Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday August 2 2007 - (813)

Thursday August 2 2007 edition
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UPDATE: At Least 1 Dead As Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Plunges 50 Cars Into Mississippi River 2007-08-01 23:01:46 The entire span of an interstate bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River during evening rush hour Wednesday, sending vehicles, tons of concrete and twisted metal crashing into the water. The Interstate 35W bridge, a major link between Minneapolis and St. Paul, was being repaired when it broke into several huge sections. "There were two lanes of traffic, bumper-to-bumper, at the point of the collapse. Those cars did go into the river," said Minneapolis Police Lt. Amelia Huffman. "At this point, there is nothing to suggest that this was anything other than a structural collapse." The Homeland Security Department had received no indications as of Wednesday night that the collapse was related to terrorism, department spokesman Russ Knocke said in Washington, D.C. It is not clear how many people were injured. WCCO Radio reported that one body, covered with a blue sheet, was seen being pulled from the area. Read The Full Story U.S. House Passes $20 Billion Water Bill 2007-08-01 22:50:46 The House overwhelmingly passed a $20 billion water projects bill late Wednesday night despite a promised veto by President Bush, who complains the bill is laden with costly pet projects and shifts new costs onto the government. "I regret that we're in this situation. But we're going to have to do what we have to do," said Rep. John Mica, R-Florida, rallying support for a bill loaded with Army Corps of Engineers environmental projects and drinking water and wastewater treatment plants included by Senate and House negotiators. Shepherded by Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minnesota, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the bill was seven years in the making and finally passed the House on a 381-40 vote. Read The Full Story News Blog: Republicans Shun Debate, And The Right Cries Out 2007-08-01 22:50:16 When the leading Republican presidential candidates started to squirm last week about attending a Sept. 17 YouTube debate, in which the public would ask questions via video, there was a surprising backlash from the world of Republican and conservative bloggers. The Republican candidates’ failure to embrace the new format, which the Democrats participated in last week, has prompted a public soul-searching in the blogosphere by some of the party’s most loyal supporters. The candidates, they say, reinforced a notion already bedeviling their side: that Republicans don’t “get” the Web. While the Republicans have mastered talk radio, the Democrats have been ahead in using the Web for fund-raising, organizing and energizing the grassroots. “The YouTube debate snub is the symptom, not the disease,” said Patrick Ruffini, a prominent Republican blogger and the e-campaign director for the Republican National Committee from 2005 until earlier this year. The “disease,” he said in an interview, is the Republicans’ failure to convey that “the online community matters to them,” even if they have active Web sites and are using them to raise money. He has helped start an online petition to urge the candidates to participate in the YouTube debate. Read The Full Story Foreign Automakers Pass Detroit In Monthly Sales 2007-08-01 22:49:17 Detroit auto companies’ grip on the American automobile market ended in July, when dismal auto sales gave foreign nameplates the lead for the first time ever, sales reports showed Wednesday. The traditional American brands owned by General Motors, the Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Group held 48.1 percent of the market in July, according to the Autodata Corporation, an industry statistics company in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. That meant foreign auto companies held 51.9 percent of the market. Their previous high was in June, when they held 49.8 percent of automobile sales. In July a year ago, Detroit companies held 52 percent of the American market, according to Autodata. Read The Full Story Flights Cancelled As Typhoon Usagi Bears Down On Japan 2007-08-01 22:48:47 A powerful typhoon approached Japan's southern island of Kyushu on Thursday, bringing with it a warning of likely flooding and forcing the cancellation of 128 flights, said broadcaster NHK. Typhoon Usagi, whose name means rabbit in Japanese, was about 190 kilometers (118 miles) east of the tiny island of Tanegashima, about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) southwest of Tokyo at 9 a.m. (0000 GMT), said the Meteorological Agency. Winds were gusting up to 234 kilometers per hour (145 mph) close to the center of the storm, which was moving north northwest at about 30 kph (19 mph), the agency said, as it warned of floods and high seas around southern Japan. Read The Full Story Bush