Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday July 2 2007 - (813)

Monday July 2 2007 edition
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British Authorities Rush To Break Terror Cell 2007-07-02 00:43:47 British police and the security services are still hunting for at least three members of an al-Qaeda linked terrorist cell suspected of attempting to commit mass murder using car bombs in London and Glasgow. Counter-terrorism officers believe the cell has at least eight members, linked by a controlling "Mr. Big". The hunt led police to make five arrests over the weekend and raid a number of addresses across England and Scotland, amid fears that there could be another attempted attack. Two of those arrested were said to be doctors. The Jeep attack on Saturday at Glasgow airport, a day after two failed attempts to bomb targets in central London, triggered a decision to take the U.K. to its highest state of alert. The incidents were linked after a strong forensic connection was found between the Jeep rammed into the terminal at Glasgow airport and two Mercedes car bombs found in London. The Jeep was packed with petrol and gas canisters similar to those found in the London vehicles, which also contained nails. Counter-terrorist sources indicated that the link was much broader and that the individuals suspected of involvement in the London and Glasgow terrorist acts were connected. Read The Full Story Leahy Says He May Seek Contempt Charge Against Bush 2007-07-02 00:43:13 The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday that he will attempt to cite the White House for criminal contempt of Congress if it does not turn over documents related to the firing of nine federal prosecutors. "If they don't cooperate, yes, I'd go that far," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vermont) said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "This is very important to the American people." Leahy's comments raise the stakes in a growing conflict between the Democrat-controlled Congress and the Bush White House, suggesting the constitutional clash may end up in a court case that could last beyond Bush's tenure as president. Read The Full Story Obama Campaign Raises $32.5 Million From April Through June 2007-07-02 00:42:26 U.S. Senator Barack Obama raised at least $32.5 million from April through June, he announced Sunday on his campaign Web site, attracting more than 258,000 contributors since entering the Democratic presidential race nearly six months ago. As candidates tabulated how much money they raised in the year’s second quarter, Obama, of Illinois, appeared to be leading contenders from either party, raising at least $31 million for the primary campaign alone. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, raised about $21 million for the primary, a spokesman confirmed Sunday, and about $27 million over all. “Together, we have built the largest grass-roots campaign in history for this stage of a presidential race,” Obama said, adding that 154,000 new donors had signed on in the last three months. “That’s the kind of movement that can change the special-interest-driven politics in Washington and transform our country. And it’s just the beginning.” Obama waited barely 12 hours after the fund-raising period closed to trumpet his success, a quarterly record for a Democratic candidate, hoping to depict widespread support for his campaign and to rebut suggestions that his candidacy is falling behind Mrs. Clinton’s. If her estimate last week that she had raised “in the range of $27 million” proves true, Obama will have outpaced Mrs. Clinton for a second consecutive quarter in money that can be spent in primaries. Read The Full Story In A Fabled City At The End Of The Earth, A Treasury Of Ancient Manuscripts 2007-07-02 00:41:45 A hot wind stirred up the desert sand. Fida ag Muhammad, a wispy man with a blue-grey turban, hurried across the street. Reaching a mud-brick building, he quickly unlocked its corrugated iron door and pushed it open. A beam of soft early-morning light pierced the darkness. On a metal table covered with a red bath towel sat half a dozen leather-bound manuscripts. Carefully untying the string around a small weathered pouch, Muhammad pulled back its flaps to reveal a sheaf of yellowed papers. Their edges had crumbled away, but the neat Arabic calligraphy was still clear. "A Qur'an," he said. "From the 1300s." For an outsider, such a remarkable find might seem extraordinary. In Timbuktu and its surrounding villages like Ber, where Muhammad lives, it is commonplace. After centuries of storage in wooden trunks, caves or boxes hidden beneath the sand, tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts, covering topics as diverse as astronomy, poetry, music, medicine and women's rights, are surfacing across the legendary Malian city. Their emergence has caused a stir among academics and researchers, who say they represent some of the earliest examples of written history in sub-Saharan Africa and are a window into a golden age of scholarship in west Africa. Some even believe that the fragile papers, which are now the focus of an African-led preservation effort, may reshape perceptions of the continent's past. Read The Full Story U.K. Police Make 5th Arrest, Conduct Raids Around Britain As Hunt For Terror Suspects Widens 2007-07-01 14:24:02 British police raided buildings near Glasgow and in central England