June 21, 2005. Ashdod, Israel.
Monday, July 04, 2005
June 20, 2005. These are Global Warming Heat Transfer Clouds. One of t he leading edges can be seen at the very top fo this picture. These clouds never rain. They carry heat from the equator to the Arctic Circle. This is the mechanism of Global Warming after the vortices begin. This is a sunset at Alturas, California.
Morning Papers - It's Origins
Rooster "Crowing"
"Okeydoke"
History
1804, Nathaniel Hawthorne, novelist
1807, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian nationalist
1826, Stephen Foster, songwriter
1885, Louis B. Mayer, film executive
1872, Calvin Coolidge, U.S. president
1927, Neil Simon, playwright
1776, The American Continental Congress votes to approve the Declaration of Independence, in which the American colonies proclaim their separation from Britain.
1802, the United States Military Academy officially opened at West Point, N.Y.
1845, Writer Henry David Thoreau moves to a small hut by Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, where he lives alone for two years, writing a journal that is published as Walden in 1854.
1910, In Reno, Nevada, Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion, knocks out Jim Jefferies, who had retired in 1905 rather than face him. Afterwards, films of the fight are banned in many U.S. cities.
1917, during a ceremony in Paris honoring the French hero of the American Revolution, U.S. Lt. Col. Charles E. Stanton declared, "Lafayette, we are here!"
1939, baseball's "Iron Horse," Lou Gehrig, said farewell to his fans at New York's Yankee Stadium.
1954: Housewives celebrate end of rationing
Fourteen years of food rationing in Britain ended at midnight when restrictions on the sale and purchase of meat and bacon were lifted.
Members of the London Housewives' Association held a special ceremony in London's Trafalgar Square to mark Derationing Day.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_3818000/3818563.stm
1968: Alec Rose sails home
Yachtsman Alec Rose received a hero's welcome as he sailed into Portsmouth after his 354-day round-the-world trip.
The 59-year-old was escorted into Portsmouth harbour by 400 motor-boats, yachts, catamarans and canoes blowing sirens and whistles.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_2744000/2744481.stm
1976, A midnight Israeli commando raid at Entebbe airport in Uganda, planned by future prime minister Ehud Barak, frees more than 100 hostages from an airliner hijacked by pro-Palestinian guerrillas.
Israeli commandos have rescued 100 hostages, mostly Israelis or Jews, held by pro-Palestinian hijackers at Entebbe airport in Uganda.
At about 0100 local time (2200GMT), Ugandan soldiers and the hijackers were taken completely by surprise when three Hercules transport planes landed after a 2,500-mile trip from Israel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_2786000/2786967.stm
1977: Manchester United sack manager
Manchester United manager Tommy Docherty has been sensationally sacked by the club's directors.
A statement from the football club's board found him in breach of his contract following a meeting today.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_2492000/2492743.stm
1985: Teenage genius gets a first
Child prodigy Ruth Lawrence has achieved a starred first in Mathematics at Oxford University.
The 13-year-old is the youngest British person ever to earn a first-class degree and the youngest known graduate of Oxford University.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_2492000/2492853.stm
Do you get the feeling NASA has a 'thing' about the Fourth of July? Do these scientists ever see a fireworks display?
1997, After traveling for seven months, NASA's Pathfinder spacecraft finally touched down on Mars, inaugurating a new era in the search for life on the Red Planet.
NASA's Mars Exploration page provides information about Mars, including mission data, background, videos, and other resources.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Flush with success, city readies for round two
By Tina Moore
Inquirer Staff Writer
The city was still recovering from a slight Live 8 hangover yesterday as it declared triumph and prepared for another day of partying on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway today.
"We're finished with one event, and we're starting up another," Christopher Palmer, director of operations for the Fairmount Park Commission, said while assessing minor damage in front of the Art Museum.
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/special_packages/live8/12049817.htm
Fresh off London Live 8 show, Elton John eager for Phila. gig
By Joel Bewley
Inquirer Staff Writer
Sir Elton John, fresh from his Live 8 appearance in London two days ago, has plenty of energy left to help Philadelphia celebrate Independence Day.
"We have a wonderful artist lineup, and I cannot wait to get on that stage," John said yesterday through Simon Prytherch, a spokesman for the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12050927.htm
Part concert, part block party
By Larry Eichel
Inquirer Staff Writer
They came, hundreds of thousands of them, to rock to the Black Eyed Peas and Jay-Z, to hear about poverty in Africa, and to play their part in a potentially historic day.
Philadelphia's portion of the worldwide Live 8 event was part concert at the Art Museum, part block party on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and a resounding success in the end.
Despite the huge potential for problems in a mass event put together on barely 30-days notice, few difficulties surfaced yesterday as the seven-hour musical/political extravaganza played itself out.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/12045820.htm
Get ready for war of the words over court
By Dick Polman
Inquirer Political Analyst
A lit match has been tossed into the combustible world of Washington politics.
Partisans on the left and right have long been spoiling for a fight over the future of the U.S. Supreme Court, and now passions have finally been ignited. The retirement of Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor opens a seat for the first time in 11 years, and virtually guarantees an ideological bloodbath.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12042636.htm
Concert provides a victory for the city
By Joseph A. Slobodzian and Christine Schiavo
Inquirer Staff Writers
Call it experience, call it professionalism, call it luck. Maybe it was all of the above.
The city said it wanted to throw a party for a million people. Many if not most showed up, partied and had a good time, and managed to show the world Philadelphia's best - albeit sunburned and sweaty - face.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12045793.htm
A giant party, with a cause
More than a half-million showed up.
By Natalie Pompilio
Inquirer Staff Writer
They surged toward the stage at 5:30 a.m. in a rush comparable to the running of the bulls in Spain, the Filene's Basement bridal gown sale, an Old West stampede:
Thousands of music fans, desperate to get as close as possible to Destiny's Child, Stevie Wonder and the Dave Matthews Band.
And most of them stayed there - many on their feet, some pressed against the metal barricades - all day.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12045821.htm
Web soars, MTV crashes in coverage of concerts
By Beth Gillin
Inquirer Staff Writer
If Live Aid helped launch MTV as a media powerhouse two decades ago, Live 8 not only dethroned the music channel yesterday but made it seem quaintly old-fashioned.
The Internet left cable in the dust. To put it bluntly, MTV sank and AOL soared.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12045852.htm
Sandra Day O'Connor
Editorial Justice served
If President Bush wants to avoid a partisan meltdown of the federal government, he should nominate to the Supreme Court someone very much like Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired Friday.
In 24 years on the high court, O'Connor has been guided by the law and a rigorous search for constitutional balance, rather than by political ideology. She is a conservative, but has not served reflexively the right side of the partisan divide. Her independence as the court's swing vote often antagonized partisan conservatives and showed her value to the nation.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12042630.htm
Bush given warning from the right
Conservative groups say Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales would be the wrong Supreme Court choice.
By Todd S. Purdum and David D. Kirkpatrick
New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON - Conservative groups confronted President Bush with a groundswell of opposition this weekend against nominating his attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, to the Supreme Court, warning that doing so would splinter conservative support.
At least one prominent Latino evangelical group urged Bush to name another Hispanic candidate, Emilio M. Garza, a federal appeals judge from Texas.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12045847.htm
The appeals court judge is a contender.
N.J. native holds conservatives' high court hopes
By Emilie Lounsberry
Inquirer Staff Writer
Conservative. Intelligent. And personable enough to have a gourmet coffee named after him.
That is the reputation of Samuel A. Alito Jr., a judge on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit who is on several short lists of possible nominees to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the nation's highest court.
If President Bush nominates the Trenton-born judge to the U.S. Supreme Court, he will be selecting someone often compared to another conservative jurist from Trenton: Justice Antonin Scalia.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12042659.htm
Detainees are defying U.S. troops at Guantanamo, documents show
Military probes and accounts of alleged abuse and retaliation are detailed in the 278 pages.
By Ben Fox
Associated Press
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The prisoners banged on their cells to protest the heat in the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They doused guards with whatever liquid was handy - including spit and urine. Sometimes, they struck their jailers.
The U.S. military police at times retaliated with force - punches, pepper spray, and a splash of cleaning fluid in the face, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press that detail military investigations and eyewitness accounts of alleged abuse.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12042641.htm
FREUD NEVER HAD A FEMALE ORGASM. HE WAS CUTTING EDGE. YOU HAVE TO FORGIVE HIM. "Clit? What? Oh, Clitoris." Freud never did autopsies on cadavers he was completely modeling from the issue of personality. He wasn't as progressive as Masters and Johnson who counted every drop of sweat. Oh, sorry, perspiration.
From Freud to Lloyd, all the talk about female orgasm
By Faye Flam
Inquirer Staff Writer
Lest we get too caught up in this year's 100th anniversary of Einstein's special relativity theory, it should be noted that 2005 also marks the centennial of Sigmund Freud's theory of vaginal orgasm.
