Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday September 1 2007 - (813)

Saturday September 1 2007 edition
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Group Troubled By Rise In U.S. Government Secrecy 2007-09-01 02:16:11 Government secrecy by almost any measure is expanding and little is being done to stop it, according to a coalition of 67 organizations favoring greater openness. From classified information to the president's use of the state secrets privilege, the lack of disclosure should be a growing concern to the public and the Congress, said Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org, which compiled a report using mostly the government's own figures. "While some of the increased secrecy is attributable to a reaction to 9/11 and to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is also a significant expansion of the power of the executive at the expense of the public, the courts, and Congress," McDermott said Friday. "The executive branch seems to believe that something is kept under wraps solely on its say-so, whether it is legitimately so or not." White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the administration's goal is to effectively protect classified materials and to enforce laws and regulations related to the handling of sensitive information. Read The Full Story $1.6 Billion Hedge Fund Bail-Out Adds To London's Jitters Over Barclay's 2007-09-01 02:15:32 Barclays Capital, the financial group's investment banking arm, Friday bailed out a $1.6 billion (£800 million) hedge fund as the global credit squeeze and U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis claimed another victim. The news increased jitters about Barclays in the London, as it followed Thursday's revelation that it borrowed £1.6  billion ($3.2 billion) from the Bank of England after a breakdown in the electronic system that processes trades. Barclays, however, stressed it was not facing financial difficulties. It said its decision to borrow from the Bank of England - at a penalty rate of interest - was due to a technical hitch, and the bail-out of the Cairn Capital fund was unrelated. The London-based fund - Cairn High Grade Funding I - was structured by Barclays Capital and was one of a small but growing breed of hybrid investment funds called a SIV-Lite, designed to bring together elements of structured investment vehicles (SIV) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO). Only about half a dozen have been created and four of these have been structured by Barclays Capital. Read The Full Story Republican Officials Say Craig To Resign From Senate 2007-09-01 02:14:40 Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig will resign from the Senate amid a furor over his arrest and guilty plea in a police sex sting in an airport men's room, Republican officials said Friday. Craig will announce at a news conference in Boise Saturday morning that he will resign effective Sept. 30, GOP officials in Idaho and Washington told the Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity. Word of the resignation came four days after the disclosure that Craig had pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge arising out of his June 11 arrest during a lewd-conduct investigation at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The three-term Republican senator had maintained that he did nothing wrong except for making the guilty plea without consulting a lawyer. But he found almost no support among Republicans in his home state or Washington. Read The Full Story Military Briefs Bush On Soldiers' Welfare 2007-09-01 02:13:07 Effects of lengthy deployments discussed. President Bush went to the Pentagon Friday to hear firsthand the views of top military advisers concerned about the impact of extensive Iraq deployments on the overall health of the U.S. armed forces. Administration officials declined to offer details of Bush's private meeting with Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Bush did not appear publicly after the meeting but issued a written statement indicating that the discussions included plans to expand the size of the military and improve coordination between military and civilian officials in places such as Iraq. Bush once again urged lawmakers to withhold judgment on what to do in Iraq until after they hear from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, who are scheduled to testify before Congress on the progress of the U.S. strategy in Iraq. "It is my hope that we can put partisanship and politics behind us and commit to a common vision that will provide our troops what they need to succeed and secure our vital national interests in Iraq," said the president. Read The Full Story White House Press Secretary Tony Snow Resigns 2007-08-31 12:52:52 White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, who has been battling cancer, plans to step down Sept. 14 and will be replaced by his deputy, Dana Perino, White House sources said Friday. President Bush is scheduled to announce the news later in the day. Snow, 52, a former journalist and syndicated talk-show host on Fox News Radio, has signaled in recent weeks that he probably would not finish out the remainder of the Bush presidency. "I'm not going to be able to go the distance, but that's primarily for financial reasons," Snow told talk-show host Hugh Hewitt Thursday. "I've told people when my money runs out, then I've got to go." Read The Full Story California State Senate Blocks Madatory I.D. Implants In Employees 2007-08-31 03:24:24 The bill would prevent employers in California from requiring workings to the devices implanted beneath their skin. Tackling a dilemma right out of a science fiction novel, the California State Senate passed legislation Thursday that would bar employers from requiring workers to have identification devices implanted under their skin. State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) proposed the measure after at least one company began marketing radio frequency identification devices for use in humans. The devices, as small as a grain of rice, can be used by employers to identify workers. A scanner passing over a body part implanted with one can instantly identify the person. "RFID is a minor miracle, with all sorts of good uses," said Simitian. "But we shouldn't condone forced 'tagging' of humans. It's the ultimate invasion of privacy." Read The Full Story Foreign-Born Widows Face Deportation 2007-08-31 03:23:47 Jacqueline Coats' husband drowned after he dove into a fierce Pacific Ocean riptide to rescue two boys. Now the immigrant from Kenya might be forced to leave the United States because he died before filing her residency application. She is among more than 80 foreign-born widows across the nation who face possible deportation because their husbands died before immigration paperwork was approved. Some attorneys want to challenge the government's policy of rejecting green card requests if an immigrant's American spouse