Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday July 31 2008 - (813)

Thursday July 31 2008 edition
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Republicans Giving Money They Got From Stevens To Charity 2008-07-31 01:35:45 Republican senators facing reelection challenges sought to insulate themselves from indicted Sen. Ted Stevens Wednesday by promising to donate to charity tens of thousands of dollars they received from the veteran Alaska lawmaker's political action committee (PAC). Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the Republican Conference, led the way, with each disclosing that he'd relinquish $10,000 in campaign donations from Stevens' Northern Lights PAC. Minnesota freshman Sen. Norm Coleman, who's fighting to win reelection against comedian-turned-politician Al Franken, decided to give away $20,000 that his campaign and his own leadership PAC got from Stevens' PAC. The Republican senators acted a day after Stevens was indicted on charges of lying to conceal more than $250,000 in gifts from VECO Corp., a former Alaska oil services company at the center of a public corruption scandal that already has netted seven criminal convictions. North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole acted quickly on Tuesday, announcing that she'd give $10,000 from Stevens' PAC to a campaign to fight hunger, as did Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts. Read The Full Story Trade Collapse A Blow For Tackling Global Warming 2008-07-31 01:35:21 Prospects for global co-operation to tackle climate change weakened Wednesday as the collapse of trade liberalization talks cast doubt on the international community's capacity to act in concert for a common good. A downbeat Kevin Rudd, Australia's Prime Minister - who had personally stayed up to 2 a.m. calling world leaders - was Wednesday "deeply, deeply disappointed" that World Trade Organization talks, which would have reduced barriers to international trade, had been abandoned in the Swiss city of Geneva. The Prime Minister suggested the failure of the talks augured poorly for the completion of international negotiations aimed at crafting a global agreement for carbon emissions reductions to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012. The climate talks, due to be finalized at a U.N. meeting late next year in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, are seen as crucial to creating a global approach to climate change by creating co-operation between developed and developing nations. Rudd said the climate talks, which hope to include the big emitters who spurned the Kyoto pact, such as the U.S. and China, would be extremely difficult. The finalization of the talks is important to Rudd, whose proposal to begin an emissions trading scheme in 2010 will be attacked as meaningless without commitments by big carbon emitters. Read The Full Story IOC Press Chief Says News Media Not Told Of Censorship Plan 2008-07-31 01:33:52 The international media should have been told they would not have completely free access to the internet before they arrived to report the Beijing Olympics, IOC press chief Kevan Gosper told Reuters on Thursday. As the row over censorship continued to rumble, Gosper said that both he and the international media had been taken by surprise that some sensitive websites had been blocked despite many assurances from Beijing organizers that they would be able to work normally during the Games, which start on August 8. Gosper said: "It's clear that I have been providing, on behalf of the IOC, incomplete information." Gosper said he had never been told that some IOC officials had held discussions with local organizers BOCOG that some websites not directly connected to the Games could be blocked. "Had I and the international media been informed earlier of this understanding that certain websites would be inaccessible, we would not now find ourselves in the position where they, as well as myself, have been taken by surprise," he said. Read The Full Story U.S. House Judiciary Committee Cites Karl Rove For Contempt 2008-07-30 16:54:08 A House panel Wednesday voted to cite former top White House aide Karl Rove for contempt of Congress as its Senate counterpart explored punishment for alleged Bush administration misdeeds. Voting 20-14 along party lines, the House Judiciary Committee said that Rove had broken the law by failing to appear at a July 10 hearing on allegations of White House influence over the Justice Department, including whether Rove encouraged prosecutions against Democrats such as former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. The committee decision is only a recommendation, and a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said she would not decide until September whether to bring it to a final vote. With little more than three months before Election Day, it wasn't clear whether majority Democrats could take any substantial action in a political environment in which time for the current Congress is running short and lawmakers face a host of daunting legislative problems and a cluttered calendar. The House committee vote occurred as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee delved into allegations of wrongdoing ranging from discriminating against liberals at Justice to ignoring subpoenas and lying to Congress. Read The Full Story Tech Blog: Exploit Prods Software Firms To Update Their Updates 2008-07-30 16:53:45 Intellpuke: This blog was written by Washington Post staff writer Brian Krebs, writing in his "Security Fix" column. A security researcher has released a set of tools that make it simple for attackers to exploit weaknesses in the auto-update feature of many popular software titles. By targeting widely deployed programs such as Jaba, OpenOffice, Winamp and Winzip, that don't use a digital signature on their product updates, attackers can impersonate those companies and trick users into believing they are updating their software, when in reality the users may be uploading a package designed to compromise the security of their computer. Software companies should include these signatures in all of their updates, so that a user's computer can validate that the update was indeed sent by the vendor. For example, Microsoft signs all of its updates with an encryption key that only it knows, and Windows machines are configured to ignore any incoming software update alerts that are not signed with that key. For whatever reason, Java, Winamp, Winzip (and no doubt dozens of other software titles with auto-update capabilities who haven't been named yet) have chosen not to sign their updates. Read The Full Story Editorial: Low-Road Express 2008-07-30 16:53:20 Intellpuke: This editorial appeared in the New York Times edition for Wednesday, July 30, 2008. Well, that certainly didn’t take long. On July 3, news reports said Senator John McCain, worried that he might lose the election before it truly started, opened his doors to disciples of Karl Rove from the 2004 campaign and the Bush White House. Less than a month later, the results are on full display. The candidate who started out talking about high-minded, civil debate has wholeheartedly adopted Mr. Rove’s low-minded and uncivil playbook. In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has been waving the flag of fear (Senator Barack Obama wants to “lose” in Iraq), and issuing attacks that are sophomoric (suggesting that Mr. Obama is a socialist) and false (the presumptive Democratic nominee turned his back on wounded soldiers). Mr. McCain used to pride himself on being above this ugly brand of politics, which killed his own 2000 presidential bid. But he clearly tossed his inhibitions aside earlier this month when he put day-to-day management of his campaign in the hands of one acolyte of Mr. Rove and gave top positions to two others. The resumes of the new team’s members included stints in Mr. Bush’s White House and in his 2004 re-election campaign, one of the most negative and divisive in memory. Almost immediately, the McCain campaign was using Mr. Rove’s well-honed tactics, starting with an attempt to widen this nation’s damaging ideological divide by painting Mr. Obama as a far-left kook. On July 18, Mr. McCain even suggested that Mr. Obama is a socialist to the left of the Senate’s only avowed socialist: Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Read The Full Story U.N.: Millions Of North Koreans Going Hungry 2008-07-30 16:52:43 With shriveled harvests and a cutback in imports, North Korea has slipped back into a serious food shortage that is causing millions of people to go hungry, the United Nations announced Wednesday. The main U.N. aid agency in North Korea, the World Food Program, will resume emergency operations there in the next two weeks to help feed more than 5 million people over the next 15 months at a cost of $500 million, said Jean-Pierre de Margerie, the agency's country director in Pyongyang. "The situation is, indeed, very serious," de Margerie said at a news conference in Beijing. The resumption of emergency operations, which were scaled back in 2005 on a request from the North Korean government, was decided after a U.N. survey last month showed the most severe and widespread hunger among North Koreans in a decade. The survey was taken after the Pyongyang government, in an unusual gesture, officially acknowledged a growing hunger crisis and appealed for international aid. Ending North Korea's isolation from its neighbors and encouraging it to cooperate with international organizations have been major goals of the ongoing six-party negotiations aimed at dismantling the country's nuclear weapons program. In return for destroying its nuclear research installations and weaponry, North Korea has been promised large amounts of economic aid and better relations with the United States and its Asian neighbors. Read The Full Story Clashes Escalate In Third Day Of Pakistan Violence 2008-07-30 16:52:08 Violent clashes between extremist insurgents and Pakistani troops escalated Wednesday in the country's fractious northwest as Taliban leaders threatened to withdraw their support for peace deals brokered earlier this year with Pakistan's new government. Accounts of casualties from the skirmishes in Pakistan's Swat Valley, near the Afghan border, varied widely, and could not be independently verified. A local military spokesman said five Pakistani soldiers and at least 38 militants were killed, but a spokesman for the pro-Taliban group disputed that tally, saying that only three of its fighters had been slain. It was the third consecutive day of violence between pro-Taliban extremists and government troops in the formerly serene Swat Valley. After skirmishes erupted near the town of Matta, Pakistani security forces began enforcing a 24-hour curfew on the area, said a military spokesman. At least 70 insurgents from the group - known as Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi, or the Movement for Enforcement of Islamic Law - attacked a security post near the Ucharai Sar area of Matta district Wednesday morning, according to a statement issued by the Pakistani military. Troops backed by helicopter gunships repelled the attack, which occurred about 12 miles from the once-popular resort town of Mingora. The bodies of about 20 insurgents were left behind after the skirmish ended, said the military spokesman. Nearby, about 50 to 60 insurgents tried to overtake the Matta market, threatening to close shops and harm residents, according to Pakistani military officials. The pro-Taliban fighters retreated after military reinforcements arrived at the police station. Read The Full Story European Union Points At U.S. For WTO Trade Talks Collapse 2008-07-30 16:51:20 The European Union's trade chief Peter Mandelson said on Wednesday the United States helped to bring down global trade talks this week when its negotiators shunned a compromise proposal at a key juncture in the talks. The United States hit back and accused the E.U. of having tried to undo a carefully crafted set of compromises because it was under fire from European governments including France. The proposal in question was drawn up by the E.U. on Tuesday in a last-gasp bid to unblock an impasse over an agricultural trade issue being discussed by seven powers at the center of the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks.  