Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday August 15 2007 - (813)

Wednesday August 15 2007 edition
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Dow Drops 208 Points On Credit, Consumer Woes 2007-08-14 22:21:44 Wall Street pulled back sharply Tuesday as investors worried about fundamental economic problems as well as the ongoing fallout from credit market problems and stocks' own volatility. The Dow Jones industrials skidded more than 200 points. The Dow fell 207.61, or 1.57 percent, to 13,028.92. The benchmark index is now on the verge of falling back below the psychologically-important 13,000 mark, which it first crossed in late April. Broader stock indicators were lower. The Standard & Poor's 500 index shed 26.38, or 1.82 percent, to 1,426.54, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 43.12, or 1.70 percent, to 2,499.12. The retreat ended a one-day reprieve from triple-digit moves in the Dow, but no one really had expected that the market had moved past its protracted period of volatility. The Dow, which went from 13,000 to 14,000 in just 57 trading days ended in mid-July, is now up only 4.54 percent for the year. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is close to wiping out all its gains and is ahead just 0.58 percent. The Nasdaq is up 3.47 percent. The downturn in stocks was first triggered by a report from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that profit will fall below expectations this year as consumers rein in spending. Home Depot Inc., the world's biggest home improvement chain, added to the slide when it said weakness in the housing market caused quarterly profit to slide. Read The Full Story Commentary: You Have No Rights 2007-08-14 22:21:16 Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive and author of "You Have No Rights", explains how the U.S. president became a "medieval king", and why your civil liberties are in greater danger than ever. Transcript: James Harris: Here again on Truthdig this is James Harris with Josh Scheer. On the phone is Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive and the author of the new book "You Have No Rights." I feel like I have some rights left, and so do other Americans. So why did you choose this title for your book? Matthew Rothschild: I took the title of the book from a couple of brothers, Yasser and Hany Ibrahim, who were Egyptians living in the United States after 9/11. They had the police come knock on their door, come in and drag them away and hold them in a pen for 24 hours where they weren't allowed even to go to the bathroom. And then they dragged them through the Metropolitan Detention Center, banging their heads against the walls, especially on the wall that had an American flag on it. And then these guards played a little sadistic game, stepping on the chain between their legs, and then they'd fall down, and then the guards would say "Get up!" and then they'd step on the chain and then they'd say "Get up!" again. Ultimately, one of the brothers said to the guards, "Look, don't we have any rights here?" And the response came back, "You have no rights." What rights do we have, actually, if the president can say, even of U.S. citizens, that you're enemy combatants and throw you in jail as he did, into solitary confinement, of two American citizens: Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla. The Military Commissions Act allows them to identify any of us as an enemy combatant, and if you're not a U.S. citizen you can be thrown into jail and never have a right to talk to a lawyer or see a courtroom again for the rest of your lives. Josh Scheer: Or they can outsource you for torture. Rothschild: They can disappear you. Bush and Cheney-they act like we're an Argentinean junta and they're disappearing people here, or sending them overseas to secret CIA prisons. Harris: Now, something-. Rothschild: Now just let me go on for a second. Harris: OK. Rothschild: What Fourth Amendment rights to privacy do we have if the NSA, the National Security Agency, can spy on us without a warrant when the law says they need to have a warrant to spy on us? What First Amendment rights do we have to protest if we can't protest in front of the president or the vice president, if we have to go to some free-speech zone a half-mile or a mile or a mile and a half away where they can't even see us? Harris: You've been called a madman. I'm sure you've been called anti-American. I don't know if you know, but an executive order was issued by the president, I believe on the 17th of July, and it said, basically, that if you protest or threaten what he calls "stabilization efforts in Iraq," your property can be seized and you can be detained. Were you aware of that? Read The Full Story 175 Dead, 200 Wounded As Four Suicide Bombs Hit One Kurdish Town In Iraq 2007-08-14 22:20:21 At least 175 people have been killed and 200 wounded in four suicide bombings against a Kurdish religious minority in northern Iraq, the army said tonight. At least four bombs hit Yazidi communities near the town of Qahataniya, 120 kilometers west of Mosul, said government officials. The attack was the deadliest in Iraq since 215 people were killed on November 23 last year when mortar rounds and five car bombs killed 215 people in the Shia neighborhood of Sadr City. Dhakil Qassim, mayor of Sinjar, a town near where the attacks happened, said al-Qaeda in Iraq was behind the attack, citing what he said were Kurdish government intelligence reports. Read The Full Story