Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday October 23 2007 - (813)

Tuesday October 23 2007 edition
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Southern California Wildfires Blaze On Unchecked 2007-10-23 02:46:45 Half a million told to evacuate; 700 homes and businesses destroyed. Wind-whipped firestorms destroyed more than 700 homes and businesses in Southern California on Monday, the second day of its onslaught, and more than half a million people in San Diego County were told to evacuate their homes. The gale-force winds turned hillside canyons into giant blowtorches from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border. Although the worst damage was around San Diego and Lake Arrowhead, dangerous fires also threatened Malibu, parts of Orange and Ventura counties, and the Agua Dulce area near Santa Clarita. Monday evening, a new blaze was menacing homes near Valencia and Stevenson Ranch in northern Los Angeles County. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, calling it "a tragic time for California," declared a state of emergency in seven counties and redeployed California National Guard members from the border to support state and local firefighters. Schwarzenegger stressed how much California officials have learned since the devastating wildfires of October 2003, which raged over much of the same terrain. Read The Full Story Many 'Red Flags' Preceded Hamburger E Coli Recall 2007-10-23 02:46:24 Over the summer, as Americans fired up their grills, the Topps Meat factory here scrambled to produce thousands of frozen hamburger patties for Wal-Mart and other customers, putting intense pressure on workers. As output rose, federal regulators said in interviews, the company was neglecting critical safeguards meant to protect consumers. Three big batches of hamburger contaminated with a potentially deadly germ emerged from the plant, making at least 40 people sick and prompting the second-largest beef recall in history. Topps is now out of business, but the case points up broader problems in the nation’s system for protecting consumers from food-borne illness. Five years ago, the government demanded more stringent safeguards against contamination because of a deadly form of the germ E. coli, but federal regulators now acknowledge that the controls are not working in some meat plants. They are trying to figure out what went wrong and how to overcome the dangers. Read The Full Story It Was All Hot Air - British Government Plans To Abandon Rewewable Energy Targets 2007-10-22 20:56:02 Leaked documents detail strategy for U-turn on Britain's pledges to combat climate change. Government ministers are planning a U-turn on Britain's pledges to combat climate change that "effectively abolishes" its targets to rapidly expand the use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. Leaked documents seen by the Guardian newspaper show that Prime Minister Gordon Brown will be advised Tuesday that the target Tony Blair signed up to this year for 20% of all European energy to come from renewable sources by 2020 is expensive and faces "severe practical difficulties". According to the papers, John Hutton, the secretary of state for business, will tell Brown that Britain should work with Poland and other governments skeptical about climate change to "help persuade" German chancellor Angela Merkel and others to set lower renewable targets, before binding commitments are framed in December. It admits that allowing member states to fall short of their renewable targets will be "very hard to negotiate .. and will be very controversial". "The commission, some member states and the European parliament will not want the target to be diluted, though others may be allies for a change," says a draft copy of Hutton's Energy Policy Presentation to the Prime Minister, marked "restricted - policy". Read The Full Story Bush Requests Another $46 Billion From Congress For Wars 2007-10-22 20:55:35 President Bush requested $46 billion more Monday to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other security priorities, bringing the total request pending before Congress to $196.4 billion and setting the stage for another politically charged battle over the course of the war. The funding request would pay for day-to-day costs of the wars, including everything from bullets to body armor, as well as for training of Iraqi troops, embassy programs and intelligence operations. It also would pay for treatment of injured soldiers, equipment repairs, relief for Iraqi refugees, U.N. peacekeeping in the Darfur region of Sudan and counter-narcotics aid to Mexico. The president's war funding plan appears certain to revive the debate over Iraq that has grown somewhat dormant in Washington over the past month. Bush demanded that Congress approve his spending request by the end of the year and cast it as a test of whether lawmakers support U.S. troops, rather than his policy. Democratic leaders in Congress have said they do not plan to act on Bush's request until next year as they seek a new strategy to counter the president's war leadership. Read The Full Story Oil Prices Fall Toward $87 A Barrel On Worries Of Economic Slowdown 2007-10-22 15:55:01 Oil fell sharply toward $87 a barrel on Monday as part of a broad-based commodities sell-off on concerns over the health of the U.S. economy and a recovery in the U.S. dollar. U.S. crude settled down $1.04 at $87.56 a barrel, retreating from last week's all-time high of $90.07. London Brent crude was 52 cents lower at $83.27. Dealers said the dollar's rebound from a record low against the euro, alongside sliding world stock markets following a flurry of weak corporate earnings results encouraged selling across energy and metals. U.S. oil remains up around 10 percent since October 8, propelled by geopolitical worries and expectations that energy inventories will be tight during the Northern Hemisphere winter. Read The Full Story Microsoft Antitrust Case With European Union Ends 2007-10-22 15:54:39 Company to