionage cases Saturday criticized President Bush's decision to order warrantless surveillance after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "We have to understand you can fight the war [on terrorism] and lose everything if you have no civil liberties left when you get through fighting the war," said Royce C. Lamberth, a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C.,  and a former presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, speaking at the American Library Association'sannual convention. Lamberth, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan, expressed his opposition to letting the executive branch decide on its own which people to spy on in national security cases. Read The Full Story Commentary: Lay Off America - Its Heart Is In The Right Place 2007-06-24 02:03:36 Intellpuke: The following commentary is by The Observer columnist Carol Sarler. It appears in the Manchester, U.K.-based The Observer's edition for Sunday, June 24, 2007. What can I say? I like the title and the column and thought it merited a broader audience. Carol Sarler's commentary follows: Once again, this time for a report commissioned by the broadcaster itself, the ostensibly neutral BBC stands accused of a sneaky preference for dressing to the left. Much of the evidence for this is, at best, wobbly, but one witness employee, Washington correspondent Justin Webb, needs to be heard. The organization, he peeved, is anti-American; it treats the U.S. with scorn and derision and accords it "no moral weight". He is, thus far at least, correct. The last 10 years have seen American stories relegated to a slew of "and finally"  freak shows, a vast country's talents reduced to synchronized gas-guzzling as choreographed by Paris Hilton. The trouble is that it is not just the BBC; disdaining Americans has become a national sport, regardless of the fact that it requires the skill of all sports involving fish, guns and barrels. Everybody knows the check-list, only their priorities vary: stem cells, lethal injections, indelicate warfare, creationism, the second amendment, Wal-Mart, reproductive choice, pointy white hoods, chewing tobacco and obscene chocolate. We may add personal quibbles: that they call this paper The London Observer, on the solipsistic basis that if all their newspapers are mono-citied, then so must be everyone's. Or that now they finally screen Formula One, they go to ad breaks during clusters of pitstops because, apparently, stationary cars are boring. Jeez. Read The Full Story Karzai Decries Civilian Deaths, Says Recent NATO, U.S. Operations 'Careless' 2007-06-24 02:02:39 Afghan President Hamid Karzai chastised U.S. and NATO-led troops Saturday for their "careless operations" and accused them of killing more than 90 civilians in the past 10 days, as fresh reports emerged of more noncombatant deaths. Using some of his strongest language yet against the foreign forces that occupy his country, Karzai asserted that "Afghan life is not cheap and it should not be treated as such." "We do not want any more military operations without coordinating them with the Afghan government," a visibly angry Karzai said at a news conference in Kabul, the capital. "From now onwards, they have to work the way we ask them to work in here." Read The Full Story	Commentary: Don't Privatize Our Spies 2007-06-25 02:07:32 Intellpuke: In the following commentary, Patrick Radden Keefe writes that contracting out spy work is a bad idea. Mr. Keefe, a fellow at the Century Foundation, is the author of “Chatter: Dispatches From the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping.” His commentary appears in the New York Times edition for Monday, June 25, 2007. Shortly after 9/11, Senator Bob Graham, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called for “a symbiotic relationship between the intelligence community and the private sector.” They say you should be careful what you wish for. In the intervening years a huge espionage-industrial complex has developed, as government spymasters outsourced everything from designing surveillance technology to managing case officers overseas. Today less than half of the staff at the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington, D.C., are actual government employees, The Los Angeles Times reports; at the C.I.A. station in Islamabad, Pakistan, contractors sometimes outnumber employees by three to one. So just how much of the intelligence budget goes to private contracts? Because that budget is highly classified, and many intelligence contracts are allocated without oversight or competitive bidding, it seemed we would never know. Until last month, that is: a procurement executive from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence gave a PowerPoint presentation at a conference in Colorado and let slip a staggering statistic - private contracts now account for 70 percent of the intelligence budget. Read The Full Story Romney Gaining Credibility In Early Primary States 2007-06-25 02:06:57 When former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney began airing television ads in a handful of states last winter, his opponents paid little notice. Early advertising in presidential campaigns - particularly commercials broadcast almost 11 months before the first contests - seemed a classic waste of resources. Four months and more than $4 million later, Romney's ads are still running, and the GOP presidential candidate is reaping the dividends. Although he remains well behind former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, in most national polls, his standing in the states that will kick off the nominating process has risen dramatically. In New Hampshire, Romney leads both McCain, who won there in 2000, and Giuliani, who leads virtually all the national polls. In Iowa, his campaign's organizational depth recently drove Giuliani and McCain to drop out of an August GOP presidential straw poll - seen as a trial run for next year's first-in-the-nation caucuses - rather than risk a costly and embarrassing defeat at the hands of their lesser-known rival. Read The Full Story Fire Destroys 165 Homes In California 2007-06-25 02:06:26 A wind-driven wildfire destroyed at least 165 homes and other structures and scorched 750 acres just southwest of Lake Tahoe, a spokesman for the El Dorado County Sheriff's Department said Sunday. Sheriff's Lt. Kevin House said the fire is less than 5 percent contained and has more than 500 homes in its path, but no injuries or deaths have been reported. The cause of the fire is still unknown. ''This thing is raging out of control, and there's no estimate as to when that may change,'' said House. The El Dorado County Board of Supervisors has issued a declaration of emergency, said House. Read The Full Story Tornado Cleanup Begins In Southern Manitoba, Canada 