Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday June 28 2007 - (813)

Thursday June 28 2007 edition
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U.S. Senate's Immigration Bill Appears On Shakey Ground - Again 2007-06-27 23:43:26 The U.S. Senate Wednesday turned back a series of amendments from both parties aimed at substantially altering controversial immigration legislation, but the bill shed supporters as it became mired in procedural hurdles that left backers concerned about its prospects. The legislation faces a make-or-break vote this morning when senators will decide whether to cut off debate and move to a final vote Thursday. If it does not get the 60 votes necessary, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nevada) has said he will pull the bill, all but dashing hopes for any meaningful legislation this year. Top legislative aides in both parties predicted Thursday's vote would be very close but would fall short of keeping the proposal alive. Read The Full Story At Least 13 Palestinians Killed, More Than 40 Wounded As Israeli Military Enters Gaza 2007-06-27 23:42:53 Israeli forces killed at least 13 Palestinians on Wednesday and wounded more than 40 others in ground fighting backed by tanks and air support during military operations across the Gaza Strip. Most of those killed, said Palestinian health officials, belonged to militias that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of the secular Fatah party is moving to disarm following the intense factional fighting this month that left Gaza in the hands of Hamas. But also among the dead was 12-year-old Sami al-Manasrah, who witnesses said was killed in fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen in the Shajaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City. Read The Full Story Probe Finds National Institutes Of Health Official Violated Government Regulations 2007-06-27 23:42:18 A high-powered institute director at the National Institutes of Health disregarded conflict-of-interest guidelines by making decisions affecting the university where he was a faculty member, broke government spending rules, and raised concerns with his growing involvement as an expert witness in legal cases, according to sources within NIH and Congress and hundreds of pages of confidential documents. David Schwartz, a physician and researcher recruited from Duke University to great fanfare in 2005 as chief of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, was found to have spent modest amounts of institute money for personal purposes but was cleared of other allegations of wrongdoing in a recent internal NIH ethics review obtained by the Washington Post. In a telephone interview Tuesday, Schwartz said he made mistakes, which he blamed on "misunderstandings" about institute rules and "poor communication," for which he said he takes "full responsibility." Read The Full Story Ancient Seri Indian Tribe At Crossroads 2007-06-27 23:41:32 Gloria Sesma clamps tough stems of desert limberbush between her front teeth, shredding the plant into the floppy strands she needs to weave graceful baskets. Sesma's lifelong work has worn her top teeth down to tiny stubs, much like the teeth of other women in this remote Gulf of California village, home to Mexico's most reclusive indigenous people, the Seri Indians. She and her daughters adhere to traditional techniques, so it can take 10 months of shredding and weaving to make a single basket. But Sesma's family also reflects new realities for the Seri, a tribe at a crossroads. While eight of her children married within the tribe, a ninth - her son, Ezekiel - piqued the family by breaking with long-standing tradition and moving away last year to marry a non-Seri woman. Now, the Seri desire for insularity is being tested on a larger scale. The inevitable march of development is forcing the Seri to confront fundamental questions about their future, questions that will determine whether one of the last truly autonomous tribes in Mexico melds into the greater society or stays walled off from the world. Read The Full Story Kremlin Lays Claim To 460,000 Square Miles Of The Oil-Rich Arctic 2007-06-27 22:00:37 It is already the world's biggest country, spanning 11 time zones and stretching from Europe to the far east. But Tuesday Russia signalled its intention to get even bigger by announcing an audacious plan to annex a vast 460,000 square mile chunk of the frozen and ice-encrusted Arctic. According to Russian scientists, there is new evidence backing Russia's claim that its northern Arctic region is directly linked to the North Pole via an underwater shelf. Under international law, no country owns the North Pole. Instead, the five surrounding Arctic states, Russia, the U.S., Canada, Norway and Denmark (via Greenland), are limited to a 200-mile economic zone around their coasts. On Monday, however, a group of Russian geologists returned from a six-week voyage on a nuclear icebreaker. They had travelled to the Lomonosov ridge, an underwater shelf in Russia's remote and inhospitable eastern Arctic Ocean. Read The Full Story Skepticism Hangs Over Blair's Appointment As 'Quartet' Middle East Envoy 2007-06-27 22:00:14 Tony Blair is to make his first working visit to Ramallah in the