Freud's idea didn't cause a revolution in our understanding of the cosmos, but it did set off a debate that rages to this day. Now, a new genetics study and a book on the evolution of female orgasm may help bring a new understanding of this complicated reflex.
Freud proposed that female pleasure and orgasm should center on the reproductive tract. He was aware that many women experienced orgasm through a small but ultrasensitive organ known as the clitoris but dealt with this by declaring such orgasms "infantile." Any woman who didn't transfer her center of sensitivity to the vagina he labeled as frigid.
It was the idea that launched a thousand fake orgasms.
Sex research has shown that about 95 percent of men nearly always have orgasm from intercourse while only about 25 percent to 30 percent of women do. Another 30-some-odd percent of women never have orgasm from intercourse, and a middle 30 percent to 40 percent report having them sometimes.
In "The Case of the Female Orgasm - Bias in the Science of Evolution," philosopher of science Elizabeth Lloyd argues that this dizzying variety occurs because the female orgasm didn't evolve for a specific function. Instead, she said, it probably rode along as a byproduct of male orgasm, the way male nipples appeared as a byproduct of female ones.
The byproduct idea was first proposed in 1979 by biologist Donald Symons. Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould extolled the idea but many other scientists dismissed it. A more popular theory holds that female orgasm evolved to increase fertility, the resulting muscle contractions helping suction sperm upward.
But Lloyd points out that contractions can occur without orgasm and, unfair as it may seem, a woman can get in trouble just as easily from disappointing sex as from the fireworks kind. Nor does orgasm seem to play the pivotal role in motivating women to have sex. Many factors beyond the wish for an orgasm can fuel desire.
Lloyd notes that female orgasm can happen in animals, where it also appears dissociated from reproduction. In a primate called the stump-tail macaque, scientists found only a few females displayed signs of orgasm when they mated with males, but many more females could readily bring it on by rubbing the requisite parts against the backs of other females.
By mid-century, Alfred Kinsey's systematic studies redirected the center of female orgasm and sensitivity away from the vagina and back to the clitoris, which he found needs a certain amount of sustained attention. For some women that happened through intercourse alone and for others it did not.
Vaginal orgasm made a come-back with the discovery of the G-spot, which is located in the interior region and originates from the same bit of tissue that develops into a prostate gland in men. Scientists are still figuring out how common such orgasms are and whether they differ from the clitoral variety. But the latest research suggests not all women have enough of a G-spot to notice its existence, said Lloyd.
In early June of this year, a new study from St. Thomas Hospital in London echoed the wide variation among women in their orgasmic tendencies and traced that not to neurosis, as Freud proposed, but to genetics.
In other words, wherever you get your orgasms, there's no right or wrong way to be a woman any more than there's a right or wrong hair or eye color. It would be nice if all women landed on this planet with the same set of equipment, however complicated, but apparently we all get a little different configuration and wiring and there's no instruction manual for this stuff.
After all his theorizing, Freud eventually called female sexuality "the dark continent," implying he didn't understand us after all. Did Mrs. Freud finally admit to faking it?
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12049789.htm
Genius at work
The magic we call music
Writer John Timpane and artist Tony Auth, both of The Inquirer's Editorial Board, were present for rehearsals and performances of a pair of premieres by the Philadelphia Orchestra earlier this season. With the musicians soon to leave for an Asian tour, here are their impressions.
It was a Thursday night at the Kimmel Center. The maestro raised his baton - and the Philadelphia Orchestra disappeared.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/special_packages/sunday_review/11648276.htm
Editorial Energy Bill
Needed: Some visionary additives
When Congress goes to work on energy legislation, it's best to lower your expectations.
Several recent attempts by lawmakers have failed to develop sensible, forward-looking energy policy. And for everyone tiring of $2.20-per-gallon gasoline, be forewarned that a possible compromise by House-Senate negotiators on their markedly different energy bills wouldn't lower prices at the pump this summer.
The Senate's energy bill, approved Tuesday, is the better vehicle for starting the nation on a responsible course of investing in renewable fuels, reducing dependence on foreign oil and developing new technologies. But it can and must be improved if it's to become law. House-Senate negotiators ought to ditch several costly provisions. And, although unlikely, they ought to add others that weren't included in either bill.
For example, the House bill contains $8 billion in tax breaks to the oil and gas industries, which are reaping huge profits and don't need government subsidies to search for new deposits. Those giveaways should be scaled back drastically to lower the cost to taxpayers.
Perhaps the biggest roadblock to a bill reaching President Bush's desk is the quarrel over methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), a gasoline additive. The House energy bill again contains protection from lawsuits for manufacturers of MTBE, which has polluted groundwater in communities nationwide. This liability shield is the work of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R., Texas), who insists annually on this poisonous provision.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/12049824.htm
The Chicago Tribune
Abducted imam aided CIA ally
Last month, Italian authorities charged 13 CIA operatives with kidnapping an Islamic cleric known as Abu Omar. Now former Albanian intelligence officials reveal that the imam was once an informant valued by the CIA.
By John Crewdson and Tom Hundley, Tribune correspondents. John Crewdson reported from Rome and Washington, and Tom Hundley reported from Milan and Tirana. Altin Raxhimi also contributed from Tirana
Published July 3, 2005
MILAN, Italy -- Among the multiple mysteries swirling around the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr in Italy, one stands out as by far the most perplexing.
Why would the U.S. government go to elaborate lengths to seize a 39-year-old Egyptian who, according to former Albanian intelligence officials, was once the CIA's most productive source of information within the tightly knit group of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0507030272jul03,1,7425992.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Saudi Forces Kill Top al-Qaida Militant
By ABDULLAH AL-SHIHRI
Associated Press Writer
Published July 3, 2005, 9:38 PM CDT
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- In a swift and telling victory, Saudi anti-terror forces killed al-Qaida's top leader in the key U.S. ally in a gunbattle Sunday, but experts warn the kingdom still faces a surge in attacks despite its two-year crackdown on militants.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-saudi-clashes,1,5673348.story?coll=chi-news-hed
THE GREAT UNWED
THE FASTEST-GROWING DEMOGRAPHIC IN THE U.S. LIVES ALONE-AND SEEMS TO LIKE IT THAT WAY
By Michael Austin. Chicago writer Michael Austin would love to meet a woman who is smart, funny and at least vaguely interested in the fine arts. But not necessarily right now
Published July 3, 2005
If you had told me in 1975 that in the year 2005 I would be unmarried with no children, I would have laughed until my baseball mitt fell off my hand. I remember being disappointed back then knowing I would have to wait practically a lifetime for my golden birthday, the day when my age matched the date of my birth, on the 28th of December. I was envious of the kids who got to celebrate theirs at age 9 or 12 or, my goodness, 16. But at least my wife and kids would be there to celebrate mine, I told myself, and how many 8-year-olds could say that? Having a family of my own to help me celebrate my golden birthday seemed like a fair trade-off for being born near the end of the month. I even pictured us huddled around my cake with those glorious, golden candles burning.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-0507030421jul03,1,7525018.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Going by media, some women matter more
Published July 4, 2005
With all due respect, if I have to see another report from Aruba on some incremental development in the Natalee Holloway story, I think I'll scream. No, I'm certain I'll scream.
If we took all of our cues from the media, we'd be forced to conclude that the only people who come up missing in this country are young girls and women who are white. Who are middle- to upper-middle-class. Who are cute as a button.
In recent weeks we've seen exhaustive news coverage of runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks, who disappeared just before her wedding day but surfaced a few days later expressing regret and blaming cold feet, and of 18-year-old Holloway of Alabama, who disappeared in Aruba during a chaperoned trip in May and remains missing.
In recent years there has been seemingly unyielding coverage in general of white females in dire straits: Chandra Levy, Laci Peterson, JonBenet Ramsey and Elizabeth Smart. (No need to add more than names because I'm confident you know their stories.)
I have nothing against very attractive middle- to upper-middle-class white girls and women. But contrary to what we see in the news, they're not the only people who drop out of sight.
The FBI has more than 100,000 active files on missing adults and children. Slightly more women than men make up the rolls. But you wouldn't know that by looking at the media.
African-Americans, Asians and Native Americans account for about 37 percent of the missing. (It's not clear how Hispanics add to that percentage because they're counted with whites.) But the media don't depict an accurate race picture either.
It's true that whenever a wealthy young white woman vanishes, it's a harrowing experience that deeply affects all those involved. But that also has to be the case, one would think, when a man comes up missing, an older person or even a not-so-attractive white woman.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0507040162jul04,1,2419015.column?coll=chi-news-hed
Haaretz
Hamas rejects invitation to join Abbas government
By The Associated Press
Hamas on Monday rejected an invitation by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to join his government, a Hamas official said.
