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

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