Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday November 14 2007 - (813)

Wednesday November 14 2007 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
FBI Says Blackwater Killed 14 Iraqis Without Cause 2007-11-14 02:43:20 Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq,according to civilian and military officials briefed on the case. The FBI investigation into the shootings in Baghdad is still under way, but the findings, which indicate that the company’s employees recklessly used lethal force, are already under review by the Justice Department. Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek indictments, and some officials have expressed pessimism that adequate criminal laws exist to enable them to charge any Blackwater employee with criminal wrongdoing. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the FBI declined to discuss the matter. The case could be one of the first thorny issues to be decided by Michael B. Mukasey, who was sworn in as attorney general last week. He may be faced with a decision to turn down a prosecution on legal grounds at a time when a furor has erupted in Congress about the administration’s failure to hold security contractors accountable for their misdeeds. Read The Full Story Oil Prices Rebound In Asian Trading 2007-11-14 02:42:54 Oil prices rebounded modestly in Asian trading Wednesday as traders bought contracts after they dropped sharply in the previous session. Crude prices had declined sharply after the International Energy Agency cut its demand forecasts and said Tuesday that crude supplies are rising. ''Essentially, what the IEA indicated was that high crude prices were weighing down on oil demand,'' said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. ''The news is seen as bearish for the market.'' The IEA, an energy policy adviser to 26 predominantly Western industrialized nations, lowered its fourth-quarter oil demand forecasts by 500,000 barrels a day and cut its demand forecasts for 2008 by 300,000 barrels a day. Year-over-year demand growth will now average 1.2 percent in 2007 and 2.3 percent in 2008, said the IEA. Read The Full Story It's Back - H5N1 Bird Flu Hits Turkeys In Britain 2007-11-14 02:42:17 Officials attempt to contain U.K.'s fourth outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu and discover source. The hunt for the source of Britain's fourth outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu centered last night on an ornamental lake at a Suffolk stately home, where free range turkeys from an infected poultry farm have been mixing with wild birds. The outbreak at Redgrave park farm near Diss was confirmed Tuesday by veterinarians. Tuesday night the cull of more than 5,000 turkeys, 1,000 ducks and 500 geese on the farm was continuing as officials tried to contain the virus and discover its source. Early indications were that there had been no spread of the disease beyond Redgrave park, a mansion whose grounds have been let out to Gressingham Foods, Britain's largest duck farmers. The company provides birds to some of Britain's most renowned restaurants. Read The Full Story U.S.' 2nd Largest Bank - Bank of America - To Write Down $3 Billion In Debt 2007-11-13 15:00:37 Bank of America Corp., the nation's second biggest bank, said Tuesday it will take a $3 billion debt-related writedown in the fourth quarter and warned its losses could grow as the market wrestles with the fallout from the housing and mortgage-lending slump. The Charlotte-based bank said it will also spend about $600 million to support a group of its money market funds because of "uncertainty around the value" of the funds investments. Of specific concern are the funds' holdings in structured investment vehicles, which use borrowed money to make risky but potentially high-yielding investments. Speaking at an investor conference in New York, Bank of America chief financial officer Joe Price said the bank is also setting aside more money for potential losses but considers the losses "manageable." Read The Full Story Pakistan - Bhutto Calls On Musharraf To Step Down 2007-11-13 15:00:01 Former Pakistani prime minister, under house arrest, calls on president to resign; appears to scotch any chance of powersharing arrangement. Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, in harsh comments issued by phone while under house arrest, on Tuesday demanded that President Pervez Musharraf step down and appeared to scotch any lingering chance of a power-sharing arrangement between them. In Karachi, meanwhile, clashes erupted between local police and members of Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party, with reports of arrests and gunshots fired at local police stations. Bhutto has estimated that more than 10,000 of her party members may now be in police custody - just one of several facts she listed in explaining her decision to call for Musharraf's resignation. "I am calling for Gen. Musharraf to step down, to quit, to leave," Bhutto said in a phone call with reporters. "I feel he's done too little, too late. He keeps trying to bide time. He keeps trying to break momentum ... Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country. We cannot afford this kind of chaos and instability. Pakistan needs stability. I could not serve as prime minister with Gen. Musharraf as president. I wish I could." Read The Full Story 4 Transplant Recipients Contract H.I.V. 2007-11-13 14:59:27 Four transplant recipients in Chicago have contracted H.I.V. from an organ donor, the first known cases of the virus being spread by organ transplants in 22 years, the Chicago Tribune is reporting today. The patients also contracted the hepatitis C virus. The organ donor tested negative for both diseases said health officials - apparently because the donor was infected too recently for commonly used blood tests to detect the infection. Those blood tests do not find the virus itself; they look instead for the body’s reaction to the infection - antibodies produced by the immune system. But the body takes time to react, and if the test is done too soon - within 22 days of infection - the antibodies may not be detected. Doctors say that is what probably occurred these cases. Read The Full Story 'Hidden Costs' Double The Price Of Iraq, Afghanistan Wars 2007-11-13 02:53:50 Study says wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost average U.S. family of four more than $20,000. The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new study by congressional Democrats that estimates the conflicts' "hidden costs" - including higher oil prices, the expense of treating wounded veterans and interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars. That amount is nearly double the $804 billion the White House has spent or requested to wage these wars through 2008, according to the Democratic staff of Congress's Joint Economic Committee. Its report, titled "The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War," estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far cost the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000. "The full economic costs of the war to the American taxpayers and the overall U.S. economy go well beyond even the immense federal budget costs already reported," said the 21-page draft report, obtained yesterday by the Washington Post. Read The Full Story Former Pilots, Government Officials Call For U.S. UFO Investigation 2007-11-13 01:20:23 Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich may have been ridiculed for saying he had seen a UFO, but for some military pilots and other observers, unidentified flying objects are no laughing matter. An international panel of two dozen former pilots and government officials called on the U.S. government Monday to reopen its generation-old UFO investigation as a matter of safety and security given continuing reports about flying discs, glowing spheres and other strange sightings. "Especially after the attacks of 9/11, it is no longer satisfactory to ignore radar returns ... which cannot be associated with performances of existing aircraft and helicopters," they said in a statement released at a news conference. The panelists from seven countries, including former senior military officers, each said they have seen a UFO or conducted an official investigation into UFO phenomena. Read The Full Story	Bush Approves Clearances For NSA Investigation 2007-11-14 02:43:06 Just four days after Michael B. Mukasey was sworn in as attorney general, Justice Department officials said Tuesday that President Bush had reversed course and approved long-denied security clearances for the Justice Department’s ethics office to investigate the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program. The department’s inspector general has been investigating the department’s involvement with the NSA program for about a year, but the move suggested both that Mukasey wanted to remedy what many in Congress saw as an improper decision by the president to block the clearances and that the White House chose to back him. Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, and Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, declined to say whether Mukasey had pressed Bush on the clearances for the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.  Mukasey himself had indicated in a written answer to senators on Oct. 30, before his confirmation, that the clearance issue had been resolved. But Democrats said they thought Mukasey deserved credit. “It seems the new attorney general understands that his responsibility is to the American people and the rule of law and not to any particular person, including the president,” said Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, Democrat of New York, who had first demanded the internal Justice Department investigation. Read The Full Story Commentary: The New Global 'Power' 2007-11-14 02:42:40 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Robert J. Samuelson, an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, and appears in the Post's edition for Wednesday, November 14, 2007. Mr. Samuelson writes that oil at $100 a barrel suggests a new geopolitical paradigm: energy as a weapon. His commentary follows: Oil is flirting with $100 a barrel. Do not think this just another price spike. It suggests a new geopolitical era when energy increasingly serves as a political weapon. Producers (or some of them) will use it to advance national agendas; consumers (or some of them) will seek preferential treatment. We already see this in Hugo Chavez's discounting of Venezuelan oil to favored allies, China's frantic efforts to secure guaranteed supplies, and Russia's veiled threats to use natural gas - it supplies much of Europe - to intimidate its neighbors and customers. Since World War II, the United States has sought to keep energy - mainly oil - widely available on commercial terms. America's foreign policy has been, in effect, to prevent other nations from using oil to advance their foreign policies. On the whole, this has minimized conflicts over natural resources and favored global economic growth. Producing countries focused on maximizing their wealth; consuming nations relied on the market to get their oil. But shifts in supply and demand now threaten this system. Just last week, the International Energy Agency in Paris projected that world oil demand would grow to 116 million barrels a day by 2030, up from 86 million in 2007. About two-fifths of the increase would come from China and India;  other developing countries would account for much of the rest. The number of cars and trucks worldwide would more than double, to 2.1 billion. There's only one catch: Oil supply probably won't satisfy projected demand. Read The Full Story Bush Vetoes Spending Bill For Health, Education, Labor 2007-11-13 15:00:54 President Bush vetoed a $606 