Republican Rep. Hastert, Former House Speaker, Stepping Down After This Term 2007-08-14 22:19:56 Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, who served as speaker of the House longer than any other Republican in history, intends to retire next year at the end of his term, party officials said Tuesday. A formal announcement is planned for Friday. Hastert's planned retirement is likely to set off a lively scramble between the two political parties for a House seat that he has held easily since first elected in 1986. Hastert's decision has been expected since the GOP lost control of the House last November, costing him his powerful post. He had been speaker, second in the line of presidential succession behind the vice president, for eight years. The officials who discussed his plans did so on condition of anonymity because there had been no public announcement. Read The Full Story Proposed Rules Would Let U.S. Attorney General Reduce Time For Death Penalty Appeals 2007-08-14 12:17:24 The Justice Department is putting the final touches on regulations that could give Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales important new sway over death penalty cases in California and other states, including the power to shorten the time that death row inmates have to appeal convictions to federal courts. The rules implement a little-noticed provision in last year's reauthorization of the Patriot Act that gives the attorney general the power to decide whether individual states are providing adequate counsel for defendants in death penalty cases. The authority has been held by federal judges. Under the rules now being prepared, if a state requested it and Gonzales agreed, prosecutors could use "fast track" procedures that could shave years off the time that a death row inmate has to appeal to the federal courts after conviction in a state court. Read The Full Story OPEC Warns Subprime Woes May Hit Oil Market 2007-08-14 12:16:55 OPEC on Tuesday warned that a slowing U.S. economy and fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis could cut oil consumption in the rest of 2007. In its August Monthly Oil Market Report, OPEC also repeated its view that major consumers have enough crude stocks, despite calls for more oil. The report is OPEC's last before it meets on Sept. 11 to set supply policy. Oil has fallen to around $72 (U.S.) a barrel in New York from a record high of $78.77 reached on Aug. 1 because of concern that worsening credit conditions and a slowdown in the United States could take a wider economic toll. “The more bearish economic trend which has materialized in recent weeks could negatively impact demand growth in the second half of the year,” OPEC said in the report. Read The Full Story Lawsuits May Shed Light On U.S. Spy Program 2007-08-14 03:05:31 In 2003, Room 641A of a large telecommunications building in downtown San Francisco, California, was filled with powerful data-mining equipment for a "special job" by the National Security Agency, according to a former AT&T  technician. It was fed by fiber-optic cables that siphoned copies of e-mails and other online traffic from one of the largest Internet hubs in the United States, the former employee says in court filings. What occurred in the room is now at the center of a pivotal legal battle in a federal appeals court over the Bush administration's controversial spying program, including the monitoring that came to be publicly known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP). Wednesday, a three-judge panel will hear arguments on whether the case, which may provide the clearest indication yet of how the spying program has worked, can go forward. So far, evidence in the case suggests a massive effort by the NSA to tap into the backbone of the Internet to retrieve millions of e-mails and other communications, which the government could sift and analyze for suspicious patterns or other signs of terrorist activity, according to court records, plaintiffs' attorneys and technology experts. Read The Full Story Editorial: Mr. Rove Gets Out Of Town 2007-08-14 03:04:57 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Tuesday, August 14, 2007. Karl Rove, the architect of so much that has gone so wrong with the Bush administration, announced yesterday that he is leaving the White House to spend more time with his family. What he didn’t say is that by getting out of town he is also hoping to avoid spending any time at all with Congressional investigators. Congress should not oblige. The American public needs to understand the full story of how this White House - with Mr. Rove pulling many of the strings - has spent the last six and a half years improperly and dangerously politicizing the federal government. Mr. Rove is already defying one Congressional subpoena to testify about the United States attorneys scandal. He should be made to respond to that one, and should also be subpoenaed to explain his role in several other cases of crass politicization. President Bush took a risk when he put someone so focused on politics as blood sport at the center of his White House. Once he did, he had an obligation to ensure that Mr. Rove understood that his job was to promote the interests of the American people - not solely the Republican Party. Instead, Mr. Rove used his position and power to relentlessly pursue his declared goal of a permanent Republican majority. Read The Full Story 22 Killed, 46 Missing In Bridge Collapse In China 2007-08-14 03:04:31 A bridge being built