Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday July 17 2007 - (813)

Tuesday July 17 2007 edition
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Democrats Maneuver To Chip Away At Republican Resolve To Back Bush's Iraq Strategy 2007-07-17 01:47:08 U.S. Senate Democratic leaders are planning a rare all-night session Tuesday night, employing theatrics and scheduling votes that they hope will chip away at Republican resolve to back President Bush's Iraq war strategy. Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nevada) had hoped to convince Republicans to allow a simple-majority vote on a Democratic proposal to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq by next spring, but Republican leaders held firm to a 60-vote threshold for passage - a routine maneuver in today's closely divided Senate but a number Democrats have been unable to meet all year. And Republicans decried Reid's decision for a marathon session as a stunt. Democrats employed similar delaying tactics when they were in the minority, but Reid said the gravity of the Iraq war calls for a straightforward debate, free of political or procedural gimmicks. "We're going to continue working on this until we get a vote on this amendment," said Reid. "It's unfortunate that President Bush has proven, beyond any doubt, that he won't listen to the Congress or the American people unless he's forced to, and that's what this amendment does." Read The Full Story U.N. Secretary General Says U.S. Should Be At Climate Meeting 2007-07-17 01:46:43 United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he will ask President Bush on Tuesday to have a top U.S. official attend a high-level U.N. meeting on climate change in September because "American participation is crucially important." The secretary-general told a news conference Monday before he headed to Washington to meet Bush that he wants the September meeting to provide "strong political (momentum) and guidelines" for a major meeting in Bali, Indonesia in December on a new global climate pact. Ban, who has made climate change a top priority since he became secretary-general on Jan. 1, has called the meeting on Sept. 24, the day before the annual General Assembly ministerial meeting begins. Bush traditionally addresses the opening session as the representative of the host country. "I would like to discuss this matter with President Bush, and would expect President Bush and the American administration will be represented at the highest possible level," he said. Read The Full Story FDA Bonuses Spending To Get Scrutiny From U.S. House Committee Tuesday 2007-07-17 01:46:09 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is giving workers more than $8 million in bonuses to keep them from defecting to pharmaceutical and other regulated industries, at the same time the agency is being pressed to spend more on food and drug safety. The retention bonuses, worth $5,000 or more per employee, are triple what it paid in 2002 and more than any other federal agency pays. As recently as 2005, the FDA accounted for more than 40 percent of the overall $21.6 million the government paid in retention bonuses, according to FDA and other government records. The retention bonuses are only part of an overall financial incentive program, including recruitment and relocation bonuses paid its employees, that has grown sharply at FDA in recent years. In 2002, the agency gave out just $3.2 million in bonuses worth $5,000 or more. That grew to $9.5 million last year. Read The Full Story Help Us Out, West Asks OPEC; Warning That Oil Could Hit $95 A Barrel By Year-End 2007-07-17 00:51:54 Middle East members of the oil cartel OPEC were under pressure Monday night for an immediate rise in production, after a warning from Goldman Sachs that prices could hit $95 a barrel this year. With a bout of speculative activity Monday driving Brent crude to within a few cents of the record $78.65 of last summer, Goldman said that shortages of supply were behind the steady rise. However, the price later dropped to $77.63 and a decline in gasoline futures led New York analysts to question Goldman's forecast. A further rise in oil prices would add to inflationary pressures in developed countries, with some U.K. analysts fearful that dearer energy increases the risk of at least one more quarter-point increase in base rates from the Bank of England. Despite recent declines in North Sea output, Britain's status as an oil producer has been a contributory factor in the recent rapid rise in sterling against the dollar. The pound Monday exploited nervousness about further fallout from the U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis to climb above $2.04 for the first time in more than a quarter of a century. Analysts in London were looking to Tuesday's inflation figures for June, and tomorrow's release of the minutes of the meeting this month at which the Bank [of England] raised borrowing costs to 5.75%, to assess the chances of what would be a sixth increase in bank rate since last August. Read The Full Story UPDATE: Japan Quake Caused Leak Of Radioactive Water, Damaged Roads, Buildings, Homes 2007-07-16 14:44:28 A strong earthquake struck northwestern