Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday July 23 2007 - (813)

Monday July 23 2007 edition
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Democrats Press U.S. House To Expand Health Care Bill 2007-07-23 02:17:22 After a rare bipartisan agreement in the Senate to expand insurance coverage for low-income children, House Democrats have drafted an even broader plan that also calls for major changes in Medicare and promises to intensify the battle with the White House over health care. President Bush has threatened to veto what he sees as a huge expansion of the children’s health care program, which he describes as a step “down the path to government-run health care for every American.” The House measure calls for changes that the administration will probably find even more distasteful, including cuts in Medicare payments to private health plans. Like the bill approved last week 17 to 4 in the Senate Finance Committee, the House bill would increase tobacco taxes to help finance expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. House Democrats hope to portray the issue as a fight pitting the interests of children and older Americans against tobacco and insurance companies. The White House says the Democratic proposals would distort the original intent of the children’s program, cause a big increase in federal spending and adversely affect older Americans who are happy with the extra benefits they receive from private health plans. Read The Full Story U.S. Agriculture Dept. Pays Deceased Farmers 2007-07-23 02:16:59 The U.S. Department of Agriculture distributed $1.1 billion over seven years to the estates or companies of deceased farmers and routinely failed to conduct reviews required to ensure that the payments were properly made, according to a government report. In a selection of 181 cases from 1999 to 2005, the Government Accountability Office found that officials approved payments without any review 40 percent of the time. The report cited a 1,900-acre soybean and corn farm in Illinois that collected $400,000 on behalf of an owner who lived in Florida before his death in 1995. The company did not notify the government of the death but certified each year that the dead shareholder, who owned 40 percent of the company, was "actively engaged" in managing the farm. Most estates are allowed to collect farm payments for up to two years after an owner's death, giving heirs time to restructure their businesses and probate the will. After that, local USDA officials must certify every year that the estate is still farming and has remained open for reasons other than simply collecting subsidies. Read The Full Story Turkey's Secular Parties Get Clobbered At Polls 2007-07-23 02:16:24 Voters Sunday handed Turkey's Islamist-influenced ruling party a decisive victory in parliamentary elections, rewarding it for stewardship of the country's robust economy but raising the specter of bitter new quarrels over the feared erosion of Turkey's secular traditions. With more than two-thirds of the votes counted, the Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials AKP, garnered about 48% of the vote, according to unofficial results - a substantial increase over the 34% it received in elections five years ago when it came to power. The vote could have far-reaching consequences for Turkey's engagement with the West, including its drive to become the first Muslim-dominated country to join the European Union. Though secularist parties have been cool to that idea, the AKP has vowed to press ahead with the bid despite early rebuffs. "With this vote, Turkey said no to insularity, no to closing in on itself," said Cengiz Candar, a prominent political columnist. Read The Full Story Military Forces Surround Taliban Holding South Korean Hostages 2007-07-22 21:59:55 American and Afghan soldiers surrounded a district in central Afghanistan where 23 South Korean Christian aid workers were being held hostage last night as their Taliban captors extended a deadline for their demands by 24 hours. The insurgents, who snatched the South Koreans from a bus at gunpoint on Thursday, have threatened to start executing the group unless an equal number of imprisoned fighters are freed. Intensive negotiations involving President Hamid Karzai, Korean hostage negotiators and local tribal elders were under way Sunday night as tearful relatives held a candlelight vigil outside the aid workers' church in Seoul, South Korea. The sense of urgency grew after the body of a German engineer, who had been abducted in a separate incident, was found in Wardak province near Kabul. The Taliban said they killed the man. Last night Germany said his body had gunshot wounds. A German foreign ministry spokesman said the exact cause of death was unclear and Berlin wanted the remains returned to Germany as soon as possible for a closer examination. Read The Full Story Britain: Thousands Without Fresh Water As Floods Bring Chaos 2007-07-22 21:59:24 Intellpuke: There are several articles here reporting on the flooding in Britain. One follows below another with seperate headlines. The first article, by staff writers for the Guardian newspaper follows: More than 350,000 people are facing days without fresh water supplies and a clean-up operation lasting months as devastating floods this weekend left communities cut off across