Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday September 6 2007 - (813)

Thursday September 6 2007 edition
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OECD Warns U.S. Could Go Into Recession 2007-09-06 02:25:29 West's leading economic thinktank urges Federal Reserve to cut interest rates as housing market crisis deepens. The west's leading economic thinktank Wednesday urged America's central bank to insure against the prospect of recession with an immediate cut in interest rates as it emerged that the crash in the U.S. housing market had left real-estate activity at its weakest since the economy was brought to a halt by the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Updating its half-yearly forecasts for the global economy, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) added to growing pressure on the Federal Reserve to ease the pressure on U.S.  borrowers when it meets later this month. The OECD expressed concerns about the ripple impact on the world economy from the credit crunch triggered by the losses sustained by financial institutions as a result of defaults on home loans to Americans with poor borrowing records and said it could not rule out a recession if an imminent slowdown in the world's biggest economy turned out to be worse than expected. "Downside risks have become more ominous," the OECD's chief economist, Jean-Philippe Cotis, said in a statement. Read The Full Story Italian Tenor Luciano Pavarotti Is Dead At 71 2007-09-06 02:24:51 Luciano Pavarotti, whose vibrant high C's and ebullient showmanship made him one of the world's most beloved tenors, died Thursday, his manager told the Associated Press. He was 71. His manager, Terri Robson, told the A.P. in an e-mailed statement that Pavarotti died at his home in Modena, Italy, at 5 a.m. local time. Pavarotti had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year and underwent further treatment in August. "The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer which eventually took his life. In fitting with the approach that characterized his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness," said the statement. For serious fans, the unforced beauty and thrilling urgency of Pavarotti's voice made him the ideal interpreter of the Italian lyric repertory, especially in the 1960s and '70s when he first achieved stardom. For millions more, his charismatic performances of standards like "Nessun dorma" from Puccini's "Turandot" came to represent what opera is all about. Read The Full Story Hurricane Felix Kills 18 In Nicaragua 2007-09-06 02:23:58 Hurricane Felix killed at least 18 people and damaged thousands of homes as it passed through the remote Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, but the storm failed to produce the massive flooding many had feared in neighboring Honduras, officials said Wednesday. Little more than a day after it came ashore as a powerful Category 5 hurricane, Felix was downgraded to a tropical depression. In the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, where 300,000 people were evacuated from low-lying areas, the rain stopped and life returned to normal. On Mexico's Baja California peninsula, where a second hurricane struck land less than nine hours after Felix, officials were breathing a sigh of relief. Henriette made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane just six miles from the center of San Jose del Cabo, but damage to the region's tourist industry was minimal, said officials. Read The Full Story Jones Report: Iraqi Security Forces Not Ready 2007-09-05 21:18:57 Logistical self-sufficiency is at least two years away. Iraq's Interior Ministry is "dysfunctional," filled with sectarianism and corruption, according to an independent assessment of the Iraqi security forces to be published Thursday. The report said that Iraq's national police force, controlled by that ministry, is "operationally ineffective" and should be disbanded and reorganized. The report, by a congressionally-named commission of retired senior military officers, cites progress in the operation and training of the Iraqi army, but it estimates that "they will not be ready to independently fulfill their security role within the next 12 to 18 months" without a substantial U.S. military presence. Logistical self-sufficiency, which it describes as key to independent Iraqi operations, is at least two years away, the report says. Iraqi security forces "have the potential to help reduce sectarian violence," the report says. But the report, which emphasizes the failure of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to achieve key political benchmarks, says that violence will not end without political reconciliation. In addition to the failings of the Interior Ministry and police, it says that Maliki is perceived as bypassing the Ministry of Defense and the chain of command to create "a second, and politically motivated" command structure in the army. Read The Full Story Titan Rain - How Chinese Hackers Targeted British Government Departments 2007-09-05 