"Tonight the Hamas leadership made a decision following deep consultations within the movement institutions, and the decision was not to participate in the proposed government," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told The Associated Press.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595760.html
Injunction allows trying over illegal W. Bank posts
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
GOC Central Command Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh last Thursday signed an unprecedented injunction that permits trying settlers who attempt to mobilize caravans in a bid to illegally build outposts in the West Bank, Haaretz learned on Monday.
Under the injunction, settlers who erect outposts in areas declared by the Israel Defense Forces as restricted will be put on trial in a civil court.
The move comes in the wake of the Sasson Report on illegal settlements which emphasized the difficulty in trying Israelis over offenses committed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip which are not included in the law books.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595730.html
IDF admits there was no need to handcuff two journalists
By Amos Harel and Haaretz Staff
The arrest and handcuffing of two journalists covering the evacuation of the Maoz Yam Hotel near Neveh Dekalim in the Gaza Strip last week was unnecessary, the Israel Defense Forces acknowledged in a preliminary investigation made public Monday evening.
Commander of the IDF's Gaza Division, Brigadier General Aviv Kochavi carried out the investigation and presented its findings to GOC Southern Command Dan Harel. In the findings, the IDF expresses regret over the incident.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595734.html
2 former U.S. envoys concerned about Gaza withdrawal aftermath
By The Associated Press
Gaza could fall under control of Hamas after Israel's withdrawal this summer unless the Israeli and Palestinian governments begin serious coordination, two former U.S. Middle East envoys warned on Monday.
Dennis Ross, the former chief Middle East negotiator, and Martin Indyk, U.S. ambassador to Israel under the Clinton administration, told a conference in Jerusalem that the problems are urgent and no solution is in sight.
They said the Palestinian Authority is dysfunctional, the international
co
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595756.html
Egypt, Israel close to Philadelphi deal; AG says no need for MKs' approval
By Aluf Benn
Israel and Egypt are on the verge of concluding an agreement that will see Egyptian border guards deployed opposite the Philadelphi route in Rafah. Following a meeting yesterday between the head of the Defense Ministry's political-security division, Amos Gilad, and Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Israeli officials said that the agreement would be signed "very shortly."
The main sticking point that remains to be resolved pertains to Israel's demand that Egypt assume responsibility for preventing arms smuggling along the Philadelphi route after the Israel Defense Forces leaves the area.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595284.html
Hezbollah infiltrators planned to kidnap soldiers
By Amos Harel
The infiltration of a Hezbollah cell into the Har Dov region last week was part of a plan to abduct soldiers, according to Israel Defense Forces officials. Corporal Uzi Peretz was killed in the incident.
"In all likelihood, we prevented the possibility of the abduction of soldiers," the head of the IDF's Northern Command, Major General Benny Ganz, said yesterday. "The cell's objective was to undermine the stability on the northern border and escalate the situation."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595274.html
The coffee is moral, the chocolate is green
By Tamara Traubmann
"Do you see this cup of coffee?" asked Krishnamurty Pushnapath, lifting the cup in his hand. "You are drinking poverty." Pushnapath was talking about coffee, which has become one of the most exploitative industries in world, at an improvised cafe at the recent Activism Festival in Ramle. There, all the coffee that was served was a different kind, coffee that was produced in fair trade.
Pushnapath, who calls himself Push for short, is the top campaigner for Oxfam on trade issues, and he explains the Make Trade Fair drive of the British-based charitable organization, which is part of a worldwide movement to promote fair trade and put an end to poverty. About three weeks ago he came to Israel for the inauguration of the fair trade campaign of the local branch of Oxfam.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595315.html
Basketball / Blatt spurns fast-track kosher coach play by IBA
By Arie Livnat
Israel's first training session ahead of next month's European Championship qualifying last chance tournament was replaced with a fitness workout yesterday, as the team was left without a coach. No solution was found to allow David Blatt to rescind his resignation.
Blatt quit the post Friday after Israel Basketball Association chairman Yermi Olmert said he would not be allowed to coach the squad until he had completed a coaching certificate.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595290.html
The New York Times
For the First Time a Spacecraft Impacts With Comet
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 4, 2005
Filed at 5:43 a.m. ET
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- A space probe hit its comet target late Sunday in a NASA-directed, Hollywood-style mission that scientists hope will reveal clues to how the solar system formed. It marked the first time a spacecraft touched the surface of a comet, igniting a dazzling Independence Day weekend fireworks display in space.
The successful strike 83 million miles away from Earth occurred just before 11 p.m. PDT, according to mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which is managing the $333 million mission.
Scientists at mission control erupted in applause and gave each other hugs as news of the impact spread.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Comet-Buster.html?hp
A Frantic Finale for Cities Vying for 2012 Games
Ed Wray/Associated Press
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain is in Singapore as part of London's bid to become the host city for the 2012 Olympic Games.
By LYNN ZINSER
Published: July 4, 2005
SINGAPORE, Monday, July 4 - International Olympic Committee members warily stepped out of elevators, looking both ways for solicitous representatives from the cities bidding to be host for the 2012 Olympics who might be lurking in the lobby.
Altaf Hussein/Reuters
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, with Ian Thorpe of Australia, a five-time gold medalist in swimming.
Soldiers who look barely old enough to drive were pacing outside the doors, toting machine guns and appearing impervious to the sweltering heat. The mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, huddled with advisers in the lobby bar, chain smoking.
The entire scene paused as a huge security detail ushered Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain through the doors and into the elevator, a burst of camera flashes lighting his way.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/sports/othersports/04olympics.html?hp&ex=1120536000&en=8f4187a5e73386f3&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Melding Gravity and Guilt at Live 8
By JON PARELES
Published: July 4, 2005
LONDON, July 3 - The symmetry was clear between the Group of 8 summit meeting, which begins in Scotland on Wednesday, and Saturday's Live 8 concerts, which were staged to pressure the G-8 leaders on policies affecting Africa. The concerts took place in the eight major industrial countries represented by the group (along with a concert belatedly added in South Africa). And like the G-8 meeting, they hinged on the privileged addressing the problems of the impoverished.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/arts/music/04eigh.html?hp&ex=1120536000&en=63013081a80acca7&ei=5094&partner=homepage
With Congress's Blessing, a Border Fence May Finally Push Through to the Sea
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
The Fence Goat Canyon, just west of Smuggler's Gulch, is also part of the proposal for finishing the fence along the Mexican border. Here, the fence ends just before the large hill.
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: July 4, 2005
IMPERIAL BEACH, Calif., June 29 - The Border Patrol truck lurches along a rutted road paralleling the Mexican border and comes to a stop on a mesa above Smuggler's Gulch, a 300-foot-deep gully that has been a prime route for bandits, border jumpers and raw sewage from Tijuana to Southern California for more than 150 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/national/04fence.html?8hpib
Car's Trending Smaller. AKA: 'Where did the big three lose it?'
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/07/02/automobiles/03auto.graphic.html
continued . . .
"Okeydoke"
History
1804, Nathaniel Hawthorne, novelist
1807, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian nationalist
1826, Stephen Foster, songwriter
1885, Louis B. Mayer, film executive
1872, Calvin Coolidge, U.S. president
1927, Neil Simon, playwright
1776, The American Continental Congress votes to approve the Declaration of Independence, in which the American colonies proclaim their separation from Britain.
1802, the United States Military Academy officially opened at West Point, N.Y.
1845, Writer Henry David Thoreau moves to a small hut by Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, where he lives alone for two years, writing a journal that is published as Walden in 1854.
1910, In Reno, Nevada, Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion, knocks out Jim Jefferies, who had retired in 1905 rather than face him. Afterwards, films of the fight are banned in many U.S. cities.
1917, during a ceremony in Paris honoring the French hero of the American Revolution, U.S. Lt. Col. Charles E. Stanton declared, "Lafayette, we are here!"
1939, baseball's "Iron Horse," Lou Gehrig, said farewell to his fans at New York's Yankee Stadium.
1954: Housewives celebrate end of rationing
Fourteen years of food rationing in Britain ended at midnight when restrictions on the sale and purchase of meat and bacon were lifted.
Members of the London Housewives' Association held a special ceremony in London's Trafalgar Square to mark Derationing Day.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_3818000/3818563.stm
1968: Alec Rose sails home
Yachtsman Alec Rose received a hero's welcome as he sailed into Portsmouth after his 354-day round-the-world trip.
The 59-year-old was escorted into Portsmouth harbour by 400 motor-boats, yachts, catamarans and canoes blowing sirens and whistles.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_2744000/2744481.stm
1976, A midnight Israeli commando raid at Entebbe airport in Uganda, planned by future prime minister Ehud Barak, frees more than 100 hostages from an airliner hijacked by pro-Palestinian guerrillas.
Israeli commandos have rescued 100 hostages, mostly Israelis or Jews, held by pro-Palestinian hijackers at Entebbe airport in Uganda.