central and southern England. Last night waters were still rising in several parts of the country as the Severn and Thames rivers threatened to burst their banks in Gloucester and Oxford, bringing more chaos to a region where hundreds of people have been evacuated after downpours which began on Friday and swept the country over the weekend. Monday Hilary Benn, Britain's environment secretary, will make an emergency statement to the House of  Commons and Prime Minister Gordon Brown's first monthly press conference is certain to be dominated by criticism about the speed of the response to the latest flooding. He is expected to visit flood affected areas this morning, though Downing Street declined to reveal exactly where he would go. In developments Sunday: -- More people were airlifted to safety in one of the RAF's biggest peacetime operations and the army distributed aid to thousands cut off by rising water in Upton upon Severn, Worcestershire and Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire; Read The Full Story 26 Poles On Religious Pilgrimage Die In Blazing Bus 2007-07-22 21:57:00 A bus transporting Polish pilgrims from a holy site in the French alps plunged off a steep mountain road into a river bank and burst into flames Sunday, killing 26 people, said authorities. Fourteen others were seriously injured in the crash, which occurred near the village of Vizille, not far from Grenoble, said officials from the prefecture of the Isere region. Residents of a nearby town said the bus missed a 90-degree bend, ploughed through a barrier and fell about 20 meters (65 feet) on to the banks of La Romanche river, bursting into flames. "When the bus was burning, there were injured people inside," said Philippe Baret, owner of the field where the bus landed. "I saw at least six of them who were stuck inside the bus and burned to death before my very eyes." Read The Full Story Commentary: Bush Still Doesn't Get It 2007-07-22 02:32:23 Intellpuke: The following commentary is by Akbar Ahmed, the Ibn Khaldun chairman of Islamic studies at American University and the author, most recently, of "Journey Into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization." Mr.Ahmed's commentary appears in the Washington Post edition for Sunday, July 22, 2007. Here's a bit of modern-day heresy: President Bush actually has some rather sound instincts about the Muslim world. He has visited mosques more often than any of his predecessors, and he frequently talks of winning Muslim hearts and minds. So why are those hearts and minds so estranged today? What went wrong? The problem is that Bush has relied on ill-informed advisers and out-of-touch experts. By substituting their false expertise for his own sensible intuitions, he has failed to understand the Muslim world - which means he has failed to understand the arena in which the first post-9/11 presidency will be judged. Instead of seriously explaining Muslim societies that are profoundly split in complex ways, Bush's aides have offered a fatally flawed stereotype of Islam as monolithic and violent. These missteps have helped squander the potential goodwill of people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan - countries that pose major threats to U.S. security, and countries that once saw themselves as U.S. friends. (When the Soviet Unioninvaded Afghanistan in 1979, I was the administrator in charge of south Waziristan, the lawless border region of Pakistan where Osama bin Laden is now said to be hiding, and I saw how appreciative Muslims were of U.S. support.) Today, rather than extending his hand to the people of Pakistan, Bush is marching in lockstep with the country's fading dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is mockingly referred to as "Busharraf." Read The Full Story Gasoline Prices Rise On Refineries' Record Failures 2007-07-22 02:31:41 Oil refineries across the country have been plagued by a record number of fires, power failures, leaks, spills and breakdowns this year, causing dozens of them to shut down temporarily or trim production. The disruptions are helping to drive gasoline prices to highs not seen since last summer’s records. These mechanical breakdowns, which one analyst likened to an “invisible hurricane,” have created a bottleneck in domestic energy supplies, helping to push up gasoline prices 50 cents this year to well above $3 a gallon. A third of the country’s 150 refineries have reported disruptions to their operations since the beginning of the year, a record according to analysts. There have been blazes at refineries in Louisiana, Texas, Indiana and California, some of them caused by lightning strikes. Plants have suffered power losses that disrupted operations; a midsize refinery in Kansas was flooded by torrential rains last month. American refiners are running roughly 5 percent below their normal levels at this time of the year. Read The Full Story Warming Lets Malaria Reach Kenya's Highlands 2007-07-22 02:30:22 The boy was feverish, vomiting, and wouldn't eat. His mother rushed him to a village clinic, suspecting measles, typhoid or one of the other usual childhood ailments found in Kenya's central highlands. Instead, the doctor diagnosed a disease she knew little about: malaria. Though it is Africa's biggest killer, malaria has always been a regional blight. In the secluded coffee-farming