Mandelson initially declined to point fingers, calling the collapse of the talks a collective failure, but his frustration at Washington was clear in a weblog he wrote on Wednesday, describing the events of the previous day when the talks failed. "...when WTO chief (Pascal) Lamy reconvenes the Group of Seven negotiators at midday, the Indians and the Chinese express reservations and the U.S. rejects the proposal outright, much to Lamy's understandable frustration," said  Mandelson. Read The Full Story Bush Signs Housing Relief Bill 2008-07-30 16:50:36 President Bush this morning signed into law the most sweeping housing legislation in decades, aimed at calming rocky financial markets and giving mortgage relief to up to 400,000 homeowners. In an unannounced White House ceremony attended by senior administration aides shortly after 7 a.m., Bush gave his imprimatur to a law he had long vowed to veto because of objections to some aspects of the legislation. "We look forward to put in place new authorities to improve confidence and stability in markets" and to provide tougher oversight of teetering mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "The Federal Housing Administration will begin to implement new policies intended to keep more deserving American families in their homes," he added. Read The Full Story International Olympic Committee Admits Internet Censorship Deal With China 2008-07-30 13:34:48 Some International Olympic Committee officials cut a deal to let China block sensitive websites despite promises of unrestricted access, a senior IOC official admitted on Wednesday. Persistent pollution fears and China's concerns about security in Tibet also remained problems for organizers nine days before the Games begin. China had committed to providing media with the same freedom to report on the Games as they enjoyed at previous Olympics, but journalists have this week complained of finding access to sites deemed sensitive to its communist leadership blocked. "I regret that it now appears BOCOG has announced that there will be limitations on website access during Games time," IOC press chief Kevan Gosper said, referring to Beijing's Olympic organizers. "I also now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related," he said. Read The Full Story	'Dead Zone' In The Gulf Of Mexico Is Near Record Size 2008-07-31 01:35:32 The "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, an area on the seabed with too little oxygen to support fish, shrimp, crabs and other forms of marine life, is nearly the largest on record this year, about 8,000 square miles, researchers said this week. Only the churning effects of Hurricane Dolly last week, they said, prevented the dead zone from being the largest ever. The problem of hypoxia - very low levels of dissolved oxygen - is a downstream effect of fertilizers used for agriculture in the Mississippi River watershed. Nitrogen is the major culprit, flowing into the Gulf and spurring the growth of algae. Animals called zooplankton eat the algae, excreting pellets that sink to the bottom like tiny stones. This organic matter decays in a process that depletes the water of oxygen. Researchers expected the dead zone to set a record - even more than the 8,500 square miles observed in 2002 - after the Mississippi, swollen with floodwaters, carried an extraordinary amount of nitrates into the Gulf, about 37 percent more than last year and the most since measuring these factors was begun in 1970. The researchers set out July 20 aboard the Pelican, a 115-foot academic research vessel, and braved 12-foot waves and 35-mph winds from the outer bands of Dolly to take samples. The hypoxia began to appear about halfway to the bottom in waters ranging from 10 to 130 feet deep, said Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, which conducted the study. Some water samples from the bottom of the water column showed no oxygen at all, and instead bore the signature odor of hydrogen sulfide emerging from underlying sediments. Read The Full Story Canada's Defense Minister: Not In Afghanistan To Guard Pipelines 2008-07-31 01:34:53 Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay insisted Wednesday that Canadian troops are not in Afghanistan to guard a new natural gas pipeline being built through the southern part of the country. MacKay told a Halifax radio talk show that Canada has to let Afghanistan map its own future. He said fears that Canadian troops may end up paying a hefty price to protect the U.S.-backed project from insurgents are unfounded. “We have to decide what role, if any, we'll play,” said MacKay. “We are not there specifically to protect a pipeline across Afghanistan.” Read The Full Story Arthur C. Clarke's Last Vision 2008-07-31 01:33:36 Arthur C. Clarke's health was failing fast, but he still had a story to tell. So he turned to fellow science fiction writer Frederik Pohl, and together the longtime friends wrote what turned out to be Clarke's last novel. "The Last Theorem," which grew from 100 pages of notes scribbled by Clarke, is more than a futuristic tale about a mathematician who discovers a proof to a centuries-old mathematical puzzle. The novel, due in bookstores August 5, represents a historic collaboration between two of the genre's most influential writers in the twilight of their careers. Clarke, best known for his 1968 work, "2001: A Space Odyssey," died in March at age 90; Pohl is 89. "As much as anything, it'll be a historic artifact," says Robin Wayne Bailey, a former president of Science Fiction Writers of America and a writer. "This is a book between two of the last remaining giants in the field." Clarke originally intended "The Last Theorem" to be his last solo project, and he began writing it in 2002. Progress was slow because of his poor health, and he missed the book's original 2005 publication deadline. Worried the book wouldn't be published at all, he began to search for a co-author. Read The Full Story For Republicans, Stevens Indictment Is Latest In String Of Indictments 2008-07-30 16:53:58 Ted Stevens' indictment Tuesday could not have occurred at a more politically inopportune time for the senator from Alaska or for his fellow Republicans. In less than a month, on Aug. 26, he has a primary contest against five opponents, including a wealthy businessman who is attacking the incumbent's ethics in television ads. Should he survive, the six-term senator probably will face his stiffest general-election challenge yet, from Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, who was leading in polls before the indictment. Although a spokesman said yesterday that the senator's reelection campaign "is continuing to move full steam ahead," some Republican strategists in Washington expressed concern that his legal troubles - and resulting political vulnerability - could move the Democrats closer to achieving a 60-seat majority in the Senate. "We've had nothing but challenges all the way through, so what else is new?" said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), who was tapped earlier this year as a lead fundraiser for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.  Republicans entered this election at a numerical disadvantage - 23 seats to defend, compared with 12 for Democrats - and have caught almost no breaks. Five Republican senators opted to retire and one resigned office last December, including incumbents in Virginia and New Mexico, where Democrats are strongly favored in the fall. Senate Republicans have fallen far behind their Democratic counterparts in fundraising. Read The Full Story McCain Charge Against Obama Lacks Evidence 2008-07-30 16:53:32 For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true. The attacks are part of a newly aggressive McCain operation whose aim is to portray the Democratic presidential candidate as a craven politician more interested in his image than in ailing soldiers, said a senior McCain adviser. They come despite repeated pledges by the Republican that he will never question his rival's patriotism. The essence of McCain's allegation is that Obama planned to take a media entourage, including television cameras, to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany during his week-long foreign trip, and that he canceled the visit when he learned he could not do so. "I know that, according to reports, that he wanted to bring media people and cameras and his campaign staffers," McCain said Monday night on CNN's "Larry King Live." The Obama campaign has denied that was the reason he called off the visit. In fact, there is no evidence that he planned to take anyone to the American hospital other than a military adviser, whose status as a campaign staff member sparked last-minute concern among Pentagon officials that the visit would be an improper political event. "Absolutely, unequivocally wrong," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in an e-mail after McCain's comments to Larry King. Despite serious and repeated queries about the charge over several days, McCain and his allies continued Tuesday to question Obama's patriotism by focusing attention on the canceled hospital visit. Read The Full Story Israeli Prime Minister Olmert To Resign In September 2008-07-30 16:53:03 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced Wednesday he will resign in September, throwing his country into political turmoil and raising doubts about progress for U.S.-backed Mideast peace efforts. Olmert's brief address, given at his official Jerusalem residence, included harsh criticism of corruption investigations against him. He said he was choosing the public good over his personal justice. He has consistently denied wrongdoing but pledged to resign if indicted. Appearing angry and reading from a prepared text, Olmert said, "I was forced to defend myself against relentless attacks from self-appointed 'fighters for justice' who sought to depose me from my position, when the ends sanctified all the means." Olmert, whose term was to end in 2010, said he would not run in his party's primary election, set for Sept. 17, and would step down afterward "in order to allow the chairman to be elected and form a different government quickly and efficiently." He did not answer questions from reporters. Olmert's popularity dropped below 20 percent at one point after his bloody but inconclusive war in Lebanon in 2006, and a string of corruption allegations and police interrogations have battered him in recent months. Political analysts here have predicted his resignation for weeks. Read The Full Story CIA Outlines Pakistan Links With Militants 2008-07-30 16:52:21 A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan's most senior officials with new information about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials. The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, said the officials. The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new C.I.A. assessment of the spy service’s activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants. The C.I.A. assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence,or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The C.I.A. has depended heavily on the ISI for information about militants in Pakistan, despite longstanding concerns about divided loyalties within the Pakistani spy service, which had close relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks. Read The Full Story China Shifted On Food In Trade Talks 2008-07-30 16:51:51 China and India have seldom shared the same views on free trade in recent years, but they ended up on the same side at the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday because China made an abrupt about-face. Growing worries in China about food security now appear to have overridden the country’s previous commitment to free trade - a commitment that has served it well until now as China’s exports have skyrocketed in recent years, giving it the world’s second-largest trade surplus after Germany’s. Since joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in November 2001, China has been a strong and outspoken defender of free-trade principles. It has been especially critical of the United States, for example, for invoking so-called “safeguard” rules to prevent an increase of Chinese textile imports that threatened to put American manufacturers out of business. This week, China allied itself with Indian negotiators in insisting on safeguard rules for agriculture. China and India insisted that developing countries be allowed to impose prohibitively high tariffs on food imports from affluent countries to halt increases in imports that might put farmers in poor countries out of business. The United States and other food exporters refused to accept the Chinese and Indian position on food safeguards, and talks broke down. Read The Full Story Workings Of Ancient 'Computer' Deciphered 2008-07-30 16:51:02 After a closer examination of the Antikythera Mechanism, a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games. The new findings, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, also suggested that the mechanism’s concept originated in the colonies of Corinth, possibly Syracuse, in Sicily. The scientists said this implied a likely connection with the great Archimedes. Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse and died in 212 B.C., invented a planetarium calculating motions of the Moon and the known planets and wrote a lost manuscript on astronomical mechanisms. Some evidence had previously linked the complex device of gears and dials to the island of Rhodes and the astronomer Hipparchos, who had made a study of irregularities in the Moon’s orbital course. The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the first analog computer, was recovered more than a century ago in the wreckage of a ship that sank off the tiny island of Antikythera, north of Crete. Earlier research showed that the device was probably built between 140 and 100 B.C. Only now, applying high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography, have experts been able to decipher inscriptions and reconstruct functions of the bronze gears on the mechanism. The latest research has revealed details of dials on the instrument’s back side, including the names of all 12 months of an ancient calendar. Read The Full Story Riverside County Sheriff Calls For Closure Of Tribe's Casino 2008-07-30 16:50:20 Riverside County, California, Sheriff Stanley Sniff on Tuesday called on federal authorities to shut down the Soboba Casino, saying that the tribal council had ordered security officers to block or delay his deputies from entering the troubled reservation, where five members have been shot to death during confrontations with his department. Sniff told the Riverside County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that he sent a letter to the National Indian Gaming Commission on Monday, asking authorities to suspend the casino's operating license. He added that tribal leaders and security officers could face arrest if they interfere with law enforcement on the reservation. "The tribal council has directed tribal officers to block officers coming onto the reservation," Sniff told the supervisors. "This is a violation of the law. Allowing an isolated pocket of lawlessness to exist is simply not an option. The residents deserve better than this." The announcement comes two weeks after Sniff and Soboba Tribal Chairman Robert Salgado signed an agreement designed to ease tensions on the San Jacinto-area reservation. Salgado denied blocking any deputies. Read The Full Story
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Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday July 30 2008 - (813)

Wednesday July 30 2008 edition
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7-Square-Mile Ice Sheet Breaks Loose In Canada 2008-07-29 20:01:39 A chunk of ice spreading across seven square miles has broken off a Canadian ice shelf in the Arctic, scientists said Tuesday. Derek Mueller, a research at Trent University, was careful not to blame global warming, but said it the event was consistent with the theory that the current Arctic climate isn't rebuilding ice sheets. "We're in a different climate now," he said. "It's not conducive to regrowing them. It's a one-way process." Mueller said the sheet broke away last week from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada's far north. He said a crack in the shelf was first spotted in 2002 and a survey this spring found a network of fissures. The sheet is the biggest piece shed by one of Canada's six ice shelves since the Ayles shelf broke loose in 2005 from the coast of Ellesmere, about 500 miles from the North Pole. Read The Full Story U.S. Federal Judge: EPA Turned A Blind Eye To Everglades 2008-07-29 20:01:16 The U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has turned a "blind eye" to Florida's Everglades cleanup efforts, while the state is violating its own commitment to restore the vast ecosystem, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. In a stinging ruling from Miami, U.S. District Judge Alan Gold put to rest a 2004 lawsuit filed against the EPA, ordering the agency to review water pollution standards and timelines set by Florida for the Everglades. Gold repeatedly accused EPA of acting "arbitrarily and capriciously" in its failure to adhere to the mandates of the Clean Water Act. "Plaintiffs are correct," Gold wrote, "that EPA has once again avoided its duty to protect the Everglades." The Miccosukee Indians, who live in the Everglades, and Friends of the Everglades sued the EPA in 2004. They claimed the agency violated the Clean Water Act by allowing Florida to change its water pollution requirements for the Everglades and delay its pollution compliance deadlines. Gold agreed, adding that the Florida Legislature "violated its fundamental commitment and promise to protect the Everglades." Read The Full Story 5.4 Earthquake Rattles Los Angeles, 27 Aftershocks, Minor Injuries, Damage Reported 2008-07-29 19:09:07 A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.4 shook large parts of Southern California late this morning, shaking a wide swath from Ventura County to San Diego. The quake shook downtown L.A. buildings and was felt as far east as Palm Springs. It was centered near Chino Hills, about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, said the U.S. Geological Survey. "It felt like something had exploded underneath us," said Vanessa Rojas, 21, a hair salon employee at Blondie's Clip Shop in nearby Chino. "The ground lifted, then it began to shake. It was a big ripple." There were reports of minor damage and a few injuries. A spokesperson for the St. Jude medical groups confirmed that there were minor injuries and minor structural damage at the St. Jude Centers for Rehabilitation and Wellness in Brea, an outpatient medical facility. There was flooding at the Macy's in Topanga Plaza, and five people suffered minor injuries at a building in the 3600 block of Wilshire Boulevard in the rush to exit. Read The Full Story U.S. Firms Owe Billions In Unpaid Payroll Taxes 2008-07-29 13:16:27 More than 1.6 million U.S. businesses owe the Internal Revenue Service more than $58 billion in unpaid taxes for Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance, a government watchdog agency said on Tuesday. In a report to the Senate Homeland Security investigations subcommittee, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)  said the IRS fails to take full advantage of tools available to collect unpaid taxes and to prevent further cheating on payroll taxes. "When businesses do not remit payroll taxes, they are using employees' money to fund business operations or the personal lifestyle of the businesses' owners," GAO Director of Financial Management and Assurance Steven Sebastian said in testimony to the committee. This problem is a fraction of the estimated $300 billion or so in unpaid taxes each year that some members of Congress believe can be collected through tougher enforcement. Payroll taxes are withheld from workers' wages by employers to fund the Social Security and Medicare retirement and health programs. Additional payroll taxes are collected to finance unemployment insurance. When the money is not passed on to the government, general revenues have to be tapped to make up for the loss to the programs' trust funds. "Many of these businesses repeatedly failed to remit amounts withheld from employees' salaries," the GAO found. Read The Full Story Editorial: There Was Smoke - And Fire 2008-07-29 13:16:03 Intellpuke: This editorial appeared in the New York Times edition for Tuesday, July 29, 2008. It was hardly news that President Bush’s Justice Department has been illegally politicized, but it was important that the Justice Department finally owned up to that sorry state of affairs. An internal investigation released on Monday found that the department’s top staff routinely took politics and ideology into account in filling nonpolitical positions - and lied about it. The details of what the investigators found were appalling, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s response was disgracefully lukewarm. If he hopes to leave office with any sort of reputation for integrity, he needs to get serious about punishing this sort of wrongdoing. The report, prepared by the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility and Office of the Inspector General, does not delve deep enough. There is much more work to be done. But even this dip into the murky waters of the Justice Department found that senior officials took into account applicants’ political views in hiring United States attorneys and other nonpolitical positions. This, the report said, “violated federal law and department policy, and also constituted misconduct.” The department was so determined to hire only reliable, conservative Republicans for what are supposed to be apolitical jobs that Monica Goodling, then the White House liaison for the Justice Department, rejected an experienced career terrorism prosecutor to work on counterterrorism because of his wife’s politics. Instead, the department hired a junior attorney without counterterrorism experience who was considered unqualified by department officials. Ms. Goodling “provided inaccurate information,” the report found, to a department attorney defending a lawsuit from a rejected applicant. Another official, still employed at the department, prepared a statement for a reporter - who was asking questions about politicized hiring - that “he knew to be inaccurate.” Read The Full Story BP 2nd Quarter Profits Soar 28 Percent 2008-07-29 13:15:22 BP PLC reported a 28 percent rise in second quarter net profit Tuesday on surging energy prices and vowed to fight for its troubled Russian joint venture, TNK-BP. BP, Europe's second biggest oil producer, posted net profit of $9.47 billion for the three months ending June 30, up from $7.38 billion in the same period a year ago. Revenues jumped 49 percent to $110.98 billion as the price for a barrel of oil rose by around 35 percent over the quarter. The strong year for BP has been overshadowed by an ongoing fight with Russian shareholders for control of the TNK-BP joint venture. The company's American chief executive Robert Dudley left Russia last week when his work permit was not renewed. "We will vigorously defend our rights using all legal means possible," said BP chief executive Tony Hayward. "We will not be intimidated by strong-arm tactics." Read The Full Story Australia Changes Asylum Policy 2008-07-29 13:14:25 Australia is ending its controversial policy of automatic detention for asylum seekers who arrive in the country without visas, the government announced Tuesday. Detention in immigration centers is only to be used as a last resort and for the shortest practicable time, Immigration Minister Chris Evans said, as he announced the major policy change in a speech at the Australian National University in the capital, Canberra. Children, and those adults who are not considered a security risk, will no longer be held in detention centers, he said. The presumption will be that these persons will remain in the community while their immigration status is resolved, he said. In addition, those adults who are detained in centers will have their cases reviewed every three months. Previously, illegal immigrants who managed to make it to the Australian mainland were immediately sent to detention centers while the bureaucracy sifted through their claims for asylum, a process that could take years. Evans is a member of the Labor Party government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who took office last year after the 11-year administration of his conservative predecessor, John Howard. Read The Full Story British Airways In Merger Talks With Spain's Iberia Airlines 2008-07-29 13:13:13 British Airways and Iberia of Spain said Tuesday that they were discussing a merger amid record prices for jet fuel and an economic slowdown. The discussions are the latest between the two airlines, which already own shares in each other, operate under a marketing alliance and have discussed a merger in the past. “The aviation landscape is changing and airline consolidation is long overdue,” the chief executive of British Airways, Willie Walsh, said in a statement. “The combined balance sheet, anticipated synergies and network fit between the airlines make a merger an attractive proposition, particularly in the current economic environment.” Similar pronouncements were made by airline executives in the United States over the last several years but led to only one deal. Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines said in April they would merge to become the biggest domestic carrier, ahead of American Airlines. Their merger is expected to be finalized before the end of the year. British Airways and Iberia said the discussions had the support of their respective boards. The British carrier owns 13.15 percent of Iberia, while the Spanish company holds 2.99 percent of British Airways. Read The Full Story U.S. Congress Agrees To Ban Toxins In Children's Products 2008-07-29 02:28:20 Lawmakers plan to outlaw certain chemicals used in plastic production that cause reproductive problems. The White House opposes the ban. Congressional negotiators agreed Monday to a ban on a family of toxins found in children's products, handing a major victory to parents and health experts who have been clamoring for the government to remove harmful chemicals from toys. The ban, which would take effect in six months, would have significant implications for U.S. consumers, whose homes are filled with hundreds of plastic products designed for children that may be causing dangerous health effects. The rare action by Congress reflects a growing body of scientific research showing that children ingest the toxins by acts as simple as chewing on a rubber duck. Used for decades in plastic production, the chemicals are now thought to act as hormones and cause reproductive problems, especially in boys. Read The Full Story Warren Buffet Joins Obama Summit On Economic Crisis 2008-07-29 02:27:42 Barack Obama was joined by the world's wealthiest person, Warren Buffett, and a number of entrepreneurs, economists and union leaders for a summit in Washington, D.C., Monday to find ways out of America's economic crisis. Obama, who returned to the U.S. from a 10-day overseas visit on Saturday, sought to switch Monday from foreign affairs to the U.S. economy, the issue that Americans tell pollsters will determine their choice of the next president. "People are worried about gas prices, they're worried about job security, they're worried about their retirement fund as the stockmarket goes down," Obama said before the summit. "People are understandably concerned about the immediate effects of the economy, and that's what we will be talking about for the duration." Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, said the summit, which was attended by interested Republicans, discussed job losses, financial markets and the rising costs of oil, food and other commodities. Buffett, who built his fortune through stock investments and is a leading philanthropist, was joined at the summit by Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; Robert Rubin, former Treasury secretary; Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google; and John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest confederation of U.S. unions. Republicans included Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary in George Bush's administration. His attendance was not seen as an endorsement for Obama. Read The Full Story Pakistani Leader Reproaches U.S. For Missile Strike 2008-07-29 02:27:04 A U.S. missile strike that's believed to have killed a senior al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan's tribal area roiled talks Monday between President Bush and Pakistan's Prime Minister Sayed Yousaf Gilani, who reproached Bush for acting unilaterally and failing to share intelligence with Pakistani authorities. A U.S. official defended the missile strike as a message that Washington will no longer abide Pakistan's failure to deny al-Qaeda and the Taliban refuge at a time of surging cross-border attacks on U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. "If they (Pakistan) aren't doing anything, then we are," said the official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue publicly. Pakistan, however, considers U.S. strikes on its territory violations of its sovereignty and interference in its internal affairs. Gilani, appearing on CNN, said he told Bush, "This action should not be taken by the United States" and, "It's our job because we are fighting the war for ourselves." Read The Full Story	Merrill Lynch In New $8.5 Billion Cash Call 2008-07-29 20:01:28 Merrill Lynch shocked the market Monday night when it moved to raise $8.5 billion (£4.3 billion) through a public share offering to shore up its balance sheet, sold $11.1 billion of toxic mortgage securities and took a fresh $5.7 billion write-down. The move came only days after the Wall Street bank unveiled a $4.6 billion second-quarter loss and write-downs of $9.4 billion related to sub-prime mortgages and risky debts.The latest write-down brings Merrill's total to $46 billion, making it one of the biggest casualties of the credit crunch so far, along with rivals Citi and UBS. Total write-downs announced by major banks around the world since the start of the crisis a year ago have hit $274 billion, and some estimates suggest the figure could reach $1 trillion. Deutsche Bank analyst Mike Mayo said Citi could post another $8bn write-downs from its CDO exposure, based on Merrill's figures. Merrill's announcement came after Wall Street closed Monday. Shares in Merrill had ended the day down 11.6% at $24.33, suggesting some traders knew what was coming. The shares rose 34 cents to $24.67 in early trading Tuesday, a rise of 1.4%. Read The Full Story 4 Senate Democrats Call For EPA Chief To Resign 2008-07-29 20:01:03 Four Democratic senators called Tuesday for Stephen Johnson to resign as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey to begin an investigation into whether he lied in testimony to a Senate committee. The senators, all members of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said Johnson - the first career scientist to head the agency - had repeatedly succumbed to political pressure on decisions vital to protecting health and the environment. In a letter the senators sent to Mukasey on Tuesday, they also allege that Johnson made false statements before the committee in January when he said that he alone had decided California should not regulate the gases blamed for global warming from motor vehicles. A former top EPA official told the committee earlier this month that the administrator initially decided to grant a partial waiver to the state, but later changed his mind under pressure from the White House. "We have lost all confidence in Stephen Johnson's ability to carry out EPA's mission under the law," Environment Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-California, told reporters. Read The Full Story U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens Indicted On 7 Criminal Charges 2008-07-29 14:25:30 U.S. Senator Ted F. Stevens (R-Alaska) was charged with seven counts of making false statements on his financial disclosure forms in an indictment unsealed in federal court in the District this afternoon. The indictment accuses Stevens, former chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, of concealing payments of more than $250,000 in goods and services he allegedly received from an oil company. The items include home improvements, autos and household items. The Alaska oil firm, Veco, and its onetime leader Bill Allen, asked for help in return, which Stevens allegedly provided. Allen and a former Veco lobbyist pleaded guilty in May 2007 in connection with their role in the scheme, said Justice Department officials. The indictment charges Stevens with violating the Ethics in Government Act between 2001 and 2006 by hiding payments from Allen, Veco and two other people. The law requires elected officials to disclose gifts and debts that exceed $10,000 during any point in the year. Brendan Sullivan, a defense lawyer for Stevens, did not return a telephone call seeking comment. Read The Full Story U.S. Home Prices Drop By 15.8 Percent In May 2008-07-29 13:16:16 Home prices tumbled by the steepest rate ever in May, according to a closely watched housing index released Tuesday, as the housing slump deepened nationwide. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city index dropped by 15.8 percent in May compared with a year ago, a record decline since its inception in 2000. The 10-city index plunged 16.9 percent, its biggest decline in its 21-year history. No city in the Case-Shiller 20-city index saw price gains in May, the second straight month that's happened. The monthly indices have not recorded an overall home price increase in any month since August 2006. Home values have fallen 18.4 percent since the 20-city index's peak in July 2006. Nine metropolitan cities - Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Tampa, Florida - posted record lows in May and the value of housing in Detroit is now lower than it was in 2000. Read The Full Story Oil Prices Fall More Than $3, Continuing Slide 2008-07-29 13:15:51 Oil fell more than $3 a barrel on Tuesday, to slightly more than $121, as signs of weakening demand outweighed a disruption to Nigerian oil output. It was the lowest price since mid-May. The drop also coincided with a firmer dollar, which may have reduced the appeal of commodities to some investors, and comments from OPEC's president that oil could fall to $70 or $80 in the long term. “We still believe that crude’s rallies are vulnerable and we would advise not buying into them,” said Edward Meir, analyst at MF Globalwho earlier on Tuesday said he expected an “eventual retreat” to $121 to $122. United States crude was down $3.30 at $121.43 a barrel and traded as low as $121.10, the lowest since May 15. Brent crude was off $3.36 at $122.48. The president of OPEC, Chakib Khelil, on Tuesday called the current price “abnormal” and said he did not think the producer group should consider cutting output should prices continue to fall as markets were now balanced. Khelil, who is also Algeria’s oil minister, said oil could fall to $70 to $80 in the long term, if the U.S. dollar continued to strengthen and geopolitical concerns eased. Read The Full Story Commentary: Unidentified Flying Threats 2008-07-29 13:14:42 Intellpuke: This commentary was written by Nick Pope, author of "Open Skies, Closed Mines", and formerly in charge of U.F.O. investigations for the British Ministry of Defense from 1991 to 1994. Mr. Pope's commentary, which appeared in the New York Times edition for Tuesday, July 29, 2008, follows: On the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2006, pilots and airport employees at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago saw a disc-like object hovering over the tarmac for several minutes. Because nothing was tracked on radar, the Federal Aviation Administration did not investigate. Yet radar is not a reliable detector of all aircraft. Stealth planes are designed to be invisible to radar, and many radar systems filter out signals not matching the normal characteristics of aircraft. Did it really make sense to entirely ignore the observations of several witnesses? A healthy skepticism about extraterrestrial space travelers leads people to disregard U.F.O. sightings without a moment’s thought. But in the United States, this translates into over dependence on radar data and indifference to all kinds of unidentified aircraft - a weakness that could be exploited by terrorists or anyone seeking to engage in espionage against the United States. The American government has not investigated U.F.O. sightings since 1969, when the Air Force ended Project Blue Book, an effort to scientifically analyze