Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday July 7 2007 - (813)

Saturday July 7 2007 edition
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Court Rejects Suit Challenging Bush's Domestic Spying Program 2007-07-06 15:58:26 A federal appeals court Friday ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging President Bush's domestic spying program, saying the plaintiffs had no standing to sue. The 2-1 ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel vacated a 2006 order by a lower court in Detroit, Michigan, which had found the post-Sept. 11 warrantless surveillance aimed at uncovering terrorist activity to be unconstitutional, violating rights to privacy and free speech and the separation of powers. U.S. Circuit Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, one of the two Republican appointees who ruled against the plaintiffs, said they failed to show they were subject to the surveillance and therefore do not have standing for their claims. U.S. Circuit Judge Ronald Lee Gilman, a Democratic appointee, disagreed, saying he felt the plaintiffs were within their rights to sue and that it was clear to him that the surveillance program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Read The Full Story 32 Radioactive Devices Missing In Canada 2007-07-06 15:58:00 The Canadian government agency tracking radioactive devices that could be used by terrorists gave four different answers in the past two weeks when asked how many are missing until finally settling Friday on 32. The confusion has raised questions about how closely the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is keeping tabs on items that experts say could be used to make a dirty bomb. The commission initially said it knew of just one wayward device in the last few years, but after being challenged, the number climbed days later to 27 since 2002. The commission said this week that 40 gauges, medical tools and other radioactive devices lost in the last five years are still missing, but it revised the figure Friday to 32. Commission spokesman Max London says the number has fluctuated because officials followed up with the companies that reported losing them and found that some have been retrieved. Read The Full Story Republican Congressman Linked To Two Bribery Scandals 2007-07-06 15:57:19 U.S. Rep. John Doolittle's associations with some notorious scoundrels have him uniquely tied to both congressional bribery scandals that have sent other Republican lawmakers to jail. Justice Department investigators are focusing on the California Republican's dealings with jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, including $5,000 monthly checks from Abramoff to Doolittle's wife. Then there's $37 million in federal funds Doolittle secured for a defense contractor accused of bribing now imprisoned ex-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Brent Wilkes, a benefactor of both Cunningham and Doolittle, is awaiting trial in San Diego, California, on charges of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. There's no indication prosecutors are investigating Doolittle in connection with Wilkes or Cunningham, and the nine-term lawmaker may be guilty of nothing more than a poor choice of friends. But his favors for and from Abramoff leave him the only sitting member of Congress still under investigation in a scandal that netted a dozen convictions, including a guilty plea from now imprisoned former Rep. Bob Ney, of Ohio. Read The Full Story Climate Change Is 'Ravaging Everest' 2007-07-06 15:56:50 The sons of the first men to scale Mount Everest warned Friday that climate change is ravaging the mountain. Speaking prior to the Live Earth concerts this weekend, Sir Edmund Hillary's son, Edmund, and Tenzing Norgay's son, Jamling, said the lives of millions of people who rely on Everest's glaciers for drinking water were being put at risk. They said so much ice on the world's highest mountain had melted that their fathers would no longer recognize the terrain. The pair - who have both climbed Everest - said the base camp where Sir Edmund and Norgay began their historic ascent is now 40 meters (120 feet) lower than in 1953, while the mountain's glaciers were melting so fast that it could be barren rock by 2050. Read The Full Story Britain's Flood Insurance Claims Expected To Be $3 Billion 2007-07-06 15:56:08 Insurance claims from the recent devastating floods in Britain are expected to reach £1.5 billion ($3 billion), an industry group said Friday. The news came as Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised extra government help for the affected areas. An assessment of claims made so far, extrapolated to cover all flood-affected areas, gave a total 50% higher than the £1 billion ($2 billion) estimated a week ago, said the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters. There have so far been 27,500 domestic claims with an average value of £30,000 ($60,000) and 6,800 claims from businesses averaging £100,000 ($200,000), said the organization. "As far as I am aware, this is the most expensive flooding for the insurance industry since the 1950s," Graham Cave, the organization's executive director, told Guardian Unlimited. Read The Full Story Heat Wave Scorches Western U.S. States, Heads East 2007-07-06 11:27:30 Californians who have been taking cover from scorching heat could expect a little relief Friday, although triple-digit temperatures were forecast to set records in other parts of the West. Forecasters predicted a high of 107 in Boise - six degrees higher than the 101 record for that date set in 1985. The city reached 104 degrees Thursday