villages around Mt. Kenya, malaria was rare, something other people had to worry about, in the sun-baked west or along the steamy coast. "When I was growing up, we never heard of malaria," said Charity Njuki, 31, whose 2-year-old son, Eric, recently contracted the mosquito-borne parasite that causes the disease. Her older children, ages 14 and 10, hadn't had it. "I was really surprised." Read The Full Story Georgia Meat Processor Expands Recalled Products List Over Botulism 2007-07-22 02:29:04 A Georgia meat processor on Saturday expanded its recall of canned meat products that may be connected to a botulism outbreak. Castleberry's Food Co. of Augusta, Georgia, recalled more than 80 brands of canned chili, beef stew, corned beef hash and other meat products in addition to the 10 brands it had recalled Thursday. Cans of chili sauce made at the Castleberry's plant were found in the homes of an Indiana couple and two children in Texas who had been hospitalized with botulism. All four are expected to survive. Castleberry's, which is owned by Bumble Bee Seafoods LLC and based in San Diego, California, voluntarily expanded the recall. Brand names of the recalled products include Austex, Best Yet, Big Y, Black Rock, Bryan, Bunker Hill, Castle, Castleberry's, Cattle Drive, Firefighter, Food Club, Georgia, Goldstar, Great Value, Kroger, Lowes, Meijer, Morton House, Paramount, Piggly Wiggly, Prudence, Southern Home, Steak N Shake, Thrifty Maid, Triple Bar and Value Time. The recall also includes four varieties of Natural Balance dog food. Read The Full Story Key Aide To Iraq's Top Shiite Cleric Fatally Stabbed 2007-07-22 02:28:11 A top aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani was stabbed to death in what Sistani's supporters believe was a warning to Iraq's senior Shiite cleric, authorities said Saturday. Abdullah Falaq was killed Friday in his office, which is adjacent to Sistani's home in the Shiite holy city of Najaf,  about 100 miles south of Baghdad, according to an aide to the cleric. Sistani is considered one of the most influential Shiite leaders in Iraq, and Falaq was his chief adviser on matters of Islamic law. Police said they had taken four suspects into custody. An officer said he could not comment on whether the men were part of any insurgent group. In January, an attempt to assassinate Sistani was foiled during a battle between U.S. and Iraqi military forces and insurgents near Najaf. A representative from Sistani's office expressed concern that an armed attacker had gained entrance to the heavily guarded compound and said he suspected that one of the cleric's bodyguards aided the killer. He said officials close to Sistani interpreted the attack as a threat to the ayatollah and are considering moving him out of Najaf. Read The Full Story Report: 152 Killed By Record Storm In China 2007-07-22 02:26:50 Record rainfall this week triggered floods, landslides and mud flows that killed 152 people in China and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands, state media reported Sunday. Since the start of the annual rainy season in June, floods have hit nearly half of China's regions and killed at least 400 people, said the official Xinhua News Agency. Worst-hit this week was southern China's Yunnan province, where rain triggered floods and landslides from Wednesday to Saturday. More than 4,000 houses were destroyed and 386,000 people evacuated, said Xinhua. It cited the Ministry of Civil Affairs as saying that 59 people were killed in Yunnan, most of them caught in violent mud flows on Thursday. Eastern China's Shandong province and the southwestern city of Chongqing were also badly hit, with rain inflicting severe damage to infrastructure, transportation and telecommunications, said Xinhua. Read The Full Story	Idaho Fire Nears Homes, Military Range 2007-07-23 02:17:08 A wildfire grew by an estimated 200 square miles in 24 hours, blackening grazing land Sunday as it threatened thousands of southern Idaho homes and facilities at an Air Force training range, fire officials said Sunday. Two large wildfires along the Nevada line combined Saturday to create the more than 880-square-mile blaze, which burned grass and brush and was less than a mile from a training range of Mountain Home Air Force Base. No one has been seriously hurt, but the homes of about 7,500 people in the sparsely populated region were threatened, said Chuck Dickson, a fire information officer. The fire was only about 15 percent contained, fire spokeswoman Pam Bierce said, and mandatory evacuations remained in effect for the town of Jarbidge, Nev. Evacuation warnings were lifted for residents of Murphy Hot Springs, Idaho. Read The Full Story Deadline Extended For 23 South Korean Hostages 2007-07-23 02:16:41 A purported Taliban spokesman said Sunday that the hard-line militia had extended by 24 hours the deadline for the Afghan government to trade captured militants for 23 South Korean hostages. Afghan elders leading the hostage negotiations met with the kidnappers and reported that the Koreans were healthy, said Khwaja Mohammad Sidiqi, the police chief of Qarabagh district in Ghazni district, where the Koreans were kidnapped Thursday. He said the delegation made progress in their talks, but the Afghan military said Afghan and U.S. troops had "surrounded" the region in case the government decides the military should move in. Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, said the militants were giving the Afghan and South Korean governments until 10:30 a.m. EDT Monday to respond to their demand that 23 Taliban prisoners be freed in exchange for the Koreans. Read The Full Story YouTube Takes Center Stage As Public Asks Questions Of Democratic Candidates 2007-07-22 22:00:23 Old media enter into an uneasy alliance with new media Monday night to grill the Democratic candidates in the United States's 2008 presidential race. CNN and YouTube, the video-sharing website, are holding a joint debate in which the public have sent in video-recorded questions for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the other candidates. Hours before Sunday night's deadline, more than 2,300 videos recorded on webcameras and mobile phones had been submitted. Among them is a 30-second clip from a cancer survivor who removes her wig and says her chances of survival are not as good as they would have been if she had had health insurance. "What would you, as president, do to make low-cost or free preventative medicine available for everyone in this country?" she asks. Read The Full Story In Alaska, A Road Marked With Controversy 2007-07-22 21:59:41 Seldom has the prospect of building a one-lane, nine-mile gravel road caused such a furor. On one side, proponents say isolated native Alaskans living near the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge on the Aleutian Peninsula could die for lack of emergency medical care if federal officials do not allow the road to be built. The state supports their efforts and has agreed to donate 42,000 acres of its land for the refuge if 200 acres now in the preserve are made available for the road. Environmentalists say the road would wreak havoc with the heart of one of the most fertile wildlife breeding and feeding sites in the nation, if not the world. It would pass along a thin isthmus between two lagoons that are the exclusive feeding grounds of the Pacific black brant, a small sea goose, and a variety of other rare or threatened waterfowl. The site was the first refuge that the United States listed 25 years ago under an international convention on wetlands. To make the stakes even higher, environmentalists say allowing construction of the road would weaken protections for all officially designated federal wilderness areas, making them vulnerable to development whenever Congress decides to make an exception. Read The Full Story Chavez: Foreign Visitors Who Criticize Him Will Be Expelled 2007-07-22 21:57:15 President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that foreigners who publicly criticize him or his government while visiting Venezuela will be expelled from the country. Chavez ordered officials to closely monitor statements made by international figures during their visits to Venezuela - and deport any outspoken critics. "How long are we going to allow a person - from any country in the world - to come to our own house to say there's a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?" Chavez asked during his weekly television and radio program. The Venezuelan leader's statements came after Manuel Espino, the president of Mexico's conservative ruling party, criticized Chavez during a recent pro-democracy forum in Caracas. Government opponents argue Chavez - a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro - is becoming increasingly authoritarian and cracking down on dissent as he steers oil-rich Venezuela toward what he calls "21st-century socialism". Read The Full Story Welcome To Richistan, USA - Dream Of Riches Turning Into Nightmare Of Inequality 2007-07-22 02:32:43 On the surface, Mark Cain works for a time-share company. Members pay a one-off sum to join and an annual fee. They then get to book holiday time in various destinations around the globe. But Solstice clients are not ordinary people. They are America's super-rich and a brief glance at its operations reveal the vast and still widening gulf between them and the rest of America. Solstice has only about 80 members. Platinum membership costs them $875,000 to join and then a $42,000 annual fee. In return they get access to 10 homes from London to California and a private yacht in the Caribbean, all fully staffed with cooks, cleaners and "lifestyle managers" ready to satisfy any whim from helicopter-skiing to audiences with local celebrities. As the firm's marketing manager, Cain knows what Solstice's clientele want. "We are trying to feed and manage this insatiable appetite for luxury," Cain said with pride. America's super-rich have returned to the days of the Roaring Twenties. As the rest of the country struggles to get by, a huge bubble of multi-millionaires lives almost in a parallel world. The rich now live in their own world of private education, private health care and gated mansions. They have their own schools and their own banks. They even travel apart - creating a booming industry of private jets and yachts. Their world now has a name, thanks to a new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank which has dubbed it "Richistan". There every dream can come true. But for the American Dream itself - which promises everyone can join the elite - the emergence of Richistan is a mixed blessing. "We in America are heading towards 'developing