Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday August 7 2007 - (813)

Tuesday August 7 2007 edition
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Same Agencies To Run And Oversee Surveillance Program 2007-08-07 03:05:48 The Bush administration plans to leave oversight of its expanded foreign eavesdropping program to the same government officials who supervise the surveillance activities and to the intelligence personnel who carry them out, senior government officials said Monday. The law, which permits intercepting Americans' calls and e-mails without a warrant if the communications involve overseas transmission, gives Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales responsibility for creating the broad procedures determining whose telephone calls and e-mails are collected. It also gives McConnell and Gonzales the role of assessing compliance with those procedures. The law, signed Sunday by President Bush after being pushed through the Senate and House over the weekend, does not contain provisions for outside oversight - unlike an earlier House measure that called for audits every 60 days by the Justice Department's inspector general. Read The Full Story Iraq's Political Crisis Grows 2007-08-07 03:05:20 Iraq's political crisis worsened Monday as five more ministers announced a boycott of Cabinet meetings - leaving the embattled prime minister's unity government with no members affiliated with Sunni political factions. Meanwhile, a suicide bomber killed at least 28 people in a northern city, including 19 children, some playing hopscotch and marbles in front of their homes. And the American military reported five new U.S. deaths: Four soldiers were killed in a combat explosion in restive Diyala province north of the capital Monday, and a soldier was killed and two were wounded during fighting in eastern Baghdad on Sunday. The new cracks in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government appeared even as U.S. military officials sounded cautious notes of progress on security, citing strides against insurgents linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq but also new threats from Iranian-backed Shiite militias. Despite the new U.S. accusations of Iranian meddling, the U.S. and Iranian ambassadors met Monday for their third round of talks in just over two months. A U.S. embassy spokesman called the talks between U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his counterpart, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, "frank and serious". Read The Full Story Commentary: Saving Soldiers' Jobs 2007-08-07 03:04:33 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Amy R. Gershkoff and appeared in the Washington Post edition for Saturday, August 4, 2007. Ms. Gershkoff is director of analytics at MSHC Partners, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm. Her commentary follows: For tens of thousands of members of the National Guard and reserves who are called up to serve in Iraq, returning home safely may be the beginning - not the end - of their worst nightmare. Reservists lucky enough to make it home often find their civilian jobs gone and face unsympathetic employers and a government that has restricted access to civilian job-loss reports rather than prosecuting offending employers. The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) protects members of the guard and reserves from job loss, demotion, loss of seniority and loss of benefits when they are called to active duty. The act is supposed to protect reservists' civilian jobs for up to five years of military service. But the government has made it difficult for veterans to enforce their legal rights. Service members who return to find their civilian jobs gone also find that the burden is on them to prove that their jobs were taken away as a result of their military service and that there is no other reason that they could have been fired. Read The Full Story Federal Judge Orders Release Of 2004 Surveillance Reports 2007-08-07 03:03:45 A federal judge Monday rejected New York City’s efforts to prevent the release of nearly 2,000 pages of raw intelligence reports and other documents detailing the Police Department’s covert surveillance of protest groups and individual activists before the Republican National Convention in 2004. In a 20-page ruling, Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV ordered the disclosure of hundreds of field intelligence reports by undercover investigators who infiltrated and compiled dossiers on protest groups in a huge operation that the police said was needed to head off violence and disruptions at the convention. At the behest of the city and with the concurrence of civil liberties lawyers representing plaintiffs swept up in mass arrests during the convention, the judge agreed to the deletion of sensitive information in the documents to protect the identities of undercover officers and confidential informants and to safeguard police investigative methods and the privacy of individuals caught up in investigations. Read The Full Story 5 Dead In New Mexico Medical Plane Crash 2007-08-07 03:03:09 A medical plane crashed en route to a hospital, killing all five on board, including a 15-month-old patient and her mother, authorities said Monday. The plane left the Ruidoso Regional Airport late Sunday on a flight to University of New Mexico Hospital, and crashed almost immediately in Devil's Canyon in the Lincoln National Forest, said Peter Olson, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety. A search helicopter found the wreckage early Monday. Tracy Smith