Expected To Prevent Testimony Of Rove, Jennings 2007-08-01 12:50:46 President Bush is expected to claim executive privilege to prevent two more White House aides from testifying before Congress about the firings of federal prosecutors. Thursday is the deadline for Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, to provide testimony and documents related to the firings, under a subpoena from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Also subpoenaed was White House political aide J. Scott Jennings. The Justice Department included both men on e-mails about the firings and the administration's response to the congressional investigation. White House Counsel Fred Fielding has consistently said that top presidential aides - present and past - are immune from subpoenas and has declared the documents sought off-limits under executive privilege. The House Judiciary Committee already has approved a contempt citation against two other Bush confidants, chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers. The full House is expected to vote on the citation in the fall, but the Justice Department has said it won't prosecute the two. Read The Full Story Ohio Supreme Court Strikes Down Governor's Veto 2007-08-01 12:50:20 Ohio's highest court on Wednesday struck down Gov. Ted Strickland's veto of a bill on his first day in office, saying his action came two days past the deadline. In a 5-2 decision, the state Supreme Court ordered Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to move forward with the bill, which prohibited lawsuits over lead paint. The measure had been passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and former Gov. Bob Taft chose to let it become law without his signature. However, on Jan. 8, the day Democrat Strickland took office, he had Brunner return the bill to his office and he vetoed it. Lawmakers sued, arguing that the veto violated procedures laid out in the Ohio Constitution. Read The Full Story Wall Street Jitters As Credit Firm Goes Under 2007-08-01 12:18:13 A deepening crisis in America's credit market prompted a fresh slump on Wall Street Tuesday as a major lender, American Home Mortgage Investment Corp, confessed it had run out of cash and was likely to go into liquidation. Having begun the day in positive territory, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 146 to 13,211 points as American Home compounded fears of bad debts tied up in sub-prime mortgages. American Home signalled distress on Friday by delaying a dividend to shareholders. Tuesday the New York-based company said "unprecedented disruption" in the secondary mortgage market had led its bankers to call in debts; it had been unable to meet obligations of $300 million on Monday, and $450 million to $500 million on Tuesday; and it had appointed advisers to examine options including liquidation. Read The Full Story U.S. Attorney Became Justice Department Target For Refusing To Slow Down On OxyContin Case 2007-08-01 02:25:18 The night before the government secured a guilty plea from the manufacturer of the addictive painkiller OxyContin, a senior Justice Department official called the U.S. attorney handling the case and, at the behest of an executive for the drugmaker, urged him to slow down, the prosecutor told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday.  John L. Brownlee, the U.S. attorney in Roanoke, Virginia, testified that he was at home the evening of Oct. 24 when he received the call on his cellphone from Michael J. Elston, then chief of staff to the deputy attorney general and one of the Justice aides involved in the removal of nine U.S. attorneys last year. Brownlee settled the case anyway. Eight days later, his name appeared on a list compiled by Elston of prosecutors that officials had suggested be fired. Brownlee ultimately kept his job but, as Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales confronts withering criticism over the dismissals, the episode in the OxyContin case provides fresh evidence of efforts by senior officials in the department's headquarters to sway the work of U.S. attorneys' offices. Read The Full Story U.S. FCC Approves Airwave Use For All Phones 2007-08-01 02:24:32 Consumers will be able to use any cellphone and software they want on a network built on airwaves to be auctioned early next year, according to rules approved Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission.  