West Bank next month as envoy of the quartet of Middle East peacemakers, it emerged Wednesday, after his job was confirmed amid skepticism about any chance of his success. His role of quartet representative was announced jointly in New York by the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia. Blair will work on building government institutions and the rule of law, mobilizing international help, and promoting the economy. "He will spend significant time in the region working with the parties and others to help create viable and lasting government institutions representing all Palestinians, a robust economy, and a climate of law and order for the Palestinian people," the quartet said in a statement. Read The Full Story New Poll Finds Young Americans Are Leaning Left 2007-06-27 13:41:24 Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage, according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll. The poll also found that they are more likely to say the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion. The poll offers a snapshot of a group whose energy and idealism have always been as alluring to politicians as its scattered focus and shifting interests have been frustrating. It found that substantially more Americans ages 17 to 29 than four years ago are paying attention to the presidential race. But they appeared to be really familiar with only two of the candidates, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, both Democrats. They have continued a long-term drift away from the Republican Party. Although they are just as worried as the general population about the outlook for the country and think their generation is likely to be worse off than that of their parents, they retain a belief that their votes can make a difference, the poll found. Read The Full Story China Shuts 180 Food Factories 2007-06-27 13:40:57 China has closed 180 food factories after inspectors found industrial chemicals being used in products from candy to seafood, state media said Wednesday. The closures came amid a nationwide crackdown on shoddy and dangerous products launched in December that also uncovered use of recycled or expired food, said the China Daily. Formaldehyde, illegal dyes, and industrial wax were found being used to make candy, pickles, crackers and seafood, it said, citing Han Yi, an official with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, which is responsible for food safety. "These are not isolated cases," Han, director of the administration's quality control and inspection department, was quoted as saying. Read The Full Story CIA Experimented With Mind Drugs 2007-06-27 13:39:26 The CIA was eager to examine the use of dangerous pharmaceutical drugs to modify the behavior of targeted individuals, and so it asked commercial drug manufacturers to pass along samples of medicines rejected for commercial sale "because of unfavorable side effects," according to an undated memorandum included in dozens of CIA documents released Tuesday. CIA scientists tested some of the drugs on monkeys and mice, the memo said. Drugs that showed promise, it said, "were then tested at Edgewood, using volunteer members of the Armed Forces." This appears to be a reference to an Army laboratory north of Baltimore, Maryland, now called the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center. The memo doesn't discuss the reactions of those human subjects. The three-paragraph memo reports that the late Carl Duckett, a senior CIA technologist, had said the testing program was not intended to find new techniques to be used offensively, but rather was an effort to detect if such drugs were being employed by others. Read The Full Story Tony Blair Officially Resigns As Prime Minister 2007-06-27 13:38:29 Prime Minister Tony Blair resigned Wednesday after a decade of guiding Britain through economic prosperity at home and a deeply unpopular war abroad, turning over power to his longtime political partner and rival Gordon Brown. Looking grayer but no less effusive than when he took office in 1997, Blair, 54, received a standing ovation after his final appearance at Britain's famous Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons. He then tendered his resignation in a private audience with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. Blair spent much of his last address as prime minister defending the war in Iraq and began his remarks by saluting three British soldiers who had died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read The Full Story Editorial: Gitmos Across America 2007-06-27 02:25:50 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Wednesday, June 27, 2007. Toughness is the watchword in immigration policy these days. When you combine the new toughness with same-old bureaucratic indolence and ineptitude, you get a situation like that described by Nina Bernstein in the Times Tuesday. She wrote about how the boom in immigration detention - the nation’s fastest-growing form of incarceration - ensnares people for dubious reasons, denies them access to medicine and lawyers and sometimes holds them until they die. Sandra M. Kenley, a legal permanent resident who had high blood pressure and a bleeding uterus, died in a rural Virginia jail after not receiving