and her daughter, Lily Smith, were among those killed, said Olson. It's unknown why Lily was being taken to a hospital. Southwest Medevac identified its pilot as Ricky Byers, 56, of Dimmitt, Texas, who had worked for the company for a year. The other two killed in the crash were Brian Miller, a 44-year-old flight nurse from Roswell who had worked for the service for 1 year, and Deanna Palmer, a 40-year-old paramedic from Prescott Valley, Arizona, who had been on the job one month. Read The Full Story Australia's Murray River Is Choking To Death 2007-08-06 21:47:02 The Murray River is the lifeblood of Australia's farming country, a legendary river that thundered 1,500 miles from the Snowy Mountains to the Indian Ocean. Now, it's choking to death in the worst drought for a thousand years, sparking water rationing and suicides on devastated farms. Is the "Big Dry" a national emergency, or a warning that the Earth is running out of water? Australian farmers always know someone else who is doing it tougher. They pride themselves on their resilience. They take pleasure in living in "a sunburnt country of droughts and flooding rains". Conservative and deeply skeptical, many dismiss global warming as hogwash, but with unprecedented water scarcity and the Murray, the country's greatest river system, on the verge of collapse, warning bells are ringing around the globe. Financially, the drought is pinching as far away as the U.K., hiking up the cost of bread in British supermarkets as wheat prices reach a 10-year high. Symbolically, it cuts much deeper. Commentators are looking on, nervously, wondering if what is becoming the norm in Sydney could be the future for Sydenham. Professor Tim Flannery, an Australian environmental scientist and an international leader on climate change, has no doubts. "Australia is a harbinger of what is going to happen in other places in the world," he says. "This can happen anywhere. China may be next, or parts of western USA. There will be emerging water crises all over the world." In Kenya, the herdsmen of the Mandera region have been dubbed the "climate canaries" - the people most likely to be wiped out first by global warming. In Australia, the earth's driest inhabited continent, it is the farmers who are on the frontline. This extended dry spell began in 1998. Four years later came the one-in-100-years drought. Last year was declared a once-in-a-millennium event. Every city, bar Darwin in the "top end", is facing water restrictions. Rivers are reduced to a trickle a child can jump across. Old Adaminaby, a town drowned by a reservoir 50 years ago, has resurfaced from its watery grave. Distressed koalas have been drinking from swimming pools. The list goes on. Read The Full Story New Orleans' Water System At Risk 2007-08-06 21:46:29 Deep underground, an unseen crisis is threatening New Orleans' already troubled recovery. The city's 3,200-mile system of water and sewer lines - old, leaky and in need of improvements long before Hurricane Katrina - was damaged by the torrent of pipe-corroding salt water. The city Sewerage & Water Board says at least 50 million gallons of water a day are now being lost to leaks, or 2 times pre-Katrina levels. S&WB officials also believe raw sewage is leaking out in places, though the extent of the problem is unclear. The larger fear is that if some water pumps fail - whether because of a power outage, some other kind of mechanical trouble, or another Katrina-like storm - a drastic drop in pressure could allow raw sewage or other pollutants to back up into the water system through the leaks. And that could contaminate the drinking water in some neighborhoods for days or even weeks. Read The Full Story Chavez Seeks Changes Allowing Him Indefinite Rule 2007-08-06 21:45:58 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has announced his intention to change the country's constitution, allowing him to rule indefinitely. The socialist leader used his weekly television program, Hello President, to confirm widely anticipated plans to scrap the limits on presidential terms. Chavez said the expected change - which must be agreed by parliament and approved by voters in a referendum - would enhance democracy. However, critics of his leadership will see it as an attempt to tighten his grip on Venezuela and cement his self-styled "revolution", which has sharply divided opinion at home and abroad. Read The Full Story Bomber Kills At Least 28 People, 19 Of Them Children, In Tal Afar, Iraq 2007-08-06 15:20:09 A suicide bomber slammed his truck into a densely populated residential area in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar on Monday, killing at least 28 people, including 19 children, said local authorities. The attack occurred in a crowded Shiite neighborhood of the religiously mixed city, about 250 miles northwest of Baghdad. The powerful blast caused houses to collapse in the morning as many families were getting ready for the day, and officials said the death toll could rise. ''Rescue teams are still searching for casualties among the rubble,'' said Ali Abbo, the head of the human rights committee. The attacker drove a dump truck filled with explosives and covered with a layer of gravel, said Brig. Gen. Najim Abdullah, adding that at least 19 children were among the 28 killed. At least 40 others were wounded, said Brig. Gen. Rahim al-Jibouri, commander of Tal Afar police. Read The Full Story Beach Real Estate Caught In An Undertow, Buyers Scarce 2007-08-06 15:19:32 The "no vacancy" signs outside hotels, sunburned families packing boardwalk amusement rides and thousands of