Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday July 31 2007 - (813)

Tuesday July 31 2007 edition
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Police Find Body Of 2nd Slain S. Korean Hostage 2007-07-31 01:05:31 Police in central Afghanistan at daybreak Tuesday discovered the body of a second South Korean hostage slain by the Taliban, said officials. The Al-Jazeera television network, meanwhile, showed footage that it said was seven female hostages in Afghanistan. The victim's body was found in the village of Arizo Kalley in Andar District, some 6 miles west of Ghazni city, said Abdul Rahim Deciwal, the chief administrator in the area. A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said senior Taliban leaders decided to kill the male captive because the government had not met Taliban demands to trade prisoners for the Christian volunteers, who were in their 12th day of captivity Monday. Read The Full Story U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts Suffers Seizure 2007-07-31 01:05:11 U.S. Chief Justice John G. Robers, Jr., was rushed to a hospital in Rockport, Maine, Monday afternoon after suffering a seizure at his summer island home, said a Supreme Court spokeswoman. Roberts, 52, fell on a dock after having a "benign idiopathic seizure," said Kathleen Landin Arberg, the court's public information officer. She said that Roberts has "fully recovered from the incident" but that he would remain at Penobscot Bay Medical Center here overnight for observation. Arberg said that the chief justice, who has presided over the court for two terms, received minor scrapes from the fall but that a "thorough neurological evaluation ... revealed no cause for concern." She said he experienced a similar event in 1993 but had no recurrence until Monday. Read The Full Story U.S. Aids Turkish Drive Against Kurdish Fighters 2007-07-31 01:04:49 The Pentagon confirmed yesterday that it is working closely with the Turkish government to stop Kurdish guerrillas operating from bases in northern Iraq. But it refused to comment on a report that the U.S. is planning a covert operation to send special forces into action to try to neutralize the leadership of the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), which has been mounting attacks inside Turkey. The U.S. is trying to persuade the Turkish army against taking matters into its own hands by invading northern Iraq, where the Kurds have established an autonomous region. Washington, faced with a myriad of problems in Iraq, does not need a new front opening up in the country. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, would neither confirm nor deny that a covert operation was being planned, but he said Monday: "We recognize that the PKK is a serious problem and we're working closely with both the government of Iraq and the government of Turkey to resolve this." Read The Full Story British Prime Minister Brown Stresses Shared Values In Talks With Bush 2007-07-31 01:04:05 President Bush Monday lavished praise on Gordon Brown at their first summit together, saying he was a man of principle who understood the ideological war against terrorism. But over two days of talks held at Camp David,  Brown retained his right to withdraw British troops from Iraq more quickly than the Americans. During their joint press conference Tuesday, Bush heaped personal praise on the prime minister as a worthy leader and a man that wanted to find solutions. The prime minister, by contrast, hailed the relationship with America as the most important bilateral relationship for Britain, but held back from any personal praise of President Bush, in what is likely to have been a calculated decision to put the bilateral relations on a more formal footing. Brown also read out a businesslike lengthy statement and surprisingly described the talks simply as "full and frank", normally diplomatic language for a cool relationship. The atmosphere suggested the British delegation is determined to rid themselves of the image of poodle to a Republican administration that has only 18 months to run. Read The Full Story FBI, IRS Raid Home of Sen. Ted Stevens 2007-07-30 21:56:33 As found on Slashdot.org: A while back we discussed the corruption investigation aimed at Alaska Sen. Ted "series of tubes" Stevens. A number of readers sent us word that the home of Sen. Stevens was raided earlier today by agents of the FBI and the IRS. The focus of the raid was a remodeling project at Stevens's home and the involvement of VECO, an oil company. Read The Full Story Gonzales' Disputed Honesty To Shield Bush Stretches Back A Decade 2007-07-30 01:00:53 When Alberto R. Gonzales was asked during his January 2005 confirmation hearing whether the Bush administration would ever allow wiretapping of U.S. citizens without warrants, he initially dismissed the query as a "hypothetical situation." When Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisconsin) pressed him further, Gonzales declared: "It is not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes." By then, however, the government had been conducting a secret wiretapping program for more than three years without court oversight, possibly in conflict with federal intelligence laws. Gonzales had personally defended the effort in fierce internal debates. Feingold later called his testimony that day "misleading and deeply troubling." Read The Full Story British National Health Service Doctors Challenge High-Priced Drugs 2007-07-30 01:00:05 British doctors are to rebel against high prices set by pharmaceutical companies for their products by giving patients a cheap but unlicensed drug that prevents blindness, the Guardian newspaper reports. Unable to afford to treat all those losing their sight with a licensed and extremely expensive drug, Lucentis, some primary care trusts are giving National Health Service (NHS) doctors the green light to use tiny shots of a similar drug, Avastin, which is marketed for bowel cancer, but costs a fraction of the price. Avastin is widely used for eye complaints in the United States. A call from the former health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, for Avastin's manufacturer to put the drug through trials for wet age-related macular degeneration went unheeded. Now the NHS is funding a groundbreaking trial which will compare Avastin directly with Lucentis. Both drugs are manufactured by Genentech. Read The Full Story Afghan Leaders: Free Female S. Korean Hostages 2007-07-30 00:59:30 Afghanistan's top political and religious leaders invoked Afghan and Islamic traditions of chivalry and hospitality Sunday in attempts to shame the Taliban into releasing 18 female South Korean captives. A purported Taliban spokesman shrugged off the demands and instead set a new deadline for the hostages' lives, saying the hardline militants could kill one or all of the 22 captives if the government didn't release 23 militant prisoners by 3:30 a.m. EDT Monday. Several other deadlines have passed without killings. Afghan officials, meanwhile, reported no progress in talks with tribal elders to secure hostages' freedom. In his first comments since 23 Koreans were abducted on July 19, Karzai criticized the Taliban's kidnapping of "foreign guests", especially women, as contrary to the tenets of Islam and national traditions. Read The Full Story Commentary: We Need A New Attentiveness To Nature To Understand Our Own Humanity 2007-07-30 00:58:32 Intellpuke: The following commentary is written by Madeleine Bunting and appears in the Guardian edition for Monday, July 30, 2007. Ms. Bunting is a Guardian columnist and associate editor. She writes on a wide range of subjects including politics, work, Islam, science and ethics, development, women’s issues and social change. She has written two books. Most recently, "Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives", an analysis of the British work culture, published by HarperCollins. Ms. Bunting's commentary follows: Here's a slim book to squeeze into that last corner of the holiday suitcase. It coins a new word for a new enthusiasm - corvophile - and it's guaranteed to ensure that you never look at a crow in quite the same way again. Published this week, Mark Cocker's "Crow Country" is the latest addition to a new genre of writing. It doesn't quite fit to call it "nature writing", because what makes these books so compelling - and important - is that they put center stage the interconnections between nature and human beings. So Cocker doesn't just write about crows - breeding, feeding habits, patterns of flight and roosting - but the impact of his fascination with these big, raucous birds on him, his family and, in turn, the impact of humans on crows. (They've cracked the art of opening bin liners on the M4 to rifle through leftovers). The point is that nature is no longer something to be studied from a position of scientific detachment, but an experience, a relationship in which human beings are as much part of nature as any so called wildlife. It was "Findings", a book by the Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie in 2004, that first brought my attention to this genre. In her essays on Scottish landscapes, she charts her observation of a peregrine nesting in the hills above her house between loading the washing machine and looking after her children. Since then I've devoured these books - for example, Richard Mabey's "Nature Cure" or Robert Macfarlane's "The Wild Places", published next month - which map a British landscape as rich and as full of wonder as anything we might find by catching a flight abroad, if we only are attentive enough to notice. That is one of Cocker's central points. A long-standing ornithologist, he challenges the bird twitchers' preoccupation with scarcity by writing a whole book about one of our most common birds - and least liked, because no one claims there is anything cute about a corvid. As he writes, "a really significant element in ascribing beauty to a thing lies not within itself but in the quality of our attention to it". Stop for a moment to examine closely a leaf or a blade of grass, and even these commonplace things become extraordinary. We share these islands with well over a million corvids and yet we have learned to ignore them, so Cocker's task is to try and get us to look again. After his description of the spectacle of 40,000 gathered at the rookery near his home in Norfolk, it will be hard to ever treat them with dismissive contempt again. Read The Full Story Australian Police Hit Back - Accuse Scotland Yard Of Sending Wrong Information On Bomb Plot Suspect 2007-07-30 00:57:51 Australian police Sunday said they held an innocent doctor as a suspect in the plot to bomb London and Glasgow because they were initially sent wrong information by Scotland Yard. Mohammed Haneef arrived home in Bangalore, India, Sunday to a hero's welcome from crowds waiting at the airport. He held a brief press conference outside his home, saying: "It's an emotional moment for me being with my family and home after a long wait of 27 days. I'm going through the trauma of being a victim. I was being victimized by the Australian authorities and the Australian federal police." He thanked his legal team and his supporters around the world. Read The Full Story	FBI, IRS Agents Search Alaska Senator Ted Stevens' Home 2007-07-31 01:05:22 Agents from the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service raided the Alaska home of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R) Monday as part of a broad federal investigation of political corruption in the state that has also swept up his son and one of his closest financial backers, said officials. Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in history, is under scrutiny from the Justice Department for his ties to an Alaska energy services company, Veco, whose chief executive pleaded guilty in early May to a bribery scheme involving state lawmakers. Contractors have told a federal grand jury that in 2000, Veco executives oversaw a lavish remodeling of Stevens'  house in Girdwood, an exclusive ski resort area 40 miles from Anchorage, according to statements by the contractors. Stevens said in a statement that his attorneys were advised of the impending search Monday morning. He said he would not comment on details of the inquiry to avoid "any appearance that I have attempted to influence its outcome." Read The Full Story Editorial: Bush's Folly 2007-07-31 01:04:59 Intellpuke: The following editorial appeared in the Los Angeles Times edition for Monday, July 30, 2007. His fixation on al-Qaeda's role in Iraq reveals the shallowness of his thinking - and of the U.S. strategy on fighting terrorism. President Bush's speech last week arguing that the United States must stay in Iraq to defeat the al-Qaeda leadership reassembling there ranks as one of his most vacuous. It drew on intelligence that was conveniently (and perhaps selectively?) declassified in order to make the dubious case that the al-Qaeda in Iraq today is the same enemy that attacked us on 9/11. Bush repeated his tendentious trope: "A key lesson of September the 11th is that the best way to protect America is to go on the offense, to fight the terrorists overseas so we don't have to face them here at home." This led directly to the unstated conclusion that the United States must stay in Iraq for as long as it takes to conquer evil. The speech leaves little doubt that the president intends to keep fighting in Iraq until Jan. 20, 2009 - if Congress will let him. Either way, the public shouldn't believe that al-Qaeda is responsible for most of Iraq's problems. Foreign jihadists have certainly done a wicked job of urging onthe Sunnis and Shiites who are doing most of the killing. But the key question is who should be fighting al-Qaeda - and all the other groups slaughtering Iraqi civilians. The answer, of course, is the Iraqis. They're the most qualified. Sunni tribal leaders in Al Anbar and Diyala provinces are already on the job, supported by the U.S. Iraqis have the language, intelligence and understanding of the enemy. They are fighting for and on their home ground. It is American hubris to think we can do it better. Read The Full Story Germany May End Ransom Payments For Kidnap Victims 2007-07-31 01:04:29 A debate is raging in Germany about the government's policy on negotiating the release of hostages taken abroad after the interior ministry implicitly acknowledged that secret ransom payments were made to kidnappers. Following a string of kidnappings of German nationals, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq, the government is reportedly discussing ways of implementing a tougher strategy in an apparent attempt to reduce the frequency of the seizures. Because it is known that the German government - like those of Italy and France - is willing to pay ransoms, the "value" of German kidnap victims has risen in the Middle East, experts have acknowledged. Observers in the field say that ransom money often goes to finance weaponry for insurgents. "We have to consider whether we can justify paying money for a hostage with money which is eventually used to buy weapons which are used to kill our soldiers in Afghanistan," a high-ranking security expert in the interior ministry told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. Read The Full Story Stronger Link Found between Hurricanes and Global Warming 2007-07-30 23:02:03 Using records dating back to 1855, hurricane researchers say they have uncovered an ongoing rise in the number of Atlantic hurricanes that tracks the increase in sea surface temperature related to climate change. Critics of such a link argue that this trend is merely because of better observations since the dawn of the satellite era in the 1970s. But the authors of the new study say the conclusion is hard to dodge. "Even if we take the extreme of these error estimates, we are left with a significant trend since 1890 and a significant trend in major hurricanes starting anytime before 1920," say atmospheric scientists Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Read The Full Story More Republicans Want Iraq Military Limits 2007-07-30 01:01:08 Republicans increasingly are backing a new approach in the Iraq war that could become the party's mantra come September. It would mean narrowly limited missions for U.S. troops in Iraq but let President Bush decide when troops should leave. So far, the idea has not attracted the attention of Democratic leaders. They are under substantial pressure by anti-war groups to consider only legislation that orders troops from Iraq. Yet the GOP approach quickly is becoming the attractive alternative for Republican lawmakers who want to challenge Bush on the unpopular war without backtracking from their past assertions that it would be disastrous to set deadlines for troop withdrawals. "This is a necessary adjustment in the national debate to reintroduce bipartisanship, to stop the 'gotcha' politics that are going on that seem to be driven by fringes on both sides and change the terms of the discussion," said Rep. Phil English, R-Pennsylvania. Read The Full Story Montana Wildfire Spreads Nearly Unchecked 2007-07-30 01:00:26 Hot, dry and windy weather helped a wildfire near Glacier National Park grow to roughly 5,000 acres on Sunday and continue to threaten an evacuated lodge. The blaze had grown from 1,000 acres a day earlier and was just 2 percent contained, said fire information officer Dale Warriner. The fire was running into heavy timber. On Sunday, authorities reopened a highway near the park in northwestern Montana, but they warned that U.S. 2 could be closed again if the blaze flared up. Guests and 18 workers at the Summit Station Lodge along the highway remained evacuated as flames burned within a mile, said owner Jorge Simental. The number of guests was not immediately available. Read The Full Story Number Of Tropical Storms In Atlantic Have Doubled 2007-07-30 00:59:49 The number of tropical storms developing annually in the Atlantic Ocean more than doubled over the past century, with the increase taking place in two jumps, researchers say. The increases coincided with rising sea surface temperature, largely the byproduct of human-induced climate warming, researchers Greg J. Holland and Peter J. Webster concluded. Their findings were being published online Sunday by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. An official at the National Hurricane Center called the research "sloppy science" and said technological improvements in observing storms accounted for the increase. From 1905 to 1930, the Atlantic-Gulf Coast area averaged six tropical cyclones per year, with four of those storms growing into become hurricanes. Read The Full Story Iran Opens Doors To Nuclear Facility 2007-07-30 00:59:18 The rush to process uranium is to generate electricity, Iranian official in Isfahan say - but there are no power stations. In the bowels of Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan strands of black and red wire stretch from the concrete wall to giant white tanks full of a volatile uranium compound. It is by these slender cords that the international community hopes to hold Iran's atomic ambitions in check. The wires pass through a brass seal that has been soldered and marked in such a way that any attempt to divert the fuel to making a bomb would be spotted by United Nations inspectors. It is a nuclear trigger the world hopes will never be pulled. With global tensions rising over Iran's nuclear intentions, the doors of the Isfahan plant were opened last week to a small group of journalists from Europe and America in a rare bid for transparency by the embattled but determined government in Tehran. Read The Full Story British Prime Minister Brown Tries To Shift Bush Talks To Trade And Darfur 2007-07-30 00:58:14 British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived in Washington, D.C., Sunday night for his first meeting as prime minister with George Bush, determined to shift the focus from Iraq towards less divisive issues such as trade and Darfur. Brown, who is scheduled to hold formal talks Monday with Bush and his team at Camp David, the presidential weekend retreat, praised Bush and commended his leadership in the fight against international terrorism - but failed to mention the war in Iraq. In a statement to journalists on the plane, Brown said the U.S.-British relationship was founded on common values of liberty, opportunity and the dignity of the individual. "And because of the values we share, the relationship with the United States is not only strong, but can become stronger in the years ahead," he said. Brown is intent on sustaining a juggling act in which he maintains the alliance with the U.S. while showing it is not as tight as under Tony Blair. Read The Full Story
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Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday July 30 2007 - (813)

Monday July 30 2007 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
More Republicans Want Iraq Military Limits 2007-07-30 01:01:08 Republicans increasingly are backing a new approach in the Iraq war that could become the party's mantra come September. It would mean narrowly limited missions for U.S. troops in Iraq but let President Bush decide when troops should leave. So far, the idea has not attracted the attention of Democratic leaders. They are under substantial pressure by anti-war groups to consider only legislation that orders troops from Iraq. Yet the GOP approach quickly is becoming the attractive alternative for Republican lawmakers who want to challenge Bush on the unpopular war without backtracking from their past assertions that it would be disastrous to set deadlines for troop withdrawals. "This is a necessary adjustment in the national debate to reintroduce bipartisanship, to stop the 'gotcha' politics that are going on that seem to be driven by fringes on both sides and change the terms of the discussion," said Rep. Phil English, R-Pennsylvania. Read The Full Story Montana Wildfire Spreads Nearly Unchecked 2007-07-30 01:00:26 Hot, dry and windy weather helped a wildfire near Glacier National Park grow to roughly 5,000 acres on Sunday and continue to threaten an evacuated lodge. The blaze had grown from 1,000 acres a day earlier and was just 2 percent contained, said fire information officer Dale Warriner. The fire was running into heavy timber. On Sunday, authorities reopened a highway near the park in northwestern Montana, but they warned that U.S. 2 could be closed again if the blaze flared up. Guests and 18 workers at the Summit Station Lodge along the highway remained evacuated as flames burned within a mile, said owner Jorge Simental. The number of guests was not immediately available. Read The Full Story Number Of Tropical Storms In Atlantic Have Doubled 2007-07-30 00:59:49 The number of tropical storms developing