Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday October 19 2007 - (813)

Friday October 19 2007 edition
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Senators Clash With Mukasey Over Torture 2007-10-19 03:13:21 President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey, declined Thursday to say if he considered harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding, which simulates drowning, to constitute torture or to be illegal if used on terrorism suspects. On the second day of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mukasey went further than he had the day before in arguing that the White House had constitutional authority to act beyond the limits of laws enacted by Congress, especially when it came to national defense. He suggested that both the administration’s program of eavesdropping without warrants and its use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects, including waterboarding, might be acceptable under the Constitution even if they went beyond what the law technically allowed. Mukasey said the president’s authority as commander in chief might allow him to supersede laws written by Congress. The tone of questioning was far more aggressive than on Wednesday, the first day of the hearings, as Mukasey, a retired federal judge, was challenged by Democrats who pressed him for his views on President Bush’s disputed antiterrorism policies. Read The Full Story Actress Deborah Kerr, 86, Dies 2007-10-19 03:12:31 Deborah Kerr, 86, a Scottish-born actress who set the standard for white-gloved elegance in 1950s films including "The King and I" and "An Affair to Remember" and who shocked viewers as the lusty adulteress in "From Here to Eternity," died Oct. 16 in Suffolk, England. She had Parkinson's disease. Ms. Kerr, who appeared in nearly 50 films, was nominated six times for the Academy Award as best actress but never won. She received an honorary Oscar in 1994, and three years later, Queen Elizabeth II recognized Ms. Kerr for her distinguished career. In her most popular roles, Ms. Kerr was usually genteel and quietly forceful opposite rugged men such as Burt Lancaster and Robert Mitchum. Her biographer, Eric Braun, wrote that she excelled in parts that conveyed "moral fortitude concealed by a frail appearance." She was so well-known for her on-screen grace that People magazine once rehashed a Hollywood joke about her: "Deborah Kerr is the sort of creature who could be photographed ambling, disheveled, out of a place of assignation, or doing the hully-gully, naked, on the Golden Gate Bridge, and draw no more comment from the public than, 'Lovely girl.' " Read The Full Story Putin Declares New Nuclear Weapons Project 2007-10-18 18:32:29 Russia President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia is developing new types of nuclear weapons. Putin said during a live televised phone-in that the new missiles are part of a "grandiose" plan to boost Russian defenses, Reuters reported. "We will develop missile technology including completely new strategic [nuclear] complexes," he said in the annual phone-in, in which Russians can question him directly. Putin began the session by extolling the strength of the Russian economy, particularly the improvements since he assumed office, but warned that inflation could rise to 8.5% by the end of the year. The annual televised Q&A session is Putin's sixth since being elected president in 2000. More than 1 million people sent in questions by email, text or telephone. Many viewers were keen to see if Putin would give any clues as to his plans when his second presidential term expires in 2008. Under the terms of the constitution he cannot be elected for a third term. Read The Full Story Senate, Bush Reach Consensus On Spying 2007-10-18 03:15:29 Legislation grants legal immunity to telecom companies that assisted in past eavesdropping while restoring court oversight of surveillance. Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration Wednesday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources. Disclosure of the deal followed a decision by House Democratic leaders to pull a competing version of the measure from the floor because they lacked the votes to prevail over Republican opponents and GOP parliamentary maneuvers. The collapse marked the first time since Democrats took control of the chamber that a major bill was withdrawn from consideration before a scheduled vote. It was a victory for President Bush, whose aides lobbied heavily against the Democrats' bill, and an embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), who had pushed for the measure's passage. The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-West Virginia), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States. Read The Full Story Blackwater Likely To Be Out Of Iraq 2007-10-18 03:14:54 A State Department review of private security guards for diplomats in Iraq is unlikely to recommend firing Blackwater USA over the deaths of 17 Iraqis last month, but the company probably is on the way out of that job, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Blackwater's work escorting U.S. diplomats outside the protected Green Zone in Baghdad expires in May, said one official,  and other officials told the Associated Press they expect the North Carolina company will not continue to work for the embassy after that. It is likely that