and made a fifth arrest today, as the hunt intensified for suspects in the fiery attack on the Scottish city's airport and foiled car bombings in London. The terrorist threat that Britain faces is "long-term and sustained," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a nationally televised interview. It is clear, he said, "that we are dealing, in general terms, with people who are associated with al-Qaeda." On Friday, police thwarted an apparent plot to set off a coordinated bomb attack in central London when an ambulance crew outside a nightclub spotted smoke coming from a Mercedes that was found to be rigged with explosives. They found a second Mercedes filled with explosives hours later. Read The Full Story Gathering Intelligence In Iraq Goes Private 2007-07-01 14:23:38 On the first floor of a tan building inside Baghdad's Green Zone, the full scope of Iraq's daily carnage is condensed into a 30-minute PowerPointpresentation. Displayed on a 15-foot-wide screen, the report is the most current intelligence on significant enemy activity. Two men in khakis and tan polo shirts narrate from the back of the room. One morning recently, their report covered 168 incidents: rocket attacks in Tikrit, a cow-detonated bomb in Habbaniyah, seven bodies discovered floating in the Diyala River. A quotation from Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, concluded the briefing: "Hard is not hopeless." The intelligence was compiled not by the U.S. military, as might be expected, but by a British security firm, Aegis Defence Services Ltd. The Reconstruction Operations Center is the hub of Aegis' sprawling presence in Iraq and the most visible example of how intelligence collection is now among the responsibilities handled by a network of private security companies that work in the shadows of the U.S. military. Read The Full Story Carlyle Group May Buy Virgin Media 2007-07-01 14:22:48 The Carlyle Group is in discussions with Virgin Media, the British cable company whose largest investor is Sir Richard Branson, over a potential bid worth more than $20 billion, a person familiar with the negotiations said Sunday. The talks are still early and may not lead to a bid, said this person. Last year, a consortium of private equity firms, including Providence Equity Partners, the Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Robertsand Cinven, held talks with Virgin Media about a possible $15 billion bid. Reports in The Times of London and The Telegraph over the weekend said that Providence might be interested in making another bid. A spokeswoman for Virgin Media declined to comment. Read The Full Story Tourists Going To And From U.K. Face Airport Chaos 2007-07-01 02:50:35 Holidaymakers are being warned to brace themselves for a summer of travel chaos as security measures become far tighter, creating longer queues in departure lounges and at check-ins. Following the attempted car bombing at Glasgow airport, thousands of holidaymakers hoping to jet off to a sunnier climate were facing a miserable few days as the closure of Scotland's busiest airport caused travel chaos. Airports around Britain were also affected Saturday night with much tighter security arrangements. Liverpool's John Lennon airport was closed until further notice, while safety checks were stepped up at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, with passengers facing double scrutiny of their passport details. Scotland Yard said last night in a statement: "Security at Heathrow airport has been thoroughly reviewed, in conjunction with key partners, and we have introduced enhanced levels of policing and security. This includes increased patrols by armed officers and the closure of access to the forecourts." Read The Full Story U.S.-NATO Air Assault In Afghanistan Kills 100, Or More, Civilians 2007-07-01 02:50:02 Just a week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai chastised international forces for being "careless," Afghan officials reported Saturday that possibly 100 or more civilians had been killed in a NATO and U.S.-led assault. The battle in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, which was prompted by a Taliban ambush, began Friday night and continued into Saturday morning, said Afghan officials. It ended with international forces bombing several compounds in the remote village of Hyderabad. "More than 100 people have been killed. But they weren't Taliban. The Taliban were far away from there," said Wali Khan, a member of parliament who represents the area. "The people are already unhappy with the government. But these kinds of killings of civilians will cause people to revolt against the government." Another parliament member from Helmand, Mahmood Anwar, said that the death toll was close to 100 and that the dead included women and children. "Very few Taliban were killed," he said. Read The Full Story Los Angeles Set To Record Driest Year In More Than A Century 2007-07-01 02:48:36 Barring a surprise arrival of the kind of gully washers Texas is getting these days, Los Angeles's driest year in 130 years of recordkeeping will go into the books this weekend. The nation's second-largest city is short nearly a foot of rain for the year from July 1, 2006, to June 30. Just 3.21 inches has fallen downtown in those 12 months, closer to Death Valley's numbers than the normal average of 15.14 inches. It is much the same all over the West, from the measly snowpack