The Washington Post
Wave of Marine Species Extinctions Feared
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; Page A01
BIMINI, Bahamas -- The bulldozers moved slowly at first. Picking up speed, they pressed forward into a patch of dense mangrove trees that buckled and splintered like twigs. As the machines moved on, the pieces drifted out to sea.
Sitting in a small motorboat a few hundred yards offshore on a mid-July afternoon, Samuel H. Gruber -- a University of Miami professor who has devoted more than two decades to studying the lemon sharks that breed here -- plunged into despondency. The mangroves being ripped up to build a new resort provide food and protection that the sharks can't get in the open ocean, and Gruber fears the worst.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/22/AR2005082200036.html
Japanese House-Sitter Robot Hits Stores
By HIROKO TABUCHI
The Associated Press
Tuesday, August 23, 2005; 9:13 PM
TOKYO -- Worried about leaving your house empty while you go on vacation? Japan has the answer: a house-sitter robot armed with a digital camera, infrared sensors and a videophone.
Stores across Japan started taking orders on Thursday for the Roborior _ a watermelon-sized eyeball on wheels that glows purple, blue and orange _ continuing the country's love affair with gadgets.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082300216.html
Google to Launch IM Service
Move Steps Up Competition Among Internet Chat Programs
By Yuki Noguchi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; Page D01
Instant messaging, a type of communication long dominated by chatty teens, has become the latest front in an escalating war among big Internet companies competing to make themselves indispensable to mainstream audiences.
Google Inc. plans to enter the fray today by launching Google Talk, its own version of a service that allows registered users to send instant messages or talk over the Web to other users.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301588.html
Confidence In Military News Wanes
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; Page A04
The U.S. public's confidence that the military and the media keep them informed about national security issues has eroded significantly over the past six years, according to a new poll that shows 60 percent of Americans believe they do not get enough information about military matters to make educated decisions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301290.html
Constitution on the Brink
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; Page A14
WHILE TALKS over the Iraqi constitution continue in Baghdad, the results so far can only be worrisome for those who hoped the process would help consolidate a new democratic political order and alleviate the Sunni insurgency. The completion of a constitution in the coming days would keep Iraq on track toward holding elections and forming a permanent government by early next year, a timetable the Bush administration has made an overriding priority. Yet both the means adopted to complete the draft and some of the language reported to be in the document risk exacerbating the divide between Iraq's majority Shiite and Kurd communities and the minority Sunnis, thereby adding fuel to the insurgency. Iraqis and U.S. officials need to make good use of the brief time between now and the scheduled meeting of the National Assembly tomorrow if that outcome is to be avoided.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301374.html
Chinese Detainees Are Men Without a Country
15 Muslims, Cleared of Terrorism Charges, Remain at Guantanamo With Nowhere to Go
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; Page A01
In late 2003, the Pentagon quietly decided that 15 Chinese Muslims detained at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be released. Five were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some of them picked up by Pakistani bounty hunters for U.S. payoffs. The other 10 were deemed low-risk detainees whose enemy was China's communist government -- not the United States, according to senior U.S. officials.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301362.html
In Iraq Jail, Resistance Goes Underground
Escape Tunnel, Improvised Weapons Showcase Determination of Inmates
By Steve Fainaru and Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; Page A01
CAMP BUCCA, Iraq -- In the darkest hours before dawn, groups of 10 detainees toiled 15 feet beneath Compound 5 of America's largest prison in Iraq. The men worked in five-minute shifts, digging with shovels fashioned from tent poles and hauling the dirt to the surface with five-gallon water jugs tethered to 200 feet of rope. They bagged it in sacks that had been used to deliver their bread rations and spread it surreptitiously across a soccer field where fellow inmates churned it during daily matches, guards and detainees recalled.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301525.html
3 Dead, 10 Hurt in Iraq Police Attacks
The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; 8:19 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Insurgents attacked Iraqi police patrols Wednesday in western Baghdad with three car bombs and small arms fire, killing at least three people and wounding 10, police said.
Two of the car bombs were piloted by suicide drivers near the western neighborhood of Khadra, police Capt. Taleb Thamer said. He said three civilians were killed and 10 people, including three policemen, were wounded.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/24/AR2005082400416.html
Warner: Defense Closures 'Rigged'
D.C. Area Jobs Long Targeted, Senator Asserts
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; Page A01
Virginia Sen. John W. Warner (R) said that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and a senior aide improperly manipulated the national base realignment plan announced earlier this year to compel the movement of more than 20,000 defense jobs away from the Washington area.
Two years before the Pentagon revealed its base closing plan May 13, in a stream of memos and internal records, top department officials were saying that "thinning of headquarters in the National Capital Region remains a[n] objective," according to Warner.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301537.html
Who Will Say 'No More'?
By Gary Hart
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; Page A15
"Waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool said to push on," warned an anti-Vietnam war song those many years ago. The McGovern presidential campaign, in those days, which I know something about, is widely viewed as a cause for the decline of the Democratic Party, a gateway through which a new conservative era entered.