slash fees for information needed to make programs work smoothly with Windows. Microsoft early Monday morning dropped its decade-long antitrust battle with European regulators by agreeing not to appeal a landmark Sept. 17 court ruling. The European Commission's ruling, which upheld a 2004 decision by a lower court, requires the company to cut the royalty fees it charges to competitors for access to information that allows them to create software for Windows, the world's biggest PC operating system. Microsoft has already paid nearly 1 billion euros, or $1.43 billion, in fines to the commission, which will decide by the end of the year whether Microsoft must pay an additional 1.6 billion euros. "Now that Microsoft has agreed to comply with the 2004 decision, the company can no longer use the market power derived from its 95 percent share of the PC operating system market and 80 percent profit margin to harm consumers by killing competition on any market it wishes," E.U. Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement to reporters in Belgium. Read The Full Story Polar Melting Occurs At Alarming Rate 2007-10-22 01:04:25 For scientists, global warming is a disaster movie come to life with first scenes set at Earth's poles. For scientists, global warming is a disaster movie, its opening scenes set at the poles of Earth. The epic already has started. And it's not fiction. The scenes are playing, at the start, in slow motion: The relentless grip of the Arctic Ocean that defied man for centuries is melting away. The sea ice reaches only half as far as it did 50 years ago. In the summer of 2006, it shrank to a record low; this summer the ice pulled back even more, by an area nearly the size of Alaska. Where explorer Robert Peary just 102 years ago saw "a great white disk stretching away apparently infinitely" from Ellesmere Island, there is often nothing now but open water. Glaciers race into the sea from the island of Greenland, beginning an inevitable rise in the oceans. Animals are on the move. Polar bears, kings of the Arctic, now search for ice on which to hunt and bear young. Seals, walrus and fish adapted to the cold are retreating north. New species - salmon, crabs, even crows - are coming from the south. The Inuit, who have lived on the frozen land for millennia, are seeing their houses sink into once-frozen mud, and their hunting trails on the ice are pocked with sinkholes. Read The Full Story Inch By Inch, Great Lakes Are Getting Smaller, And Cargo Carriers Face Losses 2007-10-22 01:03:47 From his office at the port in Oswego, New York, Jonathan Daniels stared at a watermark etched on the rocks that hug one of the commercial piers - a thick dark line several inches above the surface of Lake Ontario - and wondered how much lower the water would dip. “What we need is some rain,” said Daniels, director of the Port of Oswego Authority, one of a dozen public port agencies on the United States side of the Great Lakes. “The more we lose water, the less cargo the ships that travel in the Great Lakes can carry, and each time that happens, shipping companies lose money,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s people like you and I who are going to pay the price.” Water levels in the Great Lakes are falling; Lake Ontario, for example, is about seven inches below where it was a year ago. And for every inch of water that the lakes lose, the ships that ferry bulk materials across them must lighten their loads by 270 tons - or 540,000 pounds - or risk running aground, according to the Lake Carriers’ Association, a trade group for United States-flag cargo companies. As a result, more ships are needed, adding millions of dollars to shipping companies’ operating costs, experts in maritime commerce estimate. Read The Full Story U.S. Planners: Shiite Militias Are Rising Threat To U.S. In Iraq 2007-10-22 01:03:03 Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassasor Ryan C. Crocker have concluded that Shiite extremists pose a rising threat to the U.S. effort in Iraq, as the relative influence of Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq has diminished drastically due to ongoing U.S. operations. This judgment forms part of the changes that Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, approved last week to their classified campaign strategy for the country, which covers the period through summer 2009. The updated plan anticipates shifting the U.S. military effort to focus more on countering Shiite militias - some backed by Iran - that have generated new violence as they battle for power in the south and elsewhere in Iraq, said senior military and diplomatic officials familiar with the plan. "As the Sunni insurgents quit fighting us, the problems we have with criminality and other militia, many of them Shia, become relatively more important," said a U.S. Embassy official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan is not finalized. The plan also acknowledges that the U.S. military - with limited time and troops - cannot guarantee a wholesale defeat of its enemies in Iraq, and instead is seeking "political accommodation" to persuade them to end the use of violence, the officials said. Read The Full Story Pro-Business Party Wins Poland Election 2007-10-22 01:01:58 A pro-business opposition party that wants Poland's troops out of Iraq ousted Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's government in parliamentary elections Sunday, as Poles opted for leadership offering a more cooperative approach to the European Union (E.U.). Donald Tusk's Civic Platform party led with 40 percent of the vote after 32 percent of the ballots were counted early Monday, which would give the party 194 seats in the 460-seat Sejm lower house. That would be short of the 231 needed for a majority - but close enough for it to join with a smaller party to form a government. "Today I am the happiest person in the world," a teary-eyed Tusk told supporters. "People in Poland voted today to choose their own fate and have put a great