all sightings to see if any posed a threat to national security. Britain and France, in contrast, continue to investigate U.F.O. sightings, because of concerns that some sightings might be attributable to foreign military aircraft breaching their airspace, or to foreign space-based systems of interest to the intelligence community. Read The Full Story Global Trade Talks Said To Collapse 2008-07-29 13:13:25 Trade officials said Tuesday that a high-level summit to salvage a global trade pact collapsed, after the United States, China and India failed to compromise on farm import rules. Trade officials from two developed and one emerging country told the Associated Press that a meeting of seven commercial powers broke up without agreement at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tuesday. The officials said a United States dispute with China and India over farm import safeguards had effectively ended any hope of a breakthrough. The United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab appeared downcast as she began to brief reporters. She said negotiators were “so close on Friday,” but then stopped speaking. Asked if the round was over, she said: “I didn’t say that” and walked away. Two officials said the director-general of the W.T.O., Pascal Lamy, had informed ministers that convergence could not be reached after nine days of talks. Read The Full Story In The U.S., A Dwindling Supply Of Oil 2008-07-29 02:28:34 In May 1899, a pair of oil prospectors wielding picks and shovels dug into a bank of the Kern River where some gooey liquid had seeped to the surface. About 45 feet down, they hit oil, and when the local newspaper printed the news, it set off an oil rush that swept up hundreds of fortune seekers, oil companies, a big railroad and even some enterprising school districts that bought up tracts in hope of turning a profit. Today, on an arid square of land the size of Manhattan, thousands upon thousands of black derricks crowd the landscape, bobbing gently up and down and sipping crude oil from the field discovered a century ago. The wells aren't gushers these days, but they still squeeze out a few barrels a day here, a few more there. Chevron has injected steam into the reservoirs, coaxing the sedimentary rock into giving up millions of barrels of heavy oil that was too thick and sticky to retrieve using the technology of decades past. Yet the Kern River field, like most U.S. oil fields, is in decline. After surging to new highs during the 1980s, Kern River production has dropped to just over 80,000 barrels a day, more than 40 percent below its peak. Enhanced recovery techniques will continue to prolong its profitable life, but its days are numbered. Read The Full Story Bush Approves Execution Of First Soldier In 50 Years 2008-07-29 02:28:02 President Bush on Monday approved the execution of an Army soldier who terrorized Fayetteville, North Carolina, for months in the late 1980s and was eventually convicted of raping and killing four women, and raping and attempting to kill another. Bush signed off on the death penalty for Ronald A. Gray, who grew up in the Liberty City area of Miami and was stationed at Fort Bragg at the time of the crimes. Eventually, he was convicted in connection with eight rapes and four murders that took place in in the area. Gray, who was 22 and held the rank of specialist at the time of his court martial, has been on death row at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since 1988. Bush's action was the first time in more than half a century that a president has approved the execution of a member of the Armed Services. "While approving a sentence of death for a member of our Armed Services is a serious and difficult decision for a commander-in-chief, the president believes the facts of this case leave no doubt that the sentence is just and warranted," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. She called the crimes "brutal." Gray will not be put to death for at least 60 days, and it may be much longer because further legal action on his case is possible, said Lt. Col. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman. Edgecombe noted that while the last military execution took place in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower had approved it in 1957. Read The Full Story U.S. FTC: Kids Target Of $1.6 Billion In Food Ads 2008-07-29 02:27:22 The U.S.' largest food and beverage companies spent about $1.6 billion in 2006 marketing their products - especially carbonated drinks - to children, according to a Federal Trade Commission report. The report, to be released Tuesday, stems from lawmakers' concern about growing obesity rates in children. It gives researchers new insight into how much companies are spending to attract youth to their products, and what venues the companies are using for their marketing. To come up with its estimate, the FTC used confidential financial data that it required the companies to turn over. An executive summary of the report was obtained by the Associated Press. Overall, the spending was less than some previous estimates had indicated. Still, it represents a large pot of money that is being used to entice children to foods that are often unhealthy choices, said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who had sought the study. "This study confirms what I have been saying for years. Industry needs to step up to the plate and use their innovation and creativity to market healthy foods to our kids," said Harkin. "That $1.6 billion could be used to attract our kids to healthy snacks, tasty cereals, fruits and vegetables." Read The Full Story
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Free Internet Press Newsletter - Tuesday July 29 2008 - (813)

Tuesday July 29 2008 edition
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In The U.S., A Dwindling Supply Of Oil 2008-07-29 02:28:34 In May 1899, a pair of oil prospectors wielding picks and shovels dug into a bank of the Kern River where some gooey liquid had seeped to the surface. About 45 feet down, they hit oil, and when the local newspaper printed the news, it set off an oil rush that swept up hundreds of fortune seekers, oil companies, a big railroad and even some enterprising school districts that bought up tracts in hope of turning a profit. Today, on an arid square of land the size of Manhattan, thousands upon thousands of black derricks crowd the landscape, bobbing gently up and down and sipping crude oil from the field discovered a century ago. The wells aren't gushers these days, but they still squeeze out a few barrels a day here, a few more there. Chevron has injected steam into the reservoirs, coaxing the sedimentary rock into giving up millions of barrels of heavy oil that was too thick and sticky to retrieve using the technology of decades past. Yet the Kern River field, like most U.S. oil fields, is in decline. After surging to new highs during the 1980s, Kern River production has dropped to just over 80,000 barrels a day, more than 40 percent below its peak. Enhanced recovery techniques will continue to prolong its profitable life, but its days are numbered. Read The Full Story Bush Approves Execution Of First Soldier In 50 Years 2008-07-29 02:28:02 President Bush on Monday approved the execution of an Army soldier who terrorized Fayetteville, North Carolina, for months in the late 1980s and was eventually convicted of raping and killing four women, and raping and attempting to kill another. Bush signed off on the death penalty for Ronald A. Gray, who grew up in the Liberty City area of Miami and was stationed at Fort Bragg at the time of the crimes. Eventually, he was convicted in connection with eight rapes and four murders that took place in in the area. Gray, who was 22 and held the rank of specialist at the time of his court martial, has been on death row at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since 1988. Bush's action was the first time in more than half a century that a president has approved the execution of a member of the Armed Services. "While approving a sentence of death for a member of our Armed Services is a serious and difficult decision for a commander-in-chief, the president believes the facts of this case leave no doubt that the sentence is just and warranted," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. She called the crimes "brutal." Gray will not be put to death for at least 60 days, and it may be much longer because further legal action on his case is possible, said Lt. Col. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman. Edgecombe noted that while the last military execution took place in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower had approved it in 1957. Read The Full Story U.S. FTC: Kids Target Of $1.6 Billion In Food Ads 2008-07-29 02:27:22 The U.S.' largest food and beverage companies spent about $1.6 billion in 2006 marketing their products - especially carbonated drinks - to children, according to a Federal Trade Commission report. The report, to be released Tuesday, stems from lawmakers' concern about growing obesity rates in children. It gives researchers new insight into how much companies are spending to attract youth to their products, and what venues the companies are using for their marketing. To come up with its estimate, the FTC used confidential financial data that it required the companies to turn over. An executive summary of the report was obtained by the Associated Press. Overall, the spending was less than some previous estimates had indicated. Still, it represents a large pot of money that is being used to entice children to foods that are often unhealthy choices, said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who had sought the study. "This study confirms what I have been saying for years. Industry needs to step up to the plate and use their innovation and creativity to market healthy foods to our kids," said Harkin. "That $1.6 billion could be used to attract our kids to healthy snacks, tasty cereals, fruits and vegetables." Read The Full Story Chain Of French Nuclear Accidents Prompts Soul Searching 2008-07-28 19:07:37 France's confidence in atomic energy has been shaken by a recent series of mishaps at nuclear facilities. Although none of the incidents appears to be on a major scale, politicians and the population are starting to question industry practices. After a series of blunders and leaks over the last few weeks, it appears that Europe's leading nuclear power nation is starting to take a new look at its usually strong support for the atomic energy sector. France, which depends on 59 nuclear reactors to provide almost 80 percent of its electricity and also to feed European power grids, has suffered nine nuclear mishaps in the last three weeks. The series of accidents started on July 7 when a solution containing non-eriched uranium leaked from the Tricastin nuclear facility in southern France into the ground and two nearby rivers. The same facility faced another shock last Wednesday when 100 employees of French energy utility company Electricite de France (EDF) were "slightly contaminated" by radioactive particles spewing from a pipe. "What concerns us," EDF spokeswoman Carline Muller told the Associated Press, "is less the level of the people contaminated than the number of people contaminated." Read The Full Story Justice Dept. Report: Gonzales Aides Repeatedly Broke Law On Hiring 2008-07-28 15:23:44 Former Justice Department counselor Monica M. Goodling and former chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson routinely broke the law by conducting political litmus tests on candidates for jobs as immigration judges and line prosecutors, according to an inspector general's report released Monday. Goodling passed over hundreds of qualified applicants and squashed the promotions of others after deeming candidates insufficiently loyal to the Republican party, said investigators, who interviewed 85 people and received information from 300 other job seekers at Justice. Sampson developed a system to screen immigration judge candidates based on improper political considerations and routinely took recommendations from the White House Office of Political Affairs and Presidential Personnel, said the report. Goodling regularly asked candidates for career jobs: "What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?" said the report. One former Justice Department official told investigators she had complained that Goodling was asking interviewees for their views on abortion, according to the report. Taking political or personal factors into account in employment decisions for career positions violates civil service laws and can run afoul of ethics rules. Investigators said Monday that both Goodling and Sampson had engaged in "misconduct." Read The Full Story EPA Tells Staff Not To Talk To Congressional Investigators 2008-07-28 15:23:14 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is telling its pollution enforcement officials not to talk with congressional investigators, reporters and even the agency's own inspector general, according to an internal e-mail provided to the Associated Press. The June 16 e-mail tells 11 managers in the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, the branch of the agency charged with making sure environmental laws are followed, to remind staff to keep quiet. "If you are contacted directly by the I.G.'s office or GAO requesting information of any kind...please do not respond to questions or make any statements," reads the e-mail sent by Robbi Farrell, the division's chief of staff. Instead, staff should forward inquires to a designated representative. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility obtained the e-mail and provided it to the A.P. The group is a nonprofit alliance of local, state and federal professionals dedicated to upholding environmental laws and values. Jeff Ruch, its executive director, said Monday that the e-mail reinforces the "bunker mentality" within EPA under the Bush administration. "The clear intention behind this move is to chill the cubicles by suppressing any uncontrolled information," said Ruch. Read The Full Story Hatred Said To Motivate Tennessee Killer 2008-07-28 15:21:49 A man who the police say entered a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tennessee, during Sunday services and shot 8 people, killing two, was motivated by a hatred for liberals and homosexuals, Chief Sterling P. Owen IV of the Knoxville Police Department said Monday. "It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement," Chief Owen said of the suspect, Jim D. Adkisson, 58. "We have recovered a four-page letter in which he describes his feelings and the reason that he claims he committed these offenses." Police officials said they had charged Adkisson, of Powell, Tennessee, with first-degree murder. Amira Parkey, 16, had just uttered her first lines as Miss Hannigan in “Annie, Jr.” when the performance at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was interrupted by a loud pop, said witnesses. “We were just, ‘Oh, my God, that’s not part of the play’,” said Amira, adding that she saw a man standing near the door of the sanctuary and firing into the room. Read The Full Story UPDATE: 2 Killed In Gunman's Attack On Tennessee Church 2008-07-28 03:33:24 A gunman opened fire at a church youth performance Sunday and killed two people, including a man who witnesses called a hero for shielding others from a shotgun blast. Seven adults were also injured but no children were harmed at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. Church members said they dove under pews or ran from the building when the shooting started. The gunman was tackled by congregants and eventually taken into police custody. Jim D. Adkisson, 58, was charged with first-degree murder and was being held on $1 million bail, according to city spokesman Randy Kenner, who did not know if the suspect had retained an attorney. Authorities were searching Adkisson's home in the Knoxville bedroom community of Powell, said Kenner. The man slain was identified as Greg McKendry, 60, a longtime church member and usher. Church member Barbara Kemper told the Associated Press that McKendry "stood in the front of the gunman and took the blast to protect the rest of us." Read The Full Story U.S. Contractor Paid $142 Million For Iraq Projects Never Built Or Finished 2008-07-28 03:33:00 The U.S. government paid a California contractor $142 million to build prisons, fire stations and police facilities in Iraq  that it never built or finished, according to audits by a watchdog office. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said Parsons of Pasadena, California, received the money, part of a total of $333 million but only completed about one-third of the projects, which also included courthouses and border control stations. The inspector general's office is expected to release two detailed audits today, evaluating Parsons's work on the contract, which is worth up to $900 million. "Far less was accomplished under this contract than originally planned," the inspector general wrote. "Millions of dollars in waste are likely associated with incomplete, terminated and abandoned projects under this contract." Auditors did not give a dollar figure of how much had potentially been wasted, but they said Parsons got about 10 percent - or $11.3 million -- of the $108 million of award fees it could have received. Parsons said in a written statement Sunday that it had "some serious reservations about the conclusions" in the audits, saying the company was hindered by the violent and unstable security situation in Iraq. One of Parsons's subcontractors was shot and killed at close range while in his office, said the company. Parsons' work is emblematic of other troubles in the $50 billion U.S. reconstruction effort, in which there have been widespread problems of contractors doing poor work, being late and overspending on projects. Those issues combined with bad record-keeping, lack of oversight by overworked government managers, and high personnel turnover for both the government and contractors in an unstable war zone have created millions of dollars in waste, according to the Iraq inspector general. SIGIR conceded that Parsons's "failure to complete some of the work was understandable because of its complex nature and unstable security environment." Read The Full Story	U.S. Congress Agrees To Ban Toxins In Children's Products 2008-07-29 02:28:20 Lawmakers plan to outlaw certain chemicals used in plastic production that cause reproductive problems. The White House opposes the ban. Congressional negotiators agreed Monday to a ban on a family of toxins found in children's products, handing a major victory to parents and health experts who have been clamoring for the government to remove harmful chemicals from toys. The ban, which would take effect in six months, would have significant implications for U.S. consumers, whose homes are filled with hundreds of plastic products designed for children that may be causing dangerous health effects. The rare action by Congress reflects a growing body of scientific research showing that children ingest the toxins by acts as simple as chewing on a rubber duck. Used for decades in plastic production, the chemicals are now thought to act as hormones and cause reproductive problems, especially in boys. Read The Full Story Warren Buffet Joins Obama Summit On Economic Crisis 2008-07-29 02:27:42 Barack Obama was joined by the world's wealthiest person, Warren Buffett, and a number of entrepreneurs, economists and union leaders for a summit in Washington, D.C., Monday to find ways out of America's economic crisis. Obama, who returned to the U.S. from a 10-day overseas visit on Saturday, sought to switch Monday from foreign affairs to the U.S. economy, the issue that Americans tell pollsters will determine their choice of the next president. "People are worried about gas prices, they're worried about job security, they're worried about their retirement fund as the stockmarket goes down," Obama said before the summit. "People are understandably concerned about the immediate effects of the economy, and that's what we will be talking about for the duration." Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, said the summit, which was attended by interested Republicans, discussed job losses, financial markets and the rising costs of oil, food and other commodities. Buffett, who built his fortune through stock investments and is a leading philanthropist, was joined at the summit by Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; Robert Rubin, former Treasury secretary; Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google; and John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest confederation of U.S. unions. Republicans included Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary in George Bush's administration. His attendance was not seen as an endorsement for Obama. Read The Full Story Pakistani Leader Reproaches U.S. For Missile Strike 2008-07-29 02:27:04 A U.S. missile strike that's believed to have killed a senior al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan's tribal area roiled talks Monday between President Bush and Pakistan's Prime Minister Sayed Yousaf Gilani, who reproached Bush for acting unilaterally and failing to share intelligence with Pakistani authorities. A U.S. official defended the missile strike as a message that Washington will no longer abide Pakistan's failure to deny al-Qaeda and the Taliban refuge at a time of surging cross-border attacks on U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. "If they (Pakistan) aren't doing anything, then we are," said the official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue publicly. Pakistan, however, considers U.S. strikes on its territory violations of its sovereignty and interference in its internal affairs. Gilani, appearing on CNN, said he told Bush, "This action should not be taken by the United States" and, "It's our job because we are fighting the war for ourselves." Read The Full Story U.S. Brig. General Dies Of Gunshot On Elmendorf Air Force Base 2008-07-28 18:49:15 The commander of the 3rd Wing at Elmendorf Air Force Base died of a gunshot wound in his on-base residence Sunday night, the Air Force said this morning. Few details are being released, but an Air Force spokesman said there was no indication of foul play. Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Tinsley was declared dead around 10:30 p.m., according to a statement issued by the Air Force early this morning. Elmendorf medical authorities responded, the statement says. There was no indication of foul play, Lt. Col. Michael Paoli, an Air Force spokesman in Washington, D.C., told The Associated Press. Locally, officials would not say if the gunshot was self-inflicted or accidental. An investigation is ongoing, they said. Tinsley had served as the wing commander since May 2007, overseeing nearly 7,000 people. This morning his colleagues were shocked and sad, said Kelley Jeter, a public affairs officer who worked regularly with the general. Read The Full Story Worried Banks Sharply Reduce Business Loans 2008-07-28 15:23:32 Banks struggling to recover from multibillion-dollar losses on real estate are curtailing loans to American businesses, depriving even healthy companies of money for expansion and hiring. Two vital forms of credit used by companies - commercial and industrial loans from banks, and short-term “commercial paper” not backed by collateral - collectively dropped almost 3 percent over the last year, to $3.27 trillion from $3.36 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data. That is the largest annual decline since the credit tightening that began with the last recession, in 2001. The scarcity of credit has intensified the strains on the economy by withholding capital from many companies, just as joblessness grows and consumers pull back from spending in the face of high gas prices, plummeting home values and mounting debt. “The second half of the year is shot,” said Michael T. Darda, chief economist at the trading firm MKM Partners in Greenwich, Conn., who was until recently optimistic that the economy would continue expanding. “Access to capital and credit is essential to growth. If that access is restrained or blocked, the economic system takes a hit.” Companies that rely on credit are now delaying and canceling expansion plans as they struggle to secure finance. Read The Full Story U.S. Federal Deficit Headed For Record High 2008-07-28 15:22:50 The federal budget deficit will surge to nearly $490 billion next fiscal year, a record dollar amount, driven by continuing war costs and