annually in the Atlantic Ocean more than doubled over the past century, with the increase taking place in two jumps, researchers say. The increases coincided with rising sea surface temperature, largely the byproduct of human-induced climate warming, researchers Greg J. Holland and Peter J. Webster concluded. Their findings were being published online Sunday by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. An official at the National Hurricane Center called the research "sloppy science" and said technological improvements in observing storms accounted for the increase. From 1905 to 1930, the Atlantic-Gulf Coast area averaged six tropical cyclones per year, with four of those storms growing into become hurricanes. Read The Full Story Iran Opens Doors To Nuclear Facility 2007-07-30 00:59:18 The rush to process uranium is to generate electricity, Iranian official in Isfahan say - but there are no power stations. In the bowels of Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan strands of black and red wire stretch from the concrete wall to giant white tanks full of a volatile uranium compound. It is by these slender cords that the international community hopes to hold Iran's atomic ambitions in check. The wires pass through a brass seal that has been soldered and marked in such a way that any attempt to divert the fuel to making a bomb would be spotted by United Nations inspectors. It is a nuclear trigger the world hopes will never be pulled. With global tensions rising over Iran's nuclear intentions, the doors of the Isfahan plant were opened last week to a small group of journalists from Europe and America in a rare bid for transparency by the embattled but determined government in Tehran. Read The Full Story British Prime Minister Brown Tries To Shift Bush Talks To Trade And Darfur 2007-07-30 00:58:14 British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived in Washington, D.C., Sunday night for his first meeting as prime minister with George Bush, determined to shift the focus from Iraq towards less divisive issues such as trade and Darfur. Brown, who is scheduled to hold formal talks Monday with Bush and his team at Camp David, the presidential weekend retreat, praised Bush and commended his leadership in the fight against international terrorism - but failed to mention the war in Iraq. In a statement to journalists on the plane, Brown said the U.S.-British relationship was founded on common values of liberty, opportunity and the dignity of the individual. "And because of the values we share, the relationship with the United States is not only strong, but can become stronger in the years ahead," he said. Brown is intent on sustaining a juggling act in which he maintains the alliance with the U.S. while showing it is not as tight as under Tony Blair. Read The Full Story Japan Polls Show Huge Elections Loss For Prime Minister Abe's Ruling Party 2007-07-29 13:50:34 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling party suffered humiliating losses in parliamentary elections Sunday after a string of political scandals, exit polls showed, but Abe said he did not plan to resign. The Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan almost without interruption since 1955, was set to lose its majority in the upper house while the leading opposition party made huge gains, according to exit polls broadcast by Japanese television networks. Abe told reporters at his party's headquarters that he intends to stay on despite the disappointing results, and accepts responsibility for the defeat. "We tried our best and felt we made some progress, so the results are extremely disappointing ... I must push ahead with reforms and continue to fulfill my responsibilities as prime minister," he said. "The responsibility for this utter defeat rests with me." Read The Full Story U.S. House Members Say They Will Try To Block Sale Of U.S. Arms To Saudis 2007-07-29 02:27:52 The Bush administration's plan to sell $20 billion in advanced weaponry toSaudi Arabia and five other Persian Gulf  countries is running into congressional opposition and criticism from human rights and arms control groups. Members of Congress vowed Saturday to oppose any deal to Saudi Arabia on grounds that the kingdom has been unhelpful in Iraq and unreliable at fighting terrorism. King Abdullah has called the U.S. military presence in Iraq an "illegitimate occupation," and the Saudis have been either unable or unwilling to stop suicide bombers who have ended up in Iraq, congressional sources say. Human rights groups warned that new U.S. arms meant to contain Iran's rising influence could backfire, allowing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to rally greater support for his hard-line faction in the run-up to parliamentary elections next spring. Arms control groups said Bush's strategy would accelerate an already-dangerous trend that could increase tensions rather than generate a greater sense of security. Read The Full Story Former Rendition Victim Reveals MI5's Role In 'Torture Flight' Hell 2007-07-29 02:27:10 An Iraqi who was a key source of intelligence for MI5 has given the first ever full insider's account of being seized by the CIA and bundled on to an illegal "torture flight" under the program known as extraordinary rendition. In a remarkable interview for The Observer, British resident Bisher al-Rawi has told how he was betrayed by the security service despite having helped keep track of Abu Qatada, the Muslim cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden's "ambassador in Europe". He was abducted and stripped naked by U.S. agents, clad in nappies (diapers), a tracksuit and shackles, blindfolded and forced to wear ear mufflers, then strapped to a stretcher on board a plane bound for a CIA "black site" jail near Kabul in Afghanistan. He was taken on to the jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba before being released last March and returned to Britain after four years' detention without charge. "All the way through that flight I was on the verge of screaming," said al-Rawi. "At last we landed, I thought, thank God it's over. But it wasn't - it was just a refuelling stop in Cairo. There were hours still to go .. My back was so painful, the handcuffs were so tight. All the time they kept me on my back. Once, I managed to wriggle a tiny bit, just shifted my weight to one side. Then I felt someone hit my hand. Even this was forbidden." Read The Full Story Editorial: Mr. Gonzales' Never-Ending Story 2007-07-29 02:26:26 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Sunday, July 29, 2007. President Bush often insists he has to be the decider - ignoring Congress and the public when it comes to the tough matters on war, terrorism and torture, even deciding whether an ordinary man in Florida should be allowed to let his wife die with dignity. Apparently that burden does not apply to the functioning of one of the most vital government agencies, the Justice Department. Americans have been waiting months for Mr. Bush to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who long ago proved that he was incompetent and more recently has proved that he can’t tell the truth. Mr. Bush refused to fire him after it was clear Mr. Gonzales lied about his role in the political purge of nine federal prosecutors. And he is still refusing to do so - even after testimony by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, that suggests that Mr. Gonzales either lied to Congress about Mr. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping operation or at the very least twisted the truth so badly that it amounts to the same thing. Mr. Gonzales has now told Congress twice that there was no dissent in the government about Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize the National Security Agency to spy on Americans’ international calls and e-mails without obtaining the legally required warrant. Mr. Mueller and James Comey, a former deputy attorney general, say that is not true. Not only was there disagreement, but they also say that they almost resigned over the dispute. Read The Full Story Taliban Spokesman: No More Talks On S. Korean Hostages 2007-07-29 02:25:27 Taliban rebels on Sunday ruled out more talks with the Afghan government over their remaining 22 South Korean hostages and pressed for the release of militant prisoners as the only way out of the crisis. An Afghan team that was supposed to have held more negotiations with the Taliban on Saturday could not reach the group because of security concerns in Ghazni province, said provincial sources. The team hoped to persuade the insurgents to free without condition the Christian volunteers they kidnapped from a bus 10 days ago in Ghazni, south of Kabul. A deputy interior minister on Saturday told Reuters that force might be used if talks fail. Read The Full Story New Space Probe To Measure Earth's Gravity With 'Unprecedented Accuracy' 2007-07-29 02:23:26 Scientists unveiled a new weapon in the battle against global warming last week: a 16ft torpedo-shaped probe that will swoop over the atmosphere to measure Earth's gravity with unprecedented accuracy. The Gravity and Ocean Circulation Explorer, or GOCE, has been dubbed the "Ferrari" of space probes because of its elegant design and will be launched early next year on a Russian SS-19 missile. Scientists say its data on Earth's gravitational field will be vital in understanding how ocean currents react to the heating of our planet over the next few decades. "Gravity is the force that drives the circulation of the oceans," said Dr. Mark Drinkwater, GOCE's project scientist. "Until we understand its exact role we cannot predict how the seas - and planet - will behave as the climate gets warmer. That is why GOCE is being launched." Read The Full Story Florida's Everglades Park Rangers Battle Invasion Of Giant Pythons 2007-07-29 02:22:55 The Everglades stretch for hundreds of swampy miles across south Florida, home to hordes of snakes, alligators and assorted creepy-crawlies. But now an invasion by deadly giant pythons is threatening the eco-system of the famous park. The pythons, thought to have been released into the wild by careless pet owners, are no ordinary snakes. They are Burmese pythons, native to South Asia, which can grow 6 meters (18 feet) long, weigh 100 kilograms (220 lbs.)  and live for 20 years or more. The pythons have established breeding pairs in the swamps and are racing to the top of the food chain, even ousting alligators that were the Everglades' top predator. Two years ago a photographer snapped a picture that appeared to show a python so big it had eaten an alligator whole. Read The Full Story	Gonzales' Disputed Honesty To Shield Bush Stretches Back A Decade 2007-07-30 01:00:53 When Alberto R. Gonzales was asked during his January 2005 confirmation hearing whether the Bush administration would ever allow wiretapping of U.S. citizens without warrants, he initially dismissed the query as a "hypothetical situation." When Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisconsin) pressed him further, Gonzales declared: "It is not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes." By then, however, the government had been conducting a secret wiretapping program for more than three years without court oversight, possibly in conflict with federal intelligence laws. Gonzales had personally defended the effort in fierce internal debates. Feingold later called his testimony that