At about 0100 local time (2200GMT), Ugandan soldiers and the hijackers were taken completely by surprise when three Hercules transport planes landed after a 2,500-mile trip from Israel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_2786000/2786967.stm
1977: Manchester United sack manager
Manchester United manager Tommy Docherty has been sensationally sacked by the club's directors.
A statement from the football club's board found him in breach of his contract following a meeting today.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_2492000/2492743.stm
1985: Teenage genius gets a first
Child prodigy Ruth Lawrence has achieved a starred first in Mathematics at Oxford University.
The 13-year-old is the youngest British person ever to earn a first-class degree and the youngest known graduate of Oxford University.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_2492000/2492853.stm
Do you get the feeling NASA has a 'thing' about the Fourth of July? Do these scientists ever see a fireworks display?
1997, After traveling for seven months, NASA's Pathfinder spacecraft finally touched down on Mars, inaugurating a new era in the search for life on the Red Planet.
NASA's Mars Exploration page provides information about Mars, including mission data, background, videos, and other resources.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Flush with success, city readies for round two
By Tina Moore
Inquirer Staff Writer
The city was still recovering from a slight Live 8 hangover yesterday as it declared triumph and prepared for another day of partying on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway today.
"We're finished with one event, and we're starting up another," Christopher Palmer, director of operations for the Fairmount Park Commission, said while assessing minor damage in front of the Art Museum.
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/special_packages/live8/12049817.htm
Fresh off London Live 8 show, Elton John eager for Phila. gig
By Joel Bewley
Inquirer Staff Writer
Sir Elton John, fresh from his Live 8 appearance in London two days ago, has plenty of energy left to help Philadelphia celebrate Independence Day.
"We have a wonderful artist lineup, and I cannot wait to get on that stage," John said yesterday through Simon Prytherch, a spokesman for the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12050927.htm
Part concert, part block party
By Larry Eichel
Inquirer Staff Writer
They came, hundreds of thousands of them, to rock to the Black Eyed Peas and Jay-Z, to hear about poverty in Africa, and to play their part in a potentially historic day.
Philadelphia's portion of the worldwide Live 8 event was part concert at the Art Museum, part block party on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and a resounding success in the end.
Despite the huge potential for problems in a mass event put together on barely 30-days notice, few difficulties surfaced yesterday as the seven-hour musical/political extravaganza played itself out.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/12045820.htm
Get ready for war of the words over court
By Dick Polman
Inquirer Political Analyst
A lit match has been tossed into the combustible world of Washington politics.
Partisans on the left and right have long been spoiling for a fight over the future of the U.S. Supreme Court, and now passions have finally been ignited. The retirement of Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor opens a seat for the first time in 11 years, and virtually guarantees an ideological bloodbath.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12042636.htm
Concert provides a victory for the city
By Joseph A. Slobodzian and Christine Schiavo
Inquirer Staff Writers
Call it experience, call it professionalism, call it luck. Maybe it was all of the above.
The city said it wanted to throw a party for a million people. Many if not most showed up, partied and had a good time, and managed to show the world Philadelphia's best - albeit sunburned and sweaty - face.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12045793.htm
A giant party, with a cause
More than a half-million showed up.
By Natalie Pompilio
Inquirer Staff Writer
They surged toward the stage at 5:30 a.m. in a rush comparable to the running of the bulls in Spain, the Filene's Basement bridal gown sale, an Old West stampede:
Thousands of music fans, desperate to get as close as possible to Destiny's Child, Stevie Wonder and the Dave Matthews Band.
And most of them stayed there - many on their feet, some pressed against the metal barricades - all day.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12045821.htm
Web soars, MTV crashes in coverage of concerts
By Beth Gillin
Inquirer Staff Writer
If Live Aid helped launch MTV as a media powerhouse two decades ago, Live 8 not only dethroned the music channel yesterday but made it seem quaintly old-fashioned.
The Internet left cable in the dust. To put it bluntly, MTV sank and AOL soared.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12045852.htm
Sandra Day O'Connor
Editorial Justice served
If President Bush wants to avoid a partisan meltdown of the federal government, he should nominate to the Supreme Court someone very much like Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired Friday.
In 24 years on the high court, O'Connor has been guided by the law and a rigorous search for constitutional balance, rather than by political ideology. She is a conservative, but has not served reflexively the right side of the partisan divide. Her independence as the court's swing vote often antagonized partisan conservatives and showed her value to the nation.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12042630.htm
Bush given warning from the right
Conservative groups say Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales would be the wrong Supreme Court choice.
By Todd S. Purdum and David D. Kirkpatrick
New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON - Conservative groups confronted President Bush with a groundswell of opposition this weekend against nominating his attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, to the Supreme Court, warning that doing so would splinter conservative support.
At least one prominent Latino evangelical group urged Bush to name another Hispanic candidate, Emilio M. Garza, a federal appeals judge from Texas.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12045847.htm
The appeals court judge is a contender.
N.J. native holds conservatives' high court hopes
By Emilie Lounsberry
Inquirer Staff Writer
Conservative. Intelligent. And personable enough to have a gourmet coffee named after him.
That is the reputation of Samuel A. Alito Jr., a judge on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit who is on several short lists of possible nominees to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the nation's highest court.
If President Bush nominates the Trenton-born judge to the U.S. Supreme Court, he will be selecting someone often compared to another conservative jurist from Trenton: Justice Antonin Scalia.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12042659.htm
Detainees are defying U.S. troops at Guantanamo, documents show
Military probes and accounts of alleged abuse and retaliation are detailed in the 278 pages.
By Ben Fox
Associated Press
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The prisoners banged on their cells to protest the heat in the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They doused guards with whatever liquid was handy - including spit and urine. Sometimes, they struck their jailers.
The U.S. military police at times retaliated with force - punches, pepper spray, and a splash of cleaning fluid in the face, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press that detail military investigations and eyewitness accounts of alleged abuse.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12042641.htm
FREUD NEVER HAD A FEMALE ORGASM. HE WAS CUTTING EDGE. YOU HAVE TO FORGIVE HIM. "Clit? What? Oh, Clitoris." Freud never did autopsies on cadavers he was completely modeling from the issue of personality. He wasn't as progressive as Masters and Johnson who counted every drop of sweat. Oh, sorry, perspiration.
From Freud to Lloyd, all the talk about female orgasm
By Faye Flam
Inquirer Staff Writer
Lest we get too caught up in this year's 100th anniversary of Einstein's special relativity theory, it should be noted that 2005 also marks the centennial of Sigmund Freud's theory of vaginal orgasm.
Freud's idea didn't cause a revolution in our understanding of the cosmos, but it did set off a debate that rages to this day. Now, a new genetics study and a book on the evolution of female orgasm may help bring a new understanding of this complicated reflex.
Freud proposed that female pleasure and orgasm should center on the reproductive tract. He was aware that many women experienced orgasm through a small but ultrasensitive organ known as the clitoris but dealt with this by declaring such orgasms "infantile." Any woman who didn't transfer her center of sensitivity to the vagina he labeled as frigid.
It was the idea that launched a thousand fake orgasms.
Sex research has shown that about 95 percent of men nearly always have orgasm from intercourse while only about 25 percent to 30 percent of women do. Another 30-some-odd percent of women never have orgasm from intercourse, and a middle 30 percent to 40 percent report having them sometimes.
In "The Case of the Female Orgasm - Bias in the Science of Evolution," philosopher of science Elizabeth Lloyd argues that this dizzying variety occurs because the female orgasm didn't evolve for a specific function. Instead, she said, it probably rode along as a byproduct of male orgasm, the way male nipples appeared as a byproduct of female ones.
The byproduct idea was first proposed in 1979 by biologist Donald Symons. Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould extolled the idea but many other scientists dismissed it. A more popular theory holds that female orgasm evolved to increase fertility, the resulting muscle contractions helping suction sperm upward.
But Lloyd points out that contractions can occur without orgasm and, unfair as it may seem, a woman can get in trouble just as easily from disappointing sex as from the fireworks kind. Nor does orgasm seem to play the pivotal role in motivating women to have sex. Many factors beyond the wish for an orgasm can fuel desire.
Lloyd notes that female orgasm can happen in animals, where it also appears dissociated from reproduction. In a primate called the stump-tail macaque, scientists found only a few females displayed signs of orgasm when they mated with males, but many more females could readily bring it on by rubbing the requisite parts against the backs of other females.
By mid-century, Alfred Kinsey's systematic studies redirected the center of female orgasm and sensitivity away from the vagina and back to the clitoris, which he found needs a certain amount of sustained attention. For some women that happened through intercourse alone and for others it did not.