Blackwater does not compete to keep the job, said one official. Blackwater probably will not be fired outright or even "eased out", the official added, but there is a mutual feeling that the Sept. 16 shooting deaths mean the company cannot continue in its current role. State Department officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has not yet considered results of an internal review of Blackwater and the other two companies that protect diplomats in Iraq. Department officials said no decisions have been made and that Rice has the final say. Read The Full Story Commentary: Only Dogma And Corporate Capture (Privatization) Can Explain This 2007-10-18 03:13:31 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Seumas Milne and appears in the Guardian edition for Thursday, October 18, 2007. Mr. Milne writes that it beggars belief that U.S. health privateers straight out of Michael Moore's "Sicko" are being lined up to run core NHS (National Health Service) services. UnitedHealth is the largest healthcare corporation in the U.S., making billions of dollars a year out of cherry-picking patients and treatments, squeezing costs and restricting benefits to 70 million Americans forced to get by in the developed world's only fully privatized health system. Its chief executive, Bush donor William McGuire, paid $125 million in 2004, had to step down last year in a share-option scandal. Last month, UnitedHealth agreed with insurance regulators in 36 states to pay out $20 million in fines for failures in processing claims and responding to patient complaints. That follows a string of other fines over delayed payments, Medicare fraud and "cheating patients out of money" in New York State. Other major U.S. health corporations, such as Aetna and Humana, have also faced repeated fines for shortchanging doctors, using unlicensed agents, payment delays, failures to give information to claimants or fraud. In one case of a cancer patient who was refused payment for a failed experimental treatment its own doctors recommended, Aetna was ordered to hand over $120 million damages after it was found by a California jury to have committed "malice, oppression and fraud". All three companies figure prominently in Michael Moore's new film "Sicko", a compelling indictment of the U.S. health system - under which 18,000 Americans die a year because they are uninsured. Hardly the ideal players, you might think, to take a central role in the reform of Britain's National Health Service. Read The Full Story Pentagon To Alert 8 Guard Units For Duty 2007-10-18 03:12:30 The Pentagon is preparing to alert eight National Guard units that they should be ready to go to Iraq or Afghanistan beginning late next summer, the Associated Press learned Wednesday. The U.S. military is reaching out to more Guard units in an effort to maintain needed troop levels, ease some of the strain on the active duty Army and provide security for ports, convoys and other installations. According to defense officials, seven of the units would deploy to Iraq and one to Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the orders had not yet been signed and the announcement is not expected until the end of this week. Two of the units will be full combat brigades heading to Iraq - between next summer and into 2009, to serve as part of the rotation with active duty troops. There are currently 20 combat brigades in Iraq, but under plans mapped out by President Bush and his top commanders, that number will gradually drop to 15 next year, as the U.S. reduces its troop presence there. Read The Full Story	For First Time, Carbon Dioxide Emissions Used To Reject Power Plant 2007-10-19 03:12:56 The Kansas Department of Health and Environment Thursday became the first government agency in the United States to cite carbon dioxide emissions as the reason for rejecting an air permit for a proposed coal-fired electricity generating plant, saying that the greenhouse gas threatens public health and the environment. The decision marks a victory for environmental groups that are fighting proposals for new coal-fired plants around the country. It may be the first of a series of similar state actions inspired by a Supreme Court decision in April that asserted that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide should be considered pollutants under the Clean Air Act. In the past, air permits, which are required before construction of combustion facilities, have been denied over emissions such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury. But Roderick L. Bremby, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said yesterday that "it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health if we do nothing." Read The Full Story Breaking News: 108 Killed As Bombers Target Bhutto Convoy 2007-10-18 18:32:43 Two bomb blasts targeting rally in Karachi leave dozens killed and injured, although former prime minister Benazir Bhutto escapes uninjured. Two bombs exploded Thursday night near a truck carrying former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on her triumphant return to Pakistan after eight years in exile, killing at least 108 people and wounding 150, an official said. Party workers and police said Bhutto was unhurt. Associated Press photographer B.K. Bangash at the scene said he saw between 50 and 60 dead or badly injured people. He said some of the bodies were ripped apart. An initial small explosion was followed by a huge blast just feet from the front of the truck carrying Bhutto during a procession through Karachi. The blast shattered windows in her vehicle and set a police escort vehicle on fire. Those traveling atop the truck with Bhutto got off, with one man jumping off while others climbed down. Bhutto, who is expected to seek the premiership for an unprecedented third time and partner in ruling Pakistan with U.S.