day "misleading and deeply troubling." Read The Full Story British National Health Service Doctors Challenge High-Priced Drugs 2007-07-30 01:00:05 British doctors are to rebel against high prices set by pharmaceutical companies for their products by giving patients a cheap but unlicensed drug that prevents blindness, the Guardian newspaper reports. Unable to afford to treat all those losing their sight with a licensed and extremely expensive drug, Lucentis, some primary care trusts are giving National Health Service (NHS) doctors the green light to use tiny shots of a similar drug, Avastin, which is marketed for bowel cancer, but costs a fraction of the price. Avastin is widely used for eye complaints in the United States. A call from the former health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, for Avastin's manufacturer to put the drug through trials for wet age-related macular degeneration went unheeded. Now the NHS is funding a groundbreaking trial which will compare Avastin directly with Lucentis. Both drugs are manufactured by Genentech. Read The Full Story Afghan Leaders: Free Female S. Korean Hostages 2007-07-30 00:59:30 Afghanistan's top political and religious leaders invoked Afghan and Islamic traditions of chivalry and hospitality Sunday in attempts to shame the Taliban into releasing 18 female South Korean captives. A purported Taliban spokesman shrugged off the demands and instead set a new deadline for the hostages' lives, saying the hardline militants could kill one or all of the 22 captives if the government didn't release 23 militant prisoners by 3:30 a.m. EDT Monday. Several other deadlines have passed without killings. Afghan officials, meanwhile, reported no progress in talks with tribal elders to secure hostages' freedom. In his first comments since 23 Koreans were abducted on July 19, Karzai criticized the Taliban's kidnapping of "foreign guests", especially women, as contrary to the tenets of Islam and national traditions. Read The Full Story Commentary: We Need A New Attentiveness To Nature To Understand Our Own Humanity 2007-07-30 00:58:32 Intellpuke: The following commentary is written by Madeleine Bunting and appears in the Guardian edition for Monday, July 30, 2007. Ms. Bunting is a Guardian columnist and associate editor. She writes on a wide range of subjects including politics, work, Islam, science and ethics, development, women’s issues and social change. She has written two books. Most recently, "Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives", an analysis of the British work culture, published by HarperCollins. Ms. Bunting's commentary follows: Here's a slim book to squeeze into that last corner of the holiday suitcase. It coins a new word for a new enthusiasm - corvophile - and it's guaranteed to ensure that you never look at a crow in quite the same way again. Published this week, Mark Cocker's "Crow Country" is the latest addition to a new genre of writing. It doesn't quite fit to call it "nature writing", because what makes these books so compelling - and important - is that they put center stage the interconnections between nature and human beings. So Cocker doesn't just write about crows - breeding, feeding habits, patterns of flight and roosting - but the impact of his fascination with these big, raucous birds on him, his family and, in turn, the impact of humans on crows. (They've cracked the art of opening bin liners on the M4 to rifle through leftovers). The point is that nature is no longer something to be studied from a position of scientific detachment, but an experience, a relationship in which human beings are as much part of nature as any so called wildlife. It was "Findings", a book by the Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie in 2004, that first brought my attention to this genre. In her essays on Scottish landscapes, she charts her observation of a peregrine nesting in the hills above her house between loading the washing machine and looking after her children. Since then I've devoured these books - for example, Richard Mabey's "Nature Cure" or Robert Macfarlane's "The Wild Places", published next month - which map a British landscape as rich and as full of wonder as anything we might find by catching a flight abroad, if we only are attentive enough to notice. That is one of Cocker's central points. A long-standing ornithologist, he challenges the bird twitchers' preoccupation with scarcity by writing a whole book about one of our most common birds - and least liked, because no one claims there is anything cute about a corvid. As he writes, "a really significant element in ascribing beauty to a thing lies not within itself but in the quality of our attention to it". Stop for a moment to examine closely a leaf or a blade of grass, and even these commonplace things become extraordinary. We share these islands with well over a million corvids and yet we have learned to ignore them, so Cocker's task is to try and get us to look again. After his description of the spectacle of 40,000 gathered at the rookery near his home in Norfolk, it will be hard to ever treat them with dismissive contempt again. Read The Full Story Australian Police Hit Back - Accuse Scotland Yard Of Sending Wrong Information On Bomb Plot Suspect 2007-07-30 00:57:51 Australian police Sunday said they held an innocent doctor as a suspect in the plot to bomb London and Glasgow because they were initially sent wrong information by Scotland Yard. Mohammed Haneef arrived home in Bangalore, India, Sunday to a hero's welcome from crowds waiting at the airport. He held a brief press conference outside his home, saying: "It's an emotional moment for me being with my family and home after a long wait of 27 days. I'm going through the trauma of being a victim. I was being victimized by the Australian authorities and the Australian federal police." He thanked his legal team and his supporters around the world. Read The Full Story European Group's Report Warns Of Lack Of 'Net Freedom 2007-07-29 13:50:20 Kazakhstan and Georgia are among countries imposing excessive restrictions on how people use the Internet, a new report says, warning that regulations are having a chilling effect on freedom of expression. “Governing the Internet,” issued Thursday by the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, called the online policing “a bitter reminder of the ease with which some regimes - democracies and dictatorships alike - seek to suppress speech that they disapprove of, dislike, or simply fear.” “Speaking out has never been easier than on the Web. Yet at the same time we are witnessing the spread of Internet censorship,” the report said. Miklos Haraszti, who heads the OSCE's media freedom office (http://www.osce.org/fom/), said about two dozen countries practice censorship, and others have adopted needlessly restrictive legislation and government policy. Read The Full Story Bush Appointee Blocked Surgeon General's Global Health Report 2007-07-29 02:27:28 A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials. The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate. A copy of the report was obtained by the Washington Post.  Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  Richard H. Carmona, who commissioned the "Call to Action on Global Health" while serving as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, recently cited its suppression as an example of the Bush administration's frequent efforts during his tenure to give scientific documents a political twist. At a July 10 House committee hearing, Carmona did not cite Steiger by name or detail the report's contents and its implications for American public health. Read The Full Story Amputations Bring Health Care, Social Crisis To Iraq 2007-07-29 02:26:40 Iraq is facing a hidden healthcare and social crisis over the soaring number of amputations, largely of lower limbs, necessitated by the daily explosions and violence gripping the country. In the north of Iraq, the Red Crescent Society and the director general for health services in Mosul have told U.S.  forces, there is a requirement for up to 3,000 replacement limbs a year. If that estimate is applied across the country, it suggests an acute and looming long-term health challenge that has been largely ignored by the world. The revelation of the scale of limb loss suffered by Iraqi civilians is not entirely surprising, even though it has gone unreported. Levels of amputations performed by military surgeons on U.S. troops in Iraq are twice as high as those recorded in previous wars: the most recently available figures suggest 6 per cent of wounded U.S. troops require an amputation, compared with 3 per cent in other conflicts. The problem is the nature of the war itself, which has involved a very high incidence of blast injuries from car bombs and suicide bombers, as well as collateral injuries caused to civilians by blasts from U.S. airstrikes, numbers of which have increased fivefold since early 2006. Read The Full Story Data Mining Prompted Fight Over NSA Warrantless Suveillance Program 2007-07-29 02:25:49 A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program. It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate, but such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues. The N.S.A.’s data mining has previously been reported. But the disclosure that concerns about it figured in the March 2004 debate helps to clarify the clash this week between Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senators who accused him of misleading Congress and called for a perjury investigation. Read The Full Story Tillman Comrade Recalls Final Moments 2007-07-29 02:24:21 As bullets flew above their heads, the young soldier at Pat Tillman's side started praying. "I thought I was praying to myself, but I guess he heard me," Sgt. Bryan O'Neal recalled in an interview Saturday with the Associated Press. "He said something like, 'Hey, O'Neal, why are you praying? God can't help us now.'" Tillman's intent, O'Neal said, was to "more or less put my mind straight about what was going on at the moment." "He said, 'I've got an idea to help get us out of this,'" said O'Neal, who was an 18-year-old Army Ranger in Tillman's unit when the former NFL player was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004. O'Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!" again and again when he was killed, said O'Neal. Read The Full Story Germany And Israel United To Film Movie Based On Holocaust Novel 2007-07-29 02:23:13 German and Israeli filmmakers have come together to tackle the subject of the Holocaust for the first time in an ambitious screen adaptation of a bestselling novel. Their groundbreaking collaboration over the highly sensitive topic has attracted a star-studded cast in what has been described as a "tightrope walk" of a project. "Adam Resurrected", based on a darkly comic 1969 novel by popular Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk, tells the story of Adam Stein, a Jewish-German clown who is forced to entertain inmates in a Nazi concentration camp. His life is spared only because he plays his violin for the prisoners being sent to the gas chamber. Jeff Goldblum is to play the part of Adam, while Willem Dafoe will play the concentration camp commandant who forces him to act like a dog. Goldblum has described it as "the most difficult role I have ever had to play". Directed by Paul Schrader, who is best known for his screenplay for "Taxi Driver", and produced by the Israeli Ehud Bleiberg and the German Werner Wirsing, the harrowing film has been compared to Roberto Benigni's Oscar-winning Holocaust black comedy "Life is Beautiful". Read The Full Story