Vaginal orgasm made a come-back with the discovery of the G-spot, which is located in the interior region and originates from the same bit of tissue that develops into a prostate gland in men. Scientists are still figuring out how common such orgasms are and whether they differ from the clitoral variety. But the latest research suggests not all women have enough of a G-spot to notice its existence, said Lloyd.
In early June of this year, a new study from St. Thomas Hospital in London echoed the wide variation among women in their orgasmic tendencies and traced that not to neurosis, as Freud proposed, but to genetics.
In other words, wherever you get your orgasms, there's no right or wrong way to be a woman any more than there's a right or wrong hair or eye color. It would be nice if all women landed on this planet with the same set of equipment, however complicated, but apparently we all get a little different configuration and wiring and there's no instruction manual for this stuff.
After all his theorizing, Freud eventually called female sexuality "the dark continent," implying he didn't understand us after all. Did Mrs. Freud finally admit to faking it?
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/12049789.htm
Genius at work
The magic we call music
Writer John Timpane and artist Tony Auth, both of The Inquirer's Editorial Board, were present for rehearsals and performances of a pair of premieres by the Philadelphia Orchestra earlier this season. With the musicians soon to leave for an Asian tour, here are their impressions.
It was a Thursday night at the Kimmel Center. The maestro raised his baton - and the Philadelphia Orchestra disappeared.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/special_packages/sunday_review/11648276.htm
Editorial Energy Bill
Needed: Some visionary additives
When Congress goes to work on energy legislation, it's best to lower your expectations.
Several recent attempts by lawmakers have failed to develop sensible, forward-looking energy policy. And for everyone tiring of $2.20-per-gallon gasoline, be forewarned that a possible compromise by House-Senate negotiators on their markedly different energy bills wouldn't lower prices at the pump this summer.
The Senate's energy bill, approved Tuesday, is the better vehicle for starting the nation on a responsible course of investing in renewable fuels, reducing dependence on foreign oil and developing new technologies. But it can and must be improved if it's to become law. House-Senate negotiators ought to ditch several costly provisions. And, although unlikely, they ought to add others that weren't included in either bill.
For example, the House bill contains $8 billion in tax breaks to the oil and gas industries, which are reaping huge profits and don't need government subsidies to search for new deposits. Those giveaways should be scaled back drastically to lower the cost to taxpayers.
Perhaps the biggest roadblock to a bill reaching President Bush's desk is the quarrel over methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), a gasoline additive. The House energy bill again contains protection from lawsuits for manufacturers of MTBE, which has polluted groundwater in communities nationwide. This liability shield is the work of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R., Texas), who insists annually on this poisonous provision.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/12049824.htm
The Chicago Tribune
Abducted imam aided CIA ally
Last month, Italian authorities charged 13 CIA operatives with kidnapping an Islamic cleric known as Abu Omar. Now former Albanian intelligence officials reveal that the imam was once an informant valued by the CIA.
By John Crewdson and Tom Hundley, Tribune correspondents. John Crewdson reported from Rome and Washington, and Tom Hundley reported from Milan and Tirana. Altin Raxhimi also contributed from Tirana
Published July 3, 2005
MILAN, Italy -- Among the multiple mysteries swirling around the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr in Italy, one stands out as by far the most perplexing.
Why would the U.S. government go to elaborate lengths to seize a 39-year-old Egyptian who, according to former Albanian intelligence officials, was once the CIA's most productive source of information within the tightly knit group of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0507030272jul03,1,7425992.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Saudi Forces Kill Top al-Qaida Militant
By ABDULLAH AL-SHIHRI
Associated Press Writer
Published July 3, 2005, 9:38 PM CDT
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- In a swift and telling victory, Saudi anti-terror forces killed al-Qaida's top leader in the key U.S. ally in a gunbattle Sunday, but experts warn the kingdom still faces a surge in attacks despite its two-year crackdown on militants.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-saudi-clashes,1,5673348.story?coll=chi-news-hed
THE GREAT UNWED
THE FASTEST-GROWING DEMOGRAPHIC IN THE U.S. LIVES ALONE-AND SEEMS TO LIKE IT THAT WAY
By Michael Austin. Chicago writer Michael Austin would love to meet a woman who is smart, funny and at least vaguely interested in the fine arts. But not necessarily right now
Published July 3, 2005
If you had told me in 1975 that in the year 2005 I would be unmarried with no children, I would have laughed until my baseball mitt fell off my hand. I remember being disappointed back then knowing I would have to wait practically a lifetime for my golden birthday, the day when my age matched the date of my birth, on the 28th of December. I was envious of the kids who got to celebrate theirs at age 9 or 12 or, my goodness, 16. But at least my wife and kids would be there to celebrate mine, I told myself, and how many 8-year-olds could say that? Having a family of my own to help me celebrate my golden birthday seemed like a fair trade-off for being born near the end of the month. I even pictured us huddled around my cake with those glorious, golden candles burning.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-0507030421jul03,1,7525018.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Going by media, some women matter more
Published July 4, 2005
With all due respect, if I have to see another report from Aruba on some incremental development in the Natalee Holloway story, I think I'll scream. No, I'm certain I'll scream.
If we took all of our cues from the media, we'd be forced to conclude that the only people who come up missing in this country are young girls and women who are white. Who are middle- to upper-middle-class. Who are cute as a button.
In recent weeks we've seen exhaustive news coverage of runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks, who disappeared just before her wedding day but surfaced a few days later expressing regret and blaming cold feet, and of 18-year-old Holloway of Alabama, who disappeared in Aruba during a chaperoned trip in May and remains missing.
In recent years there has been seemingly unyielding coverage in general of white females in dire straits: Chandra Levy, Laci Peterson, JonBenet Ramsey and Elizabeth Smart. (No need to add more than names because I'm confident you know their stories.)
I have nothing against very attractive middle- to upper-middle-class white girls and women. But contrary to what we see in the news, they're not the only people who drop out of sight.
The FBI has more than 100,000 active files on missing adults and children. Slightly more women than men make up the rolls. But you wouldn't know that by looking at the media.
African-Americans, Asians and Native Americans account for about 37 percent of the missing. (It's not clear how Hispanics add to that percentage because they're counted with whites.) But the media don't depict an accurate race picture either.
It's true that whenever a wealthy young white woman vanishes, it's a harrowing experience that deeply affects all those involved. But that also has to be the case, one would think, when a man comes up missing, an older person or even a not-so-attractive white woman.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0507040162jul04,1,2419015.column?coll=chi-news-hed
Haaretz
Hamas rejects invitation to join Abbas government
By The Associated Press
Hamas on Monday rejected an invitation by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to join his government, a Hamas official said.
"Tonight the Hamas leadership made a decision following deep consultations within the movement institutions, and the decision was not to participate in the proposed government," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told The Associated Press.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595760.html
Injunction allows trying over illegal W. Bank posts
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
GOC Central Command Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh last Thursday signed an unprecedented injunction that permits trying settlers who attempt to mobilize caravans in a bid to illegally build outposts in the West Bank, Haaretz learned on Monday.
Under the injunction, settlers who erect outposts in areas declared by the Israel Defense Forces as restricted will be put on trial in a civil court.
The move comes in the wake of the Sasson Report on illegal settlements which emphasized the difficulty in trying Israelis over offenses committed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip which are not included in the law books.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595730.html
IDF admits there was no need to handcuff two journalists
By Amos Harel and Haaretz Staff
The arrest and handcuffing of two journalists covering the evacuation of the Maoz Yam Hotel near Neveh Dekalim in the Gaza Strip last week was unnecessary, the Israel Defense Forces acknowledged in a preliminary investigation made public Monday evening.
Commander of the IDF's Gaza Division, Brigadier General Aviv Kochavi carried out the investigation and presented its findings to GOC Southern Command Dan Harel. In the findings, the IDF expresses regret over the incident.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595734.html
2 former U.S. envoys concerned about Gaza withdrawal aftermath
By The Associated Press
Gaza could fall under control of Hamas after Israel's withdrawal this summer unless the Israeli and Palestinian governments begin serious coordination, two former U.S. Middle East envoys warned on Monday.
Dennis Ross, the former chief Middle East negotiator, and Martin Indyk, U.S. ambassador to Israel under the Clinton administration, told a conference in Jerusalem that the problems are urgent and no solution is in sight.
They said the Palestinian Authority is dysfunctional, the international
co
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595756.html
Egypt, Israel close to Philadelphi deal; AG says no need for MKs' approval
By Aluf Benn
Israel and Egypt are on the verge of concluding an agreement that will see Egyptian border guards deployed opposite the Philadelphi route in Rafah. Following a meeting yesterday between the head of the Defense Ministry's political-security division, Amos Gilad, and Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Israeli officials said that the agreement would be signed "very shortly."
