Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday June 16 2007 - (813)

Saturday June 16 2007 edition
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Behind In the GOP Candidate Polls, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul Is Huge On The Web 2007-06-16 03:01:08 On Technorati, which offers a real-time glimpse of the blogosphere, the most frequently searched term this week was "YouTube". Then comes "Ron Paul". The presence of the obscure Republican congressman from Texas on a list that includes terms such as "Sopranos", "Paris Hilton" and "iPhone" is a sign of the online buzz building around the long-shot Republican presidential hopeful - even as mainstream political pundits have written him off. Rep. Ron Paul is more popular on Facebook than Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona). He's got more friends on MySpace than former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. His MeetUp groups, with 11,924 members in 279 cities, are the biggest in the Republican field. And his official YouTube videos, including clips of his three debate appearances, have been viewed nearly 1.1 million times - more than those of any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, except Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois). Read The Full Story Gaza, West Bank Split Deepens 2007-06-16 03:00:37 Leaders of the Hamas and Fatah parties began operating parallel Palestinian governments Friday after days of intense factional fighting that have sharply defined the political and geographic divisions undermining the Palestinian drive for statehood. As street battles in the Gaza Strip gave way to calm, Palestinian analysts and Israeli officials said Hamas's swift military conquest of the strip has badly fractured the Palestinian territories and the government established 13 years ago to run them. The hardening differences could be seen in both Gaza and the West Bank, the two increasingly separate pieces of a future Palestinian state now administered by rival armed parties whose leaders each claimed Friday to be conducting official government business. The division has broad humanitarian and security implications for the Palestinians, for Israel and for foreign donor nations, which are weighing whether to end economic sanctions against the Palestinian Authority now that it no longer includes Hamas. Read The Full Story Arab Nations Back Abbas 2007-06-15 22:07:27 Arab nations threw their support behind the leadership of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday, but also urged an immediate halt to infighting so that the unity of Palestinian lands can be preserved. Arab League foreign ministers gathered for an emergency session on how to deal with the Palestinian split after militant Hamas gained full control of the Gaza Strip. "We are seeking a national unity in Palestine and we stand against the events that we have witnessed in the last days," said Arab League chief Amr Moussa, adding there must be an "immediate and full halt" to the violence. Moussa said that Arab nations want to "serve the Palestinian cause, and not one faction against another." Read The Full Story Sen. Ted Stevens Gets Delay On Financial Disclosure 2007-06-15 22:06:39 U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has asked the Senate ethics committee to review his finances from last year, allowing him to delay filing his official disclosure forms and making him one of four lawmakers receiving such extensions amid investigations involving their personal dealings. Federal investigators have asked Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, to preserve records related to a widening corruption inquiry in Alaska that has brought four indictments of current and former state legislators and plea agreements from two energy company executives. The executives, one of whom is a close friend of Stevens, pleaded guilty to paying more than $400,000 in bribes to the state lawmakers, including an unindicted "state Senator B." The latter's consulting payments, according to court records, match those reported by Ben Stevens, the son of Ted Stevens and a former state senator. "At Senator Stevens's request, the Senate ethics committee is reviewing his 2006 financial disclosure. That process is still ongoing, therefore it was necessary for Senator Stevens to file an extension," said Aaron Saunders, spokesman for Stevens. He declined to specify why the senator had asked for the ethics review. Read The Full Story Pakistan's Soldiers "Huddling In Their Bases" In Tribal Areas 2007-06-15 19:31:37 The Pakistani army is paralyzed by the growing Taliban threat and some retired officers are covertly aiding the militants, according to a former CIA officer. Soldiers posted to Waziristan, a tribal area that hosts an estimated 2,000 al-Qaeda fighters, are "huddling in their bases, doing nothing", said Art Keller, a CIA case officer who was posted to Pakistan last year. "Their approach was to pretend that nothing was wrong because any other approach would reveal that they were unwilling and unable to do anything about Talibanization," said Keller, who has visited Waziristan. The Pakistani military insists it is doing its best. President Pervez Musharraf has repeatedly referred to the 80,000 soldiers posted to the tribal areas, about 700 of whom have been killed in action. Read The Full Story Literary World Applauds Salman Rushdie Knighthood 2007-06-15 19:31:10 Salman Rushdie has amassed for himself a fair number of distinctions over the years, among them the Booker of Bookers prize, the Whitbread novel award (twice), the James Tait Black memorial prize, and a fatwa from the Ayatollah Khomeini calling for his immediate assassination. Friday, however, came the big one: a knighthood recognizing the services