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Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday July 29 2007 - (813)

Sunday July 29 2007 edition
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U.S. House Members Say They Will Try To Block Sale Of U.S. Arms To Saudis 2007-07-29 02:27:52 The Bush administration's plan to sell $20 billion in advanced weaponry toSaudi Arabia and five other Persian Gulf  countries is running into congressional opposition and criticism from human rights and arms control groups. Members of Congress vowed Saturday to oppose any deal to Saudi Arabia on grounds that the kingdom has been unhelpful in Iraq and unreliable at fighting terrorism. King Abdullah has called the U.S. military presence in Iraq an "illegitimate occupation," and the Saudis have been either unable or unwilling to stop suicide bombers who have ended up in Iraq, congressional sources say. Human rights groups warned that new U.S. arms meant to contain Iran's rising influence could backfire, allowing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to rally greater support for his hard-line faction in the run-up to parliamentary elections next spring. Arms control groups said Bush's strategy would accelerate an already-dangerous trend that could increase tensions rather than generate a greater sense of security. Read The Full Story Former Rendition Victim Reveals MI5's Role In 'Torture Flight' Hell 2007-07-29 02:27:10 An Iraqi who was a key source of intelligence for MI5 has given the first ever full insider's account of being seized by the CIA and bundled on to an illegal "torture flight" under the program known as extraordinary rendition. In a remarkable interview for The Observer, British resident Bisher al-Rawi has told how he was betrayed by the security service despite having helped keep track of Abu Qatada, the Muslim cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden's "ambassador in Europe". He was abducted and stripped naked by U.S. agents, clad in nappies (diapers), a tracksuit and shackles, blindfolded and forced to wear ear mufflers, then strapped to a stretcher on board a plane bound for a CIA "black site" jail near Kabul in Afghanistan. He was taken on to the jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba before being released last March and returned to Britain after four years' detention without charge. "All the way through that flight I was on the verge of screaming," said al-Rawi. "At last we landed, I thought, thank God it's over. But it wasn't - it was just a refuelling stop in Cairo. There were hours still to go .. My back was so painful, the handcuffs were so tight. All the time they kept me on my back. Once, I managed to wriggle a tiny bit, just shifted my weight to one side. Then I felt someone hit my hand. Even this was forbidden." Read The Full Story Editorial: Mr. Gonzales' Never-Ending Story 2007-07-29 02:26:26 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Sunday, July 29, 2007. President Bush often insists he has to be the decider - ignoring Congress and the public when it comes to the tough matters on war, terrorism and torture, even deciding whether an ordinary man in Florida should be allowed to let his wife die with dignity. Apparently that burden does not apply to the functioning of one of the most vital government agencies, the Justice Department. Americans have been waiting months for Mr. Bush to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who long ago proved that he was incompetent and more recently has proved that he can’t tell the truth. Mr. Bush refused to fire him after it was clear Mr. Gonzales lied about his role in the political purge of nine federal prosecutors. And he is still refusing to do so - even after testimony by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, that suggests that Mr. Gonzales either lied to Congress about Mr. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping operation or at the very least twisted the truth so badly that it amounts to the same thing. Mr. Gonzales has now told Congress twice that there was no dissent in the government about Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize the National Security Agency to spy on Americans’ international calls and e-mails without obtaining the legally required warrant. Mr. Mueller and James Comey, a former deputy attorney general, say that is not true. Not only was there disagreement, but they also say that they almost resigned over the dispute. Read The Full Story Taliban Spokesman: No More Talks On S. Korean Hostages 2007-07-29 02:25:27 Taliban rebels on Sunday ruled out more talks with the Afghan government over their remaining 22 South Korean hostages and pressed for the release of militant prisoners as the only way out of the crisis. An Afghan team that was supposed to have held more negotiations with the Taliban on Saturday could not reach the group because of security concerns in Ghazni province, said provincial sources. The team hoped to persuade the insurgents to free without condition the Christian volunteers they kidnapped from a bus 10 days ago in Ghazni, south of Kabul. A deputy interior minister on Saturday told Reuters that force might be used if talks fail. Read The Full Story New Space Probe To Measure Earth's Gravity With 'Unprecedented Accuracy' 2007-07-29 02:23:26 Scientists unveiled a new weapon in the battle against global warming last week: a 16ft torpedo-shaped probe that will swoop over the atmosphere to measure Earth's gravity with unprecedented accuracy. The Gravity and Ocean Circulation Explorer, or GOCE, has been dubbed the "Ferrari" of space probes because of its elegant design and will be launched early next year on a Russian SS-19 missile. Scientists say its data on Earth's gravitational field will be vital in understanding how ocean currents react to the heating of our planet over the next few decades. "Gravity is the force that drives the circulation of the oceans," said Dr. Mark Drinkwater, GOCE's project scientist. "Until we understand its exact role we cannot predict how the seas - and planet - will behave as the climate gets warmer. That is why GOCE is being launched." Read The Full Story Florida's Everglades Park Rangers Battle Invasion Of Giant Pythons 2007-07-29 02:22:55 The Everglades stretch for hundreds of swampy miles across south Florida, home to hordes of snakes, alligators and assorted creepy-crawlies. But now an invasion by deadly giant pythons is threatening the eco-system of the famous park. The pythons, thought to have been released into the wild by careless pet owners, are no ordinary snakes. They are Burmese pythons, native to South Asia, which can grow 6 meters (18 feet) long, weigh 100 kilograms (220 lbs.)  and live for 20 years or more. The pythons have established breeding pairs in the swamps and are racing to the top of the food chain, even ousting alligators that were the Everglades' top predator. Two years ago a photographer snapped a picture that appeared to show a python so big it had eaten an alligator whole. Read The Full Story U.S. Intelligence Seeks Greater Surveillance Power Overseas 2007-07-28 17:41:01 Citing a "period of heightened threat" to the U.S. homeland, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell  asked Congress to "act immediately" to make changes in current law to permit the interception of messages between terrorist targets overseas, which he said now requires burdensome court orders. In a July 25 letter made public yesterday, McConnell told the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Silvestre Reyes(D-Texas), that he hopes Congress "will be able to act immediately ... to provide the legislative changes needed to protect the nation in this period of heightened threat." At issue is a package of changes that the Bush administration wants in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to facilitate the continuation of its terrorist surveillance program. Congress has delayed amending the program pending further study. Read The Full Story Taliban's South Korean Hostages 'Not In Good Condition' 2007-07-28 17:40:18 A purported Taliban spokesman warned Friday that some of the 22 remaining South Korean hostages in Afghanistan were in bad health, saying hours after the kidnappers' latest deadline passed that the captives were crying and worried about their future. Meanwhile, in eastern Afghanistan, two NATO soldiers were killed and 13 wounded in a major clash with insurgents in a high mountain area where U.S. soldiers do most of the fighting. Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the kidnappers, said by phone that the Taliban still insisted on an exchange of prisoners for the captives, who could be killed if the demand was not met. Ahmadi spoke several hours after the most recent Taliban deadline passed but said the militia had not set a new one. Some of the South Koreans were "not in good condition," said Ahmadi. "I don't know if the weather is not good for them, or our food. The women hostages are crying. The men and women are worried about their future." Read The Full Story Poll: Fewer Americans See Balance In Supreme Court Decisions 2007-07-28 13:54:20 About half of the public thinks the Supreme Court is generally balanced in its decisions, but a growing number of Americans say the court has become "too conservative" in the two years since President Bush began nominating justices, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Nearly a third of the public - 31 percent - thinks the court is too far to the right, a noticeable jump since the question was last asked in July 2005. That's when Bush nominated John G. Roberts, Jr., to the court and, in the six-month period that followed, the Senate approved Roberts as chief justice and confirmed Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. The two have proved to be reliably conservative justices, and the increasingly polarized court this year moved to uphold restraints on abortion, restrict student speech rights and limit the ability of school districts to use race in student assignments, among other issues. Read The Full Story Scientists Hack Into Electronic Voting Machines In California, Elsewhere 2007-07-28 13:53:51 Computer scientists from California universities have hacked into three electronic voting systems used in California and elsewhere in the nation and found several ways in which vote totals could potentially be altered, according to reports released yesterday by the state. The reports, the latest to raise questions about electronic voting machines, came to light on a day when House leaders announced in Washington, D.C., that they had reached an agreement on measures to revamp voting systems and increase their security. The House bill would require every state to use paper records that would let voters verify that their ballots had been correctly cast and that would be available for recounts. The House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, and the original sponsor of the bill, Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, said it would require hundreds of counties with paperless machines to install backup paper trails by the presidential election next year while giving most states until 2012 to upgrade their machines