an economic slowdown that is not likely to turn around fast, according to the Office of Management and Budget. After three successive years of decline, this year's deficit will jump dramatically as well. That is likely to scramble the plans of the next president, regardless of which candidate prevails. Either Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama will enter the White House in a tide of red ink. In February, President Bush had already projected a huge deficit increase, to $410 billion for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, anticipating passage of his war funding request and a generous package of tax rebates to stimulate the economy. But the White House had expected that increase to begin receding quickly. The deficit forecasted for 2009 was supposed to be $409 billion. Now, the White House says the economic rebound is not likely to come that quickly. Instead, the deficit will be even higher, at nearly a half-trillion dollars, easily beating the record $413 billion deficit of fiscal 2004. Measured against the size of the economy, that mark, at 3 percent of the gross domestic product, is still eclipsed by the deficits of Bush's first term, as well as the deficits of George H. W. Bush's administration and Ronald Reagan's. Still, this year's jump and next year's increase are marked reversals from the last three years, when an improving economy pushed down the deficit to $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006 and $162 billion last year. Neither McCain nor Obama have been particularly mindful of the budget deficit. McCain has proposed to extend all of Bush's first-term tax cuts, which expire in 2011, and add hundreds of billions of additional tax cuts, mostly for business. Obama would allow only the tax cuts for most affluent to expire, leaving the lion's share in place and adding additional tax cuts for the working poor and middle class, plus hundreds of billions in more spending on health care, energy and education. Read The Full Story Dozens Killed In Iraq Suicide Bombings 2008-07-28 15:21:36 Female suicide bombers attacked Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad and Kurdish political demonstrators in the northern city of Kirkuk on Monday in one of the bloodiest days of violence in recent months. The bombings killed at least 39 people and injured scores of others, officials said, and clashes in Kirkuk prompted by the attack left another 12 people dead. No evidence emerged to suggest the attacks in the two cities were coordinated, but the bombings underscored the political tensions that have potential to fuel regional conflicts across Iraq even as overall levels of violence have fallen. In Kirkuk, a suicide bomber detonated her explosives in a crowd of Kurds protesting a provincial elections law, killing 15 people, according to Kurdish security officials. The attack triggered fighting among Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens, ethnic rivals who are locked in a struggle for land and resources in the oil-rich city. The bombing and the clashes injured 187, according to police and hospital officials in Kirkuk. After the blast, Kurdish protesters attacked the offices of a Turkmen political party. Authorities placed a curfew on the city until 6 a.m. Tuesday in an attempt to diffuse tensions. Read The Full Story China's Cars Accelerating Global Demand For Fuel 2008-07-28 03:33:14 Nodding his head to the disco music blaring out of his car's nine speakers, Zhang Linsen swings the shiny, black Hummer H2 out of his company's gates and on to the spacious four-lane road. Running a hand over his closely shaved head, Zhang scans the expanse of high-end suburban offices and villas that a decade ago was just another patch of farmland outside of Shanghai. To his left is a royal blue sedan with a couple and a baby, in front of him a lone young woman being chauffeured in a van. "In China, size matters," says Zhang, the 44-year-old founder of a media and graphic design company. "People want to have a car that shows off their status in society. No one wants to buy small." Zhang grasps the wheels of his Hummer, called "hanma" or "fierce horse" in Chinese, and hits the accelerator. Car ownership in China is exploding, and it's not only cars but also sport-utility vehicles, pickup trucks and other gas-guzzling rides. Elsewhere in the world, the popularity of these vehicles has tumbled as the cost of oil has soared. But in China, the number of SUVs sold rose 43 percent in May compared with the previous year, and full-size sedans were up 15 percent. Indeed, China's demand for gas is much of the reason for the dramatic run-up in global oil prices. China alone accounts for about 40 percent of the world's recent increase in demand for oil, burning through twice as much now as it did a decade ago. Fifteen years ago, there were almost no private cars in the country. By the end of last year, the number had reached 15.2 million. Read The Full Story
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Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday July 28 2008 - (813)

Monday July 28 2008 edition
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UPDATE: 2 Killed In Gunman's Attack On Tennessee Church 2008-07-28 03:33:24 A gunman opened fire at a church youth performance Sunday and killed two people, including a man who witnesses called a hero for shielding others from a shotgun blast. Seven adults were also injured but no children were harmed at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. Church members said they dove under pews or ran from the building when the shooting started. The gunman was tackled by congregants and eventually taken into police custody. Jim D. Adkisson, 58, was charged with first-degree murder and was being held on $1 million bail, according to city spokesman Randy Kenner, who did not know if the suspect had retained an attorney. Authorities were searching Adkisson's home in the Knoxville bedroom community of Powell, said Kenner. The man slain was identified as Greg McKendry, 60, a longtime church member and usher. Church member Barbara Kemper told the Associated Press that McKendry "stood in the front of the gunman and took the blast to protect the rest of us." Read The Full Story U.S. Contractor Paid $142 Million For Iraq Projects Never Built Or Finished 2008-07-28 03:33:00 The U.S. government paid a California contractor $142 million to build prisons, fire stations and police facilities in Iraq  that it never built or finished, according to audits by a watchdog office. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said Parsons of Pasadena, California, received the money, part of a total of $333 million but only completed about one-third of the projects, which also included courthouses and border control stations. The inspector general's office is expected to release two detailed audits today, evaluating Parsons's work on the contract, which is worth up to $900 million. "Far less was accomplished under this contract than originally planned," the inspector general wrote. "Millions of dollars in waste are likely associated with incomplete, terminated and abandoned projects under this contract." Auditors did not give a dollar figure of how much had potentially been wasted, but they said Parsons got about 10 percent - or $11.3 million -- of the $108 million of award fees it could have received. Parsons said in a written statement Sunday that it had "some serious reservations about the conclusions" in the audits, saying the company was hindered by the violent and unstable security situation in Iraq. One of Parsons's subcontractors was shot and killed at close range while in his office, said the company. Parsons' work is emblematic of other troubles in the $50 billion U.S. reconstruction effort, in which there have been widespread problems of contractors doing poor work, being late and overspending on projects. Those issues combined with bad record-keeping, lack of oversight by overworked government managers, and high personnel turnover for both the government and contractors in an unstable war zone have created millions of dollars in waste, according to the Iraq inspector general. SIGIR conceded that Parsons's "failure to complete some of the work was understandable because of its complex nature and unstable security environment." Read The Full Story Global Pressures Have Converged To Drive Up Oil Prices 2008-07-27 15:18:32 The two events, half a world apart, went largely unheralded. Early this month, Valero Energy, in Texas, got the unwelcome news that Mexico would be cutting supplies to one of the company's Gulf Coast refineries by up to 15 percent. Mexico's state-owned oil enterprise is one of Valero's main sources of crude, but oil output from Mexican fields, including the giant Cantarell field, is drying up. Mexican sales of crude oil to the United States have plunged to their lowest level in more than a dozen years. The same week, India's Tata Motors announced it was expanding its plans to begin producing a new $2,500 "people's car" called the Nano in the fall. The company hopes that by making automobiles affordable for people in India and elsewhere, it could eventually sell 1 million of them a year. Although neither development made headlines, together they were emblematic of the larger forces of supply and demand that have sent world oil prices bursting through one record level after another. And while the cost of crude has surged before, this oil shock is different. There is little prospect that drivers will ever again see gas prices retreat to the levels they enjoyed for much of the last generation. Unlike the two short, sharp oil jolts of the 1970s, the latest run-up has been accelerating over several years as ample supplies of crude oil have proven elusive and the thirst for petroleum products has grown. The average price of a barrel of oil produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries doubled from 2001 to 2005, doubled again by March this year and jumped as much as 40 percent more after that. For American motorists, a full tank of gas costs nearly twice what it did at the start of last year, racing past the $4-a-gallon mark, and has begun cutting into other household spending. Read The Full Story If Greenland's Ice Sheet Melts, Sea Levels Could Rise 23 Feet Worldwide 2008-07-27 15:17:52 Greenland's ice sheet represents one of global warming's most disturbing threats. The vast expanses of glaciers -  massed, on average, 1.6 miles deep - contain enough water to raise sea levels worldwide by 23 feet. Should they melt or otherwise slip into the ocean, they would flood coastal capitals, submerge tropical islands and generally redraw the world’s atlases. The infusion of fresh water could slow or shut down the ocean’s currents, plunging Europe into bitter winter. Yet for the residents of the frozen island, the early stages of climate change promise more good, in at least one important sense, than bad. A Danish protectorate since 1721, Greenland has long sought to cut its ties with its colonizer. But while proponents of complete independence face little opposition at home or in Copenhagen, they haven’t been able to overcome one crucial calculation: the country depends on Danish assistance for more than 40 percent of its gross domestic product. “The independence wish has always been there,” says Aleqa Hammond, Greenland’s minister for finance and foreign affairs. “The reason we have never realized it is because of the economics.” Climate change has the power to unsettle boundaries and shake up geopolitics, usually for the worse. In June, the tiny South Pacific nation of Kiribati announced that rising sea levels were making its lands uninhabitable and asked for help in evacuating its population. Bangladesh, low-lying, crowded and desperately impoverished, is watching the waves as well; a one-yard rise would flood a seventh of its territory. But while most of the world sees only peril in the island’s meltwater, Greenland’s independence movement has explicitly tied its fortunes to the warming of the globe. The island’s ice cover has already begun to disappear. “Changes in the ocean eat the ice sheet from underneath,” says Sarah Das, a glaciologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “Warmer water causes the glaciers to calve and melt back more quickly.” Hunters who use the frozen surface of the winter ocean