as a tourist attraction in central China collapsed, killing at least 22 people and leaving 46 missing, China Central Television reported Tuesday. The official Xinhua News Agency said 64 people were rescued, including 22 who were injured when the 1,049-foot bridge spanning the Tuo River in Hunan province collapsed Monday. The cause of the collapse is under investigation, it said. The 140-foot-high bridge in Hunan's Fenghuang County had four decorative stone arches and was scheduled to open at the end of this month, Xinhua reported. It collapsed as workers were removing scaffolding from its facade, it said. CCTV showed bulldozers plowing through the rubble, overturning chunks of stone and concrete mixed in a tangle of steel reinforcement bars. Read The Full Story	We've Been Neglected And Let Down Say British Combat Troops 2007-08-14 22:21:29 Campaign to be launched over medical care, compensation and inquests. The British government is failing in its historic duty of care towards frontline troops who put their lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan, forces charities and campaigners claim. There is growing anger in the service community that the Military Covenant, which says soldiers should always be able to expect fair treatment in return for the rights they forgo, is not being upheld. The newly-founded British Armed Forces Federation, BAFF, says that the covenant is "now a dead letter". In an unprecedented move, the Royal British Legion - widely known for its poppy appeal and welfare work for old soldiers - is to launch a campaign demanding that the government uphold the covenant and provide its armed forces and their families with proper care in return for asking them to risk making "the ultimate sacrifice for their country". The campaign aims to "address the growing sense of disillusionment among service personnel and veterans about their treatment by the state". Read The Full Story Commentary: How Fear Destroyed The Fourth Amendment 2007-08-14 22:20:49 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by journalist Jonathan Alter who writes a column for Newsweek The following column appears in Newsweek's issue for August 20-27, 2007. I hate to sound melodramatic about it, but while everyone was at the beach or "The Simpsons Movie" on the first weekend in August, the U.S. government shredded the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the one requiring court-approved "probable cause" before Americans can be searched or spied upon. This is not the feverish imagination of left-wing bloggers and the ACLU. It's the plain truth of where we've come as a country, at the behest of a president who has betrayed his oath to defend the Constitution and with the acquiescence of Democratic congressional leaders who know better. Historians will likely see this episode as a classic case of fear - both physical and political - trumping principle amid the ancient tension between personal freedom and national security. Congress had good reason to amend the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). After the shift from satellites to fiber-optic cable for most international phone calls, the statute was as out of date as disco. With Congress, the courts and President Bush squabbling over his illegal wiretapping program, the government was actually conducting less surveillance of foreign nationals than before 9/11, which was crazy. We had to do more listening in, especially with scary new intelligence "chatter" suggesting an unspecified attack on the U.S. Capitol this summer. Congressional sources who attended the late-July classified intel briefings, but won't talk about them for the record, say these threats didn't sound like spin. After all, we're not talking here about trumped-up Iraqi WMD, but al-Qaeda terrorists who have already tried to kill us. So members of Congress are legitimately afraid that they and their families will get blown up this summer. Fair enough. But then they lost their heads and sold out the Constitution to cover their political rears while keeping the rest of us mostly in the dark. The reason we don't know more about what happened is that the United States has moved sharply in recent years from legitimate secrecy - regarding sources and methods - to the bogus kind the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others warned will wreck democracies. For instance, the abstract legal arguments used by the shadowy FISA court to strike down Bush's surveillance program are secret. Why? Because they might be politically embarrassing. Read The Full Story Netanyahu Sweeps Election To Lead Israel's Likud Party 2007-08-14 22:20:08 Benjamin Netanyahu easily defeated a radical Jewish settler in the race to lead Israel's hardline Likud Party on Tuesday, a party official said, boosting his ambitions to reclaim the country's premiership. While Netanyahu's victory had been all but assured, a strong showing by challenger Moshe Feiglin could have shored up Israel's extreme right and hurt Netanyahu's efforts to rehabilitate Likud after it was trounced in national elections last year. Recent polls have crowned Netanyahu, Likud's leader since late 2005, as the front-runner for Israel's top job. With more than 80 percent of the primary votes tallied, Netanyahu was out way ahead with 73 percent to Feiglin's 22 percent, party executive director Gad Arieli said. World Likud Party Chairman Danny Danon trailed with 4 percent. Final results were expected early Wednesday. In his victory speech, Netanyahu made it