21:17:46 British Foreign Office among targets hit; Chinese military involvement suspected. Chinese hackers, some believed to be from the People's Liberation Army, have been attacking the computer networks of British government departments, the Guardian has learned. The attackers have hit the network at the Foreign Office as well as those in other key departments, according to Whitehall officials. Britain's Ministry of Defense declined Tuesday to say whether it had been hit. An incident last year that shut down part of the House of Commons computer system, initially believed to be by an individual, was discovered to be the work of an organized Chinese hacking group, said British officials. Security and defense officials are coy about what they know of specific attacks. However, they say several Whitehall departments have fallen victim to China's cyberwarriors. One expert described it as a "constant ongoing problem". Read The Full Story Mattel Issues Third Toy Recall Of The Summer 2007-09-05 21:16:52 For the third time this summer, Mattel issued a major recall, telling parents Tuesday to watch out for Chinese-made toys with excessive amounts of lead, including locomotive toys and accessories for its iconic Barbie brand. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said the company is recalling 773,900 toys. Mattel said it discovered the use of lead-based paint as part an ongoing investigation of the toys it gets from China and once again found that contractors had used uncertified paint. "We apologize again to everyone affected and promise that we will continue to focus on ensuring the safety and quality of our toys," Robert A. Eckert, Mattel's chief executive, said in a statement. The contractors that used the uncertified paint no longer work for Mattel, said the statement. The company is recalling 675,000 Barbie accessories, including Barbie Dream Puppy House, in which lead paint was found on the dog, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The recall also includes 8,900 Big Big World 6-in-1 Bongo Band toys and about 90,000 Geo Trax locomotive toys. The products were sold from September 2006 to last month. Read The Full Story 10-Term Ohio Congressman Gillmor, 68, Found Dead In His Home 2007-09-05 21:16:00 U.S. Rep. Paul E. Gillmor, (R-Ohio), a quiet conservative in his 19th year in the House, was found dead Wednesday morning in his Arlington County, Virginia, townhouse, said police and House Republican leaders. Gilmor was 68. Arlington police are investigating the lawmaker's death, but police spokesman John Lisle said it appeared to be from natural causes. "It does not appear there was anything suspicious at this time," said Lisle. Gillmor had stents implanted to prevent heart attacks, said a source familiar with the investigation. Bradley Mascho, Gillmor's communications director, said the congressman had complained of being tired during a trip last week through his district in northwest Ohio. "He said he was tired and he didn't feel well," said Mascho, who added that Gillmor appeared to be doing better by the end of week. Read The Full Story Short On Labor, U.S. Farmers Move Growing Operations To Mexico 2007-09-05 12:16:10 Steve Scaroni, a farmer from California, looked across a luxuriant field of lettuce here in central Mexico and liked what he saw: full-strength crews of Mexican farm workers with no immigration problems. Farming since he was a teenager, Scaroni, 50, built a $50 million business growing lettuce and broccoli in the fields of California, relying on the hands of immigrant workers, most of them Mexican and many probably in the United States illegally. Early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented fields here. Now some 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they run no risk of deportation. “I’m as American red-blood as it gets,” said Scaroni, “but I’m tired of fighting the fight on the immigration issue.” A sense of crisis prevails among American farmers who rely on immigrant laborers, more so since immigration legislation in the United States Senatefailed in June and the authorities announced a crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants. An increasing number of farmers have been testing the alternative of raising crops across the border where there is a stable labor supply, said growers and lawmakers in the United States and Mexico. Read The Full Story Law Enforcement Takes Notice As Sex Workers Move To Craig's List 2007-09-05 12:15:43 The eight women visited Long Island this summer along with vacationing families and other business travelers, staying in hotels and motels in commercial strips in middle-class suburbs like East Garden City, Hicksville and Woodbury. Their ages ranged from 20 to 32. Three had come all the way from the San Francisco Bay area in California, one from Miami, Florida. Two lived less than 60 miles away, in Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey, and two in Brooklyn, New York. All eight were arrested on prostitution charges here in Garden City, New York, snared in a new sting