students working in surf shops and souvenir concessions along the avenues suggest that the beach economy is booming this summer. Yet to a newly minted real estate agent, just six months into the job, the hottest and sunniest days are also the most frustrating signs of a different economic reality: one spent hours on end sitting in model homes and waiting for buyers, who are harder to find this year. If 2006 was the year the boom market began to fade, 2007 is shaping up to be the year that beach communities along the Delaware, Maryland and Virginiashorelines see their economic engines - largely driven by tourism and real estate - downshift from overdrive, say economic and tourism analysts. That means job and income growth is slowing, vacations are being scaled back, and real estate opportunities have shifted in favor of buyers. Read The Full Story Mortgage Maze May Increase Home Foreclosures 2007-08-06 00:43:59 In 2003, Dianne Brimmage refinanced the mortgage on her home in Alton, Illinois, to consolidate her car and medical bills. Now, struggling with a much higher interest rate and in foreclosure, she wants to modify the terms of the loan. Lenders have often agreed to such steps in the past because it was in everyone’s interest to avoid foreclosure costs and possibly greater losses; but that was back when local banks held the loans and the bankers knew the homeowners, as well as the value of the properties. Ms. Brimmage got her loan through a mortgage broker, just the first link in a financial merry-go-round. The mortgage itself was pooled with others and sold to investors - insurance companies, mutual funds and pension funds. A different company processes her loan payments. Yet another company represents the investors as the trustee. She has gotten nowhere with any of the parties, despite her lawyer’s belief that fraud was involved in the mortgage. Like many other Americans, Ms. Brimmage is a homeowner stuck in foreclosure limbo, at risk of losing the home she has lived in since 1998. As the housing market weakens and interest rates on adjustable mortgages rise, more and more borrowers are falling behind. Almost 14 percent of subprime borrowers were delinquent in the first quarter of 2007. Investors, fearful that these problems will hurt the overall economy, have retreated from the stock and bond markets, creating major sell-offs. Read The Full Story U.S. House Approve's The Pentagon's Budget - Minus The President's War Funding 2007-08-06 00:43:19 The House early Sunday approved modest changes to President Bush's record Pentagon budget proposal, but Democrats signaled plans to resume a more contentious debate over the Iraq war after the August recess. The House's $459.6 billion version of the defense budget, approved on a 395 to 13 vote, would add money for equipment for the National Guardand Reserve, provide for 12,000 additional soldiers and Marines, and increase spending for defense health care and military housing. Minutes after the vote, the chamber adjourned until after Labor Day. The White House criticized Democrats for cutting Bush's request and effectively transferring $3.5 billion of the money to domestic spending programs. It is likely that the cuts will be restored in the fall when Congress will consider another wartime supplemental spending bill. Read The Full Story Montana Governor Declares State Of Emergency Over Wildfires 2007-08-06 00:42:19 A state of emergency was declared in Montana on Sunday because of several large wildfires, including one that has crept to within a mile of several homes and destroyed at least one. Higher humidity and clouds were helping firefighters contain that nearly 28-square-mile blaze, which began Friday and rapidly grew, leading to evacuation orders for residents of about 200 homes. In addition to the destroyed home, another one was damaged, as well as a commercial building and seven other structures, said Pat Cross, a fire information officer, but no injuries were reported, and the fire grew little on Sunday. "The fire didn't do much today in terms of moving," said Cross. "We had a very good day." Read The Full Story Nicaragua Defies U.S. With Iran Trade Deal 2007-08-06 00:41:49 Nicaragua has signed contracts with Iran worth hundreds of millions of pounds (dollars) in defiance of warnings from the United States. President Daniel Ortega brushed aside Washington's concerns by agreeing to trade bananas, coffee and meat in exchange for Iranian help with infrastructure projects. Ortega and Iran's energy minister, Hamid Chitchian, signed the accords in Nicaragua's capital, Managua, on Saturday, cementing Tehran's toehold in what the U.S. considers its backyard. In return for Nicaraguan agricultural goods, Iran is to help fund a farm equipment factory, 4,000 tractors, five milk-processing plants, a health clinic, 10,000 houses and a deep-water port. Read The Full Story In Italy, Politicians Are Accused Of Plotting To Keep Banks In Italian Control 2007-08-06 00:40:45 Before heading for the beach, members of Italy's parliament try to sweep all the outstanding business out of parliament in a frenzy of last-minute votes at the start of August. This year one issue has proved so delicate that, at the end of last week, it was decided to put off a vote until the autumn. The issue is whether the chamber of deputies should accede to a request from Milan magistrate Clementina Forleo to admit the evidence of 68 bugged telephone conversations linking some of the country's legislators to alleged plots to keep foreign banks out of Italy. One politician caught on tape is Massimo D'Alema, foreign minister and a deputy