Japan on Monday, causing a fire and radioactive water leak at the world's largest nuclear plant. At least eight people were killed and hundreds injured in the 6.8 magnitude quake that collapsed wooden houses, ripped apart roads and buckled seaside bridges. Flames and billows of black smoke poured from the Kashiwazaki nuclear plant - the world's largest in terms of power output capacity. It took two hours to extinguish the fire in an electrical transformer, said Motoyasu Tamaki, a Tokyo Electric Power Co. official. The plant leaked about 315 gallons of water, said Katsuya Uchino, another Tokyo Electric official. Uchino said the water contained a tiny amount of radioactive material and is believed to have flushed into the Sea of Japan. "The radioactivity is one-billionth of the legal limit," said Oshima. The quake, which left fissures 3 feet wide in the ground along the coast, hit shortly after 10 a.m. local time and was centered off Niigata state. Buildings swayed 160 miles away in Tokyo. Sirens wailed in Kashiwazaki, a city of about 90,000, which appeared to be hardest hit. Read The Full Story 2 Car Bombs Kill At Least 80 People In Northern Iraq 2007-07-16 14:43:41 Two car bombs killed at least 80 people in a busy commercial area in the northern city of Kirkuk on Monday, police said, while U.S. military officials announced a major push south of Baghdad to try to disrupt the supply of arms and fighters into the capital city. A third bomb later claimed the life of a police officer in the city. The first attack in Kirkuk occurred around noon, when a truck bomb exploded near the office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the political party of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, said Iraqi police Col. Pestton Mahmoud. The blast destroyed the party's compound, which includes offices for the Kurdish Olympic committee, a Kurdish cultural center and Kurdish security forces, Mahmoud said. Control over the oil-rich city is disputed between Kurdish groups and Sunni Arab factions. Read The Full Story Israel To Release 250 Palestinian Prisoners At End Of Week 2007-07-16 14:43:11 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting here Monday that Israel would proceed with the promised release of 250 Palestinian prisoners later this week, but neither side reported tangible progress in restarting a formal peace process. Most of the prisoners on the proposed list are from Abbas's Fatah party, whose militia and security forces were defeated last month in the Gaza Strip by the rival Hamas movement. Coupled with a provisional amnesty agreement offered to nearly 200 wanted Fatah militiamen in the West Bank, Olmert's proposals represent incremental steps intended to improve Abbas's political standing within the fractured Palestinian electorate. Palestinian officials had hoped for more from the meeting, the first between the two men since a summit in Egypt  last month when Olmert promised to release the 250 prisoners, a tiny proportion of the roughly 10,000 Palestinian prisoners that Israel holds. In an interview published Monday in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Israeli gestures would not benefit Palestinian moderates unless Olmert began formal negotiations over the creation of a Palestinian state. Such talks have not been held since January 2001. Read The Full Story Mahdi Army Is No. 1 Enemy Is Western Baghdad, Not Al-Qaeda 2007-07-16 02:58:19 The lights were on in Baghdad. Something was wrong. Two platoons were creeping through the southwestern neighborhood of al-Amil well past midnight last week. Headlights snapped off, night vision lenses lowered into place, they maneuvered their Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles down narrow streets, angling for surprise. As they approached the suspected homes of the militia leaders they were hunting, their cover of darkness disappeared, fluorescent bulbs on the houses and street lights casting a glow on their vehicles. At 3 in the morning in a city notoriously hard up for power, these blocks were strangely bright. Capt. Sean Lyons, the company commander leading the raid, said he knew why. "This whole area here is just absolutely dominated by Jaish al-Mahdi," he said, using the Arabic for the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia led by the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "They control the power distribution." In the 10-square-mile district of West Rashid, the Mahdi Army also controls the housing market, the gas stations and the loyalty of many of the residents, according to the soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment. The militia has a structure familiar to U.S. soldiers: brigade and battalion commanders leading legions of foot soldiers. Its fighters are willing and able to attack Americans with armor-piercing bombs, mortars, machine guns and grenades. Meanwhile, the political wing of Sadr's movement plays an outsize role in the national government. Read The Full Story Senators Seek Update On Iraq War Authorization 2007-07-16 02:57:42 U.S. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Virginia) said Sunday that the congressional resolution approved in October 2002 that gave President Bush authority to use force in Iraqneeds to be changed because it no longer covers what U.S. forces are doing or will do in the future. The former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee recalled during an appearance on ABC's "This Week" that Bush was given authority to protect the United States from Saddam Husseinand enforce United Nations resolutions involving Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, but Warner said that the original resolution "does not embrace what the missions are today and the missions that are likely to take place with our forces." Warner said he wanted Bush to offer a revised resolution this fall so that by the fifth anniversary of the original Oct. 16 authorization "our forces fighting and the world can see this clear support between the Congress and the president's mission." Read The Full Story Intelligence Reports Cast Doubts On Abbas' Strength, Warn Of Hamas' Tenacity 2007-07-16 02:57:09 Several intelligence assessments have warned that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, the man U.S. policymakers hope can help salvage the Middle East peace process, may not be politically strong enough to achieve that goal, according to U.S. officials. The assessments have also cautioned that his opponents in Hamas - the Islamic movement that is being shunned by Abbas, Israel and the United States - will not be easily marginalized. The White House is now betting that Abbas, replenished by the return of aid from the West and tax revenue withheld by Israel, can create a stable enclave in the West Bank and resume peace negotiations with Israel, a view reiterated Sunday by national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley.He said on ABC's "This Week" that President Bush Monday will publicly discuss "what we are going to do to support [Abbas] ... financially, diplomatically." The administration intends to continue politically isolating the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. Abbas dismissed the Hamas government, which was democratically elected and has refused to recognize Israel, after it routed his security forces in Gaza. The "West Bank first" strategy is the White House's biggest and potentially riskiest policy departure in its dealings with the Palestinian Authoritysince it was created in 1994. The administration is moving into uncharted territory in trying to aid Abbas even though he and his Fatah political party control just a portion of the Authority. Read The Full Story Pakistan Peace Deal Is Dead, Say Tribal Leaders 2007-07-16 02:56:37 A controversial peace deal between the Pakistani government and local tribal leaders in an area where al-Qaeda is  known to be regrouping appeared to collapse Sunday, as tensions escalated and a fresh wave of bombings killed at least 44 people. The 10-month-old deal in the restive region of North Waziristan was designed to curb cross-border attacks against U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan; but it has been widely criticized by security analysts and, lately, U.S. officials, who said it provided terrorist groups including the Taliban and al-Qaeda with a safe haven in which to train recruits and plot attacks. On Sunday, local Taliban fighters proclaimed the deal dead and announced the start of an all-out guerrilla war against the Pakistani army. Pakistani officials stopped short of conceding the agreement's demise, but the military has been moving tens of thousands of troops toward troubled spots along the border in recent days, after the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, last week announced a new crackdown on extremism. Military officials said the troops were being deployed in a bid to keep the peace following last week's raid on the Red Mosque in Islamabad. That effort appeared to be breaking down Sunday, as security forces continued to take heavy losses in a series of attacks that killed more than 70 people over the weekend. Most of those killed were soldiers or police. Read The Full Story BREAKING NEWS: 2 Killed, 33 Injured As 6.8 Earthquake Hits Japan 2007-07-16 01:18:29 Two elderly women were killed and at least 33 people were injured when a magnitude 6.8 earthquake, centered 17 kilometers below sea level, struck just off the northwestern Japanese coast Monday morning, knocking down several small buildings, authorities reported. A spokesman at Kashiwazaki Chuo Hospital said the two women who were killed were at least 80 years old. While government sources would only confirm 33 people hurt, local media reports place the number at over 260. The quake struck at 10:13 a.m. (0113 GMT), the Japanese Meteorological Agency reported. The quake caused minor shaking in Tokyo, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of its epicenter. Read The Full Story	Glaciers In Retreat 2007-07-17 01:46:56 This is how a glacier retreats. At nearly 13,000 feet above sea level, in the shadow of a sharp Himalayan peak, a wall of black ice oozes in the sunshine. A tumbling stone breaks the silence of the mountains, or water gurgles under the ground, a sign that the glacier is melting from inside. Where it empties out - scientists call it the snout - a noisy, frothy stream rushes down