The vote sets the stage for the auction of public airwaves that will change hands from television broadcasters to a fast-growing wireless industry. The auction, scheduled for January 2008, is expected to raise about $15 billion for the U.S. Treasury. The vote was a partial victory for consumer advocacy groups and Internet companies such as Google, which wanted rules that would allow consumers to use a variety of devices on a network, but those groups also sought more-ambitious rules that would open the network to third-party companies. That measure did not pass. Creating an open network would mean companies like Google would not have to arrange with wireless carriers to make services like Web search and online video available, as they do now. Read The Full Story Retired General Censured In Tillman Case 2007-08-01 02:23:56 The Army censured a retired three-star general Tuesday for a "perfect storm of mistakes, misjudgments and a failure of leadership" after the 2004 friendly-fire death in Afghanistan of Army Ranger Pat Tillman. Army Secretary Pete Geren asked a military review panel to decide whether Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, who led Army special operation forces after the Sept. 11 attacks, should also have his rank reduced. In a stinging rebuke, Geren said Kensinger "failed to provide proper leadership to the soldiers under his administrative control" when the Army Ranger and former pro football star was killed in 2004. Geren said that while Kensinger was "guilty of deception" in misleading investigators, there was no intentional Pentagon cover-up of circumstances surrounding Tillman's death - at first categorized by the military as being from enemy fire. Read The Full Story Cheney Opposes Closing Guantanamo Prison 2007-08-01 02:23:24 Vice President Cheney said Tuesday that he would not immediately close the prison housing terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,because there is no other place to send some of the world's most dangerous men. President Bush has said repeatedly that he wants to close the prison once administration officials figure out what to do with several hundred remaining detainees, but senior administration officials have been divided about how to accomplish that, given practical impediments such as the reluctance on the part of some countries to accept the return of their citizens detained there. Cheney gave voice to his position in an interview with CNN's Larry King, who asked whether Cheney agreed with former secretary of state Colin L. Powell that the facility should be closed "yesterday." "I think you need to have someplace to hold those individuals who have been captured during the global war on terror. I'm thinking of people like Khalid Sheik Mohammad. This is a man we captured in Pakistan. He's the mastermind of 9/11," replied Cheney. "There are hundreds of people like that, and if you closed Guantanamo, you'd have to find someplace else to put these folks." Read The Full Story	U.S. House Approves Children's Health Bill, Senate Likely To Approve, Bush Likely To Veto 2007-08-01 22:50:57 The House Wednesday approved legislation vastly expanding a federal health insurance program for the children of the working poor, shrugging off a fresh veto threat from President Bush and the fierce opposition of House Republicans. The Senate, where the legislation has strong bipartisan support, is expected to follow suit as early as Thursday, voting on a more modest version of the program and probably setting up a showdown between congressional supporters and the White House, which says the measures are far too expansive. The legislation would launch the most significant growth in federal health care in a decade, and Democrats hope it will fortify their members as they head home soon for the summer recess amid voter perceptions that they have accomplished little since taking control of Congress. Read The Full Story Mattel Recalls 1 Million Toys Because Of Lead Paint 2007-08-01 22:50:34 Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, is recalling nearly one million toys in the United States today because the products’ surfaces are covered in lead paint. According to Mattel, all the toys were made by a contract manufacturer in China. The recall, the second biggest this year involving toys, covers 83 different products, manufactured between April 19 and July 6. Many of them feature “Sesame Street” and Nickelodeon characters - including the Elmo Tub Sub, the Dora the Explorer Backpack, and the Giggle Gabber, a toy shaped like Elmo or Cookie Monster that toddlers shake to hear giggles and funny noises. Mattel says it prevented more than two-thirds of the 967,000 affected toys from reaching consumers by contacting retailers, like Wal-Mart, Target and Toys ‘R’ Us, late last week, but more than 300,000 of the tainted toys have been purchased by consumers in the United States. Read The Full Story Politicians Fear Civil War As Musharraf's Regime Is Battered By Suicide Attacks, Civilian Revolt And U.S. Pressure 2007-08-01 22:49:45 Decorum was abandoned as accusations ricocheted between the wood-panelled walls of Pakistan's national assembly on Monday night. "Murderers! Murderers of innocent people!" screamed a Parliament member from a religious party, his yellow turban shaking as he wagged a finger towards the government benches. Five female parliamentarians, their faces concealed behind black and white burkas, slapped the benches with open palms. Another mullah stood up and started shouting. The speaker strained to maintain order. Article continues Others were less