and fire-scarred Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada to Arizona's shrinking Lake Powell and the shriveling Colorado River watershed. The weather that is withering Los Angeles and drowning Texas are connected, said Bill Patzert, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist who researches the ocean's role in climate variations and has watched a Western drought grow for seven years. Stationary high pressure has pushed the moisture-bringing jet stream to the north, which has also allowed moist air to linger over Texas, he said. Read The Full Story U.K. Floods Bring Fears Of Looting 2007-07-01 02:47:49 British residents who have suffered the worst of June's extraordinary rains and floods are on alert for potential looting in areas where homes have been left empty and cars abandoned. South Yorkshire police said extra-high-visibility patrols had been brought in because of residents' concerns and warned they would bring "the full might of the law" down on anyone caught looting. Bob Dyson, the force's deputy chief constable, said: "There have been rumors of burglary and theft in empty homes but we have not received any reports of this. No one deserves to be a victim of crime but to take advantage of people affected by the flooding would be viewed severely by us. Our officers would bring the full might of the law to bear on anyone caught doing that." In Toll Bar, near Doncaster, resident Mark Birkby said four to six men from the village were keeping watch 24 hours a day because police were not doing enough. Residents said they had caught people trying to break into a car and stopped outsiders from entering the flooded area. "We had nothing here at all; no help from police or council, nothing at all for days," added Birkby. Read The Full Story	Despite Law, Labels Do Not Provide Foods' Origin 2007-07-02 00:43:33 In every American supermarket, labels tell shoppers where their seafood came from, but there are no such labels for meat, produce or nuts. Behind the contradiction is a lesson in political power in Washington, D.C., where lobbyists and members of Congress have managed to hold off the enforcement of a five-year-old law that required country-of-origin labeling on meat and produce as well as fish. Now, with Democrats in control of Congress and mounting questions about the safety of food imported from China, proponents of the labeling law say they believe that they finally have momentum on their side. After all, they say, at a time when consumers are ever more concerned about where their food is coming from, why not just tell them on the package? “No. 1, there’s a basic consumer right to know,” said Michael Hansen, senior scientist at Consumers Union, an advocacy group that publishes Consumer Reports magazine and supports the labeling law. “People are more and more concerned about the food they eat.” Read The Full Story Bush: A President Besieged And Isolated, Yet At Ease 2007-07-02 00:42:57 At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers. One at a time or in small groups, he summons leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House to join him in the search. Over sodas and sparkling water, he asks his questions: What is the nature of good and evil in the post-Sept. 11 world? What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I'm facing? How will history judge what we've done? Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate? These are the questions of a president who has endured the most drastic political collapse in a generation. Not generally known for intellectual curiosity, Bush is seeking out those who are, engaging in a philosophical exploration of the currents of history that have swept up his administration. For all the setbacks, he remains unflinching, rarely expressing doubt in his direction, yet trying to understand how he got off course. These sessions, usually held in the Oval Office or the elegant living areas of the executive mansion, are never listed on the president's public schedule and remain largely unknown even to many on his staff. To some of those invited to talk, Bush seems alone, isolated by events beyond his control, with trusted advisers taking their leave and erstwhile friends turning on him. Read The Full Story 40 Years Later, Spain Revisits An American Nuclear Accident 2007-07-02 00:41:58 The year was 1966, the height of the cold war and the final years of the Franco dictatorship, when an American B-52 bomber carrying four thermonuclear bombs collided with a supply plane above the village of Palomares in southeastern Spain. Two bombs landed intact, one just outside the village of 1,200 people in the province of Almeria, the other salvaged, unscathed, by a fisherman five miles offshore in the Mediterranean, at a depth of 760 meters (2,500 feet). The third and fourth bombs were damaged by a chemical explosion on impact, releasing about 20 kilograms (44 lbs.) of plutonium into the center of Palomares and surrounding hills. Nobody died or is known to have developed cancer, but Spain's worst nuclear accident took three months and the work of 1,600 U.S. specialists to clean up before it was promptly forgotten outside of Spain. The amnesia was helped along with a now legendary stunt by the former minister of tourism under Franco, Manuel Fraga, who took a much-photographed swim in the Mediterranean with the American ambassador to prove the waters - and budding tourist industry - were safe. More than 40 years later, the Spanish nuclear regulatory agency and a national research center on the environment, energy and technology, CIEMAT, have concluded the first large-scale study of the extent of radioactive contamination around the village, now perched in the middle of the nationwide building frenzy. It found that the area of soil contaminated with americium, a radioactive metal derived from plutonium, is more than three times larger than was previously thought: 300,000 square meters. Read The Full Story Japan Polls: Prime Minister Abe's Support Falls Below 30 Percent 2007-07-02 00:41:20 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was forced to reprimand his defense minister over a gaffe on Monday, as his cabinet's support rates slid below the critical 30 percent level in a poll weeks before an upper house election. Government mismanagement of pension records and voter concern about political corruption have left Abe struggling to win back support ahead of the July 29 election. He was dealt a fresh blow on Saturday when Defense Minister Kyuma sparked public anger by saying he thought the U.S. atomic bomb attacks on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World World Two "could not be helped." Kyuma apologized on Sunday, but opposition lawmakers called for his resignation after the latest in a series of gaffes. Read The Full Story U.S. Companies Increase Testing Of Chinese Goods 2007-07-01 14:23:51 General Mills, Kellogg, Toys “R” Us and other big American companies are increasing their scrutiny of thousands of everyday products they receive from Chinese suppliers, as widening recalls of items like toys and toothpaste force them to focus on potential hazards that were overlooked in the past. These corporations are stepping up their analysis of imported goods that they sell, making more unannounced visits to Chinese factories for inspections and, in one case, pulling merchandise from American shelves at the first hint of a problem. General Mills, which makes food products like Pillsbury dough and Chex cereals, is testing for potential contaminants that it did not look for previously, although it would not name the substances. Kellogg has increased its use of outside services that scrutinize Chinese suppliers and has identified alternative suppliers if vital ingredients become unavailable. And Toys “R” Us recently hired two senior executives in new positions to oversee procurement and product safety, mainly for goods made in China. “We’re thinking in new ways about this,” said Tom Forsythe, a spokesman for General Mills. “We’re looking for things we didn’t look for in the past.” Read The Full Story Selling The Threat Of Bioterrorism 2007-07-01 14:23:13 In the fall of 1992, Kanatjan Alibekov defected from Russia to the United States, bringing detailed, and chilling, descriptions of his role in making biological weapons for the former Soviet Union. As a doctor of microbiology, a physician and a colonel in the Red Army, he helped lead the Soviet effort. He told U.S. intelligence agencies that the Soviets had devoted at least 30,000 scientists, working at dozens of sites, to develop bioweapons, despite a 1972 international ban on such work. He said that emigrating Russian scientists and others posed imminent threats. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, he said, several specialists went to Iraq and North Korea. Both countries, he said, may have obtained anthrax and smallpox. The transfer of smallpox would be especially ominous because the Russians, he said, had sought to genetically modify the virus, posing lethal risk even to those who had been vaccinated. His expertise, combined with his dire pronouncements, solidified his cachet in Washington. He simplified his name to Ken Alibek, became a familiar figure on Capitol Hill, and emerged as one of the most important voices in U.S. decisions to spend billions of dollars to counter anthrax, smallpox and other potential bioterrorism agents. Read The Full Story Britain Raises Terror Threat To 'Critical' Following Attempted Car Bombing In Glasgow 2007-07-01 02:50:47 Britain was braced Saturday night for a fresh wave of terrorist attacks as the national threat level was raised to "critical" following an attempted car bombing of Glasgow airport in Scotland Saturday. Just four days into his premiership, Gordon Brown was dealing with the most dangerous situation facing Britain since the attacks on London in July 2005. Police and intelligence officers confirmed that there was a direct link between the Scottish attack and the attempted car bombing of London on Friday - confirming the reality of a renewed U.K. offensive by Islamist extremists. Saturday night the Prime Minister summoned intelligence chiefs and ministers before the Cobra emergency committee in Whitehall to discuss the deteriorating security situation. It was agreed to raise the threat level to the highest degree possible, a decision that confirmed another attack is expected imminently. In a televised address from Downing Street, a sombre-faced Brown urged people to be "vigilant" and support the police and security services. He said: "I know that the British people will stand together, united, resolute and strong." Read The Full Story Editorial: Abuse Of Executive Privilege 2007-07-01 02:50:23 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Sunday, July 1, 2007. After six years of kowtowing to the