operation by the Nassau County police that focuses on Craigslist.org, the ubiquitous Web site best known for its employment and for-sale advertisements but which law enforcement officials say is increasingly also used to trade sex for money. Nassau County has made more than 70 arrests since it began focusing on Craigslist last year, one of numerous crackdowns by vice squads from Hawaii to New Hampshire that have lately been monitoring the Web site closely, sometimes placing decoy ads to catch would-be customers. Read The Full Story FCC's Methods Leave Public In The Dark 2007-09-05 12:15:04 It's odd for an agency that has the word "communications" as its middle name, but the Federal Communications Commission routinely leaves the public in the dark about how it makes critical policy decisions. That secrecy was on display during the recent debate over how the government should auction off the rights to billions of dollars worth of publicly owned airwaves. For three weeks, potential bidders such as AT&T Inc. and Google Inc. and a coalition of public interest groups waged a war through the media over proposed rules, prepared under FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, that would guide the auction. The debate advanced largely on rumor and speculation, because Martin's draft, as required by agency rules, was never made public. In fact, even when commissioners approved the auction rules at an open meeting on July 31, they still hadn't been made public. Read The Full Story Stocks Drop Sharply As Home Sales Fall 2007-09-05 12:14:21 Stocks fell sharply Wednesday as a jittery Wall Street sold off on a report showing a large drop in pending home sales. The Down Jones industrial average dropped about 160 points. The National Association of Realtors said pending sales of existing homes fell in July to the lowest level in nearly six years. Though the report did support the argument for an interest rate cut, it also worried investors who are nervous about the housing market growing so weak that it drags the economy into recession. Investors' concerns about spreading fallout from market turmoil also intensified after the European Central Bank said it would consider steps to curb recent euro money market upheaval. The statement was a sign the ECB might not lift its benchmark interest rate when it meets Thursday; there had been speculation it would raise the rate a quarter percentage point to 4.25 percent. Later Wednesday, the Federal Reserve releases its Beige Book, which describes economic conditions in regions around the country. Wall Street could be disappointed if the Beige Book's largely anecdotal findings don't help make the case for a rate cut, which markets have been pining for. Read The Full Story In Baghdad, No Relief From Fear 2007-09-05 03:10:02 Despite U.S. buildup, families still fleeing Baghadad homes in fear of sectarian violence. Driven by fear and desperation, Um Abdullah's parents, who are Sunnis, swapped homes with a Shiite family they have known for years. Her parents moved to a section of Baghdad's Saidiya neighborhood controlled by Sunni insurgents. And their friends moved into her family home in the Risala area, controlled by Shiite militias. Each family left behind their furniture, so they could move swiftly and in secret. It seemed a perfect solution in a capital whose polarization along sectarian lines has deepened this year, despite the influx of 30,000 U.S. military reinforcements. But within days of the arrival of Um Abdullah's parents two months ago, Shiite militias pushed deeper into Saidiya, driving out hundreds of Sunni families. The parents' fear returned. "If they leave their house in Saidiya, that means they will lose their house in Risala because they made the exchange," said Um Abdullah, who would allow only her nickname to be used because of safety concerns. "My parents feel trapped." A seven-month-old security offensive was intended to bring enough calm to Baghdad and other areas to resuscitate Iraq societally, politically and physically. Achieving those goals has proved elusive. Read The Full Story Packing Dangerous Winds, Hurricane Felix Hits Nicaragua As Henriette Slams Baja Peninsula 2007-09-05 03:09:19 Hurricanes swept ashore in Nicaragua and Mexico within hours of each other Tuesday, the first time Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes have made landfall on the same day since 1998, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, in Miami, Florida.  