responsibility, a great task on our shoulders. We undertake this great responsibility." Read The Full Story	Editorial: Even Closer To The Brink 2007-10-23 02:46:34 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Tuesday, October 23, 2007. The news out of Iraq just keeps getting worse. Now Turkey is threatening to send troops across the border to wipe out Kurdish rebel bases, after guerrillas killed at least a dozen Turkish soldiers. This latest crisis should have come as no surprise. But it is one more widely predicted problem the Bush administration failed to plan for before its misguided invasion - and one more problem it urgently needs to deal with as part of a swift and orderly exit from Iraq. Turkey’s anger is understandable. Guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., have been striking from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan with growing impunity and effect, using plastic explosives, mines and arms that are far too readily accessible in Iraq. The death toll for Turkish military forces is mounting. Turkey’s civilian leaders are feeling strong popular pressure to lash back. The leadership needs to realize that the conflict is providing a dangerous opening for Turkey’s generals. The military is determined to regain the upper hand over Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom they detest for his party’s roots in Islamic politics. Read The Full Story 2 Reports Sharply Critical Of State Dept. Role In Iraq, Afghanistan Security Contracts 2007-10-23 02:46:04 A pair of new reports have delivered sharply critical judgments about the State Department’s performance in overseeing work done by the private companies that the government relies on increasingly in Iraq and Afghanistan to carry out delicate security work and other missions. A State Department review of its own security practices in Iraq assails the department for poor coordination, communication, oversight and accountability involving armed security companies like Blackwater USA, according to people who have been briefed on the report. In addition to Blackwater, the State Department’s two other security contractors in Iraq are DynCorp International and Triple Canopy. At the same time, a government audit expected to be released Tuesday says that records documenting the work of DynCorp, the State Department’s largest contractor, are in such disarray that the department cannot say “specifically what it received” for most of the $1.2 billion it has paid the company since 2004 to train the police officers in Iraq. The review of security practices was ordered last month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and it did not address the Sept. 16 shooting involving Blackwater guards, which Iraqi investigators said killed 17 Iraqis. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading a separate inquiry into that episode. Read The Full Story Commentary: How To Aid Destruction 2007-10-22 20:55:46 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Robert Goodland, who writes, "My former employers, the World Bank, are damaging the planet and punishing the poor. Mr. Goodland's commentary follows: I worked as environmental adviser for the World Bank Group, headquartered in Washington, for 23 years. I joined because I believed the bank wanted to improve the lot of the poor and conserve the environment. Before going to Washington, D.C., I did an environmental study for the government of Tucurui, the first big dam in Amazonia. A vast part of the forest was flooded, so I saw at first hand the huge environmental and social cost of misguided development projects. The bank knew how impassioned I was but hired me none the less. I thought I would work with colleagues to prevent blunders in the future. Indeed, we achieved a lot. Perhaps our greatest feat was having the bank adopt a suite of social and environmental policies to be applied to all projects. The bank also adopted policies for reducing poverty directly, instead of relying on "trickle-down" economics. In 2000,  I was thrilled when James Wolfensohn, then president of the bank, led it to pursue the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals. Assessing risks and impacts, we failed to stop the bank funding ExxonMobil's oil pipeline in Chad and Cameroon, but managed to prevent it supporting China's Three Gorges dam. Progress faltered in the late 90s. Most social and environmental policies were gutted, and those that remain are no longer being rigorously followed. During the Wolfowitz presidency, policy work on the two key challenges of population and climate change was crippled. While governments around the world are regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, the bank is not yet doing anything like this. The bank has encouraged India to resume investing in coal and nuclear energy. Social and environmental policies have been handed over to developing countries to implement - or not, as the case may be. The bank's private sector affiliate, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is backing oil palm plantations in Indonesia and cutting protective mangrove forests. Among the worst is financing for monoculture soya plantations in Amazonia, even though soya is suicide for Brazil's rich agricultural lands. Read The Full Story California Fires Force 250,000 To Evacuate 2007-10-22 15:55:10 Wildfires fanned by fierce desert winds consumed huge swaths of bone-dry Southern California on Monday, burning dozens of buildings and threatening hundreds more from Malibu to San Diego, including a jail, a hospital and nursing homes. More than a dozen wildfires had engulfed the region, killing at least one person, injuring dozens more and forcing hundreds of thousands of evacuations. Overwhelmed firefighters said they lacked the resources to save many houses. "We have more houses burning than we have people and engine companies to fight them," San Diego Fire Captain Lisa Blake said. "A lot of people are going to lose their homes today." Nearly 250,000 people were forced to flee