further. Read The Full Story Agent Orange May Cause Hypertension 2007-07-28 13:53:10 Exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam may lead to high blood pressure in some veterans, but the evidence is limited and only suggestive, the Institute of Medicine said Friday. The institute, an arm of the National Academies, has been studying the effects of the herbicide on veterans since the early 1990s and issued its seventh update. Two recent studies of Vietnam veterans who handled Agent Orange and other defoliants indicated that they have higher rates of high blood pressure, said the report. Hypertension affects more than 70 million American adults and is a major risk factor for heart attack and stroke. Read The Full Story Musharraf Holds Talks With Bhutto 2007-07-28 13:52:31 President Gen. Pervez Musharraf held secret talks with opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a government minister said Saturday. Media widely reported that the once-bitter rivals had discussed a power-sharing deal. The president, who is struggling with twin upsurges in Islamic militancy and calls for democracy, "held a successful meeting" with Bhutto in the Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi on Friday, said Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. He would not elaborate, but said "hopefully" Bhutto's secular, socially liberal Pakistan Peoples Party - Pakistan's largest opposition party - would decide to back Musharraf. Pakistani media reported that Musharraf and Bhutto discussed a possible power-sharing deal for nearly an hour but ended without agreement. Sher Afgan Khan Niazi, a minister in the coalition government that backs Musharraf, said it appeared the two were trying to strike a deal to secure another term for the general while paving the way for Bhutto to return as prime minister. Read The Full Story	Bush Appointee Blocked Surgeon General's Global Health Report 2007-07-29 02:27:28 A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials. The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate. A copy of the report was obtained by the Washington Post.  Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  Richard H. Carmona, who commissioned the "Call to Action on Global Health" while serving as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, recently cited its suppression as an example of the Bush administration's frequent efforts during his tenure to give scientific documents a political twist. At a July 10 House committee hearing, Carmona did not cite Steiger by name or detail the report's contents and its implications for American public health. Read The Full Story Amputations Bring Health Care, Social Crisis To Iraq 2007-07-29 02:26:40 Iraq is facing a hidden healthcare and social crisis over the soaring number of amputations, largely of lower limbs, necessitated by the daily explosions and violence gripping the country. In the north of Iraq, the Red Crescent Society and the director general for health services in Mosul have told U.S.  forces, there is a requirement for up to 3,000 replacement limbs a year. If that estimate is applied across the country, it suggests an acute and looming long-term health challenge that has been largely ignored by the world. The revelation of the scale of limb loss suffered by Iraqi civilians is not entirely surprising, even though it has gone unreported. Levels of amputations performed by military surgeons on U.S. troops in Iraq are twice as high as those recorded in previous wars: the most recently available figures suggest 6 per cent of wounded U.S. troops require an amputation, compared with 3 per cent in other conflicts. The problem is the nature of the war itself, which has involved a very high incidence of blast injuries from car bombs and suicide bombers, as well as collateral injuries caused to civilians by blasts from U.S. airstrikes, numbers of which have increased fivefold since early 2006. Read The Full Story Data Mining Prompted Fight Over NSA Warrantless Suveillance Program 2007-07-29 02:25:49 A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program. It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate, but such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues. The N.S.A.’s data mining has previously been reported. But the disclosure that concerns about it figured in the March 2004 debate helps to clarify the clash this week between Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senators who accused him of misleading Congress and called for a perjury investigation. Read The Full Story Tillman Comrade Recalls Final Moments 2007-07-29 02:24:21 As bullets flew above their heads, the young soldier at Pat Tillman's side started praying. "I thought I was praying to myself, but I guess he heard me," Sgt. Bryan O'Neal recalled in an interview Saturday with the Associated Press. "He said something like, 'Hey, O'Neal, why are you praying? God can't help us now.'" Tillman's intent, O'Neal said, was to "more or less put my mind straight about what was going on at the moment." "He said, 'I've got an idea to help get us out of this,'" said O'Neal, who was an 18-year-old Army Ranger in Tillman's unit when the former NFL player was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004. O'Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!" again and again when he was killed, said O'Neal. Read The Full Story Germany And Israel United To Film Movie Based On Holocaust Novel 2007-07-29 02:23:13 German and Israeli filmmakers have come together to tackle the subject of the Holocaust for the first time in an ambitious screen adaptation of a bestselling novel. Their groundbreaking collaboration over the highly sensitive topic has attracted a star-studded cast in what has been described as a "tightrope walk" of a project. "Adam Resurrected", based on a darkly comic 1969 novel by popular Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk, tells the story of Adam Stein, a Jewish-German clown who is forced to entertain inmates in a Nazi concentration camp. His life is spared only because he plays his violin for the prisoners being sent to the gas chamber. Jeff Goldblum is to play the part of Adam, while Willem Dafoe will play the concentration camp commandant who forces him to act like a dog. Goldblum has described it as "the most difficult role I have ever had to play". Directed by Paul Schrader, who is best known for his screenplay for "Taxi Driver", and produced by the Israeli Ehud Bleiberg and the German Werner Wirsing, the harrowing film has been compared to Roberto Benigni's Oscar-winning Holocaust black comedy "Life is Beautiful". Read The Full Story Donations Thank You! 2007-07-28 18:42:23   I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our great readers who have made donations recently.   R.Y.  $36.00   C.S.  $3   C.C.C. $36.00   P.M.  $3   Thanks to all of you, we really appreciate it!   JW Smythe   Editor   Free Internet Press Read The Full Story Justice Dept. Lawyers Join Chorus Criticizing Gonzales 2007-07-28 17:40:43 Daniel J. Metcalfe, a lawyer who began his government career in the Nixon administration and retired from the Justice Department last winter, said morale at the department is worse under Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales than during Watergate. John S. Koppel, who continues to work at the department as a civil appellate lawyer in Washington, wrote this month that he is “ashamed” of the department and that if Gonzales told the truth in recent Congressional testimony, “he has been derelict in the performance of his duties and is not up to the job.” Even though they worry that it may hinder their career prospects, a few current and former Justice Department lawyers have begun to add to the chorus of Gonzales’ critics who say that the furor over his performance as attorney general, and questions about his truthfulness under oath, could do lasting damage to the department’s work. Read The Full Story Bush Administration Set To Offer $20 Billion Arms Deal To Saudi Arabia 2007-07-28 13:54:38 The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq. The proposed package of advanced weaponry for Saudi Arabia, which includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters and new naval vessels, has made Israel and some of its supporters in Congress nervous. Senior officials who described the package on Friday said they believed that the administration had resolved those concerns, in part by promising Israel $30.4 billion in military aid over the next decade, a significant increase over what Israel has received in the past 10 years. Yet administration officials remained concerned that the size of the package and the advanced weaponry it contains, as well as broader concerns about Saudi Arabia’s role in Iraq, could prompt Saudi critics in Congress to oppose the package when Congress is formally notified about the deal this fall. Read The Full Story Southern Europe Scorched As Rain Batters North, Both Bad News For Farmers 2007-07-28 13:54:07 Huge swaths of central and southern Europe were this week engulfed in record temperatures, as other areas recorded their heaviest summer rainfalls and farmers across the continent warned of impending food shortages and price rises. This summer Europe has been split by climate. Above a line roughly running from the Pyrenees to Bulgaria, three humid months have been punctuated by violent storms and enormous cloudbursts; but to the south there has been a succession of heatwaves, each more intense than the last. Tens of thousands of acres of forest are believed to have been destroyed by fire. In Hungary 500 people died from heatstroke and related problems, while in Romania 19,000 were hospitalized as temperatures reached 41 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). With wildfires raging from Italy to Albania and Bosnia to Romania, firefighters - aided by Russian water bomber planes - and soldiers have fought to bring them under control. Workers in several countries were ordered by government decree to down their tools. In Macedonia pregnant women were sent home on paid leave until further notice. Read The Full Story With Gonzales Under Fire, FBI Violation Gets More Attention 2007-07-28 13:53:34 Two weeks before President Bush won reelection in 2004, the FBI sent a rare report to its overseers: One of its agents had engaged in a willful and intentional violation of a law by improperly collecting financial records during a national security investigation. The FBI concluded that the actions of the rookie agent amounted to "intelligence activities that ... may be unlawful or contrary to executive order or presidential directive," according to a declassified memo from Oct. 21, 2004. The incident was deemed serious enough for the bureau to notify both the President's Intelligence Oversight Board and the Justice Department,and to consider punishing the agent. The violation was the only one after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the FBI has specifically flagged as intentional. But it has attracted fresh attention because Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified six months later that no "verified case of civil liberties abuse" had occurred since the USA Patriot Act was enacted. Read The Full Story British Pullout Presages U.S. Problems In Iraq 2007-07-28 13:52:54 As American troop levels are peaking in Baghdad, British force levels are heading in the opposite direction as the troops prepare to withdraw completely from the city center of Basra, 300 miles to the south. The British intend to pull back to an airport headquarters miles out of town, a symbolic move widely taken by Iraqis as the beginning of the end of the British military presence in southern Iraq. The scaling down by America’s largest coalition partner foreshadows many of the political and military challenges certain to face American commanders when their troops begin withdrawing. Skepticism is widespread in Basra, as in Baghdad, about whether Iraqi forces are ready to take over. Both the British and Americans will have to assuage the fears of Iraqis that they are being abandoned to gunmen and religious extremists. And both are likely to face intensified attacks from propaganda-conscious enemies trying to claim credit for driving out the Westerners. Read The Full Story "Oh geez!" - 4 dead in new helicopter collision 2007-07-28 00:11:36 Editor:  Journalists aren't suppose to be the news.  