prime minister, in Italy's center-left government. Another is Piero Fassino, general secretary of the biggest party in Romano Prodi's government, the formerly communist Left Democrats. Neither has been charged. Both deny wrongdoing. The affair is a reminder that, more than 18 months after the resignation of Italy's central bank governor, Antonio Fazio, the events that led to his removal have yet to run their course. Fazio stepped down following what his successor, Mario Draghi, recently termed "a convulsive period of scandal and speculation". Read The Full Story	Even Non-Housing Markets Feel Mortgage Fallout 2007-08-07 03:05:35 The day-to-day financial dealings of Oneida Limited, the dinnerware and flatware maker, are typically about as far removed from the mortgage loan business as they can be. Yet, like the proverbial flapping of a butterfly’s wings that sets off a storm thousands of miles away, the turmoil in the home mortgage market this summer directly affected the fortunes of the company, based in upstate New York, when it was forced to withdraw a planned offering of $120 million in high-yield bonds to investors as the credit markets froze up seemingly overnight. If the deal had been offered just a month earlier, said Andrew G. Church, Oneida’s chief financial officer, the company would have had no trouble raising the money. “But it happened so quickly,” he said. “We’ve never seen anything as quick as this.” Read The Full Story Commentary: Beyond Disaster 2007-08-07 03:05:00 Intellpuke: The following commentary is by Chris Hedges, former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times, who spent seven years in the Middle East. He was part of that paper's reporting team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of global terrorism. Mr. Hedges is the author of "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning." His latest book is "American Fascists: The Chritian Right and the War on America." The following commentary was first posted at truthdig.com on Monday, August 6, 2007. The war in Iraq is about to get worse-much worse. The Democrats' decision to let the war run its course, while they frantically wash their hands of responsibility, means that it will sputter and stagger forward until the mission collapses. This will be sudden. The security of the Green Zone, our imperial city, will be increasingly breached. Command and control will disintegrate. And we will back out of Iraq humiliated and defeated. But this will not be the end of the conflict. It will, in fact, signal a phase of the war far deadlier and more dangerous to American interests. Iraq no longer exists as a unified country. The experiment that was Iraq, the cobbling together of disparate and antagonistic patches of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious powers in the wake of World War I, belongs to the history books. It will never come back. The Kurds have set up a de facto state in the north, the Shiites control most of the south and the center of the country is a battleground. There are two million Iraqis who have fled their homes and are internally displaced. Another two million have left the country, most to Syria and Jordan, which now has the largest number of refugees per capita of any country on Earth. An Oxfam report estimates that one in three Iraqis are in need of emergency aid, but the chaos and violence is so widespread that assistance is impossible. Iraq is in a state of anarchy. The American occupation forces are one more source of terror tossed into the caldron of suicide bombings, mercenary armies, militias, massive explosions, ambushes, kidnappings and mass executions. But wait until we leave. It was not supposed to turn out like this. Remember all those visions of a democratic Iraq, visions peddled by the White House and fatuous pundits like Thomas Friedman and the gravel-voiced morons who pollute our airwaves on CNN and Fox News? They assured us that the war would be a cakewalk. We would be greeted as liberators. Democracy would seep out over the borders of Iraq to usher in a new Middle East. Now, struggling to salvage their own credibility, they blame the debacle on poor planning and mismanagement. Read The Full Story As British Pull Back, Basra Deteriorates 2007-08-07 03:04:04 As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepening concerns among some U.S. officials in Baghdad that elements of Iraq's Shiite-dominated national government will turn on one another once U.S. troops begin to draw down. Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The city is plagued by "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors," a recent report by the International Crisis Group said. After Saddam Hussein was overthrown in April 2003, British forces took control of the region, and the cosmopolitan port city of Basra thrived with trade, arts and universities. As recently as February, Vice President Cheney hailed Basra as a part of Iraq "where things are going pretty well." Read The Full Story 2 Charged With Pipe Bombs Near U.S. Navy Base 2007-08-07 03:03:30 Two men found with several pipe bombs in their car near a Navy base were charged Monday with possession of an explosive device, said authorities. A joint state-federal investigation was under way to see whether there was any terrorism connection, said FBI spokeswoman Denise Taiste, but no link had been found. The Navy base is the site of a brig where enemy combatants have been held. Ahmed Abda Sherf Mohamed, 24, and Yousef Samir Megahed, 21, both students at the University of South Florida in Tampa, were driving through the area on Saturday