in San Diego County alone, where hundreds of patients were being moved by school bus and ambulance from a hospital and nursing homes, said sheriff's spokeswoman Susan Knauss. Read The Full Story Bear Stearns, Citic Form Partnership 2007-10-22 15:54:48 Deal underscores China's clout in global finance and Western interest in gaining entry to China. Bear Stearns, the beleaguered Wall Street investment bank, and Citic Securities, a major government-controlled bank in China, have agreed to invest $1 billion in each other and start a joint venture in Asia. The deal underscores China's growing clout in global finance and the keen interest among Western financiers to gain entry to China, where financial services are growing rapidly. Analysts said more such deals are likely to take place as China uses its massive foreign exchange reserves to invest in assets overseas. Earlier this year, the Chinese government paid $3 billion buy a 9.7 percent stake in the initial public offering of shares in private equity firm Blackstone. The agreement comes as shares of Bear Stearns have plummeted amid losses in mortgage-related securities and the summer's credit crunch. Read The Full Story News Analysis: With Wall Street Slowing, Uncertainty Descends 2007-10-22 01:04:46 Now that the biggest firms on Wall Street, widely regarded as the economic engines of New York City, have begun to sputter, economists and city officials are beginning to fear that the city’s run of steady growth will stall. One big bank after another has announced shrinking profits, job cuts or both. And the gloomy reports are dashing hopes that large year-end bonus checks for investment bankers and traders would continue to fuel the local economy. The latest psychic blow came on Thursday when the chief executive of Bank of America hinted that his company might reverse the expansion of its investment banking operations after suffering big trading losses in the last three months. That warning seemed particularly ominous because the bank, based in North Carolina, is building a $1 billion office tower on 42nd Street to herald its arrival as an important player in the financial capital of the country. With the tally of casualties from the turmoil in the financial markets mounting, analysts are rethinking their predictions of a gradual cooling of the local economy. Read The Full Story Kurds Cross From Iraq, Kill 17 Turkish Troops 2007-10-22 01:04:11 Pre-dawn attack ratchets up pressure on Turkish govt. to launch a military offensive into Iraq as U.S. says its troops killed 49 fighters in Sadr City. An audacious cross-border ambush by Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq killed at least 17 Turkish soldiers Sunday, ratcheting up pressure on the Turkish government to launch a military offensive into Iraq. The pre-dawn attack took place as the U.S. military said its troops killed 49 fighters in Baghdad's Sadr City  neighborhood, one of the highest death tolls for a military operation since President Bush declared an end to active combat in 2003. Iraqi officials and residents of the vast Shiite enclave, loyal to powerful anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, said 13 people were killed and all of the victims were innocent civilians, including children. They warned that the attack could lead Sadr to rescind a suspension of his militia's operations. Read The Full Story Dry Growth Fuels Wildfires Across Southern California 2007-10-22 01:03:22 More than a dozen firestorms consume up to 35,000 acres throughout southern California; one person is killed and at least 10 people are injured. More than a dozen wind-driven firestorms consumed up to 35,000 acres across Southern California Sunday, including a vast expanse of northern Los Angeles County where 10 structures were destroyed, 800 homes were evacuated and additional 3,800 residences were threatened. The fires raced through dry growth in hilly terrain stretching from Santa Barbara County to the Mexican border. In San Diego County, one person was killed and at least 14 injured, four of them firefighters. Near the 14 Freeway leading to Palmdale, three people suffered burn injuries in the so-called Buckweed Fire, which began near Agua Dulce and leapfrogged through the hills, starting new flare-ups that threatened subdivisions in Canyon Country and surrounding areas. Firefighters were battling the blaze along a 15- to 20-mile fire line. The fire had burned 10,000 acres by evening with no containment in sight. Winds near the fire lines were whipping up to 80 mph, and officials predicted they could intensify overnight. The blaze moved so quickly that fire officials had to relocate their command center five times to keep up with the advancing flames. Read The Full Story Federal Trade Commission Balks At Intel Investigation 2007-10-22 01:02:13 The head of the Federal Trade Commission has rejected requests by lawmakers, other commissioners and a small rival company to open a formal antitrust investigation of Intel, the world’s largest maker of computer microprocessors, for anticompetitive conduct, said government officials and lawyers involved in the proceeding. In recent weeks, regulators in Korea and with the European Commission have separately accused Intel of antitrust violations by offering large discounts to computer makers in exchange for their not using products by the rival company, Advanced Micro Devices (A.M.D.) which has struggled to compete and has waged a global antitrust campaign against Intel. Japanese officials made similar accusations in 2005. The trade commission has been conducting an informal review of A.M.D.’s complaints for more than a year, gathering thousands of documents from Intel and its customers. But the commission’s chairwoman, Deborah P. Majoras, has rejected requests to elevate the inquiry to a formal investigation, which would give staff members the authority to issue subpoenas and compel testimony from executives of the companies involved. Read The Full Story
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