The main sticking point that remains to be resolved pertains to Israel's demand that Egypt assume responsibility for preventing arms smuggling along the Philadelphi route after the Israel Defense Forces leaves the area.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595284.html
Hezbollah infiltrators planned to kidnap soldiers
By Amos Harel
The infiltration of a Hezbollah cell into the Har Dov region last week was part of a plan to abduct soldiers, according to Israel Defense Forces officials. Corporal Uzi Peretz was killed in the incident.
"In all likelihood, we prevented the possibility of the abduction of soldiers," the head of the IDF's Northern Command, Major General Benny Ganz, said yesterday. "The cell's objective was to undermine the stability on the northern border and escalate the situation."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595274.html
The coffee is moral, the chocolate is green
By Tamara Traubmann
"Do you see this cup of coffee?" asked Krishnamurty Pushnapath, lifting the cup in his hand. "You are drinking poverty." Pushnapath was talking about coffee, which has become one of the most exploitative industries in world, at an improvised cafe at the recent Activism Festival in Ramle. There, all the coffee that was served was a different kind, coffee that was produced in fair trade.
Pushnapath, who calls himself Push for short, is the top campaigner for Oxfam on trade issues, and he explains the Make Trade Fair drive of the British-based charitable organization, which is part of a worldwide movement to promote fair trade and put an end to poverty. About three weeks ago he came to Israel for the inauguration of the fair trade campaign of the local branch of Oxfam.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595315.html
Basketball / Blatt spurns fast-track kosher coach play by IBA
By Arie Livnat
Israel's first training session ahead of next month's European Championship qualifying last chance tournament was replaced with a fitness workout yesterday, as the team was left without a coach. No solution was found to allow David Blatt to rescind his resignation.
Blatt quit the post Friday after Israel Basketball Association chairman Yermi Olmert said he would not be allowed to coach the squad until he had completed a coaching certificate.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/595290.html
The New York Times
For the First Time a Spacecraft Impacts With Comet
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 4, 2005
Filed at 5:43 a.m. ET
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- A space probe hit its comet target late Sunday in a NASA-directed, Hollywood-style mission that scientists hope will reveal clues to how the solar system formed. It marked the first time a spacecraft touched the surface of a comet, igniting a dazzling Independence Day weekend fireworks display in space.
The successful strike 83 million miles away from Earth occurred just before 11 p.m. PDT, according to mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which is managing the $333 million mission.
Scientists at mission control erupted in applause and gave each other hugs as news of the impact spread.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Comet-Buster.html?hp
A Frantic Finale for Cities Vying for 2012 Games
Ed Wray/Associated Press
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain is in Singapore as part of London's bid to become the host city for the 2012 Olympic Games.
By LYNN ZINSER
Published: July 4, 2005
SINGAPORE, Monday, July 4 - International Olympic Committee members warily stepped out of elevators, looking both ways for solicitous representatives from the cities bidding to be host for the 2012 Olympics who might be lurking in the lobby.
Altaf Hussein/Reuters
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, with Ian Thorpe of Australia, a five-time gold medalist in swimming.
Soldiers who look barely old enough to drive were pacing outside the doors, toting machine guns and appearing impervious to the sweltering heat. The mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, huddled with advisers in the lobby bar, chain smoking.
The entire scene paused as a huge security detail ushered Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain through the doors and into the elevator, a burst of camera flashes lighting his way.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/sports/othersports/04olympics.html?hp&ex=1120536000&en=8f4187a5e73386f3&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Melding Gravity and Guilt at Live 8
By JON PARELES
Published: July 4, 2005
LONDON, July 3 - The symmetry was clear between the Group of 8 summit meeting, which begins in Scotland on Wednesday, and Saturday's Live 8 concerts, which were staged to pressure the G-8 leaders on policies affecting Africa. The concerts took place in the eight major industrial countries represented by the group (along with a concert belatedly added in South Africa). And like the G-8 meeting, they hinged on the privileged addressing the problems of the impoverished.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/arts/music/04eigh.html?hp&ex=1120536000&en=63013081a80acca7&ei=5094&partner=homepage
With Congress's Blessing, a Border Fence May Finally Push Through to the Sea
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
The Fence Goat Canyon, just west of Smuggler's Gulch, is also part of the proposal for finishing the fence along the Mexican border. Here, the fence ends just before the large hill.
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: July 4, 2005
IMPERIAL BEACH, Calif., June 29 - The Border Patrol truck lurches along a rutted road paralleling the Mexican border and comes to a stop on a mesa above Smuggler's Gulch, a 300-foot-deep gully that has been a prime route for bandits, border jumpers and raw sewage from Tijuana to Southern California for more than 150 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/national/04fence.html?8hpib
Car's Trending Smaller. AKA: 'Where did the big three lose it?'
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/07/02/automobiles/03auto.graphic.html
continued . . .
Morning Papers - continued
The Boston Globe
The Declaration of Independence
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
July 4, 2005
WHEN IN the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2005/07/04/the_declaration_of_independence/
For Iraqi family, scars slow to heal
Casualties of war struggling amid poverty, grief
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff July 4, 2005
BAGHDAD -- Benin Hamid, now a coquettish 4-year-old, swings the stuffed yellow duck that has been her constant companion in a short life punctuated by an invasion and two uprisings that forced her and her family to flee their home in Sadr City.
She has never named the duck, and it is not clear how well she remembers her older brother and her two sisters, who were killed with her aunt, on the catastrophic day in April 2003 when a mortar struck the house.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/07/04/for_iraqi_family_scars_slow_to_heal/
Michael Moore Today
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
Happy Birthday
Why the 4th?
Though the Fourth of July is almost iconic to Americans, some claim the date itself is somewhat arbitrary. New Englanders had been fighting Britain since April 1775. The first motion in the Continental Congress for independence was made on June 8. After hard debate, the Congress voted unanimously (12-0), but secretly, for independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain on July 2. The Congress reworked the text of the Declaration until a little after eleven o'clock, July 4th, when twelve colonies voted for adoption and released an unsigned copy to the printers. (New York abstained from both votes.) Philadelphia celebrated the Declaration with public readings and bonfires on July 8. Not until August 2 would a fair printing be signed by the members of the Congress, but even that was kept secret to protect the members from British reprisal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(United_States)
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence
National Archives
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3202
Soles evoke the souls of Americans killed in Iraq
With 1,746 pairs of boots spread across the lawn, "It's hard... not see the people who stood in them."
By Natalie Pompilio / Philadelphia Inquirer
In the undated letter to his family in Texas, Army Chief Warrant Officer Wesley C. Fortenberry wrote that the worst part of being in Iraq was not the heat - which was pretty bad - but the trauma of piloting a helicopter carrying the bodies of Marines from the field.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3203
Arlington Cemetery Undergoes Expansion
By Siobhan McDonough / Associated Press
ARLINGTON, Va. -- An excavator uproots trees. Rakes scrape the ground. A grinder turns limbs into mulch. Deer scramble for cover. For the first time in a decade, expansion is coming to the pre-eminent military burial ground in the United States. It means a major upheaval.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3204
U.S. Confirms Some Afghan Civilian Deaths
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.S. airstrike last week killed 17 Afghan villagers, including women and children, a provincial governor said Monday. The U.S. military confirmed some civilians were killed in the attack on what it called a known terrorist compound.
The bombing occurred in Kunar province last Friday, three days after an elite U.S. military team disappeared in the mountainous area.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3206
Michael Moore announces films for Traverse City festival
By John Flesher / Associated Press
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Excited movie buffs queued up Friday to buy tickets for the inaugural Traverse City Film Festival — and to meet its founder, the Oscar-winning director Michael Moore.
"It's a great thing you're doing," Mimi Bruder, the first person in line, told Moore, who stood behind the counter as sales got under way. More than 500 tickets were sold within two hours, organizers said.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3189
Guard unit monitored peace rally
By Cory Golden / Davis Enterprise
A new California National Guard intelligence unit meant to help local law enforcement deal with terrorist threats tracked a recent protest co-sponsored by the Davis chapter of Code Pink: Women for Peace.
Guard officials have said the unit will not violate long-standing rules barring the military from gathering information on American citizens.
According to e-mail messages obtained by the San Jose Mercury News, however, top National Guard officials were involved in tracking the Mother's Day event, held at the Vietnam War memorial on the state Capitol grounds.
Natalie Wormeli of the Davis group helped plan the rally. This morning, she said felt both angered and saddened to learn that the protest was monitored by the Guard.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3199
Washington Post
Devoted to God, but Not the Pledge
Beliefs Drive Man's Opposition to Oath In Virginia Schools
By Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 4, 2005; Page B01
Edward R. Myers used to ride motorcycles and fly his own airplane.
But all that seemed too dangerous after he got married and had children. So the Sterling man took up a new pastime: suing the government.