clear that the race was a dress rehearsal for a much bigger contest. Read The Full Story Quake Shakes Hawaii, Which Is Bracing For Hurricane Flossie 2007-08-14 12:28:18 An earthquake on Monday night jolted the Big Island of Hawaii, which is already under a hurricane watch and a tropical storm warning. The magnitude 5.3 temblor struck at 7:38 p.m. local time, about 25 miles south of Hilo, according to a preliminary report from the U.S. Geological Survey. There were no reports of injuries, structural damage or a tsunami, though the quake caused a small landslide, according to Tom Brown, a spokesman for Hawaii County Civil Defense. Earlier Monday, the weather service placed the Big Island under a hurricane watch and a tropical storm warning, as Hurricane Flossie approached. A flash flood watch was also issued for the island through Wednesday. Read The Full Story Mattel Recalling 9 Million More Chinese-Made Toys For Lead Paint 2007-08-14 12:17:07 Toy-making giant Mattel Inc. issued recalls today for about 9 million Chinese-made toys that contain magnets that can be swallowed by children or could have lead paint. The recalls includes 7.3 million play sets, including Polly Pocket dolls and Batman action figures, and 253,000 die cast cars that contain lead paint. The action was announced on the company's Web site and at a news conference in Washington, D.C., by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Nancy A. Nord, acting CPSC chairman, said no injuries had been reported with any of the products involved in the new recall. Several injuries had been reported in an earlier Polly Pocket recall last November. "The scope of these recalls is intentionally large to prevent any injuries from occurring," she told the news conference. Read The Full Story Canadian Team Discovers Gene That Can Turn Cancers Off 2007-08-14 12:16:43 A unique gene that can stop cancerous cells from multiplying into tumours has been discovered by a team of Canadian scientists at the Britich Columba Cancer Agency in Vancouver. The team, led by Dr. Poul Sorensen, says the gene has the power to suppress the growth of human tumors in multiple cancers, including breast, lung and liver. The gene, HACE 1, helps cells fight off stress that, left unchecked, opens the door to formation of multiple tumors. Dr. Sorensen's team found cancerous cells form tumors when HACE 1 is inactive, but when additional stress such as radiation is added, tumour growth is rampant. Kick-starting HACE 1 prevented those cells from forming tumors. Read The Full Story NASA: Shuttle Edeavour's Tiles Perforated, But Repair Poses Dangers 2007-08-14 03:05:11 NASA officials said Monday night that they believe the gouge in the bottom of the space shuttle Endeavour is not severe enough to keep the spaceship from returning safely to Earth, but they want more time to consider whether the slightly damaged heat shield needs to be repaired in orbit. Working from detailed photographs of the 3 1/2 -inch-by-2-inch indent on Endeavour's thermal tiles, NASA officials will create similarly damaged tiles to discover whether they can withstand the heat of reentry. A repair decision is expected by Wednesday, but deputy shuttle program manager John Shannon said in Houston, Texas, that the prognosis remains good. "This is not a catastrophic loss-of-orbiter case at all," he said. "This is a case where you want to do the prudent thing for the vehicle." Read The Full Story Reporters Ordered To Name Sources In Anthrax Suit 2007-08-14 03:04:45 Five reporters must reveal their government sources for stories they wrote about Steven J. Hatfill and investigators' suspicions that the former Army scientist was behind the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, a federal judge ruled Monday. The decision from U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton is yet another blow to the news industry as it seeks to shield anonymous sources who provide critical information - especially on the secret inner workings of government. "The names of the sources are central to Dr. Hatfill's case," Walton wrote in a 31-page opinion. The ruling is a victory for Hatfill, a bioterrorism expert who has argued in a civil suit that the government violated his privacy rights and ruined his chances at a job by unfairly leaking information about the probe. He has not been charged in the attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others, and he has denied wrongdoing. Read The Full Story Heavy Rains Leave Hundreds Dead, Missing In North Korea 2007-08-14 03:04:18 Heavy rains spawned flooding that left ''hundreds'' dead or missing in North Korea and destroyed more than 30,000 homes, the country's state media reported Tuesday. The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said preliminary information revealed massive casualties after the storms that began last week, but gave no specific figures. It said the rain also flooded tens of thousands of acres of farmland in the impoverished country that suffers from regular food shortages. ''The heavy rain destroyed at least 800 public buildings, over 540 bridges, 70 sections of railroads and at least 1,100 vehicles, pumps and electric motors,'' said KCNA. Hardest hit appeared to be Kangwon province, where KCNA said there were ''huge casualties'' and that homes for more than 20,000 families were partly or completely destroyed. The effects also reached to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. Read The Full Story
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