to meet the river Ganges. D.P. Dobhal, a glaciologist who has spent the last three years climbing and poking the Chorabari glacier, stands at the edge of the snout and points ahead. Three years ago, the snout was roughly 90 feet farther away. On a map drawn in 1962, it was plotted 860 feet from here. Dobhal marked the spot with a Stonehenge-like pile of rocks. Dobhal’s steep and solitary quest - to measure the changes in the glacier’s size and volume - points to a looming worldwide concern, with particularly serious repercussions for India and its neighbors. The thousands of glaciers studded across 1,500 miles of the Himalayas make up the savings account of South Asia’s water supply, feeding more than a dozen major rivers and sustaining a billion people downstream. Their apparent retreat threatens to bear heavily on everything from the region’s drinking water supply to agricultural production to disease and floods. Read The Full Story Los Angeles Judge OKs $660 Million Clergy Sex Abuse Settlement 2007-07-17 01:46:25 Sobs and a moment of silence for those who died during years of negotiations punctuated a Monday hearing at which a judge accepted a $660 million settlement between the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and alleged victims of clergy sex abuse. ''This is the right result,'' said Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Haley Fromholz. The settlement is by far the largest payout by any diocese since the clergy abuse scandal emerged in Boston in 2002. Individual payouts, to be made by Dec. 1, will vary according to the severity of each case. Cardinal Roger Mahony, whose archdiocese counts 4.3 million Catholics, sat through the hearing but did not speak. He issued an apology Sunday after the settlement was announced and said Monday in a statement that he would spend the rest of the day praying for those who claimed abuse. Read The Full Story Man Shot, Killed In Colorado Capitol 2007-07-17 01:45:56 A man carrying a gun and declaring "I am the emperor" was shot and killed Monday outside the offices of Gov. Bill Ritter by a state trooper, a spokesman said. Ritter was in his office but was not injured. The unidentified man refused orders to drop his gun, spokesman Evan Dreyer said. Four or five shots were heard, but authorities would not say how many times the patrolman fired. The gunman did not fire his weapon, police spokesman Sonny Jackson said. Before he was shot by a member of the governor's security detail, the gunman said, "I am the emperor and I'm here to take over state government," said Dreyer. The man initially walked into the vestibule of Ritter's office and was being escorted out when he produced the gun and refused orders to put it down, Jackson said. The shooting occurred about 2 p.m. in a hall outside the governor's offices on the first floor of the Capitol. Read The Full Story London Mayor Steps In As Tube (Subway) Company Faces Bankruptcy 2007-07-17 00:51:42 Metronet, the company charged with a £17 billion ($34 billion) upgrade of the London underground network, was heading for administration last night as the London mayor prepared to step in. It is understood that Mayor Ken Livingstone has lined up accountancy firm Ernst & Young to take over the running of Metronet, which is facing a cash crunch following a regulatory decision Monday. The referee for the Public-Private Partnership project to renovate the capital's tube (subway) network said Metronet, would not receive the emergency cash injection that it needs to continue with its work. Having asked for £551 million ($1.02 billion), the rail regulator Chris Bolt said it would only get £121 million ($242 million). Read The Full Story Britain Expels 4 Russian Diplomats Over Litvinenko Case 2007-07-16 14:44:04 Relations between Britain and Moscow Monday took a sharp dive as the foreign secretary, David Miliband, announced the expulsion of four diplomats from the Russian embassy in London. He told the Commons the move was intended to "send a clear and proportionate signal" to Russia of the seriousness with which Britain viewed Russia's refusal to extradite the ex-KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi to stand trial for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. "The Russian government has failed to register either how seriously we treat this case or the seriousness of the issues involved, despite lobbying at the highest level and clear explanations of our need for a satisfactory response," said Miliband. Litvinenko, a former Russian security agent who fled to Britain, died in a London hospital last November from a fatal dose of the extremely rare radioactive isotope polonium 210. Read The Full Story Kirkuk Carnage Fuels Calls For U.S. To Exit Iraq 2007-07-16 14:43:25 More than 80 people were killed and 150 wounded in Kirkuk, northern Iraq, Monday as the debate intensified in Washington over a U.S. exit plan. That debate was further complicated by a claim by the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, that Iraqi security forces were ready to take over and the U.S. could leave whenever it wanted. In a coordinated attack, insurgents exploded three bombs in Kirkuk, the biggest of which was an explosives-filled