Edward R. Myers, a Mennonite, says members of the tradition oppose saying oaths to any entity but God. "To me, it's heresy," he says of the pledge. (By Rich Lipski -- The Washington Post)
He has pursued deeply held religious convictions in courtrooms in Loudoun County, Alexandria and North Carolina. He is most passionate about his opposition to reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, which Myers believes unconstitutionally mingles God and government and dilutes his religion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/03/AR2005070300895.html
News 24 dot com
'Promises are made but not kept'
04/07/2005 11:04 - (SA)
Sirte - With the media spotlight firmly on the world's poorest peoples as the G8 summit approaches, the African Union (AU) is calling on the world's richest nations to fulfil their promises of aid to the continent.
"The fact that we still have underdevelopment in Africa shows a lot still remains to be done, both by Africa and by our partners, and African participation in the G8 summit will be the occasion to get this message across", said Rene N'Guettia Kouassi, the AU's director of economic affairs.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_1731518,00.html
US strike: '17 civilians dead'
04/07/2005 10:33 - (SA)
US helicopter crash: 17 missing
Kabul - Seventeen people, including a number of women and children, died when US aircraft bombed a suspected militant hideout in eastern Afghanistan last week, a provincial governor said on Monday.
US forces launched the airstrike on Chichal village in the province of Kunar on Friday during a search for a missing American reconnaissance team.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1731613,00.html
BBC
Live 8 attracts 9.6m UK viewers
Bono and Paul McCartney opened London's Live 8 concert
The Live 8 concerts attracted a peak audience of 9.6 million viewers on BBC One on Saturday evening.
The channel's live coverage of the global concerts won an average audience of 6.6 million.
Rock band Pink Floyd's album sales soared by 1,343% after their comeback appearance at London's Live 8 concert.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4648051.stm
First hydrogen plane tested in US
By Richard Black
BBC environment correspondent
The plane has 50ft (15m) wings (picture courtesy of AeroVironment)
A US company says it has successfully completed test flights of a potentially environment-friendly aircraft powered by liquid hydrogen.
Liquid hydrogen stored on board and oxygen extracted from the air are combined in fuel cells. The electricity generated drives the propellers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4643575.stm
Blair's G8 climate change challenge
New research by Oxford scientists suggests global warming will stir up or "activate" African sand dunes
While researching an item for Newsnight on climate change I've found it's been analogies between the G8 process and Iraq that pop up most often.
One prominent member of Britain's science glitterati even suggested a wild card tactic for Tony Blair, for those final hours of diplomacy at next week's Gleneagles summit: "He should threaten to pull the troops out... it's that serious."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4637615.stm
Emission cuts 'vital' for oceans
Tiny coccolithophorids form vast populations
Marine species are under threat from rising levels of acidity in the oceans, says the UK's Royal Society.
Unless carbon dioxide emissions are cut, there could be irreversible damage to ecosystems, it warns.
It is further evidence of the need to take action at next week's G8 summit, says working group chair, John Raven.
"Failure to do so may mean that there is no place in the oceans of the future for many of the species and ecosystems that we know today," he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4633681.stm
Poverty
Africa is a key theme of this year's G8 summit. This is an overview of some of the economic challenges facing the continent.
Most of Sub-Saharan Africa is in the World Bank's lowest income category of less than $765 Gross National Income (GNI) per person per year. Ethiopia and Burundi are the worst off with just $90 GNI per person.
Even middle income countries like Gabon and Botswana have sizeable sections of the population living in poverty.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/africa/05/africa_economy/html/poverty.stm
Gross National Income per capita 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/africa/05/africa_economy/html/poverty.stm
Two missing US troops 'are dead'
The US launched a major hunt for the missing men
Two of the three US special forces soldiers missing in eastern Afghanistan for almost a week have been found dead, US government sources tell the BBC.
The whereabouts of the other team member remains unclear, while a fourth soldier was found alive on Saturday.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4650295.stm
'Ex-Saddam guards' in Syria clash
Mount Qassioun is a popular scenic spot overlooking Damascus
A Syrian security officer has died in a shootout with an armed group that includes former bodyguards of Iraq's ex-leader Saddam Hussein, reports say.
The clash erupted early in the morning on Mount Qassioun, which overlooks Damascus, the Sana news agency reports.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4648183.stm
Rwanda in court over Congo claims
Rwanda is accused of smuggling weapons into eastern DR Congo
The International Court of Justice in The Hague has begun hearing allegations of human rights atrocities committed by Rwandan troops in DR Congo.
DR Congo accuses its neighbour of armed aggression, mass slaughter, rape, abduction, looting and assassination.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4648599.stm
Rwanda denies DRC plundering
The Democratic Republic of Congo is rich in coltan
By Stefan Armbruster
BBC News Online business reporter
The Rwandan government has denied UN accusations that it is plundering the natural resources of neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
A UN report last year detailed how the Rwandan Government and army, the Ugandan army, and Congolese and Zimbabwean Government officials continued to exploit the DRC's resources.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2775029.stm
The Miami Herald
Fireworks become more high-tech to spark crowds
The high-tech fireworks that will dazzle the sky -- and the spectators -- tonight are a far cry from the old hand-fired displays of years past.
BY DAVID OVALLE
dovalle@herald.com
Fireworks, the legend goes, first appeared in mankind's skies in ancient China, when a cook accidentally mixed sulfur, saltpeter and charcoal.
People found it amusing.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12049656.htm
Older Trainer creates a new image
Monty Trainer, a one-time power broker who owned a chain of restaurants, has worked to overcome his conviction for tax fraud and is trying to recast himself as a philanthropist.
BY NOAKI SCHWARTZ
nschwartz@herald.com
There was a time when Monty Trainer owned a chain of seven restaurants, dazzled city and county officials with his hospitality and wielded so much power from a back table at his Coconut Grove establishment that some renamed Miami City Hall ``Monty's Hall.''
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12049658.htm
Toll or not, the roads aren't free
On this holiday Monday, as we celebrate our independence from the tyranny of taxation without representation, let us take a few moments to dispel one mistaken notion of freedom.
Some fairly smart people -- including a few elected officials who should know better -- continue to perpetuate the widely held, but incorrect, belief that all roads are ''free'' if you don't pay a toll.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
''It's one of those great fallacies,'' said Miami accountant Daryl Sharpton, who chairs the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority. ``There is no such thing as a free road.''
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12049657.htm
They are schooled. Under duress? These prisoners are stated to not cooperate. So, learning is measured how? By who?
U.S. schools prisoners in Guantánamo
A U.S. military pilot program allows terror suspects at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp to learn basic reading and math skills, but some lawmakers in Congress want to shut the program down.
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@herald.com
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- It's 8:30 on a Tuesday night, President Bush is addressing the nation on Iraq and two Afghan prisoners are sitting side by side at a picnic table here -- learning simple math and how to write in their native Pashto.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12050224.htm
Well, let's get over the election hump and we can ask for the money back later. Good job, Brother Jeb !!
FEMA wants money back
FORT MYERS - (AP) -- The Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked thousands of Floridians whose homes were damaged by last summer's four hurricanes to give back more than $27 million in aid overpayments, a newspaper reported.
FEMA earlier this year began mailing letters to residents in efforts to recoup the overpayments from people who received federal aid after Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne hit Florida last August and September.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12049595.htm
Interfax, working for decision makers
Sergei Yastrzhembsky:
Foreign journalists shouldn't advise us on Kaliningrad
1 July.
Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Russian presidential envoy to the European Union, complained on Friday about comments in Polish and Lithuanian media in connection with planned celebrations of the 750th anniversary of Kaliningrad.
"We are concerned about the speculative character of some publications in the mass media by the closest neighbors of the Kaliningrad region and about attempts by the authors of the publications to give us some advice, or even force on Russia, their vision of the format for the celebration of the city's jubilee," Yastrzhembsky told Interfax.
"If things keep going at this rate, soon we'll probably hear from the same sources what Russians should eat and drink, how they should dress and what they should say," he said.
http://www.interfax.com/17/74109/Interview.aspx>
Ukrainian premier determined to "bring order" for stability
June 28. Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has explained her position on a number of pressing problems in Ukraine's current domestic and foreign policies.
In the run-up to parliamentary elections to be held in Ukraine next year, Tymoshenko said she believes it is necessary for the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, Our Ukraine, and the People's Party led by speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn to set up a tripartite coalition.
“I want the people from the Our Ukraine Party, who are currently shaping the opinion of our president, to understand that I am satisfied with what I have and that I do not have high ambitions,” Tymoshenko said.
http://www.interfax.com/17/73006/Interview.aspx
Petro Poroshenko:
Euro-Atlantic Integration for Ukraine Means Accession to NATO
29 June. Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council secretary Petro Poroshenko expressed the Ukrainian leadership's position on several of the most important problems in Ukraine's domestic and foreign policy in an exclusive interview with Interfax.