to vacation at a North Carolina beach for Mohamed's birthday, said their defense attorney. ''They admitted to having what they said were fireworks. Based on the officer's judgment at hand, based on what he had seen, we judged it to be other than fireworks,'' said Berkeley County Sheriff Wayne DeWitt. Read The Full Story 4 Die As Small Plane Crashes Into Home In Sitka, Alaska 2007-08-07 03:02:54 A small plane crashed Monday near the picturesque downtown of Sitka, Alaska, killing four people and destroying an unoccupied house, said authorities. The owner of the home, Tess Heyburn, followed others running toward the crash. She had been sitting in a restaurant when the plane went down. "At first there wasn't much smoke. Then it erupted into smoke and flames," she said. The single-engine Piper carried four people and took off from Victoria, British Columbia, said officials. The plane was owned by Hendrickson Aviation LLC, a Delaware corporation, according to the Federal Aviation Administration's registry. There were no survivors. Lt. Barry Allen of the Sitka Police Department said debris under the plane was smoldering, hampering the investigation. The National Transportation Safety Board was to begin surveying the site Tuesday morning. Read The Full Story Will Bush Keep Pledge To Rebuild Bridge? 2007-08-06 21:46:44 For New Orleans residents, the scene was all too familiar: President Bush, touring the site of the collapsed I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, promising to cut red tape and rebuild as quickly as possible. Nearly two years ago, with parts of New Orleans still under water after Hurricane Katrina, Bush made similar declarations in the French Quarter. The president's promise was all Melanie Thompson needed to hear to bring back her family of five and begin work on their flooded home. Yet today Thompson's family is still living in a cramped trailer and awaiting aid to rebuild. Her hope and faith in government have faded and she worries for the people of Minneapolis. "I just hope to God they come to their rescue a lot quicker than they did ours," she said. Read The Full Story IAEA Inspectors Begin Assessing Earthquake Damage At Japanese Nuclear Plant 2007-08-06 21:46:12 International nuclear inspectors Monday began assessing the damage caused to a power station by last month's earthquake on Japan's northwest coast in a move that local officials hope will quell fears over the safety of the country's nuclear power industry. Six inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] will conduct four days of checks and report their findings to the Japanese government and the IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. Philippe Jamet, who heads the agency's nuclear installation safety division, told reporters: "Our aim today is to draw lessons from the earthquake that happened here and share [them] with the international community. [We are] very satisfied that the Japanese government invited us so soon." Ten people died and more than a thousand others were injured when an earthquake measuring magnitude 6.8 hit Niigata prefecture, about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo, on July 16. Read The Full Story 'Fake Steve Jobs' Blogger Outed As Forbes Editor 2007-08-06 21:45:03 The Silicon Valley blogger Fake Steve Jobs, who has posed online as the Apple chief executive for a year, has been outed as an editor at Forbes magazine. Silicon Valley has been gripped by The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, which has become cult industry reading, satirizing the cult of Apple, the excess of the tech industry and the alleged "lack of candidness" in corporate blogs. After several attempts by Silicon Valley gossip sites, including Valleywag, to identify the author, the New York Times yesterday names Forbes technology editor, Daniel Lyons, as Fake Steve Jobs. Lyons praised the sleuthing skills of NYT reporter Brad Stone for tracking him down and said he had expected to be unmasked earlier. Read The Full Story American Home Mortgage Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy 2007-08-06 15:19:55 American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, the latest casualty of a mortgage industry that has plunged into distress. The Melville, New York-based company's request for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection - filed in bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Delaware - caps a tumultuous 10 days for what had been the nation's 10th-biggest home lender. American Home Mortgage said it fell victim to "extraordinary disruptions" in the markets that support the mortgage industry. A cold housing market and a spike in payment defaults scared investors away from mortgage debt, including bonds and other securities backed by home loans. With American Home Mortgage's home loan portfolio rapidly losing value, its financial backers pulled the plug and the company ran out of cash. Read The Full Story Bush, Karzai Find Much To Agree On - Except Iran 2007-08-06 15:18:49 U.S. President George W. Bush and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai found much to agree on during their two-day summit here, with one major exception: the role of Iran in Afghanistan. Karzai characterized Iran as “a helper and a solution” in a CNN television interview broadcast on Sunday, but when the two men greeted reporters at Camp David, Maryland, Monday, Bush pointedly disagreed with Karzai’s assessment, saying, “I would be very cautious about whether the Iranian influence in Afghanistan is a positive force.” Bush, who has long regarded Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism, said it is “up to Iran to prove to the world that they are a stabilizing force as opposed to a destabilizing force.” The talks with Karzai, which focused heavily on the security of Afghanistan, came just a few weeks after the Bush administration released a national intelligence estimate concluding that al-Qaeda's leadership had reconstituted itself in the mountainous border territory between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Read The Full Story Weapons U.S. Has Given To Iraq - Including 190,000 AK-47 Rifles And Pistols - Are Missing 2007-08-06 00:43:40 The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.  