Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday August 8 2007 - (813)

Wednesday August 8 2007 edition
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States Angered By Bush Administration's Disaster Planning 2007-08-08 02:21:09 A decision by the Bush administration to rewrite in secret the nation's emergency response blueprint has angered state and local emergency officials, who worry that Washington is repeating a series of mistakes that contributed to its bungled response to Hurricane Katrina nearly two years ago. State and local officials in charge of responding to disasters say that their input in shaping the National Response Plan was ignored in recent months by senior White House and Department of Homeland Security officials, despite calls by congressional investigators for a shared overhaul of disaster planning in the United States. "In my 19 years in emergency management, I have never experienced a more polarized environment between state and federal government," said Albert Ashwood, Oklahoma's emergency management chief and president of a national association of state emergency managers. The national plan is supposed to guide how federal, state and local governments, along with private and nonprofit groups, work together during emergencies. Critics contend that a unilateral approach by Washington produced an ill-advised response plan at the end of 2004 - an unwieldy, 427-page document that emphasized stopping terrorism at the expense of safeguarding against natural disasters. Read The Full Story U.N. Agency Sees Unusual Weather And More To Come 2007-08-08 02:20:36 A monsoon dropped 14 inches of rain in one day across many parts of South Asia this month. Germany had its wettest May on record, and April was the driest there in a century. Temperatures in Bulgaria reached 113 degrees last month and 90 degrees in Moscow, Russia, in late May, shattering longtime records. The year still has almost five months to go, but it has already experienced a range of weather extremes that the Untied Nations'World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday is well outside the historical norm and is a precursor of much greater weather variability as global warming transforms the planet. The warming trend confirmed in February by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - based on the finding that 11 of the past 12 years had higher average ground temperatures than any others since formal temperature recording began - appears to have continued with a vengeance into 2007. The WMO reported that January and April were the warmest worldwide ever recorded. Read The Full Story E.U. Threatens Tit-For-Tat Visa Limits On Americans After U.S. Tightens Law 2007-08-08 02:20:00 The European Union is threatening to impose tit-for-tat entry restrictions on all U.S. citizens travelling to Europe in response to new American laws designed to strengthen security at airports and prevent would-be terrorists entering the country. U.S. tourists can now travel to Europe without a visa. Franco Frattini, justice and home affairs commissioner, is drawing up plans for an E.U.-wide system of "electronic travel authorization" (ETA) similar to that written into U.S. law by President George Bush late last week as part of new homeland security rules proposed by the 9/11 commission and endorsed by Congress. The ETA requires tourists from 14 mostly west European states, including Britain, benefiting from the U.S. visa waiver program to register online and give details of their passport, travel plans and planned social and business meetings at least two days before departure. A similar scheme operates in Australia. The new system has heightened fears about privacy protection as the E.U. and U.S. already exchange information about transatlantic passengers and airline manifests, with several would-be travellers refused entry to planes at U.S. insistence. It is also seen as a deterrent to business travel to the U.S. and to tourism in general, which is down 10% in the U.S. since 2000 while it is up 13% in Britain and 20% in France. Read The Full Story Yangtze River Dolphin Declared Extinct 2007-08-08 02:19:25 The Yangtze river dolphin, until recently one of the most endangered species on the planet, has been declared officially extinct following an intensive survey of its natural habitat. The freshwater marine mammal, which could grow to eight feet long and weigh up to a quarter of a ton, is the first large vertebrate forced to extinction by human activity in 50 years, and only the fourth time an entire evolutionary line of mammals has vanished from the face of the Earth since the year 1500. Conservationists described the extinction as a "shocking tragedy" Tuesday, caused not by active persecution but accidentally and carelessly through a combination of factors including unsustainable fishing and mass shipping. In the 1950s, the Yangtze river