Like the cat that jumped on a hot stove and thereafter wouldn't jump on any stove, hot or cold, today's Democratic leaders didn't want to make that mistake again. Many supported the Iraq war resolution and -- as the Big Muddy is rising yet again -- now find themselves tongue-tied or trying to trump a war president by calling for deployment of more troops. Thus does good money follow bad and bad politics get even worse.
Gravestones of fallen Americans at Arlington National Cemetery. (J. Scott Applewhite -- AP)
History will deal with George W. Bush and the neoconservatives who misled a mighty nation into a flawed war that is draining the finest military in the world, diverting Guard and reserve forces that should be on the front line of homeland defense, shredding international alliances that prevailed in two world wars and the Cold War, accumulating staggering deficits, misdirecting revenue from education to rebuilding Iraqi buildings we've blown up, and weakening America's national security.
But what will history say about an opposition party that stands silent while all this goes on?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301178.html
Regime Change By Assassin? Easier Said Than Done.
By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; Page C01
So Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, thinks the United States should assassinate Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.
Let's see. What are our options? The 30-year-old Senate reports of the Church committee give us some options.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301406.html
Chicago Tribune
TV host puts U.S. in hot water
Pat Robertson's call to kill Venezuela's Hugo Chavez gives ammunition to critics in Latin America
By Gary Marx
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published August 24, 2005
HAVANA -- The already-icy relationship between the U.S. and Venezuela chilled further Tuesday in the wake of religious broadcaster Pat Robertson's suggestion that the United States assassinate President Hugo Chavez.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0508240209aug24,1,6246337.story?coll=chi-news-hed
The New Zealand Herald
Green MP wants tighter export rules
Keith Locke
24.08.05 4.00pm
Green MP Keith Locke is calling for tighter control of exports to prevent New Zealand-made goods being used in weapons after revelations the Government is funding an Auckland company whose products go into smart bombs.
Rakon manufactures quartz crystals for United States company Rockwell to use at the heart of Global Positioning System (GPS) units in smart bombs.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10342250
London bombers triggered blasts by hand says paper
24.08.05 4.00pm
LONDON - Four suicide bombers who killed 52 people in attacks on London's transport network on July 7 triggered the blasts by hand rather than by mobile phones as previously suggested, a British newspaper reported.
The Guardian, citing unidentified senior police and anti-terrorism sources for its information, said the four British Muslims who blew themselves up on three trains and a bus used "button-like" devices to set off the bombs.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10342269
Cricket: Vincent's 172 leads NZ to victory in Zimbabwe
25.08.05 12.30am
Lou Vincent cracked the highest one-day cricket innings by a New Zealand batsman as his team plundered 397 for five against Zimbabwe in the tri-series opener in Bulawayo today.
Vincent's stunning 172 led New Zealand to their highest total -- scored off just 44 overs after the match was reduced due to a damp pitch.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=4&ObjectID=10342383
Scientists near to growing human lungs in laboratory
24.08.05 1.00pm
By Steve Connor
The prospect of growing a set of human lungs in the laboratory for transplant surgery has come a step closer with the successful growth of mature lung cells from embryonic tissue.
British scientists announced yesterday that they have been able to stimulate stem cells from a human embryo to develop in a test tube into some of the highly specialised cells of the lungs.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10342247
Planes fly into restricted zone at Bush resort
24.08.05 3.20pm
DONNELLY, Idaho - In separate incidents, two small planes wandered into restricted air space over the Idaho resort where United States president George W Bush is staying, but he was never in danger, the White House said.
The planes committed a "minor violation of temporary flight restrictions" put in place to protect the president, White House spokesman Trent Duffy told reporters.
"The president was never in any danger and the systems designed to protect him worked effectively," Duffy said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10342267
Bush to meet with China's Hu at White House
24.08.05 1.00pm
WASHINGTON - United States president George W Bush will host Chinese president Hu Jintao on September 7, a visit that caps months of rising trade friction as well as growing co-operation on stopping North Korea's nuclear arms ambitions.
Bush and Hu will discuss "the full range of issues on the US-China agenda and continuing to build a candid, constructive and co-operative bilateral relationship," the White House said on Tuesday in Idaho, where Bush is holidaying.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10342252
Sunnis call new Iraqi constitution a 'betrayal'
24.08.05
By Kim Sengupta
Iraq's new constitution, supposedly the blueprint for a democratic future, is threatening to plunge the country into a brutal civil war.
As Shiites and Kurds presented the draft to the National Assembly, Sunnis bitterly opposed to its federal structure talked of "betrayal" and warned of a violent backlash.
The constitution is the principal plank of President George W. Bush's exit strategy from the Iraq conflict, which has made his popularity among American voters plummet.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10342176
Europe battles extreme weather on two fronts
A forest fire burns near Vila Flor in Miranda Do Corvo, near Coimbra in central Portugal. Picture / Reuters
24.08.05 4.00pm
By Elizabeth Nash and Tony Paterson
Europe is battling extreme weather on two fronts, with at least five people reported killed by storms in Austria and Switzerland, while 16 have been killed this year in scores of fires raging in Portugal.
Hundreds of towns and villages were cut off from the outside world yesterday as fierce flooding and torrential rain continued to sweep through Austria, Switzerland and southern Germany.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10342270
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