The report from the Government Accountability Office indicates that U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops. The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. The United States has spent $19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, said the GAO,  including at least $2.8 billion to buy and deliver equipment. The GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005, when security training was led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces in Iraq. The Pentagon did not dispute the GAO findings, saying it has launched its own investigation and indicating it is working to improve tracking. Although controls have been tightened since 2005, the inability of the United States to track weapons with tools such as serial numbers makes it nearly impossible for the U.S. military to know whether it is battling an enemy equipped by American taxpayers. Read The Full Story Power Cuts Worsen As Iraq's Power Grid Nears Collapse 2007-08-06 00:42:55 Iraq's power grid is on the brink of collapse because of insurgent sabotage, rising demand, fuel shortages and provinces that are unplugging local power stations from the national grid, according to officials. Aziz al-Shimari, an electricity ministry spokesman, said at the weekend that power generation nationally was only meeting half the demand, and there had been four nationwide blackouts over the past two days. The shortages across the country were the worst since the summer of 2003, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, he added. Power supplies in Baghdad have been sporadic all summer and now are down to just a few hours a day at most. The water supply in the capital has also been severely curtailed by power blackouts and cuts that have affected pumping and filtration stations. Kerbala province, south of Baghdad, has been without power for three days, causing water mains to go dry in the Shia holy city of Kerbala, the provincial capital. Read The Full Story British Officials Believe Human Error At Private Pharmaceutical Lab Led To Hoof And Mouth Outbreak 2007-08-06 00:42:03 Government officials believe human error at the private pharmaceutical firm Merial Animal Health is the most likely source for the return of foot and mouth disease, it emerged last night. As health and safety inspectors began examining the firm's laboratories at Pirbright in Surrey, Whitehall sources suggested the potential biosecurity lapse would amount to a breach of procedures rather than negligence, which could give rise to criminal charges. Senior officials believe the virus may have been transported by an individual or by a car from the research complex to the farm at the center of the outbreak, about four miles away. If the virus had been airborne, it is difficult to explain why other herds closer to the site were not first affected, sources told the Guardian. Merial researches and manufactures animal vaccines, and shares the Pirbright site with the government's Institute for Animal Health (IAH). It has been established that the strain of the highly contagious virus found in the infected cattle was held by both organizations and was used in a vaccine batch manufactured by Merial on July 16. Read The Full Story Toddler, Relatives Run Over In New York City - Driver Admits Drinking 2007-08-06 00:41:23 A woman driving home after a mid-afternoon vodka binge ran over and injured a 3-year-old girl and her family, prosecutors said, not bothering to stop until someone saw the toddler's stroller being dragged and yelled, "Look what's under your car!" The girl, Mia Tetelman, her grandmother and her great-grandmother were crossing a boulevard in Queens on Saturday afternoon when they were run over. Mia was hurled from her stroller, breaking her ribs and bruising her lungs; she was in critical condition Sunday. Her grandmother, Aviva Govshovitz, 57, suffered cuts and bruises. Her great-grandmother, Frida Shein, 86, was left with a broken rib, a black eye and other injuries. The driver, Susan E. Karnabe, went home after a passer-by pulled the girl's stroller out from under her car, even though witnesses told her she had hit people, said prosecutors. Read The Full Story Iran's 'Morals' Police Arrest 230 In Raid On 'Satanic' Concert 2007-08-06 00:40:27 Iran's drive to enforce Islamic morals netted revellers from Britain and Sweden after police swooped on a "satanic" concert organized over the Internet. Police arrested 230 people and seized drugs, alcohol and 800 illicit CDs after raiding the event in Karaj, 12 miles west of Tehran. Those arrested included young women in skimpy and "inappropriate" clothing, said officers. Reza Zarei, Tehran's provincial police chief, said the operation also resulted in the confiscation of 20 video cameras, with which organizers allegedly planned to shoot "obscene" films and then blackmail female participants. Read The Full Story
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