and neighboring watercourses had a population of thousands of freshwater dolphins, also known as Baiji, but their numbers have declined dramatically since China industrialized and transformed the Yangtze into a crowded artery of mass shipping, fishing and power generation. A survey in 1999 estimated the population of river dolphins was close to just 13 animals. Read The Full Story Humans Blamed For Britain's Hoof And Mouth Cases 2007-08-08 02:18:55 Humans are to blame for carrying the foot and mouth virus from laboratories in Pirbright, investigators into the outbreak in Surrey believe. The initial, inconclusive report from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) says there is a "strong probability" that the origin was either the government-funded Institute of Animal Health (IAH) laboratory or the commercial Merial facility, which share the same site. Both were working on the strain involved in the farm outbreak, although Merial was producing it in large quantities while the IAH was using tiny amounts for research. "There are various routes for accidental or deliberate transfer of material from the site," the report says. "We have investigated site management systems and records and spoken to a number of employees. As a result we are pursuing lines of inquiry." It adds: "Release by human movement must ... be considered a real possibility." Read The Full Story Alaska Plane Crash Victims Identified 2007-08-08 02:18:01 A New Jersey family was identified Tuesday as the four people killed when their single-engine plane crashed into a home and set it ablaze in Sitka. No one was in the home when the plane plowed into it a block from a downtown street bustling with cruise ship tourists visiting the coastal town on Monday afternoon. Robert Hendrickson, 45, died along with his daughters, Julianne, 14, and Emily, 9, said Sitka police Lt. Barry Allen. Also killed was Hendrickson's fiancee, Linda Kundair, 34. All were living in different New Jersey towns, said Allen. Allen said it was too early to have any indication of why the plane crashed. Read The Full Story Britain Finds Hoof And Mouth Disease Outbreak In Second Herd 2007-08-07 15:15:54 Foot-and-mouth disease was found in cattle on a second farm in southern England and 102 animals from that farm were slaughtered, British agricultural officials said Tuesday. The government is expected to release an inspection report Tuesday saying whether two veterinary laboratories, one government and one private, may have been the source of the outbreak. The new herd of 102 infected cattle were within a six-mile “protection zone” that was established after the first cases of foot-and-mouth, a highly contagious viral disease, were confirmed last Friday at a farm in Guildford, Surrey, about 30 miles southwest of London. The European Union banned imports of livestock from Britain over the weekend because of the outbreak. Despite the discovery of a second farm with the disease, authorities appeared to be relieved that it was geographically close to the first one. Read The Full Story Taliban Launch Frontal Attack On Coalition Base 2007-08-07 15:15:29 A group of 75 Taliban militants tried to overrun a U.S.-led coalition base in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, a rare frontal attack that left more than 20 militants dead, the coalition said in a statement. The insurgents attacked Firebase Anaconda from three sides, using gunfire, grenades and 107 mm rockets, said the coalition. A joint Afghan-U.S. force repelled the attack with mortars, machine guns and air support. "Almost two dozen insurgents were confirmed killed in the attack," said the statement. Two girls and two Afghan soldiers were wounded during the fight in Uruzgan province, it said. A firebase like Anaconda is usually a remote outpost staffed by as few as several dozen soldiers. Read The Full Story Britain Reverses Itself, Asks For Release Of 5 Guantanamo Detainees 2007-08-07 15:14:27 In a major reversal of policy, the British government Tuesday asked the Bush administration to release five British residents that are being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Under the previous government of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Britain insisted that it had no obligation to assist the five men because they are not British citizens, even though they all had legal residence status in Britain. “We saw this as an opportunity to achieve ultimately the closure of Guantanamo,” said a British official, speaking on the usual condition of anonymity. To that the extent, the British move Tuesday, which came in a letter from British Foreign Secretary David Miliband to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is almost certain to be welcomed by the Bush administration, which has been trying to reduce the number of detainees at Guantanamo. Read The Full Story Southern California On Google