her medication. Returning home from a trip to Barbados she was locked up because of two old misdemeanor drug convictions. Abdoulai Sall, an auto mechanic, had no criminal record, but was still seized during an immigration interview. He had a severe kidney ailment and he, too, complained about not getting his medicine. He got sicker and died in another Virginia jail last December. Sixty-two immigrants have died since 2004 while being held in a secretive detention system, a patchwork of federal centers, private prisons and local jails. Advocacy groups and lawyers say that the system not only denies detainees the most basic rights but also lacks the oversight and regulations that apply to federal prisons. Instead of fixing this broken system, the Senate bill that is lumbering toward final passage - after surviving a crucial procedural vote yesterday - is overloaded with provisions that will make it even harsher and more unfair. Read The Full Story Psychiatrists Top List In Gifts From Pharmaceutical Companies 2007-06-27 02:25:19 As states begin to require that drug companies disclose their payments to doctors for lectures and other services, a pattern has emerged: psychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty. How this money may be influencing psychiatrists and other doctors has become one of the most contentious issues in health care. For instance, the more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved. Vermont officials disclosed Tuesday that drug company payments to psychiatrists in the state more than doubled last year, to an average of $45,692 each from $20,835 in 2005. Antipsychotic medicines are among the largest expenses for the state’s Medicaid program. Over all last year, drug makers spent $2.25 million on marketing payments, fees and travel expenses to Vermont doctors, hospitals and universities, a 2.3 percent increase over the prior year, said the state. Read The Full Story Buffet Helps Raise $1 Million For Clinton In New York 2007-06-27 02:24:37 Billionaire investor Warren Buffett used his business clout and folksy wisdom to raise $1 million for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, telling big donors that Democrats are better than Republicans  at taking care of the less fortunate. Buffett has said he admires both Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama and could support either one. He mentioned neither by name as he regaled listeners in the New York event billed as "A Conversation with Hillary Clinton and Warren Buffett." Many of the attendees work on Wall Street. They paid $500 to hear Buffett and the New York senator, $1,000 to attend a separate cocktail party or $4,600 to attend a dinner as well, bringing the take to $1 million, said a Clinton spokeswoman. Read The Full Story Conoco, Exxon Exit Venezuelan Oil Deals 2007-06-27 02:23:57 Conoco Phillips is pulling out of its Venezuelan oil ventures after failing to agree on new contract terms with the populist government of President Hugo Chavez, and Exxon Mobil said it had also reached an impasse in negotiations there. The stalemate follows the Venezuelan national oil company's seizure of majority stakes last month in four projects in an area containing one of the largest oil deposits in the world. The move was part of a wider effort by Chavez to boost state control over parts of the economy such as utilities, television and telecommunications. It also reflected a recent trend in some oil-rich countries, such as Russia, toward squeezing foreign oil companies to a point where many of them prefer to leave. Four other major oil companies signed deals Tuesday giving the Venezuelan state oil company 60 to 83 percent interests in their ventures. The companies were Chevron, Statoil, Total and BP. Read The Full Story Al-Qaeda, Seeking New Influence, Urges Arabs To Aid Hamas 2007-06-27 02:23:25 Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command, called on all Muslims Monday to support the Islamic movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip by sending money and weapons to defend it against what he said are attacks planned by Western and Arab governments. The appeal marked a shift in tactics for al-Qaeda, which has long criticized Hamas for not adhering to strict interpretations of Islamic principles and for its participation in Palestinian elections last year. The appeal follows Hamas's conquest of Gaza this month in a brutal five-day battle against Fatah, the rival Palestinian party headquartered in the West Bank. With the Palestinian Authority now split into two camps, and Gaza cut off from international assistance as the United States and Israel back Fatah and President Mahmoud Abbas, al-Qaeda is seizing an opportunity to increase its influence. "We are with you ... despite all the mistakes of your leadership," Zawahiri told Hamas in an audio recording posted on a Web site frequently used by groups linked to al-Qaeda. Read The Full Story	U.N. Report: Likely Spread Of Deserts To Fertile Land Needs Quick Response 2007-06-27 23:43:12 Enough fertile land could turn into desert within the next generation to create an “environmental crisis of global proportions,” large-scale migrations and political instability in parts of Africa and Central Asia unless current trends