captivated by the debate on last month's siege of the Red Mosque, in which more than 100 people died. One man snoozed at his desk. Across the vast hall others started whispered conversations. And high above them Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a dapper man with a pinched, clean-shaven face, looked on impassively from his giant portrait on the wall. In August 1947 Jinnah founded Pakistan in the hope of forging a homeland where the subcontinent's Muslims could live in peace and harmony. Sixty years later, it is going badly wrong. The military runs the country, headed by a dictatorial and unpopular general. Huge protests have filled the streets, the courts are defiant and the Taliban control the tribal belt. So, in part, does al-Qaeda, and the United States is threatening to use force. Suicide blasts have rocked the big cities - and there may be worse to come. Read The Full Story Russia's Gazprom Threatens To Cut Natural Gas Supplies To Belarus 2007-08-01 22:48:57 Russia's Gazprom natural gas monopoly has threatened to halve supplies to Belarus Friday in a payment dispute that could disrupt deliveries to western Europe. Moscow said Wednesday it would cut by 45% supplies flowing to its neighbour through export pipelines - which also carry gas to Germany, Poland and Ukraine - if Minsk did not pay debts of nearly $500 million (£250 million) by 10 a.m. on Friday. Gazprom said exports to the European Union would not be affected but it is feared that Belarus may replace its deficit by siphoning off gas in transit. Russia cut off supplies to Ukraine for several days in what became known as the "gas war" in January last year and has since tussled with other former Soviet states over prices and transit fees. The Kremlin insists prices are set by market forces but critics accuse Moscow of wielding its energy reserves as a political weapon. Read The Full Story BREAKING NEWS: Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Sends 50 Cars Into Mississippi River 2007-08-01 21:24:03 An interstate highway bridge in downtown Minneapolis loaded with rush-hour traffic dropped more than 60 feet into the Mississippi River Wednesday night, sending at least 50 cars and passengers into the water below. Local officials said there were at least three fatalities, and expected the number to increase through the night. One witness told CNN that a policeman told him he had seen seven dead bodies. Dozens of injured drivers and passengers were taken to area hospitals. The eight-lane Interstate 35 bridge, which links Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesotsa, was being repaired at the time, and an eyewitness told MSNBC that he heard a jackhammer being used on the roadway just before the collapse at about 6 p.m. Central time. Witnesses said the bridge, which was built in 1967, collapsed south to north, in three sections, sending a plume of smoke 100 feet into the sky. Read The Full Story Rumsfeld Denies Cover-Up On Tillman Case 2007-08-01 12:50:33 Ex-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top former Pentagon brass denied any cover-up and rejected personal responsibility Wednesday for the military's bungled response to Army Ranger Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death in Afghanistan. "I know that I would not engage in a cover-up. I know that no one in the White House suggested such a thing to me. I know that the gentlemen sitting next to me are men of enormous integrity and would not participate in something like that," Rumsfeld told a House committee. It was Rumsfeld's first public appearance on Capitol Hill since President Bush replaced him with Robert Gates late last year. At a hearing he reiterated previous testimony to investigators that he didn't have early knowledge that Tillman was cut down on April 22, 2004, by fellow Rangers, not by enemy militia as was initially claimed. The truth was kept from the public and Tillman's own family until five weeks later - May 29, 2004. Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, and other family members watched from the back row at Wednesday's hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Read The Full Story British Airways Fined $540 Million For Fuel Price Fixing 2007-08-01 12:18:30 British Airways (BA) was fined £270 million ($540) in a dual action Wednesday by the U.K. and U.S. competition authorities, after admitting price fixing on fuel surcharges on its long-haul flights. The U.S. Department of Justice this afternoon imposed a penalty of $300 million (£148 million) on the group, just hours after a £121.5 m million ($243 million) fine was levied on the airline by Britain's Office of Fair Trading (OFT). The OFT fine is the biggest-ever penalty it has imposed on a company for infringements of competition law and, said the OFT, demonstrates its determination to "deal vigorously" with anti-competitive behavior. The airline had admitted that, between August 2004 and January 2006, it colluded with Virgin Atlantic over the surcharges added to ticket