Maps, Privacy Concerns Arise 2007-08-07 15:13:24 Google Inc. has been watching you, Southern California. A caravan of cars and trucks mounted with cameras has been driving city streets for months, snapping close-up photographs of homes, shops and public places. Any people who got in the way became subjects in Google's version of "Candid Camera". The Internet company late Monday began incorporating street-level photos from Los Angeles, San Diego and some Orange County cities into its Google Maps program. The additions expanded an online service that thrilled some digital-map buffs and freaked out privacy advocates when it launched in May in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York and three other cities. The photos can help people scout out places they plan to visit. But when Google's camera shutters click, they capture more than buildings. 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	A.P.: Seafood From China Wasn't Screened 2007-08-08 02:20:52 At least 1 million pounds of suspect Chinese seafood landed on American store shelves and dinner plates despite a Food and Drug Administration order that the shipments first be screened for banned drugs or chemicals, an Associated Press investigation found. The frozen shrimp, catfish and eel arrived at U.S. ports under an "import alert," which meant the FDA was supposed to hold every shipment until it had passed a laboratory test. Yet that was not what happened, according to an A.P. check of shipments since last fall. One of every four shipments the A.P. reviewed got through without being stopped and tested. The seafood, valued at $2.5 million, was equal to the amount 66,000 Americans eat in a year. Read The Full Story Global Warming Draws Evangelicals Into Environmental Fold 2007-08-08 02:20:18 At 8 on a Saturday morning, just as the heat was permeating this sprawling Orlando suburb, Denise Kirsop donned a white plastic moon suit and began sorting through the trash produced by Northland Church. She and several fellow parishioners picked apart the garbage to analyze exactly how much and what kind of waste their megachurch produces, looking for ways to reduce the congregation's contribution to global warming. "I prayed about it, and God really revealed to me that I had a passion about creation," said Kirsop, who has since traded in her family's sport-utility vehicle for a hybrid Toyota Prius to help cut her greenhouse gas emissions. "Anything that draws me closer to God - and this does - increases my faith and helps my work for God." Her conversion to environmentalism is the result of a years-long international campaign by British bishops and leaders of major U.S. environmental groups to bridge a long-standing divide between global-warming activists and American evangelicals. Read The Full Story Toothpaste, Tuna Salad and Egg Salad Sandwiches Recalled 2007-08-08 02:19:39 The following recalls have been announced: -- Donnamax Inc. of Brooklyn, N.Y., is recalling DentaPro brand Cavity Fighting Fluoride Toothpaste Fresh Spearmint Flavor and Bright Max Toothpaste because the products, which were made in China, may contain diethylene glycol. The chemical is found in antifreeze and is toxic to the kidneys and liver. No illnesses have been reported to date, according to the company. The recalled Cavity Fighting Fluoride Toothpaste is identified by the item No. 9112 and the UPC code 8 71290 - 00062 5; Bright Max Toothpaste has the item no. 91111. The products were sold to retail stores in the following states: New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Idaho. Any reactions should be reported to the Food and Drug Administration's MedWatch adverse event reporting program at www.fda.gov/medwatch/report.htm. -- CFS Operating Ltd. of Longview, Texas, is recalling 4,219 units of Cloud's tuna salad sandwiches and egg salad sandwiches, both on white bread, because the food might be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, which can cause listeria monocytogenes. Listeria is an organism that can cause serious or fatal infections in children, the elderly or those with weakened immune systems. It can also cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women. No illnesses have been reported, according to the company. Read The Full Story Rudy Giuliani's Daughter Comes Out For Obama 2007-08-08 02:19:11 The leading Republican for next year's presidential contest, Rudy Giuliani, is having to contend with the embarrassment of discovering his teenage daughter signed up as a supporter of Barack Obama, one of the Democratic frontrunners. Giuliani, whose family relationships are fraught after a messy divorce, is well ahead of his Republican rivals in spite of reports about his personal life. His children have already signalled they do not intend to campaign for him, but the Slate political website discovered that his daughter, Caroline, 17, had gone further and signed up