2007-06-24 16:47:16 Manitoba Premier Gary Doer toured the town of Elie, Manitoba, west of Winnipeg Saturday where a tornado hit hard the night before. The tornado destroyed at least four homes and damaged several others, but there were no reports of injuries. It also tossed several trucks into fields and caused a semi to roll into the ditch on the Trans-Canada Highway. Environment Canada said the storm was more than likely a violent F4 tornado. Read The Full Story Italy's Eni, Russia's Gazprom Agree To 2nd Black Sea Pipeline 2007-06-24 16:46:50 Gazprom and Italian oil firm Eni unveiled a plan Saturday for a big new pipeline to take Russian natural gas under the Black Sea to Europe, undermining an earlier plan to extend a Turkish route. The 900-kilometer South Stream pipeline would come ashore in Bulgaria and then branch to Austria and Slovenia in one spur and southern Italy in another, Eni CEO Paolo Scaroni said at a news conference with Gazprom deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev and the two countries industry ministers. Scaroni said the project would now go through feasibility studies and that construction might start as early as next year. It will carry 30 billion cubic meters of gas per year, enough to supply Greece and Bulgaria, Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko told Vesti-24 television. Read The Full Story Cheney's Unprecedented Power Is Exerted Behind The Scenes 2007-06-24 13:27:01 Just past the Oval Office, in the private dining room overlooking the South Lawn, Vice President Cheney joined President Bush at a round parquet table they shared once a week. Cheney brought a four-page text, written in strict secrecy by his lawyer. He carried it back out with him after lunch. In less than an hour, the document traversed a West Wing circuit that gave its words the power of command. It changed hands four times, according to witnesses, with emphatic instructions to bypass staff review. When it returned to the Oval Office, in a blue portfolio embossed with the presidential seal, Bush pulled a felt-tip pen from his pocket and signed without sitting down. Almost no one else had seen the text. Cheney's proposal had become a military order from the commander in chief. Foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States were stripped of access to any court - civilian or military, domestic or foreign. They could be confined indefinitely without charges and would be tried, if at all, in closed "military commissions." "What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, incensed, sent an aide to find out. Even witnesses to the Oval Office signing said they did not know the vice president had played any part. Read The Full Story Torrential Rains Kill At Least 228 In Pakistan 2007-06-24 13:26:28 Storms and torrential rain have killed more than 200 people in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, a provincial minister said on Sunday, and left angry residents without power. "Now the total number of those killed because of rain is 228," provincial Health Minister Sardar Ahmed told Reuters. "These deaths are caused by electrocution, falling trees, house collapses and road accidents." More bad weather is forecast for Pakistan and neighboring India, where dozens have died after prolonged downpours across the country in the last few days. Aid workers and military helicopters in India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh were battling on Sunday to provide food for 200,000 people displaced by monsoon floods. Read The Full Story Iraq Sentences `Chemical Ali' to Death 2007-06-24 11:03:44 Iraq's High Tribunal sentenced ``Chemical Ali'' and former Defense Minister Sultan Hashem to death, condemning all bar one of the senior aides of the deposed President Saddam Hussein who was executed in December. Judge Mohammed Khalifa al-Oraibi also sentenced Hussein Rashid Mohammed, former deputy director of operations in the Iraqi army, to death, the government of Kurdistan in Iraq said on its Web site. Former Vice-President Izzat al-Douri is the last senior aide of Saddam Hussein to remain at large. Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as ``Chemical Ali'' for his role in using chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds in the Anfal campaign in 1988, is a cousin of Saddam. During the Anfal campaign, Iraqi forces used chemical gas on more than 4000 Kurdish villages, killing over 100,000 people, the Web site of the government of Kurdistan, one of Iraq's three regions, said. Read The Full Story Editorial: White House Of Mirrors 2007-06-24 02:03:48 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Sunday, June 24, 2007. President Bush has turned the executive branch into a two-way mirror. They get to see everything Americans do: our telephone calls, e-mail, and all manner of personal information. And we get to see nothing about what they do. Everyone knows this administration has disdained openness and accountability since its first days. That is about the only thing it does not hide. But recent weeks have produced disturbing disclosures about just how far Mr. Bush’s team is willing to go to keep lawmakers and the public in the dark. That applies to big issues - like the C.I.A.’s secret prisons - and to things that would seem too small-bore to order up a cover-up. Vice President Dick Cheney sets the gold standard, placing himself not just above Congress and the courts but above Mr. Bush himself. For the last four years, he has been defying a presidential order requiring executive branch agencies to account for the classified information they handle. When the agency that enforces this rule tried to do its job, Mr. Cheney proposed abolishing the agency. Read The Full Story Iraqi Kurds Await Chemical Ali Verdict 2007-06-24 02:03:11 Kurds bought sheep to slaughter in celebration and stockpiled generator fuel to keep televisions working for Sunday's verdict against Saddam Hussein's cousin, known as Chemical Ali, and others accused in a 1980s crackdown against them. Many in northern Iraq said they anticipate the harshest penalty possible against Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam's cousin and the former head of the Baath Party's Northern Bureau Command, who is accused of responsibility for using chemical weapons against Kurds in the late 1980s scorched-earth campaign to crush a rebellion in the north. The case - called Anfal after the codename for the campaign - does not include the deaths of an estimated 5,600 people in a 1988 chemical weapons attack in Halabja, 150 miles northeast of Baghdad. But the impoverished town has become a focal point for the anger over the operation that led to the deaths of 100,000 Kurds and memories of the atrocities remain fresh in the minds of the survivors. Read The Full Story
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