for hunting and travel have found themselves idle when the ice fails to form. The whales, seals and birds they hunt have begun to shift their migratory patterns. “The traditional culture will be hard hit,” says Jesper Madsen, director of the department of Arctic environment at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. “But from an overall perspective, it will have a positive effect.” Greenland’s fishermen are applauding the return of warm-water cod. Shops in the island’s capital have suddenly begun to offer locally produced potatoes and broccoli - crops unimaginable a few years earlier. Read The Full Story The Agency Name That Dare Not Be Spoken 2008-07-27 15:17:09 The name of the Central Intelligence Agency cannot be spoken in the war crimes trial here at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No records of the agency's interrogations of Salim Ahmed Hamdan can be subpoenaed, and no agent can be called to testify about what he or she learned from Osama bin Laden's former driver. When defense attorney Harry H. Schneider, Jr., attempted to demonstrate how many interrogations Hamdan had undergone in the months after his November 2001 arrest - at least 40 - he couldn't list the CIA along with more than a dozen other agencies including the Secret Service and what was then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The prohibition against naming the CIA came in a "protective order" issued by the court at the government's request. The tribunal's deputy chief prosecutor, Army Col. Bruce A. Pagel, couldn't say which agency sought the shield or what arguments were made to justify it. "It's a bit absurd to go through an entire trial pretending that the CIA doesn't exist," said Matt Pollard, a legal adviser for Amnesty International here to  monitor the proceedings. Read The Full Story In Cambodia, Land Seizures Push Thousands Of The Poor Into Homelessness 2008-07-27 15:16:09 When the monsoon rain pours through Mao Sein’s torn thatch roof, she pulls a straw sleeping mat over herself and her three small children and waits until it stops. She and her children sit on a low table as floodwater rises, bringing with it the sewage that runs along the mud paths outside their shack. Ms. Mao Sein, 34, was resettled by the government here in an empty field two years ago, when the police raided the squatters’ colony where she lived in Phnom Penh, the capital, 12 miles away. She is a widow and a scavenger. The area where she lives has no clean water or electricity, no paved roads or permanent buildings; but there is land to live on, and that has drawn scores of new homeless families to settle here, squatting among the squatters. With its shacks and its sewage, Andong looks very much like the refugee camps that were home to those who were forced from their homes by the brutal Communist Khmer Rouge three decades ago. Read The Full Story Fire Still Threatens Thousands Of Homes Near Yosemite National Park 2008-07-27 15:15:25 A fast-spreading wildfire raged out of control Sunday near an entrance to Yosemite National Park after forcing residents to evacuate 170 homes and leading authorities to cut power to the park. The blaze had charred about 25 square miles, or 16,000 acres, since Friday as wooded slopes ignited amid hot, dry conditions that have plagued California for months. The steep terrain west of the park is overgrown with dense brush that was fueling the flames, said fire officials. "There's no fire history in the past 100 years. That's one of the reasons this fire's been able to burn so erratically," Daniel Berlant, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said Sunday. Officials ordered the evacuations of 170 homes under immediate threat. About 2,000 homes faced at least some danger from the fast-spreading flames, according to the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. About 900 firefighters were battling the fire and hundreds more were headed to the scene along the Merced River west of Yosemite, one of the nation's most visited national parks. Most of the evacuated homes are in the town of Midpines, located along Highway 140, about 12 miles from the park. Read The Full Story	China's Cars Accelerating Global Demand For Fuel 2008-07-28 03:33:14 Nodding his head to the disco music blaring out of his car's nine speakers, Zhang Linsen swings the shiny, black Hummer H2 out of his company's gates and on to the spacious four-lane road. Running a hand over his closely shaved head, Zhang scans the expanse of high-end suburban offices and villas that a decade ago was just another patch of farmland outside of Shanghai. To his left is a royal blue sedan with a couple and a baby, in front of him a lone young woman being chauffeured in a van. "In China, size matters," says Zhang, the 44-year-old founder of a media and graphic design company. "People want to have a car that shows off their status in society. No one wants to buy small." Zhang grasps the wheels of his Hummer, called "hanma" or "fierce horse" in Chinese, and hits the accelerator. Car ownership in China is exploding, and it's not only cars but also sport-utility vehicles, pickup trucks and other gas-guzzling rides. Elsewhere in the world, the popularity of these vehicles has tumbled as the cost of oil has soared. But in China, the number of SUVs sold rose 43 percent in May compared with the previous year, and full-size sedans were up 15 percent. Indeed, China's demand for gas is much of the reason for the dramatic run-up in global oil prices. China alone accounts for about 40 percent of the world's recent increase in demand for oil, burning through twice as much now as it did a decade ago. Fifteen years ago, there were almost no private cars in the country. By the end of last year, the number had reached 15.2 million. Read The Full Story Economists: U.S. Housing Bill Won't 'Perform Miracles' 2008-07-27 15:18:42 Even as a huge bipartisan majority in the Senate voted Saturday to send a sprawling housing bill to the White House,  economists, consumer advocates and other analysts said the package of programs for struggling homeowners and shaken mortgage lenders is unlikely to relieve the foreclosure crisis that is driving the nation toward recession. "This is not the end of the housing crunch," said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.  "Housing prices have already fallen 15 percent and they need to fall 10 percent more. This bill isn't going to change that equation." The Senate voted 72 to 13 to approve the bill, which seeks to halt the steepest slide in house prices in a generation, rescue hundreds of thousands of families from foreclosure and restore confidence in the nation's largest mortgage-finance firms. White House officials said President Bush is likely to sign it by midweek, despite his opposition to nearly $4 billion in aid to local communities. During Senate debate, Christopher J. Dodd (D-Connecticut), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and one of the bill's lead sponsors, cited a litany of grim statistics about the mortgage crisis, including that an estimated 8,500 families a day are falling into foreclosure and that one in every eight homes is projected to enter foreclosure over the next five years. "This legislation will not perform miracles. I want the American people to have realistic expectations about what we're about to do," Dodd said. "But as others have said, it is a step, and an important step, towards putting our nation on the road to economic recovery." Read The Full Story U.S. War On Terrorism Loses Ground In Pakistan 2008-07-27 15:18:13 Although the "war on terrorism" remains a consuming focus of the U.S. government, the Bush administration appears poised to leave behind a situation not unlike the one it inherited nearly eight years ago: a resurgent al-Qaeda ensconced in South Asia, training new recruits, plotting attacks against the West, and seemingly beyond the United States' reach. In dozens of interviews, senior U.S. national security, intelligence and military officials described a counter-terrorism campaign in Pakistan that has lost momentum and is beset by frustration. CIA officers pursuing al-Qaeda fighters are confined largely to a collection of crumbling bases in northwestern Pakistan. Most are on remote Pakistani military outposts, where they are kept on a short leash under an awkward arrangement with their hosts - rarely allowed to leave and often left with little to do but plead with their Pakistani counterparts to act. "Everyone who serves in Pakistan comes back frustrated," said a former CIA case officer. The case officer, like many other officials, spoke on condition of anonymity when describing U.S. counter-terrorism activity in Pakistan because the efforts are highly sensitive and the officials in many cases are not authorized to speak publicly. Two troubled options define the U.S. approach. One is the present policy of counting on a politically evolving Pakistan to address the problem, which could allow al-Qaeda to operate relatively unmolested for years. The other, unilateral U.S. military action, even counter-terrorism hard-liners acknowledge, might only compound the militant threat. Read The Full Story After Iowa Raid, Immigrants Fuel Labor Inquiries 2008-07-27 15:17:30 When federal immigration agents raided the kosher meatpacking plant here in Postville, Iowa, in May and rounded up 389 illegal immigrants, they found more than 20 under-age workers, some as young as 13. Now those young immigrants have begun to tell investigators about their jobs. Some said they worked shifts of 12 hours or more, wielding razor-edged knives and saws to slice freshly killed beef. Some worked through the night, sometimes six nights a week. One, a Guatemalan named Elmer L. who said he was 16 when he started working on the plant’s killing floors, said he worked 17-hour shifts, six days a week. In an affidavit, he said he was constantly tired and did not have time to do anything but work and sleep. “I was very sad,” he said, “and I felt like I was a slave.” At first, labor officials said the raid had disrupted federal and state investigations already under way at Agriprocessors Inc., the nation’s largest kosher plant. The raid has drawn criticism for what some see as harsh tactics against the immigrants, with little action taken against their employers. In the aftermath of the arrests, however, labor investigators have reaped a bounty of new evidence from the testimony of illegal immigrants, teenagers and adults, who were caught in the raid. In formal declarations, immigrants have described pervasive labor violations at the plant, testimony that could result in criminal charges for Agriprocessors executives, said labor law experts. Read The Full Story Gunman Wounds 7 People In Tennessee Church 2008-07-27 15:16:52 A gunman has opened fire during a church service in Knoxville, Tennessee, and seven people have been taken to a hospital. A church member told the Associated Press that the gunmen came in Sunday with a shotgun and fired three shots. The church member, Steve Drevick, says that several people had head injuries. WBIR-TV and WATE-TV in Knoxville report Sunday that the gunman is in custody. A spokeswoman for the University of Tennessee Medical Center says the patients are ''in various stages of treatment.'' Spokeswoman Becky Thompson would not release their conditions. Read The Full Story At Least 45 Killed In Explosions In India 2008-07-27 15:15:41 For the second time in two days, small explosions rocked an Indian city, this time in Ahmedabad on Saturday evening, killing at least 45 people. The Indian government said cities across the country had been put on alert for similar attacks. At least 16 explosions went off shortly after 6:30 p.m. in several crowded neighborhoods in the western city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat State, the chief minister, Narendra Modi, told reporters late Saturday. According to the latest details available Sunday, another 110 people were wounded, the Associated Press reported. One of the targets was a public bus, which appeared to be badly damaged, according to televised reports. As crowded as those neighborhoods appeared, the casualties would have been far greater had more powerful explosives been used. Law enforcement authorities did not immediately say who might have been responsible. 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