to social networking group Facebook's "Barack Obama (1 Million Strong for Barack)" site. Read The Full Story Seismic Activity Stops Utah Mine Rescue Try 2007-08-08 02:18:32 Seismic activity has "totally shut down" efforts to reach six miners trapped below ground and has wiped out all the work done in the past day, a mine executive said Tuesday. "We are back to square one underground," said Robert E. Murray, chairman of Murray Energy Corp., owner of the Crandall Canyon mine. Still, "we should know within 48 to 72 hours the status of those trapped miners," said Murray. Crews are drilling two holes into the mountain in an effort to communicate with the miners - provided they are still alive. Unstable conditions below ground have thwarted rescuers' efforts to break through to the miners, who have been trapped 1,500 feet below the surface for nearly two days, said Murray. The seismic activity and other factors "have totally shut down our rescue efforts underground," he said. Read The Full Story Editorial: The Fear Of Fear Itself 2007-08-07 15:16:13 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Tuesday, August 7, 2007. It was appalling to watch over the last few days as Congress - now led by Democrats - caved in to yet another unnecessary and dangerous expansion of President Bush’s powers, this time to spy on Americans in violation of basic constitutional rights. Many of the 16 Democrats in the Seante and 41 in the House who voted for the bill said that they had acted in the name of national security, but the only security at play was their job security. There was plenty of bad behavior. Republicans marched in mindless lockstep with the president. There was double-dealing by the White House. The director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, crossed the line from being a steward of this nation’s security to acting as a White House political operative. But mostly, the spectacle left us wondering what the Democrats - especially their feckless Senate leaders - plan to do with their majority in Congress if they are too scared of Republican campaign ads to use it to protect the Constitution and restrain an out-of-control president. Read The Full Story Scientists Revive Ancient Microbial Life Found Frozen In The Antarctic 2007-08-07 15:15:44 Scientists have recovered microorganisms from ancient Antarctic ice and coaxed it back to life in the lab, according to a study published Tuesday. The glacial ice acted as a "gene Popsicle," preserving DNA that hasn't circulated in the gene pool for up to 8 million years. If warming melts the glaciers, the DNA could fuel a new wave of bacterial evolution, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings also challenge the long-held notion that life couldn't possibly exist in Antarctic glaciers. Read The Full Story Extreme Heat, Humidity Hit Much Of U.S. 2007-08-07 15:15:01 Hot, humid air is blanketing wide areas of the nation this week, and Missouri health experts have been urging people to stay in air-conditioned buildings and take it easy. Temperatures in much of Missouri are expected to reach well into the upper 90s - and in many cases above 100 degrees Fahrenheit - through much of this week. The heat index, calculated from a combination of temperature and humidity, is predicted to climb above 105. Highs in the 90s were expected from the western Plains to the East Coast. "People don't realize it but heat is generally the number-one killer" among weather-related causes, said Ben Miller, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in the St. Louis area. "We've gone all year without a serious heat wave so we want people to be aware of what to do to keep themselves safe." Read The Full Story Israel Removes Settlers From West Bank 2007-08-07 15:14:03 Pelted by rocks and metal, hundreds of Israeli riot police Tuesday forcibly removed Jewish settlers from houses they had been occupying illegally for months in the West Bank city of Hebron. Some 15 people were hurt, 11 of them police officers, according to the police. The settlers said that 26 of their protesters were treated for injuries. Five settlers were arrested for forcibly resisting the carrying out of a court order. The scenes were reminiscent of some of the more violent incidents during the evacuation of Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005, with settlers and their supporters, many of them teenagers in masks or women, hurling abuse, large rocks, chunks of metal, soda bottles, slippers, shoes and pots of cooking oil at Israeli police in riot gear. The well-advertised confrontation began at dawn, and grew more heated with the sun, as the police forced their way into the occupied buildings, which the inhabitants and their 200 or so supporters had welded shut and barricaded. Read The Full Story 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
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