White House, Congress is finally challenging President Bush’s campaign to trample all legal and constitutional restraints on his power. Congressional committees have issued subpoenas for documents and witnesses in two major cases and have asked for the first - and likely not the last - criminal investigation of an executive branch official who might have lied to Congress. Predictably, the White House is claiming executive privilege and refusing to cooperate with the legitimate Congressional investigations, one springing from Mr. Bush’s decision to spy on Americans without a warrant and the other from the purge of United States attorneys. The courts have recognized a president’s limited right to keep the White House’s internal deliberations private. But it is far from an absolute right, and Mr. Bush’s claim of executive privilege in the attorneys scandal is especially ludicrous. The White House has said repeatedly that Mr. Bush was not involved in the firings of nine United States attorneys. If that’s true, he can hardly argue that he has the right to conceal conversations and e-mail exchanges that his aides had with one another and the Justice Department. Read The Full Story Saving Earth From The Ground Up 2007-07-01 02:49:04 You may have heard of the nematode, that microscopic gelatinous worm in your garden soil, but did you know that four out of every five living creatures on Earth is a nematode? The whole bloody planet is crawling. A gram of soil might also contain 5,000 species of bacteria and untold fungi in a secret universe separated only by the soles of our shoes and our sad ignorance of our global home. These and other marvelous revelations come from the celebrated Harvard University biologist Edward O. Wilson, who was in Washington, D.C., this week as lawmakers, government officials and scientists took a little time away from pressing matters of state to consider ... the plight and the future of bugs. Laughable? No, don't dis bugs - your very life depends on them, it turns out. Wilson, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for his books on invertebrate life, lectured to more than 200 like-minded bug lovers as part of National Pollinator Week events and celebrations. At 78, he remains a lithe figure, crowned with a mop of steel-gray hair and disco-age translucent brown glasses, as if hewn from amber but missing the frozen prehistoric mosquito. At Wednesday's talk at the Kaiser Family Foundation, Wilson was focused on putting self-absorbed Homo sapiens in some ecological context. If humans were to disappear - he doesn't advocate this, for the record - the effects on the insect world would be minimal. "It's unlikely a single insect species would go extinct except three forms of body and head lice," he said. Close relatives of the parasites could still live on gorillas. The primal, complex web of life would continue "minus all the species we have pushed into extinction." Ouch. Read The Full Story Analysis: Only Iraqis Can Win The War 2007-07-01 02:48:12 The harder President Bush has pushed to win in Iraq, the closer he has come to losing. The question no longer is whether the U.S. military can fully stabilize Iraq. It cannot. That was a possibility four years ago, immediately after Saddam Hussein's government fell. Before the insurgency took hold. Before U.S. occupation authorities lost any chance to avoid the sectarian strife of today's Iraq. Now only the Iraqis can save Iraq. They need the U.S. military's help, no doubt. But the Bush administration has made no secret of the fact that the U.S. troop buildup in Baghdad is simply buying time for the Iraqis to sort out their differences, create a government of national unity and show they can defend themselves. So it is not whether the U.S. can win the war. It is whether the Iraqis can, which is in great doubt. With limited sign of progress in Baghdad, U.S. officials are asking themselves how long it makes sense to tolerate an escalating rate of U.S. casualties - at least 3,576 dead since the war began in March 2003 - while the Iraqis debate and delay. Read The Full Story Kidnapped BBC Reporter's Fate Hangs On Clan Feud 2007-07-01 02:47:23 The arrest of two militants from the radical group holding BBC correspondent Alan Johnston hostage has put the journalist's life in great danger, according to sources in Gaza and within the group itself. Johnston, who was kidnapped on March 12, Sunday endures his 111th day in captivity. Last Monday a video of him wearing what seemed to be an explosives vest was released by his captors. Late Saturday night, members of Jaish al-Islam were due to meet to discuss his fate after two of their members were arrested earlier by Hamas security forces hoping to pressure the group - led by Mumtaz Dogmosh - into releasing the journalist. The revelation came even as members of the Dogmosh family - a notorious clan supplying most of the members of "The Army of Islam" - continued desperate efforts to convince the group not to kill the 45-year-old Scot. However, moderate insiders said the radicals were in charge and out of patience with Hamas, the British government, and the BBC. "We have tried to keep them talking and delaying, but now I fear they will not listen. We will know tonight," said one Dogmosh member with close ties to Jaish al-Islam and who has been working to end the crisis for months. Read The Full Story
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