billion spending bill Tuesday that would have funded education, health and labor programs for the current fiscal year, complaining that it was larded with pork and too expensive as he took aim at a top priority of the new Democratic Congress. Bush vetoed the bill before leaving the White House to travel to New Albany, Indiana, for a speech on budget and energy issues, spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters aboard Air Force One. At the same time, the president signed a $471 billion Defense Department spending bill that funds regular Pentagon operations other than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By signing a military spending bill with a sizeable increase while rejecting a domestic spending bill with a smaller one, Bush set the stage for a bruising battle with Congress over national goals. Democrats immediately denounced him for readily agreeing to spend money on the military while resisting what they call needed investments in programs at home. Bush called it a matter of setting priorities in a time of war. Read The Full Story Analysis: The United States' New Backyard 2007-11-13 15:00:23 When the U.S. decided that its backyard would in future be a greater Middle East - from Pakistan to Morocco - it imagined that it could rearrange the region to suit itself. The results have been disastrous and will be long-lasting. The United States undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns, said this year: “Ten years ago Europe was the epicenter of American foreign policy. This was how things stood from April 1917, when Woodrow Wilson sent one million American troops to the Western Front, through to President Clinton’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999. For the better part of the 20th century, Europe was our primary, vital focus.” But, he added, everything had changed and the Middle East was now, for President George Bush and his successors, “the place that Europe once was for the administrations of the 20th century”. President Bush had said much the same a while earlier: “The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to destroy our way of life”. This broader Middle East is an ill-defined area extending from Pakistan, through the Horn of Africa to Morocco. Since 9/11 it has become the main theater for the deployment of U.S. military power and the decisive, even the sole, battlefield in what the U.S. sees as a global conflict. The region’s oil resources and strategic position, and the presence of Israel, have made it a U.S. priority, particularly since the French and British began to withdraw after 1956. As Philippe Croz-Vincent has pointed out in a subtle analysis of the “American moment”, the Middle East has replaced Latin America as the U.S. backyard. But with a major difference: Latin America was never a crucial battlefield in a third world war. Read The Full Story 3 Dead In Bombing Of Philippine Congress 2007-11-13 14:59:39 A Philippine congressman who had been targeted by Muslim militants was among three people killed Tuesday night when a bomb exploded at an entrance of the Philippine House of Representatives, said police. Rep. Wahab Akbar, a former member of a Muslim rebel group that signed a peace accord with the government in 1996, died at the hospital, his chief of staff said. Metropolitan Manila Police Chief Geary Barias said a lawmaker's driver and a congressional staff member also were killed. Seven other people were wounded, including two congresswomen. Police and soldiers in the capital went on high alert, but Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno sought to play down the possible involvement of Muslim extremists, saying the investigation was pointing away from a terrorist attack and "more of a directed assault on certain individual." Read The Full Story Federal Judge Orders White House To Hold On To E-Mails 2007-11-13 02:53:59 A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, a move that Bush administration lawyers had argued strongly against. U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy directed the Executive Office of the President to safeguard the material in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether the White House has destroyed e-mails in violation of federal law. In response, the White House said it has been taking steps to preserve copies of all e-mails and will continue to do so. The administration is seeking dismissal of the lawsuits brought by two private groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive. The organizations allege the disappearance of 5 million White House e-mails. The court order issued by Kennedy, an appointee of President Clinton, is directed at maintaining backup tapes which contain copies of White House e-mails. Read The Full Story British Commonwealth Issues Ultimatum To Musharraf 2007-11-13 02:53:37 British Commonwealth foreign ministers threatened Pakistan Monday night with expulsion from their organization if its president, Pervez Musharraf, fails to repeal the state of emergency and step down as army chief in the next nine days. The government in Islamabad shrugged off the threat, saying it would manage the transition to democracy in its own way and on its own timetable. It signalled its defiance by ordering the detention of the People's party leader, Benazir Bhutto, for seven days - pre-empting her plans to lead a "long march" from Lahore to Islamabad in protest against emergency rule. Article continues The threat to suspend Pakistan from the Commonwealth, for the second time since Musharraf seized power in 1999, came from an "action group" meeting of foreign ministers in London. A joint statement condemned the suspension of Pakistan's constitution, describing the arrest of opposition activists and restrictions on the press as "violations against Commonwealth fundamental values of freedom of expression and human rights". Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php