It's very unfortunate when accidents happen.  Our deepest sympathy goes out to their families. Four men were killed in a mid-air helicopter crash in central Phoenix.   KNXV-TV Channel 15 reported that one of the choppers belonged to its station. The other chopper was from KTVK Channel 3 in Phoenix.  The news helicopters were covering a police pursuit in central Phoenix Friday afternoon. Police were pursuing someone suspected of stealing a city truck, then jumping into at least one other vehicle during the afternoon chase, a police spokesman told reporters. In the moments before the crash, the pilot from KNXV-TV (Channel 15), Craig Smith, was on the radio with the pilot from KTVK-TV (Channel 3).  According to a report from the Arizona Republic website, pilot Craig Smith is heard asking his photographer and talking to the pilot of Channel 3. “Where's 3?” “How far?” -  “3, I'm right over you. 15 on top of you.” - “I'm over the top of you.” Just before the picture broke up, Smith said, "Oh geez!" Read The Full Story
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Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday July 28 2007 - (813)

Saturday July 28 2007 edition
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"Oh geez!" - 4 dead in new helicopter collision 2007-07-28 00:11:36 Editor:  Journalists aren't suppose to be the news.  It's very unfortunate when accidents happen.  Our deepest sympathy goes out to their families. Four men were killed in a mid-air helicopter crash in central Phoenix.   KNXV-TV Channel 15 reported that one of the choppers belonged to its station. The other chopper was from KTVK Channel 3 in Phoenix.  The news helicopters were covering a police pursuit in central Phoenix Friday afternoon. Police were pursuing someone suspected of stealing a city truck, then jumping into at least one other vehicle during the afternoon chase, a police spokesman told reporters. In the moments before the crash, the pilot from KNXV-TV (Channel 15), Craig Smith, was on the radio with the pilot from KTVK-TV (Channel 3).  According to a report from the Arizona Republic website, pilot Craig Smith is heard asking his photographer and talking to the pilot of Channel 3. “Where's 3?” “How far?” -  “3, I'm right over you. 15 on top of you.” - “I'm over the top of you.” Just before the picture broke up, Smith said, "Oh geez!" Read The Full Story 'Sabotaged' NASA Computer Came From Texas Company 2007-07-27 21:44:11 A Houston-area company supplied NASA with a computer that had been deliberately damaged, a company official said Friday. The computer is slated to fly to the international space station next month aboard space shuttle Endeavour. The space agency announced Thursday that wires inside the computer had been cut. The manufacturer, Invocon Inc., an electronics research and development firm based in Conroe, Texas, has not yet identified any suspects or motives, said Invocon program director Kevin Champaigne. "We don't know if it was just one person or if it was more than one," he said. Invocon made the unit for Boeing Co., NASA's main contractor for the space station, he said. Read The Full Story Britain's Worst Hit Flood Areas Brace For More Rain 2007-07-27 21:43:44 Flood-damaged regions of central and southern England were on alert again Saturday, as more heavy rain was forecast to move in from the Atlantic Saturday afternoon. Up to nine hours of persistent rain will bring a risk of further flooding in saturated areas of the Severn and upper Thames Valley, said Britain's Environment Agency. Damage to communications could hamper efforts to restore water to 350,000 homes in Gloucestershire, where engineers are working round the clock on the polluted Mythe pumping station. Severn Trent Water and the army said that bottled supplies of water, and those brought in by tanker, now amounted to over 6 million liters a day and were running well, with reports of vandalism stemming from a handful of "stupid" but minor incidents. The scale of the damage was inspected by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, who visited the recently flooded town of Upton-upon-Severn in Worcestershire. The prince chatted to flood victims over a Guinness at the Ye Olde Anchor Inn, which was awash earlier this week. Read The Full Story 1 Dead, 1 Injured In Crash At Wisconsin Air Show 2007-07-27 21:43:01 Two single-engine war planes at an experimental airshow collided while landing Friday, killing one of the pilots and injuring the other, said officials. The Federal Aviation Administration said the collision with the two P-51 Mustangs happened at 3:17 p.m. after the planes finished a performance at the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual AirVenture show. P-51 Mustangs are single-seat fighters that were used in World War II. FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board investigators were on the scene on Friday. Read The Full Story Bush Administration's Nuclear Deal With India Goes Beyond What Congress Approved 2007-07-27 13:46:27 Three years after President Bush urged global rules to stop additional nations from making nuclear fuel, the U.S. State Department Friday announced that the administration is carving out an exception for India, in a last-ditch effort to seal a civilian nuclear deal between the countries. “The United States and India have reached a historic milestone in their strategic partnership by completing negotiations on the bilateral agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation,” the department said in a statement. The announcement follows more than a year of negotiations intended to keep an unusual arrangement between the countries from being defeated in New Delhi. Under the deal, which was described on Thursday by senior American officials, Bush has agreed to go beyond the terms of the deal that Congress approved, promising to help India build a nuclear fuel repository and find alternative sources of nuclear fuel in the event of an American cutoff, skirting some of the provisions of the law. Read The Full Story Editorial: Bush Asserts A King's Perogative 2007-07-27 13:46:01 Intellpuke: The following editorial was written by Jay Bookman for the editorial board of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It appeared in the Journal-Constitution's edition for Wednesday, July 25, 2007. In theory, President Bush is sworn to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. In reality, he has treated federal law as a menu from which he picks and chooses those laws he likes, while ignoring those that do not suit his taste. That royalist attitude may soon inspire a constitutional confrontation unrivaled in U.S. history. At the moment, the president's penchant for ignoring laws he finds inconvenient is best displayed in the standoff with Congress over subpoenas. Congress has demanded the sworn testimony of White House officials as part of an investigation into the Justice Department; the White House is refusing to allow that testimony, citing executive privilege. In itself, that conflict is hardly unusual; it continues a traditional contest of wills between presidents and Congress that goes back to the earliest days of the Republic. The conflict is so standard that federal law lays out a clear process for resolving it. If witnesses refuse to honor congressional subpoenas and are found in contempt, the matter is referred to the U.S. attorney from Washington, D.C., "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action." The wording of that law doesn't give the U.S. attorney any leeway. It doesn't say that he or she "can" or "may" bring it before the grand jury. It says he or she "shall" bring the matter to the grand jury, so the courts can resolve the conflict between the other two branches of government. Read The Full Story Stocks Trading Lower Following Thursday's Plunge 2007-07-27 13:45:17 Stocks are trading lower on Wall Street Friday, a day after a sharp sell-off caused by worries about slowing economic growth and tighter borrowing conditions. The three major stock indexes - the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, the Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq composite - each headed down about 1 percent in midday trading. The losses were less severe than yesterday, the worst day on Wall Street in five months, but the general trend was down. Trading was light and at times unbalanced, as stock prices jostled up and down in the morning session. Energy stocks were the biggest drag on the S.&P. 500, with Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell all dropping more than 2 percent. European markets were essentially flat today, after the plunge in the United States Thursday, but stock markets across Asia suffered one of the worst days of the year. Read The Full Story From Coast To Coast Federal Lawmakers Are Under Investigation 2007-07-27 02:33:23 The way U.S. Representative John T. Doolittle has been talking about it back home in California, his indictment on federal corruption charges is only a matter of time. Doolittle acknowledges that the Justice Department pressed him this spring to accept a plea bargain and confess to criminal charges involving his relationship with the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff, he says he refused the deal. His public relations situation has become so desperate that he and his wife, Julie, went on a local talk-radio show in Sacramento several weeks ago to describe, in detail, the four-hour F.B.I.raid that was carried out in April on their Virginia home. Doolittle, a former member of the House Republican leadership, said the raid was an effort to coerce him to “admit to a crime that I did not commit.” Among members of Congress, Doolittle is far from alone in feeling heat from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department. More than a dozen current and former lawmakers are under scrutiny in cases involving their work on Capitol Hill. Read The Full Story At Least 25 Killed By Car Bomb In Long-Secure Baghdad Neighborhood 2007-07-27 02:32:54 A car bomb tore through a crowded market in central Baghdad on Thursday evening, killing at least 25 people and injuring 110, said police. A cloud of black smoke rose over much of the city after the explosion, which set a three-story apartment building on fire. Police said many of the victims were women shopping for food or clothing. The explosion was the latest in a string of car bombs in Karrada, a largely Shiite district long considered one of Baghdad's safest neighborhoods. More