to literature of one of the world's most lauded - and most divisive - literary grandees. "I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great honor, and am very grateful that my work has been recognized in this way," the newly-minted Sir Salman said in a statement. The announcement signals a belated endorsement by the British establishment, 18 years after the author was forced to go on the run after "The Satanic Verses" was condemned as blasphemy by Iran's late spiritual leader. Britain broke off diplomatic relations over the incident; Rushdie himself had to live in hiding for a decade. Read The Full Story Hamas Offers Amnesty To Fatah Leaders 2007-06-15 13:18:14 Victorious Hamas gunmen rounded up senior military leaders of the Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip early Friday, then announced a general amnesty in a sign the Islamic movement is seeking to reconcile with its secular rivals after five days of fierce fighting. As world leaders planned to confer on the fast-moving events, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas moved to restructure the crumbling Palestinian government, naming independent lawmaker Salam Fayyad as prime minister a day after dismissing Hamas' leader from the post. The amnesty announcement defused worries that Hamas, which completed its swift military seizure of Gaza hours earlier, would begin dispensing victor's justice in the strip. In announcing the arrest of the commanders of the vanquished Fatah-controlled security services, Hamas officials called them "collaborators," a label indicating they work on behalf of Israel and can often mean a death sentence in the Palestinian territories. Read The Full Story U.S. Says Troop Levels For Iraq Surge Are Complete 2007-06-15 13:17:37 The full contingent of new U.S. forces being sent to Iraq - what military leaders call a "surge" of troops to improve security and stability in the capital - was completed by Friday, with 28,500 additional troops now posted in the country, said a U.S. military spokesman. "The strategic movement of forces into the theater is complete, and the surge is just starting," said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver. "Now that the force is here, we'll see the counterinsurgency start in full swing, and we'll be able to execute the strategy as it was designed." The full mobilization of the surge comes at the end of another tense week in Iraq, following the bombing Wednesday of an important Shiite shrine in Samarra. A widespread curfew and appeals for calm appears to have muted the cycle of retaliation that followed a 2006 attack on the same mosque. At least 13 Sunni mosques were attacked on Thursday, but the violence did not seem to be escalating into open warfare. Read The Full Story 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	Shadow War In Iraq Escalates In Intensity 2007-06-16 03:00:55 Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. militrary and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq,enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives. While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armor and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase, said the officials and company representatives. One in seven supply convoys protected by private forces has come under attack this year, according to previously unreleased statistics; one security company reported nearly 300 "hostile actions" in the first four months. The majority of the more than 100 security companies operate outside of Iraqi law, in part because of bureaucratic delays and corruption in the Iraqi government licensing process, according to U.S. officials. Blackwater USA, a prominent North Carolina firm that protects U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker,and several other companies have not applied, said U.S. and Iraqi officials. Blackwater said that it obtained a one-year license in 2005 but that shifting Iraqi government policy has impeded its attempts to renew. Read The Full Story Strategy On Iran Pits Rice Against Cheney's Hawks 2007-06-15 22:07:43 A year after President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a new strategy toward Iran a behind-the-scenes debate has broken out within the administration over whether the approach has any hope of reining in Iran’s nuclear program, according to senior administration officials. The debate has pitted Rice and her deputies, who appear to be winning so far, against the few remaining hawks inside the administration, especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney's office who, according to some people familiar with the discussions, are pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. In the year since Rice announced the new strategy for the United States to join forces with Europe, Russia and China to press Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, Iran has installed more than a thousand centrifuges to enrich uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) predicts that 8,000 or so could be spinning by the end of the year, if Iran surmounts its technical problems. Those hard numbers are at the core of the debate within the administration over whether Bush should warn Iran’s leaders that he will not allow them to get beyond some yet-undefined milestones, leaving the implication that a military strike on the country’s facilities is still an option. Read The Full Story 5 G.I.'s Killed, U.S. F-16 Crashes In Iraq 2007-06-15 22:07:12 A U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jet crashed Friday during a close air support mission for ground forces - a rare loss in Iraq of the workhorse aircraft. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Robert Gates came to Baghdad on an unannounced visit, and the U.S. military said five soldiers had died. An Air Force announcement, which referred to the 12:27 a.m. crash of the F-16 as an accident, did not say where it occurred or what happened to the pilot, the single crew member. It said the military was investigating the cause of the crash. An Ohio National Guard spokesman said the pilot, whom he did not identify, was a member of the 180th Fighter Wing based in Toledo, Ohio. Spokesman Mark Wayda said about 270 of the unit's 1,000 members were deployed to Iraq last month. The jet was operating under the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing at Balad Air Base, 50 miles north of Baghdad. Read The Full Story Cosmonauts Make Progress On Space Station Computers 2007-06-15 22:06:04 Russian cosmonauts made progress yesterday in restoring service on their essential computers on the international space station, using a jumper cable to bypass a malfunctioning power switch. Four of the six computer "channels" were restored yesterday afternoon, according to NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean. She said that it remains unclear whether they will continue to operate but that officials are optimistic. The main computers in the Russian section of the space station went down early this week, leading to some contingency planning that included the use of a docked Soyuz spaceship to bring the station crew back to Earth. The computers are used for navigating the station, keeping it properly oriented toward the sun, and maintaining safe levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Failure to bring the computers back on line could, over time, force the evacuation of the three-member crew staying in the space station. Read The Full Story U.S. Authority Accused Of Ignoring Allies In Iraq 2007-06-15 19:31:25 The U.S.-led administration set up to run Iraq following the invasion in 2003 was a "dysfunctional organization" which almost completely ignored the British, according to its director of operations. Andrew Bearpark, probably the Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA) central British figure, also revealed that when he asked for details of the plan to restore the Iraqi power supplies, he was given a one-page piece of paper with a list of a dozen Iraqi power stations and their potential output, amounting to what he describes as "a wish list". "That was the CPA plan", he said in an interview with the Guardian. He described Britain as "being complicit in Iraq's current position as a failed state due to its the failure to prepare a postwar plan." Read The Full Story Ethanol Demand Raises Corn, Other Agricultural Prices 2007-06-15 13:18:30 The USA's unquenchable thirst for gasoline - and finding an alternative to what's been called our addiction to oil - has produced an unintended consequence: The cost of the foods that fuel our bodies has jumped. Beef prices are up. So are the costs of milk, cereal, eggs, chicken and pork. And corn is getting the blame. President Bush's call for the nation to cure its addiction to oil stoked a growing demand for ethanol, which is mostly made from corn. Greater demand for corn has inflated prices from a historically stable $2 per bushel to about $4. That means cattle ranchers have to pay more for animal feed that contains corn. Those costs are reflected in cattle prices, which have gone from about $82.50 per 100 pounds a year ago to $91.15 today. Read The Full Story Space Station Computers Still Not Fixed 2007-06-15 13:17:56 Russian space officials said Friday they are considering moving up the launch of a Russian cargo ship as cosmonauts aboard the international space station struggled for a second day to reboot failed computers controlling the orbiting outpost's orientation. The problem started with a spike in static electricity while cables were being hooked up to the station's solar panels, said Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of the Russian state-controlled rocket builder RKK Energiya. He said Russian officials were considering moving up the launch of a Progress cargo ship by two weeks to July 23 to bring up some new parts. If the navigation systems aren't fixed, the station's orbit will drop by about 37 miles, to about 200 miles above the Earth, by September - not an alarming amount, according to Russian Mission Control chief Vladimir Solovyov. Read The Full Story To Avoid Conflicts, Clintons Liquidate Holdings 2007-06-15 13:16:59 Concerned that their personal finances might become a political liability once again, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton in April sold the millions of dollars of stocks held by their blind trust after learning that those investments included oil and pharmaceutical companies, military contractors and Wal-Mart, their aides said Thursday. The Clintons liquidated the trust - valued at $5 million to $25 million - and are leaving the proceeds for now in cash in an effort to eliminate any chance of ethical problems or political embarrassment from their holdings as Mrs. Clinton runs for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, their advisers said. By disposing of all their stocks, Mrs. Clinton was seeking to avoid potential conflicts of interest that might arise from legislation that she votes on in the Senate, as well as avoid holding financial stakes in companies and industries - like Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, the owner of Fox News - that could draw criticism from some Democratic voters. Mrs. Clinton automatically became aware of her investments because of a government directive this spring that she, as a presidential candidate, had to dissolve her blind trust and disclose all of her assets to the public. 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
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