Felix arrived first, punishing sparsely populated northern Nicaragua with 160 mph winds before dawn, then plowing inland across Honduras and threatening floods and mudslides in a region still recovering from Hurricane Mitch, which killed nearly 11,000 people in 1998. More than 1,900 miles away, Henriette swelled to hurricane strength Tuesday afternoon and roared onto the southern tip of Mexico's Baja peninsula, an area thick with some of Latin America's  swankiest hotels and vacation homes. Felix, which is expected to dump up to 25 inches of rain in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, and the Guatemalan capital, Guatemala City,slashed through small villages in Nicaragua, turning thin walls into kindling, toppling trees and kicking up a heavy storm surge. The storm confounded meteorologists. Originally forecast to slam into Belize on Wednesday, it veered sharply south late Monday and early Tuesday, making landfall in a coastal region of Nicaragua populated primarily by small groups of Miskito Indians, many of whom refused to evacuate as the storm approached. Read The Full Story Musharraf Considers Declaring State Of Emergency In Pakistan 2007-09-05 03:08:02 A top adviser to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged Tuesday that the general's options for staying in power are increasingly bleak and said that a declaration of emergency is being considered as a way of keeping him in office. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, said that while a complete military takeover under martial law had been ruled out, a state of emergency that would allow for the postponement of elections for up to a year and the curtailment of individual liberties was still on the table. "Martial law is a very harsh word," Hussain said in an interview. "Emergency rule is not so harsh." The comments came on the same day that nearly simultaneous bombs tore through a market and a bus in the garrison city of Rawalpindi,killing 25 people and injuring more than 60 others in attacks that seemed to target the Pakistan military. The bus, operated by the Defense Ministry, was taking employees of Pakistan's influential Inter-Services Intelligence branch to work, according to witnesses and officials. Read The Full Story	GAO Criticizes Homeland Security's Efforts To Fulfill Its Mission 2007-09-06 02:25:11 Hobbled by inadequate funding, unclear priorities, continuing reorganizations and the absence of an overarching strategy, the Department of Homeland Security is failing to achieve its mission of preventing and responding to terrorist attacks or natural disasters, according to a comprehensive report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).  The highly critical report disputes recent upbeat assessments by the Bush administration by concluding that the DHS has failed to make even moderate progress toward eight of 14 internal government benchmarks more than four years after its creation. The report is to be released to lawmakers today, as the Democratic Congress, Republican White House and presidential candidates from both parties are beginning to debate the administration's record of accomplishments since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, whose sixth anniversary will be on Tuesday. It echoes a sober report card issued by the former Sept. 11 commission in December 2005, which awarded mostly failing and mediocre grades to the administration's efforts to prevent another terrorist attack. Read The Full Story ConAgra Says It Will Drop Popcorn Chemical Linked To Lung Ailment 2007-09-06 02:24:33 At least one man who ate several bags of butter-flavored microwave popcorn each day has developed a life-threatening lung disease possibly caused by an additive in the popcorn, his doctor says, and U.S. regulators have launched an investigation. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Wednesday that it had received a report from a Denver, Colorado, doctor saying that the man's lung disease was similar to an illness affecting workers in plants where microwave popcorn is made, said FDA spokesman Michael Herndon. "We are currently evaluating the recent information on the association of inhalation of the food additive diacetyl with lung disease, and are carefully considering the safety and regulatory issues it raises," said Herndon. Read The Full Story Fred Thompson Makes A Late Night Late Entry For GOP Presidential Nomination 2007-09-06 02:23:05 After months of testing the waters, former senator Fred Thompson (Tennessee) jumped into the race for the Republican presidential nomination on late-night television Wednesday, as his eight rivals clashed here in a debate that featured sharp exchanges over Iraq and immigration. Thompson used an appearance on NBC's "Tonight Show With Jay Leno" to kick off his campaign. "I'm running for president of the United States," Thompson told Leno during the show's taping early Wednesday evening. He prepared to follow that up at midnight with a longer video on his campaign Web site outlining his reasons for running, citing threats to national security and the economy and the need to change Washington. "I know that reform is possible in Washington because I have seen it done," he said. "I do not accept it as a fact of life beyond our power to change that the federal government must go on expanding more, taxing more, and spending more forever." Read The Full Story Analysis: Bush Shifts Terms For Measuring Progress In Iraq 2007-09-05 21:18:39 With the Democratic-led Congress poised to measure progress in Iraq by focusing on the central government’s failure to perform, President Bush is proposing a new gauge, by focusing