dies before the application is processed. At least one lawyer plans to file a class-action lawsuit. ''This is a wrong that definitely has to be righted,'' said immigration attorney Ralph Pineda of Orlando, Florida. A group of California congressional lawmakers filed a bill in January asking the Congress to grant Coats legal status, but similar measures for other immigrants have seldom passed. Read The Full Story	Former British Army Chief Attacks U.S. As 'Intellectually Bankrupt' Over Iraq 2007-09-01 02:15:51 The former head of the British Army has attacked U.S. postwar policy, calling it "intellectually bankrupt". General Sir Mike Jackson, who headed the army during the war in Iraq, described as "nonsensical" the claim by the former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that U.S. forces "don't do nation-building". He has also hit back at suggestions that British forces had failed in Basra. Rumsfeld was "one of the most responsible for the current situation in Iraq," Gen. Jackson says in his autobiography, "Soldier". He describes Washington's approach to fighting global terrorism as "inadequate" for relying on military power over diplomacy and nation-building. Read The Full Story Virginia Sen. John Warner Will 'Quietly Step Aside' 2007-09-01 02:15:06 John William Warner, who was best known for marrying actress Elizabeth Taylor when he entered the Senate 28 years ago but who grew into an elder statesman and Republican maverick highly regarded for his expertise in defense matters, announced his retirement Friday. Warner, 80, chose the north steps of the Rotunda at the University of Virginia, where he studied law a half-century ago, to reveal his widely anticipated decision not to seek a sixth term next year. "So I say that my work and service to Virginia as a senator ... will conclude upon the 6th of January, 2009, when I finish ... my career of .. 30 years in the United States Senate,"said Warner. The former Navy secretary and past chairman of the Armed Services Committee said he wrestled with the question, coming to closure only "in the last day or two." He postponed a decision, he said, until completing a trip to Iraq last week. Warner has been a leading GOP  critic of the Bush White House's war policy. The rigors of Senate service as he enters his 80s and the importance of letting the next generation of Senate leaders step up drove his choice, he said. "I'm going to quietly step aside," he said as his third wife, Jeanne, stood at his side. Read The Full Story We Will Lose Savings And Home, Says Injured British Soldier's Mother 2007-09-01 02:13:49 Parents make up shortfall for "insulting" compensation. Britain's Ministry of Defense will not raise payout for severely injured son. The mother of a British soldier who was severely injured while fighting in Afghanistan has said she will lose her life savings and will have to sell her home because of the "insulting" compensation offer made to her son by the Ministry of Defense (MoD). Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson, 23, has been described as one of the most seriously wounded soldiers ever to survive. He lost both legs, suffered serious brain damage, fractured several vertebrae and sustained 34 further injuries when his vehicle struck a land mine in Helmand province last September. Despite the severity of his injuries, which have left him unable to speak and unlikely ever to walk, he was awarded £151,150 ($302,300) compensation, less than half the maximum available under the Armed Forces compensation scheme. Read The Full Story Bernanke Says Federal Reserve Won't Protect Investors 2007-08-31 12:53:04 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke Friday indicated that the central bank wants to avoid bailing out investors suffering from recent problems in financial markets, but that the Fed will take action if the U.S. economy as a whole seems to be suffering as a result of the turmoil. In the speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Bernanke laid out his thinking on the troubled credit markets publicly for the first time. He addressed a group of economists and other close students of the Fed at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's annual symposium in Jackson Hole. "It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve - nor would it be appropriate - to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions," said Bernanke, an apparent rebuke of critics on Wall Street who would like the Fed to cut its federal funds rate, a decision that would likely ease some of the locked up markets for home mortgage and other debt. Indeed, he suggested that some of the price declines in securities backed by risky mortgages and other speculative assets is welcome. Read The Full Story U.S. Says Companies Bribed U.S. Officers To Win Contracts In Iraq 2007-08-31 03:24:39 An American-owned company operating from Kuwait paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to American contracting officers in efforts to win more than $11 million in contracts, the government says in court documents. The Army last month suspended the company, Lee Dynamics International, from doing business with the government, and the case now appears to be at the center of a contracting fraud scandal that prompted Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to dispatch the Pentagon inspector general to Iraq to investigate. Court documents filed in the case say the Army took action because the company was suspected of paying hundreds of thousands in bribes to Army officers to secure contracts to build, operate and maintain warehouses in Iraq that stored weapons, uniforms, vehicles and other materiel for Iraqi forces in 2004 and 2005. A lawyer for the company denied the accusations. Read The Full Story Bush To Offer Proposals To Ease Mortgage Crisis 2007-08-31 03:24:07 The Bush administration Friday will propose a set of policies meant to help ease the wave of mortgage defaults, according to senior administration officials. It is the administration's first broad effort to deal with the rising number of home foreclosures, which are widely forecast to increase in the next year. President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., will propose changes to the Federal Housing Administration mortgage insurance program that would allow more people to refinance with FHA insurance if they fall behind on adjustable-rate mortgages, which offer low introductory rates that can later rise, sometimes doubling a monthly payment. People who have missed mortgage payments are now ineligible for FHA insurance. In the president's plan, they would be eligible if they fall behind only because the amount they are required to pay each month increases, as is now happening with many mortgages issued from 2004 to 2006. The officials said the administration can make the change without congressional approval, but other details will require legislation. Read The Full Story
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