afternoon, leading Rick Overton to arrange a trip for his co-workers to float down the Boise River on inner tubes instead of sitting at stuffy desks. "Once it gets that high - 105, 107, 109 - it just feels hot," said Overton, a copywriter for the digital marketing firm Wirestone. "I'm going to keep a tube under my desk for the whole summer and whenever it gets this hot I'm going to escape." Read The Full Story After Lobbying By Mine Owners, Farm Groups, Developers, Wetlands Protection Rules Narrowed 2007-07-06 11:26:27 After a concerted lobbying effort by property developers, mine owners and farm groups, the Bush administration scaled back proposed guidelines for enforcing a key Supreme Court ruling governing protected wetlands and streams. The administration last fall prepared broad new rules for interpreting the decision, handed down by a divided Supreme Court in June 2006, that could have brought thousands of small streams and wetlands under the protection of the Clean Water Act of 1972. The draft guidelines, for example, would allow the government to protect marsh lands and temporary ponds that form during heavy rains if they could potentially affect water quality in a nearby navigable waterway. Just before the new guidelines were to be issued last September, they were pulled back in the face of objections from lobbyists and lawyers for groups concerned that the rules could lead to federal protection of isolated and insignificant swamps, potholes and ditches. Read The Full Story U.S., NATO Troops Kill More Afghani Civilians Than Insurgents 2007-07-06 11:25:55 After more than five years of increasingly intense warfare, the conflict in Afghanistan reached a grim milestone in the first half of this year: U.S. troops and their NATO allies killed more civilians than insurgents did, according to several independent tallies. The upsurge in deaths at the hands of Western forces has been driven by Taliban tactics as well as by actions of the American military and its allies. Yet the growing toll is causing widespread disillusionment among the Afghan people, eroding support for the government of President Hamid Karzai and exacerbating political rifts among NATO allies about the nature and goals of the mission in Afghanistan. More than 500 Afghan civilians have been reported killed this year, and the rate has dramatically increased in the last month. Read The Full Story	Secrecy Shrouds Accident At Tennessee Nuclear Plant 2007-07-06 15:58:13 A factory that makes uranium fuel for nuclear reactors had a spill so bad that it kept the plant closed for seven months last year and became one of only three incidents in all of 2006 serious enough for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to include in an annual report to Congress. After an investigation, the commission changed the terms of the factory’s license and said that the public had 20 days to request a hearing on the changes. But no member of the public ever did. In fact, no member of the public could find out about the changes. The document describing them, including the notice of hearing rights for anyone who felt adversely affected, was stamped “official use only,” meaning that it was not publicly accessible. “Official use only” is a category below “Secret” and, while documents in that category are not technically classified, they are kept from the public. The agency would not even have told Congress which factory was involved were it not for the efforts of one of the five commissioners, Gregory B. Jaczko, who named the company, Nuclear Fuel Services, of Erwin, Tennessee, in a memo that became part of the public record. His memo said that other public documents would allow an informed person to deduce that the factory belonged to Nuclear Fuel Services. Such secrecy by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now coming under attack by influential members of Congress who complain that the agency is withholding numerous documents about the country’s nuclear facilities in the name of national security, but that many withheld documents are not sensitive. The lawmakers say the agency must move to balance its penchant for secrecy with the public’s right to participate in the licensing process and its right to know about potential hazards. Read The Full Story Pakistan Tilts Toward Mayhem 2007-07-06 15:57:37 The sense of crisis gripping Pakistan swelled Friday as a bloody mosque siege stretched into its fourth day, suspected militants targeted President Pervez Musharraf's plane and a suicide bomber killed six soldiers near the Afghan border. Gunfire rang out in a congested district of Rawalpindi in the morning, shortly after a plane carrying Gen. Musharraf took off. The aircraft was not hit and police traced the shots to a nearby house where they found a rifle and an anti-aircraft gun on the roof. Article continues Security officials described it as a failed assassination attempt but the main military spokesman, Major General Waheed Arshad, said that only the AK-47 rifle had been discharged, suggesting the president was in only limited danger. Gen. Musharraf's plane landed safely in western Baluchistan province, where recent floods killed 200 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless. The military leader has already survived two assassination attempts, a fact that has burnished his reputation as a warrior against militancy among western allies. Read The Full Story China Rejects Binding Target To Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions 2007-07-06 15:57:02 China will not agree any form of binding target to reduce its soaring greenhouse gas emissions as part of a new international deal on