on new American alliances with the tribes and local groups that Washington once feared would tear the country apart. That shift in emphasis was implicit in Bush’s decision to bypass Baghdad on his eight-hour trip to Iraq, stopping instead in Anbar Province, once the heart of an anti-American Sunni insurgency. By meeting with tribal leaders who just a year ago were considered the enemy, and who now are fighting al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a president who has unveiled four or five strategies for winning over Iraqis - depending on how one counts - may now be on the cusp of yet another. It is not clear whether the Democrats who control Congress will be in any mood to accept the changing measures. On Tuesday, there were contentious hearings over a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that, like last month’s National Intelligence Estimate, painted a bleak picture of Iraq’s future. Read The Full Story China Flexes Muscles Of Its 'Informationalized' Army 2007-09-05 21:17:29 Pentagon attack part of long-running effort to breach U.S. networks; hacking incidents seen as effort to develop computer warfare capability. When the presidents of the world's remaining superpower and the nation fast challenging for the title, George Bush, of the United States, and Hu Jintao, of China, meet in Sydney, Australia, Thursday they had been scheduled to be talking about matters of mutual interest: trade and global warming. Now, even if not on the formal agenda, both sides are likely to be considering the prickly issue of cyber warfare, following the revelation that the Pentagon suffered a major breach by hackers reportedly working for the Chinese military earlier this year. Disclosure by the Financial Times that the People's Liberation Army, or PLA, assaulted part of the Pentagon's system used by policy advisers to Defense Secretary Robert Gates is the latest and potentially most serious breach, and set alarm bells ringing across the U.S. military. Read The Full Story Oopsie! Nuclear Warheads Mistakenly Flown Over The U.S. 2007-09-05 21:16:23 An Air Force B-52 bomber carrying six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads flew across the central United States last week after the nuclear weapons were mistakenly attached to the airplane's wing, defense officials said Wednesday. The Stratofortress bomber, based at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, was flying a dozen Advanced Cruise Missiles to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana on Aug. 30. But crews inadvertently loaded half of them with nuclear warheads attached. Air Force officials said the warheads were not activated for use and at no time posed a threat to the public. Military officials were more concerned that the warheads were unaccounted for during the several hours that the missiles were in transit. The missiles never left Air Force control, they said. Read The Full Story Federal Judge Rules Alaska Ex-Lawmakers To Be Tried Separately 2007-09-05 21:14:57 A federal judge Wednesday granted the government's request to separate the federal corruption trial for two former Alaska state lawmakers. The trial for former Alaska State House Speaker Pete Kott was allowed to continue, with jury selection set to start later today, U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick ruled. The trial for former state Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch will be delayed while federal prosecutors appeal a decision by Sedwick to toss out some evidence in the trial. The government claims Kott and Weyhrauch were in a pay-for-votes scheme with former Veco Corp. executives Bill Allen and Rick Smith, selling their positions on oil tax and gas pipeline legislation in 2006 for cash and jobs or the promise of future work. Read The Full Story Editorial: Another Iraq Photo Op 2007-09-05 12:15:56 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Wednesday, September 5, 2007. Iraq is a long way to go for a photo op, but not for President Bush, who is pulling out all the stops to divert public attention from his failed Iraq policies and to keep Congress from demanding that he bring the troops home. As Americans and Iraqis continue to die - and Iraqi politicians refuse to reconcile - Mr. Bush stubbornly refuses to recognize that what both countries need is a responsible exit strategy for the United States, not more photo ops and disingenuous claims of success. With Congress launching a series of pivotal hearings this week, Bush’s eight-hour stopover in Iraq on Sunday won him major play in the news media, including photos of smiling American military forces with their commander in chief. But the facts of the visit undermined his claims that his troop escalation is working and deserves more time and more lives to bear fruit. Bush’s only destination was an isolated, well-fortified air base in Anbar Province, not Baghdad where his so-called surge was supposed to bring stability and persuade Iraqi politicians that they had more to gain from reconciliation than score-settling. We suppose