nation' levels of inequality. We would become like Brazil. What does that say about us? What does that say about America?" said Frank. Read The Full Story U.S. Governors: States Should Take Lead On Climate Change 2007-07-22 02:32:03 States should develop creative approaches to climate change, just as they have with challenges such as health care, despite their different economic interests, governors said Saturday. "No individual state is going to solve the climate change problem, but we can do our part," said Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. "In the absence of national or international consensus or progress, we have the opportunity to show the way." Talks on state-level climate policy were planned for the annual National Governors Association meeting this weekend at a resort on Lake Michigan, where receding water levels have touched off debate over the effects of global warming on the Great Lakes. Stephen Johnson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the European Union's environmental affairs counselor joined the discussion. The EPA has clashed with some states that are pushing for greater authority to regulate greenhouse gases, particularly automobile exhaust emissions. Read The Full Story City Of West Hollywood Becomes 80th U.S. Community To Vote To Impeach Bush, Cheney 2007-07-22 02:30:52 The White House is more than 2,600 miles from West Hollywood, a distance emblematic of how far left the progressive city is compared with elected leaders running the nation on Pennsylvania Avenue. Last week the distance came into focus as West Hollywood officials made their city the first in Southern California to pass a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. West Hollywood was the 80th city or township in the nation to pass such a declaration, following similar actions in Michigan, Ohio and Vermont as well as six cities in Northern California, including Arcada and Eureka. Citing perceived abuses of power and constitutional transgressions, such as domestic wiretapping and torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the City Council passed the resolution unanimously Monday. Read The Full Story Bush Administration Scales Back Diplomacy To Focus On Iraq, Middle East 2007-07-22 02:29:49 President Bush and his top Cabinet secretaries are scaling back their personal diplomacy around the world to focus more intently on Iraq and the rest of the Middle Eastas the administration concentrates its energy on top priorities for the president's last 18 months in office. In the past two weeks, Bush canceled a summit with Southeast Asian leaders in Singapore, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scrapped a trip to Africa and decided to skip a meeting in the Philippines, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates put off a swing through Latin America. The domestic debate over Iraq, which may culminate with a September progress report on the war, has made such travel untenable at the moment, said officials. The decisions underscore how much Iraq and the turmoil in the Middle East have come to consume Bush's presidency and threaten his ability to forge a lasting legacy. The canceled trips have fueled discontent in regions that have long felt snubbed by Bush, and U.S. diplomats and scholars warn of lasting damage. But as Bush's tenure wanes and Americans' patience with the Iraq war runs short, many specialists in Washington are saying the president must put aside secondary objectives. "An almost-exclusive concentration on Iraq is almost overdue," said James Dobbins, a longtime diplomat who served as Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan and now is a national security analyst at the Rand Corp. "We can't possibly stabilize Iraq unless we decide it's the most important thing we're doing." Read The Full Story Ambassador Crocker Urges Visas For Iraqis Aiding U.S. 2007-07-22 02:28:37 The American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan C. Crocker, has asked the Bush administration to take the unusual step of granting immigrant visas to all Iraqis employed by the U.S. government in Iraq because of growing concern that they will quit and flee the country if they cannot be assured eventual safe passage to the United States. Crocker's request comes as the administration is struggling to respond to the flood of Iraqis who have sought refuge in neighboring countries since sectarian fighting escalated early last year. The United States has admitted 133 Iraqi refugees since October, despite predicting that it would process 7,000 by the end of September. "Our [Iraqi staff members] work under extremely difficult conditions, and are targets for violence including murder and kidnapping," Crocker wrote Undersecretary of State Henrietta Holsman Fore. "Unless they know that there is some hope of an [immigrant visa] in the future, many will continue to seek asylum, leaving our Mission lacking in one of our most valuable assets." Read The Full Story Ethiopia Said To Block Food To Rebel Region - Hundreds Of Thousands Of People At Risk Of Starvation 2007-07-22 02:27:30 The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say. The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions. The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality. Read The Full Story
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