truck detonated by a suicide bomber. Many of the casualties were on a bus close to the truck. The attacks resulted in one of the highest death tolls this year and the highest in Kirkuk since the invasion in 2003. One of the bombs exploded near the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party of the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani. Police brigadier Burhan Tayeb Taha said the blast killed at least 80 people. Read The Full Story Bush Announces Mideast Peace Conference 2007-07-16 14:42:54 President Bush on Monday announced an an international conference this fall to include Israel, the Palestinian  authority and some of their Arab neighbors to help restart Mideast peace talks and review progress in building democratic institutions. He said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would preside over the session. Bush said the conference would include representatives from Israel, the Palestinians ''and their neighbors in the region'' and said participants would include just those governments that support creation of a Palestinian state. Bush also pledged increased U.S. aid to the Palestinian government of President Mahmoud Abbas and called for the convening of a meeting of ''donor'' nations to consider more international aid, including the Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. Bush said the past few years had see ''some hopeful, some dispiriting'' changes in the Middle East. And he called the present time ''a moment of clarity for all Palestinians. And now comes a moment of choice.'' Read The Full Story Clues To Rising Seas Are Hidden In Polar Ice 2007-07-16 02:57:59 Few consequences of global warming pose as severe a threat to human society as sea-level rise, but scientists have yet to figure out how to predict it. And not knowing what to expect, policymakers and others are hamstrung in considering how to try to prevent it or prepare for it. To calculate sea-level rise, the key thing researchers need to understand is the behavior of the major ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica.The disintegration of one would dramatically raise the ocean. While computer models now yield an increasingly sophisticated understanding of how a warming atmosphere would behave, such models have yet to fully encapsulate the complex processes that regulate ice sheet behavior. "The question is: Can we predict sea level? And the answer is no," said David Holland, who directs New York University's Center for Atmosphere Ocean Science. Holland, an oceanographer, added that this may mean researchers will just have to watch the oceans to see what happens: "We may observe the change much more than we ever predict it." Read The Full Story IAEA Confirms That N. Korea Has Shut Down Nuclear Reactor 2007-07-16 02:57:27 United Nations inspectors have verified that North Korea has shut down its sole functioning nuclear reactor, the chief of the watchdog agency said Monday, confirming the isolated country had taken its first step in nearly five years to halt production of atomic weapons. South Korea sent more oil to the North on Monday to reward its compliance with an international disarmament agreement. "Our inspectors are there. They verified the shutting down of the reactor yesterday," said Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency. "The process has been going quite well and we have had good cooperation from North Korea. It's a good step in the right direction," ElBaradei said in Bangkok, where he was to attend an event sponsored by Thailand's Ministry of Science. Read The Full Story U.S. Aid To Pakistan's Tribal Areas Raises Concerns 2007-07-16 02:56:50 The United States plans to pour $750 million of aid into Pakistan’s tribal areas over the next five years as part of a “hearts and minds” campaign to win over this lawless region from al-Qaeda and Taliban militants. Even before the plan has been fully carried out, documents and officials involved in the planning are warning of the dangers of distributing so much money in an area so hostile that oversight is impossible, even by Pakistan’s own government, which faces rising threats from Islamic militants. Who will be given the aid has quickly become one of the most contentious questions between local officials and American planners concerned that millions might fall into the wrong hands. The local political agents and tribal chiefs in this hinterland on the Afghan border have for years accommodated the very groups the American and Pakistani governments seek to drive out. Read The Full Story Cheney Pushes Bush To Take Military Action Against Iran 2007-07-16 01:38:00 The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favor of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned. The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo." The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates. Last year Bush came down in favor of Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month,  Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Bush sided with him. "The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern," the source said this week. Read The Full Story
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