prices in response to rising oil prices. During that period, the extra charges soared from £5 ($10) to £60 ($120) a ticket on long-haul return flights. Read The Full Story U.S. Intelligence Chief: Bush Authorized Series Of Secret Activities In 2001 2007-08-01 02:25:35 The Bush administration's chief intelligence official said Tuesday that President Bush authorized a series of secret surveillance activities under a single executive order in late 2001. The disclosure makes clear that a controversial National Security Agency program was part of a much broader operation than the president previously described. The disclosure by Mike McConnell, director of  U.S. national intelligence, appears to be the first time that the administration has publicly acknowledged that Bush's order included undisclosed activities beyond the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005. In a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania), McConnell wrote that the executive order following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks included "a number of ... intelligence activities" and that a name routinely used by the administration - the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) - applied only to "one particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more." "This is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be discussed publicly, because it is the only aspect of those various activities whose existence has been officially acknowledged," said McConnell. Read The Full Story White House Pushes Congress To Give It Authority For Warrantless Surveillance Outside U.S. 2007-08-01 02:25:02 The Bush administration is pressing Congress this week for the authority to intercept, without a court order, any international phone call or e-mail between a surveillance target outside the United States and any person in the United States. The proposal, submitted by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to congressional leaders on Friday, would amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for the first time since 2006 so that a court order would no longer be needed before wiretapping anyone "reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States". It would also give the attorney general sole authority to order the interception of communications for up to one year as long as he certifies that the surveillance is directed at a person outside the United States. The administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill have mounted a full-court press to get the Democratic-controlled Congress to pass the measure before lawmakers leave town this week for the August recess, trying to portray reluctant Democrats as weak on terrorism. Read The Full Story Murdoch Clinches $5 Billion Dow Takeover 2007-08-01 02:24:17 Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch Tuesday night clinched ownership of the Wall Street Journal's publisher, Dow Jones, after key members of the controlling Bancroft family switched sides to back his $5 billion takeover bid. After frantic last-minute negotiations, it became clear that the Bancrofts, who control 64% of Dow Jones, were pledging at least 38% of the company's stock to Murdoch's News Corporation. Because minority public shareholders are likely to overwhelmingly back the $60-a-share bid from Murdoch, the Bancrofts' position left him in a winning position in three-month takeover battle. Early this morning, the Reuters agency reported that the Dow Jones board of directors meeting in New York gave its approval to News Corp's deal after the latter's board, also meeting in the city, had approved the deal. According to reports in the U.S., a series of minor concessions were sufficient to swing the votes of a crucial Denver-based Bancroft family trust which had held out for a higher price. News Corp has agreed to foot part of the bill for $30 million in advisory fees run up by the Bancrofts as they dithered. The business news channel CNBC reported Tuesday night that a member of the family would be given a seat on News Corp's board and some would get tax-free preferred stock in lieu of cash. Read The Full Story Sydney, Australia, Installs Terror Loudspeakers 2007-08-01 02:23:39 Australia's largest city has installed dozens of loudspeakers to tell residents what to do in a terrorist attack, an official announced Wednesday. The speakers should be operational in time for next month's meeting of 21 world leaders at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, said New South Wales state Police Minister David Campbell. "If there were a terrorist event or a major building fire and there were people in the streets, this is a way of giving them information," Campbell told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. A wailing siren would attract residents' attention, followed by a police announcement directing people to evacuation points plotted around the downtown area. Read The Full Story
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