-backed President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was safe, said her lawyer, Sen. Babar Awan. Read The Full Story Sarkozy To Be First French President To Get Divorced While In Office 2007-10-18 18:32:19 Nicolas Sarkozy has become the first French president to divorce while in office, it emerged Thursday, as his entourage confirmed he had split from his wife Cecilia. A lawyer for the couple said a judge heard their case and granted the divorce. "It went very well. There was not the slightest difficulty," the lawyer, Michele Cahen, said on Europe-1 radio. Speculation over a formal separation has mounted in recent weeks, particularly after the president's spokesman refused to confirm or deny reports of an imminent break-up earlier this month. Sarkozy, 52, married his 49-year-old wife in 1996. The couple have a 10-year-old son, Louis, and two children each from previous marriages. On Wednesday, the weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur's website reported that the pair had appeared before a judge to seek a legal separation on Monday. However, the LCI news channel said Ms. Sarkozy had seen a judge alone, and that the judge had later visited the presidential Elysee palace to give Mr. Sarkozy a document to countersign. Read The Full Story FCC Plan Would Relax Media-Ownership Rules 2007-10-18 03:15:15 The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has circulated an ambitious plan to relax the decades-old media ownership rules, including repealing a rule that forbids a company to own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city. Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the commission, wants to repeal the rule in the next two months - a plan that, if successful, would be a big victory for some executives of media conglomerates. Among them are Samuel Zell, the Chicago investor who is seeking to complete a buyout of the Tribune Company, and Rupert Murdoch, who has lobbied against the rule for years so that he can continue controlling both the New York Post and a Fox television station in New York. The proposal appears to have the support of a majority of the five commission members, agency officials said, although it is not clear that Martin would proceed with a sweeping deregulatory approach on a vote of 3 to 2 - something his predecessor tried without success. In interviews on Wednesday, the agency’s two Democratic members raised questions about Martin’s approach. Read The Full Story Bush Claims He Remains Relevant 2007-10-18 03:13:59 President lashes out at lawmakers for stalling initiatives and judicial nominations. President Bush declared Wednesday that he remains "relevant" despite his political troubles, and he derided Democrats for running a do-nothing Congress that has failed to address critical domestic, economic and security issues in the nine months since they took control of Capitol Hill.  Trying to turn the tables on his adversaries, Bush lashed out at lawmakers for stalling housing and education initiatives, trade agreements, and judicial nominations, and for not having passed any of 12 annual spending bills more than two weeks into the new fiscal year. "Congress has little to show for all the time that has gone by," he said during a White House news conference. Bush's assault on Democratic leaders during the 47-minute session reflected a broader attempt by the White House to go on the offensive at a time when polls show that the public has soured on Congress just as it has on the president. Stuck with the lowest approval ratings of his presidency with just 15 months left in office, Bush presented himself as still in command of the Washington agenda and rejected the suggestion that he has grown "increasingly irrelevant," as a reporter put it in a question. Read The Full Story Green Groups Condemn U.K.'s Claim To Antarctica 2007-10-18 03:13:15 Plan to exploit regions seen as huge ecological risk; Britain's Foreign Office defends "safeguard of U.K. interests". Environmental groups Wednesday condemned British plans to claim sovereignty over a vast tract of the seabed off the coast of Antarctica, with Greenpeace and WWF expressing dismay that the Foreign Office was contemplating possible oil, gas and mineral exploration in the region. The Guardian Wednesday revealed that the Foreign Office was preparing to submit a rights claim to the United Nations commission on the limits of the continental shelf (CLCS) for 1 million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) of seabed off the coast of the British Antarctic Territory. Any claim, it is alleged, could threaten the stability of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which froze territorial disputes on the world's least explored continent. Drilling for oil or gas would disrupt the fragile marine ecology of the Southern Ocean, environmentalists warn. Read The Full Story
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