than 50 people have been killed in seven car bomb attacks in the neighborhood this month. There was no significant violence in Karrada in June, police records show. Read The Full Story	U.S. House, Senate Agree On Lobbying Bill Changes 2007-07-27 21:44:22 U.S. House and Senate negotiators agreed Friday on a bill to tighten lobbying restrictions, including a requirement that lawmakers disclose those lobbyists who collect large sums of campaign money for them, said participants. Democratic leaders hope to pass the measure in the House and Senate next week, allowing them to fulfill a 2006 campaign promise before Congress recesses for most of August. The two chambers had passed similar lobbying legislation months ago, but efforts to reconcile their differences had bogged down. The proposed legislation would require lawmakers to disclose lobbyists who raise $15,000 or more for them, within a six-month period, through a popular practice known as bundling. Bundlers solicit campaign checks from numerous people, but their efforts often go undetected under existing campaign finance disclosure laws. Earlier versions of the bill would have required lobbyists-bundlers to disclose their efforts, but many lawmakers preferred to have the obligation fall on them, fearful that a lobbyist might deliberately or inadvertently make a mistaken but embarrassing claim of large donations to a member shortly before his or her re-election. Read The Full Story Commentary: Bush Now Must Lay Out The Least Worst Options For Iraq 2007-07-27 21:43:59 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Martin Kettle and appears in Britain's Guardian newspaper edtion for Saturday, July 28, 2007. Mr. Kettle writes for the Guardian on British, European and American politics, as well as the media, law, music and many other subjects. He has worked on the Guardian since 1984 in several capacities, including as a columnist, classical music critic, political leader writer, Guardian Europe editor and U.S.  bureau chief 1997-2001. He was chief leader writer 2001-6. He was appointed an assistant editor of the paper in 1994. Before joining the Guardian he was political correspondent of the Sunday Times and before that home affairs correspondent of New Society magazine. Mr. Kettle's commentary follows: The surge is not working, yet full-scale withdrawal would be protracted and bloody. The search is on for a compromise. In the pre-Iraq years, attitudes to war on both sides of the Atlantic were commonly framed by one of two radically opposed mythic experiences. A supportable war was the sort embodied in Britain's defiance of Hitler in 1940, whose lesson was that the right people would win if they stood firm against evil. An unsupportable war was encapsulated in America's rout in Saigon in 1975, whose lesson was that conflicts were more complicated in practice. When George Bush decided to invade Iraq, he offered Americans a rerun of a 1940-style war, with himself in the role of Winston Churchill and Tony Blair as his transatlantic cheerleader. Today, as Bush's surge strategy - the deployment six months ago of a further five combat brigades - struggles to produce the promised dividends, Iraq has flipped into the alternative frame. It is widely assumed that the conflict is heading inexorably to a 1975-style nemesis. But is this really true? Do these potent precedents illuminate the only possible alternatives? At the very least, such questions must be examined. The U.S. is better at doing this than Britain, since our role is in any case reduced and detailed public discussion of Iraq options rare. One problem is that much of the discussion in 2007 is a continuation of the argument about what ought to have been done in 2003. Defenders of the surge may no longer talk about creating a democratic Iraq that will transform the region; but they still talk about staying the course and doing what it takes to achieve some vaguer benign goal. Opponents go to the other end of the spectrum, however, and say that the best thing is for the U.S. and its allies to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible, frequently without regard to the practicalities or wider consequences. Read The Full Story Rainfall In Britain Worst In 200 Years 2007-07-27 21:43:32 Torrential downpours which hit last week and left swathes of England and Wales under water were officially the worst in more than 200 years of record keeping, according to figures released by the Met Office Thursday. Rainfall was more than double the seasonal average, with the early summer months of May to July witnessing 382.4 millimeters (15.06 inches) of rainwater, topping the previous record of 349.1 millimeters in 1789, said officials. Deluges in 32 counties, covering the thousands of square miles stretching from Devon to Yorkshire, broke records dating back to 1914 by more than 25 millimeters, the meteorologists added. Forecasters predict the weather to remain unsettled until early August, with satellite images for the weekend suggesting a further 20 millimeters of rain are possible across parts of the southwest. Read The Full Story Shell Oil Makes $3 Million An Hour 2007-07-27 21:42:44 Royal Dutch Shell has produced a stunning financial performance over the second quarter of the year with profits soaring by 20% to $7.6 billion (£3.7 billion) on the back of very high refining margins and despite a fall in production. The record results - amounting to some $3 million (£1.5 million) an hour - underlined Shell's current supremacy over arch-rival BP which barely lifted its profits when measured on the same basis. They also outpaced U.S. oil giant Exxon Mobil, which caught Wall Street on the hop Thursday afternoon with a fall in its quarterly profits instead of the expected rise. At $10.3 billion, Exxon's profits remain comfortably ahead of Shell's, however. The Anglo-Dutch group raised its dividend 14% to $0.36 per share and gave an upbeat assessment of future prospects. Read The Full Story Travelers Face Greater Distribution And Use Of Their Personal Data 2007-07-27 13:46:15 The United States and the European Union have agreed to expand a security program that shares personal data about millions of U.S.-bound airline passengers a year, potentially including information about a person's race, ethnicity, religion and health. Under the agreement, airlines flying from Europe to the United States are required to provide data related to these matters to U.S. authorities if it exists in their reservation systems. The deal allows Washington to retain and use it only "where the life of a data subject or of others could be imperiled or seriously impaired," such as in a counterterrorism investigation. According to the deal, the information that can be used in such exceptional circumstances includes "racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership" and data about an individual's health, traveling partners and sexual orientation. Airlines do not usually gather such data, but officials say it could wind up in passenger files as a result of requests for special services such as wheelchairs, or through routine questioning by airline personnel and travel agents about contacts, lodging, next of kin and traveling companions. Even a request for a king-size bed at a hotel could be noted in the database. Read The Full Story Commentary: Dark Powers, The Sequel 2007-07-27 13:45:42 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Rosa Brooks and appears in the Los Angeles Times' edition for Friday, July 27, 2007. "We ... have to work the dark side, if you will," Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC's Tim Russert, five days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "We've got to spend time in the shadows using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies. That's the world [terrorists] operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal." It was an odd thing to say. Throughout our history - from John Winthrop's 1630 "City Upon a Hill" sermon to President Clinton's foreign policy speeches - our leaders have been quick to assure us of the opposite premise: We will prevail against our enemies because (and only if) we're on the side of light, rather than the side of darkness. We will prevail not through spending "time in the shadows" but through our commitment to freedom, democracy, justice and the rule of law. Granted, previous rhetorical commitments to the side of light were at times accompanied by some pretty dark episodes. But if we didn't always manage to live up to the values we publicly embraced, our public commitments at least gave us a yardstick for measuring ourselves - and declared to the world our willingness to be held to account when we fell short. Read The Full Story Violence Erupts As Pakistan's Red Mosque Is Re-Opened, 13 Killed In Nearby Bombing 2007-07-27 13:44:58 A suspected suicide bomber killed 13 people at a hotel near Islamabad's Red Mosque Friday as the government reopened the religious complex for the first time since a bloody army raid ousted Islamic militants from the site. Hundreds of students clashed with security forces outside the mosque and occupied it for several hours before being dispersed. They denounced President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and demanded the return of a pro-Taliban cleric who was detained during the siege earlier this month. The bomb struck the Muzaffar Hotel, in a downtown market area about a quarter-mile from the mosque. Local television showed victims - many of them bleeding or badly burned, with their clothing in tatters - being carried from the wreckage to waiting ambulances. Amir Mehmood, a witness, said he saw blood, body parts, and shreds of a Punjab police uniform inside the hotel. Read The Full Story Commentary: Bed Time For Gonzo 2007-07-27 02:33:09 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Eugene Robinson, an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post. It deals with the Alberto Gonzalez mess in Washington and appears in the Post's edition for Friday, July 27, 2007. It's way past bedtime for Gonzo. At this point, every day Alberto Gonzales continues as attorney general means more dishonor for the office and the nation - and higher blood pressure for Senate Judiciary Committe members trying desperately to get a straight answer out of the man. Gonzo has managed to do something no one else in Washington has managed in years: create a spirit of true bipartisanship. After his pathetic act in front of the committee Tuesday, it's no surprise that Democrats are threatening to investigate him for perjury. But it was Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican, who looked Gonzo in the face and told him, "I do not find your testimony credible, candidly." Specter seems ready to pop a gasket. "The hearing two days ago was devastating" for Gonzo, Specter said yesterday. "But so was the hearing before that, and so was the hearing before that." Read The Full Story New Details On Tillman's Death 2007-07-27 02:32:18 Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press. "The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators. The doctors - whose names were blacked out - said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away. Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman's comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman's death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident. Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php