climate change, a senior official confirmed Thursday. Lu Xuedu, deputy director of the Chinese government's office of global environmental affairs, said it "was not the time" for China to consider binding commitments, and he criticized developed countries for playing what he called the "games of children" over global warming. But Xuedu said China had not ruled out binding targets in future. "For the time being we don't have that capability to make those commitments. We hope we will have that capability very soon but it depends on the development process," he said in evidence to the U.K. joint committee on climate change. "When we can take such binding commitments will depend on our capability, our economical development level." Read The Full Story Native Americans Offer Gore Last-Minute D.C. Venue For "Live Earth" Concert 2007-07-06 15:56:22 Initially rebuffed by Washington, former Vice President Al Gore's Live Earth concerts found a last-minute home in the U.S. capital on Friday after Native Americans offered their museum for the worldwide event. A few blocks from the U.S. Capitol where some Republican lawmakers had tried to prevent the Washington concert from taking place, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian will host one of several Saturday concerts highlighting climate change. "A couple of global warming naysayers used parliamentary tricks in the Congress to block that," Gore said on CNN. "Well, instead of the cavalry riding to the rescue, the American Indians came to the rescue." Concert promoters initially sought the expansive National Mall as its U.S. venue, but two groups already had permits for that space, forcing Live Earth to find another location. Read The Full Story Key Republican Senator Breaks With Bush On Iraq 2007-07-06 11:27:50 White House efforts to keep congressional Republicans united over the Iraq war suffered another major defection yesterday as Sen. Pete V. Domenici (New Mexico)broke with President Bush and called for an immediate change in U.S. strategy that could end combat operations by spring. The six-term lawmaker, party loyalist and former staunch war supporter represents one of the most significant GOP losses to date. Speaking to reporters at a news conference in Albuquerque, Domenici said he began to question his stance on Iraq late last month, after several conversations with the family members of dead soldiers from his home state, and as it became clear that Iraqi leaders are making little progress toward national reconciliation. "We cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress," said Domenici. "I do not support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq or a reduction in funding for our troops. But I do support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home." Read The Full Story Gray Whales Are Finding Less Food, Scientists Suspect Global Warming 2007-07-06 11:26:45 A female gray whale labored up the coast, the bony ridge of a shoulder blade protruding from what should be the smooth, plump roundness of healthy blubber. "That female looks a little skinny," said federal biologist Wayne Perryman, peering through his binoculars. "You can see her scapula sticking out. Yeah, she's a skinny girl." Scientists from Mexico to the Pacific Northwest are reporting an unusually high number of scrawny whales this year for the first time since malnourishment and disease claimed a third of the gray whale population in 1999 and 2000. So far this year, scientists haven't seen a decline in numbers, and they are not sure what's causing the whales to be so thin, but they suspect it may be the same thing that triggered the die-off eight years ago: rapid warming of Arctic waters where the whales feed. Whales depend on cocktail-shrimp-size crustaceans to bulk up for their long southerly migration. As Arctic ice recedes, fat-rich crustaceans that flourished on the Bering Sea floor are becoming scarce. Read The Full Story Pakistan's President Musharraf Escapes Assassination Attempt 2007-07-06 11:26:11 A burst of gunfire went off as President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's plane left a military base on Friday, in what one official described as a failed assassination attempt. Security forces quickly raided a nearby home with two anti-aircraft guns on the roof, taking the owner in for questioning and searching for a couple who rented the property this week, said officials. "It was an unsuccessful effort by miscreants to target the president's plane," a senior security official told Associated Press. The official, like those who described the raid on the house, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. "They fled quickly, and our security agencies are still investigating." The government, however, said it had yet to establish whether it was an attack on Musharraf. Read The Full Story 3 Wounded In Las Vegas Casino Shooting 2007-07-06 11:25:26 A man on a walkway over the New York-New York casino floor opened fire on the gamblers below early Friday, wounding three people before he was tackled by a group of off-duty police officers and military personnel, said police. Police revised their initial report that four people were wounded in the 12:45 a.m. shooting, and they credited bystanders with subduing the gunman before police arrived. "These are the real heroes. They saw him shooting and tackled him and held him," said police Lt. Randy Sutton. He said the bystanders included three off-duty out-of-town police officers and two military personnel. He did not know their names. "Amazingly, few people were hurt," said Sutton. Read The Full Story
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