are quickly stemmed, a new United Nations report concludes. “The costs of desertification are large,” said Zafar Adeel of the United Nations University, who is based in Canada and is an author of the report, to be released Thursday. “Already at the moment there are tens of millions of people on the move,” Dr. Adeel said in an interview. “There’s internal displacement. There’s international migration. There are a number of causes. But by and large, in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia this movement is triggered by degradation of land.” The report’s authors say individual nations and international groups must collaborate to solve what has so far been an under-recognized crisis in the making, caused mainly by climate change. Water resources are overexploited because the poor have no other options, and climate change has exacerbated the cycle. Governments and wealthier countries must aid these populations to develop more sustainable livelihoods or suffer the consequences, says the report. Read The Full Story Study Sees Some Of Climate Change's Impacts On Alaska 2007-06-27 23:42:34 Many of Alaska's roads, runways, railroads and water and sewer systems will wear out more quickly and cost more to repair or replace because of climate change, according to a study released Wednesday. Higher temperatures, melting permafrost, a reduction in polar ice and increased flooding are expected to raise the repair and replacement cost of thousands of infrastructure projects as much as $6.1 billion for a total of nearly $40 billion - about a 20 percent increase - from now to 2030, according to the study, by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The cost estimates are based on the needs of nearly 16,000 pieces of public infrastructure, including airports and small segments of roads. Read The Full Story Poison-Containing Chinese-Made Toothpaste Sold Wider In U.S. Than Thought 2007-06-27 23:41:55 After federal health officials discovered last month that tainted Chinese toothpaste had entered the United States, they warned that it would most likely be found in discount stores. In fact, the toothpaste has been distributed much more widely. Roughly 900,000 tubes containing a poison used in some antifreeze products have turned up in hospitals for the mentally ill, prisons, juvenile detention centers and even some hospitals serving the general population. The toothpaste was handed out in dozens of state institutions, mostly in Georgia but also in North Carolina, according to state officials. Hospitals in South Carolina and Florida also reported receiving Chinese-made toothpaste, and a major national pharmaceutical distributor said it was recalling tainted Chinese toothpaste. Read The Full Story U.S. Senate Subpoenas White House, Cheney's Office 2007-06-27 22:12:17 The Senate subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office Wednesday, demanding documents and elevating the confrontation with President Bush over the administration's warrant-free eavesdropping on Americans. Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee also is summoning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to discuss the program and an array of other matters that have cost a half-dozen top Justice Department officials their jobs, committee chairman Patrick Leahy announced. Leahy, D-Vermont, raised questions about previous testimony by one of Bush's appeals court nominees and said he wouldn't let such matters pass. "If there have been lies told to us, we'll refer it to the Department of Justice and the U.S. attorney for whatever legal action they think is appropriate," Leahy told reporters. He did just that Wednesday, referring questions about testimony by former White House aide Brett Kavanaugh, who now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Read The Full Story Global Poll: Environment And U.S. Policy Top Fears 2007-06-27 22:00:25 Growing numbers of people worldwide view environmental problems, pollution, infectious diseases, nuclear proliferation and the widening gap between rich and poor as the most menacing threats facing the planet, according to a 47-nation survey published Wednesday by the U.S.-based Pew Global Attitudes Project. The survey, which conducted more than 45,000 interviews, finds that global opinion is increasingly wary of the world's dominant countries but also unimpressed by aspiring leaders in Iran and Venezuela who challenge the international status quo. In contrast, the U.N. receives strong support. The U.S. comes in for sharp criticism. "Global distrust of American leadership is reflected in increasing disapproval of the cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy," the survey says. "Not only is there worldwide support for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq but there is also considerable opposition to U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan ... The U.S. image remains abysmal in most Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia and continues to decline among the publics of America's oldest allies." Nine per cent of Turks, 13% of Palestinians and 15% of Pakistanis take a favorable view of the U.S. In Germany, the figure is 30%, in France 39% and in Britain 51% - all down on previous surveys. Only in