Bush could claim one success for his visit: he did manage to get Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to visit the Sunni-dominated province. Bush pumped up his headlines by suggesting continued gains in security could allow for a reduction in troops as his critics have been demanding and most Americans desperately want. But this is a cruel tease and a pathetic attempt to repackage old promises. Bush has been dangling that same as-soon-as-possible draw down for years. The Pentagon had a plan to do just that in 2004. Today, the troop level stands at 160,000, up 30,000 from the start of this year. Read The Full Story U.S. Federal Elections Commission Won't Regulate Political Blogging 2007-09-05 12:15:16 DailyKos, an influential political Web site that serves as a virtual bulletin board for liberals, qualifies as a media entity exempt from federal campaign finance regulations, the Federal Election Commission said Tuesday. The FEC said the Web site, operated by blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, cannot be regulated as a political committee and can freely post blog entries that support candidates. Conservative blogger John C.A. Bambenek had argued in a complaint last month that the site should comply with campaign finance laws because such entries amounted to "a gift of free advertising and candidate media services." The FEC disagreed. Read The Full Story German Authorities Disrupt Bomb Plot 2007-09-05 12:14:39 German authorities said Wednesday they had disrupted an "imminent" plot to bomb targets that may have included the largest U.S. air base in Europe and Frankfurt's international airport. Three men were in custody after their arrest in a village in western Germany, and police said they recovered large quantities of chemicals for making explosives. German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung cited the Frankfurt airport and Ramstein Air Base, a major U.S. and NATO military installation, as the likely targets, although prosecutors said the group may have been eyeing nightclubs and other venues frequented by Americans. "There was an imminent threat," Jung told ARD television, declining to give details. Read The Full Story Washington, D.C. Gun Appeal Could Reshape U.S. Gun Laws 2007-09-05 03:10:19 If the U.S. Supreme Court hears handgun ban appeal, the decision could determine if Second Amendment is an individual right or a collective, civic right. The District of Columbia Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to uphold the city's ban on private ownership of handguns, saying the appeals court decision that overturned the law "drastically departs from the mainstream of American jurisprudence". Most legal experts believe the court will accept the case, which could lead to a historic decision next year on whether the ambiguously worded Second Amendment to the Constitution protects private gun ownership or only imparts a civic right related to maintaining state militias. The District argues in its petition for review that its law - one of the toughest handgun bans in the nation - should be upheld regardless of whether the court sides with the so-called "individualist" or "collective" legal theories. Read The Full Story U.S. Efforts May Work Against Iraqi Self-Sufficiency 2007-09-05 03:09:46 After the feast, the tribal leaders of Jiff Jaffa laid out their problem. They had five water pumps issued by the Iraqi government, but none were working. Municipal officials either said they were afraid to visit this dangerous region or demanded that the leaders pay large sums to use certain contractors. Now, the sheiks were asking for help from the United States. It was a familiar request for the group of U.S. soldiers and aid officials seated in a large trailer on a farm in this rural stretch of southern Iraq. "So the real reason they are not helping you is they want a bribe?" asked Lewis Tatem, the tall, deep-voiced deputy leader of the Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in charge of this area. "Yes, a bribe," replied Hamid Mazza al-Masodi. Read The Full Story Sen. Craig Now Reconsidering His Resignation From U.S. Senate 2007-09-05 03:08:42 Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) is reconsidering his announced intention to resign, if he can clear his name of criminal and ethics charges before the end of the month, a spokesman said Tuesday night. Other Craig aides, however, sent mixed signals Tuesday about the strength of the senator's desire to remain in the chamber as he pursues a legal challenge to his guilty plea stemming from an undercover sex sting in an airport restroom, as well as an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee. Republican leaders, who leaned hard on Craig last week to resign, had put the matter behind them, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell(Kentucky) declaring Tuesday, "The episode is over." Informed Tuesday night of the apparent change of heart, McConnell's spokesman declined to comment. Read The Full Story
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