Israel, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya do majorities believe U.S. forces should stay in Iraq. Read The Full Story Torrential Rains Flood Parts Of Texas, Oklahoma 2007-06-27 13:41:36 Torrential storms flooded parts of central Texas early Wednesday, stranding people on roofs, in trees and in vehicles, and the weather was so treacherous that some helicopter rescue attempts had to be abandoned. The worst flooding was in Williamson, Lampasas and Burnet counties in the Texas Hill Country northwest of Austin. "We got hard facts of 18-plus inches of rain in a couple of those places since midnight," Austin-Travis County emergency medical services spokesman Warren Hassinger said just after 7 a.m. More rain was expected throughout the day, said the National Weather Service. Parts of Oklahoma also were soaked Wednesday, with rain falling on Oklahoma City for the 15th consecutive day, breaking a 70-year-old record. Read The Full Story U.N. Report: Half The World's Population Soon To Live In Cities, Towns 2007-06-27 13:41:08 By next year, more than half the world’s population, 3.3 billion people, will for the first time live in towns and cities, a number expected to swell to almost 5 billion by 2030, according to a United Nations Population Fund report released Wednesday. The onrush of change will be particularly extraordinary in Africa and Asia, where between 2000 and 2030 “the accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be duplicated in a single generation,” the report says. This surge in urban populations, fueled more by natural increase than the migration of people from the countryside, is unstoppable, said George Martin, author of the report, “State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth.” Read The Full Story Egypt Unveils Mummy Of Queen Hatshepsut 2007-06-27 13:39:47 The mummy of an obese woman, who likely suffered from diabetes and liver cancer, has been identified as that of Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt's most powerful female pharaoh, Egyptian archaeologists said Wednesday. Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt in the 15th century B.C., was known for dressing like a man and wearing a false beard. But when her rule ended, all traces of her mysteriously disappeared, including her mummy. Discovered in 1903 in the Valley of the Kings, the mummy was left on site until two months ago, when it was brought to the Cairo Museum for testing, said Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass. DNA bone samples taken from the mummy's pelvic bone and femur are being compared to the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut's grandmother, Amos Nefreteri, said molecular geneticist Yehia Zakaria Gad, who was part of Hawass' team. Read The Full Story CIA: The View From Watergate 2007-06-27 13:39:10 "Mr. Helms instructed me to restrict knowledge of the existence of the letter to an absolute minimum number of people." So said Howard J. Osborn, the CIA's director of security, in a sworn affidavit that sat for decades in the agency's secret files until it was released Tuesday. The Mr. Helms in question was Richard Helms, the director of central intelligence during Watergate and a zealous guardian of his agency - "the man who kept the secrets," as his biographer, Thomas Powers, called him. In this case, Osborn reported that James W. McCord, Jr., the head of the Watergate burglary team and Osborn's predecessor as the CIA's chief of security, had written a letter in August 1972 to Helms. Osborn, according to his affidavit, said he "felt strongly" that it should be turned over to the FBI, which was supposedly conducting a rigorous investigation of Watergate. It was a critical moment in the Watergate probe, with Nixon seeking reelection that fall and desperate to keep the botched burglary from spoiling his chances. McCord's letter to the CIA could have been important evidence; according to later testimony, he was seeking assistance from the CIA, where he had worked for decades, and was on the verge of blowing the whistle about Watergate, as he did months later in a famous March 21, 1973, letter to Judge John J. Sirica. Read The Full Story House Report Faults Pentagon Accounting Of Iraqi Forces 2007-06-27 02:26:02 The United States has invested $19 billion to train and equip nearly 350,000 Iraqi soldiers and police since toppling Saddam Hussein, but the ability of those forces to provide security remains in doubt, according to the findings of a bipartisan congressional investigation to be released Wednesday. As a result, President Bush's pledge to have U.S. troops "stand down" as Iraqi forces "stand up" remains unfulfilled. Instead, U.S. troop numbers and operations have escalated in recent months, and the overall level of violence has not decreased. Despite the substantial number of Iraqi security forces and their increasing willingness to fight - demonstrated by rising numbers of casualties - their progress toward taking full responsibility for the nation's security remains mixed, according to a report on the investigation by the oversight panel of the House Armed Services Committee. U.S. commanders now predict that it will take years and tens of thousands more Iraqi soldiers and police to achieve that goal. The Pentagon "cannot report in detail how many of the 346,500 Iraqi military and police personnel that the coalition trained are operational today," according to the 250-page report. Details of the document were provided to the Washington Post by congressional staff members. Read The Full Story New Scrutiny As Immigrants Die In Custody 2007-06-27 02:25:39 Sandra M. Kenley was returning home from her native Barbados in 2005 when she was swept into the United States’ fastest-growing form of incarceration, immigration detention. Seven weeks later, Ms. Kenley died in a rural Virginia jail, where she had complained of not receiving medicine for high blood pressure. She was one of 62 immigrants to die in administrative custody since 2004, according to a new tally by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that counted many more deaths than the 20 previously known. No government body is charged with accounting for deaths in immigration detention, a patchwork of county jails, privately run prisons and federal facilities where more than 27,500 people who are not American citizens are held on any given day while the government decides whether to deport them. Getting details about those who die in custody is a difficult undertaking left to family members, advocacy groups and lawyers. Read The Full Story More Evacuations In Britain As Floods Threaten To Burst Dam 2007-06-27 02:25:01 Hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes in Yorkshire, England, Tuesday after record rainfall led to a "significant risk" that a dam containing a reservoir could burst. Firefighters were trying to drain the Ulley reservoir, which is less than a mile from the M1 motorway and near a power station that serves most of Sheffield. In a separate development, West Mercia police said they were concerned about the safety of a man who called his wife Monday to say his car was being washed away by floods. He has not been heard from since. A helicopter search Monday and Tuesday failed to find any trace of the Volvo V70 estate or the man, who was travelling to Worcester from Evesham. People living near Ulley dam, in South Yorkshire, were urged by the council to leave their houses after a large section of the earth dam collapsed into a flooded stream below. Read The Full Story Judge Orders Prison Time For Ex-Interior Dept. Deputy 2007-06-27 02:24:23 A federal judge rejected the tearful pleas of the former second-ranking official in the Interior Department Tuesday and sentenced him to 10 months in prison for a felony conviction of obstructing a Senate investigation into corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramhoff. "You are not above the law," U.S. District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle told former deputy interior secretary J. Steven Griles as he asked for forgiveness. Griles pleaded guilty in March to lying to the Senate about his relationship with Abramoff. In the plea agreement, prosecutors recommended a sentence of five months of house arrest and five months in prison. But Huvelle imposed a sterner penalty of 10 months in prison and a $30,000 fine. She said she wanted to send a message to deter wrongdoing by high-ranking government officials. Defense attorneys had asked for three months of home detention, community service and a "reasonable fine." Read The Full Story Gas Rationing Sparks Iranians Anger 2007-06-27 02:23:43 Angry Iranians attacked several gas stations in protest after the government suddenly began long-threatened fuel rationing, while many others rushed to fill their tanks. The Oil Ministry announced the start of rationing Tuesday night, just three hours before it was due to begin at midnight. The sudden announcement sparked long lines at stations as Iranians tried to get one last fill-up before the limitations kicked in. Several stations were attacked "by vandals," state radio reported early Wednesday. It did not say how many stations were damaged or give details. The Iranian government has been planning for weeks to implement rationing, which was supposed to begin May 21 but was repeatedly delayed. In May, the government reduced subsidies for gas, causing a 25 percent jump in the price. Read The Full Story CIA Releases Files On Past Misdeeds - Assassination Plots, Domestic Spying And More 2007-06-27 02:22:36 Hundreds of pages of decades-old documents declassified and released by the CIA Tuesday revealed a 1970s-era agency in the throes of unaccustomed self-examination, caught between its traditional secrecy and demands that it come clean on a history of unsavory activities. Prompted by the then-unraveling Watergate affair, and by fears that CIA involvement in that scandal would be exposed along with other illegal operations, the agency combed its files for what it called "delicate" information with "flap potential." The result was a collection of documents the CIA called the "family jewels." Partly disclosed Tuesday, the documents chronicle activities including assassination plans, illegal wiretaps and hunts for spies at political conventions. One document spoke of a plan to poison an African leader. Another revealed that the CIA had offered a Mafia boss $150,000 to kill Cuba's Fidel Castro. Read The Full Story
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