Poroshenko confirmed that NATO membership is a strategic objective for Ukraine. He said that, back in 2003, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law on national security. "It is written in black and white in the law that Euro-Atlantic integration is the foundation of Ukraine's national security. Euro-Atlantic integration means NATO membership. And that's it," he said.
http://www.interfax.com/17/73403/Interview.aspx
Chechen militants kill head of village administration
GROZNY. July 4 (Interfax) - Several militants killed the a villageadministration chief of Zumsoi in Chechnya on Monday, said the regionalanti-terror headquarters."Several members of illegal armed groups who disguised themselvesby wearing federal military uniforms opened intensive fire at a carcarrying the head of the administration of Zumsoi," a spokesman toldInterfax.[RU EUROPE EEU EMRG VIO]
http://www.interfax.com/3/74390/news.aspx
RIA Novosti
Russia set to chair the G8
MOSCOW (RIA Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov).
The G8 Gleneagles (Scotland) summit that opens Wednesday will have special importance for Moscow: for the first time ever Russia will assume the presidency of this informal group of the world's most advanced nations. Next year it will host another summit that is expected to take place in the suburbs of St. Petersburg.
A mighty nuclear power, rich in manpower and natural resources, Russia still trails far behind the other seven members of the G8 in terms of per capita income. But there is one factor that makes Russia an influential and indispensable member of G8, if the latter's goal is indeed to make the world's economic advance more stable. This is Russia's growing role as a leading supplier of energy resources.
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20050704/40841537.html
Russians say their country should aim for full G8 membership
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - A poll released Monday by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) showed that a majority of Russians favor their country becoming a full member of the G8.
The poll put the percentage of those in favor at 58%, up from 51% earlier this year. Only 14% of respondents were opposed to full membership, while 28% found it difficult to give an answer.
A quarter of respondents said Russia was a full member already. However, 40% did not, while the other 35% could not assess Russia's role in the informal organization.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40840826.html
Putin sends Bush Independence Day telegram
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - President Vladimir Putin sent a telegram to U.S. President George W. Bush with a special message for Independence Day, the Kremlin press service said Monday.
"We should work hard to promote diverse Russian-U.S. cooperation," Putin wrote in his telegram. "The high level of cooperation achieved by our coordinated efforts will allow our countries to counter global threats and challenges, including international terrorism, and expand economic and public contacts."
"I am convinced that our practical efforts will show that cooperation is firmly grounded," he wrote.
Putin added that the joint celebrations of the 60th anniversary of VE Day in Moscow in May "demonstrated a new quality of Russian-U.S. relations based on partnership and mutual trust and the traditions of our joint fight against a common enemy."
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40841106.html
UN needs a peace-building commission - Russian foreign minister
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russia supports the creation of a UN peace-building commission, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday. The commission would help in conflict resolution and promote post-conflict development, Lavrov said after talks with his Irish counterpart, Dermot Ahern, who is also the UN Secretary General's special envoy ahead of the September 2005 summit. Lavrov said that effective conflict and crisis regulation was a key aspect of UN reform.
"The principle of universality should be maintained during discussion of UN reform," Lavrov said, adding that Russia backed Ahern's work as the summit's special envoy.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40840353.html
Iran to take part in Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kazakhstan
TEHRAN, July 4 (RIA Novosti, Nikolai Terekhov) - Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref was traveling to Kazakhstan Monday for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) slated to open in Astana on Tuesday.
"The SCO was established to promote regional cooperation, ensure stability and security, while Iran's membership in the organization meets our interests and the organization's interests," Aref told reporters before boarding his flight. "The issue has been put on the Iranian foreign ministry and government's agenda."
http://en.rian.ru/world/20050704/40841867.html
Sounds like a covert meeting of the Secondary Layer of Nuclear Powers.
Pakistan chasing observer status in Shanghai Cooperation Organization
ISLAMABAD, July 4 (RIA Novosti, Yevgeny Pakhomov) - Pakistan's Prime Minister said Monday that observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) would give Pakistan new opportunities to develop relations with the organization's members. Shaukat Aziz was traveling to the Kazakh capital, Astana, which will host the upcoming SCO summit. Pakistani news agencies said Aziz was going to Astana to secure observer status in the organization. "In Astana, Pakistan intends to put forward a series of proposals designed to encourage regional cooperation," said Aziz. "Pakistan has maintained friendly relations with the SCO countries and hopes the Shanghai forum will promote them further," he said.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20050704/40841616.html
Iran, India and Pakistan to become observers in international organization
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Iran, India and Pakistan will be given observer status at a July 5-6 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an international organization uniting four Eurasian states and China.
"The summit will formalize observer status for Iran, India and Pakistan," Sergei Prikhodko, an aide to the Russian president said.
The SCO member countries are Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Mongolia has observer status.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40837513.html
Moscow hopes Lithuania will take unbiased approach to Russia's Yukos inquiry
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Moscow hopes Lithuania will study the Russian Justice Ministry's inquiry about the Yukos oil major, the Foreign Ministry said Monday.
"We hope Lithuania's Justice Ministry will study the inquiry and will adopt a decision based exclusively on the rule of law," the ministry said in a statement. "This is a purely legal issue."
Russia's Justice Ministry approached the justice ministries of Lithuania and the Netherlands last Wednesday with a request to track down assets of Yukos' affiliates located in the countries and ban transactions with the oil company's 53.7% of shares in Lithuania's Mazeikiu nafta (MN). The requests were made to help Russia's tax authorities have Yukos pay its back taxes.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40842100.html
Deep Impact probe with names of 625,000 people to collide with comet
MOSCOW, July 3 (RIA Novosti) - A space probe with research equipment and a CD carrying names of 625,000 people including 5 RIA Novosti journalists is set to collide with the Tempel-1 comet on July 4.
The worldwide Internet campaign to register people wishing to go down in the space exploration history ended on January 31, 2004. The CD was put inside the probe which was installed on the Deep Impact-1 spacecraft. Deep Impact blasted off in January from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for its six-month 431-million-kilometer journey.
The probe is set to collide with the comet at a relative speed of 40,000kph. According to NASA experts, the probe will make a crater in Tempel-1 and let them study the ice surface of the comet.
As the comet closes in, the probe will transmit images of its target to the Deep Impact spacecraft. NASA's space telescopes Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra will observe the collision, as well.
http://en.rian.ru/science/20050703/40835708.html
Putin, Schroeder and Chirac discuss UN reform, Iraq in Kaliningrad
KALININGRAD, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed a broad range of issues, from UN reform to Iraq, with French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Sunday during a routine visit to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea.
Putin told a news conference after the talks that he hoped for productive cooperation with the Germany and France next year, when Russia holds the rotating presidency over the G8, an organization uniting the world's leading industrialized nations.
Putin said: "Energy security might become a priority on the G8 agenda in this period. I have no doubt that the G8 will borrow from the experience of the Russia-EU dialogue when making the relevant preparations."
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40837951.html
RICE'S takes 'stump speech' international. If it worked for Bush why shouldn't work for Putin?
Terrorist access to WMDs could lead to tragedy - Lavrov, Rice
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned in a newspaper article Monday of a potential catastrophe should weapons of mass destruction fall into the hands of terrorists.
The article, "Russia and the U.S. Against Nuclear Terrorism," warned that, should terrorists gain access to WMDs, it could lead to death and devastation on a scale far larger than the attacks of September 11 and other terrorist attacks combined.
The article appeared in Izvestiya to mark the second anniversary of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) announced on May 31, 2003, which Russia joined last year.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20050704/40840380.html
Russian scientists to join European aerohydrodynamics projects
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI) is set to take part in all European research projects, deputy director Sergei Chernyshev said Monday.
The institute is currently involved in a project to develop a flexible or aeroelastic airplane, he added.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40840414.html
Ukraine threatening European consumers of Russian gas
KIEV, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Naftogaz Ukraine has told Gazprom that reducing supplies of natural gas to Ukraine could lead to a decline in Russian exports to Europe, Novosti-Ukraine agency reported Monday.
The warning came in an official telegram issued by Naftogaz in response to Gazprom's decision to consider 7.8 billion cubic meters of Russian gas lost and later discovered in underground storage in Ukraine as payment for the transit of Russian natural gas to Europe through the country.
Gazprom's decision was communicated by CEO Alexei Miller to Alexei Ivchenko, head of the Naftogaz board of directors and also Ukraine's first deputy fuel and energy minister, last week. Gazprom later notified Ukraine that it would provide up to 1.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas to pay for transit services by yearend.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20050704/40841424.html
Russia pledges to keep high import tariffs to protect carmakers
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's chief negotiator at WTO accession talks said Monday that the country would preserve high duties on imported cars for seven years after joining the World Trade Organization, and after that tariffs would be at least 50% above European levels. Duties on other imported products will be slashed by an average of 25%.
Maxim Medvedkov, the director of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry's trade talks department, was presiding over a three-hour-long seminar-cum-conference in Nizhny Novgorod, a city 400 kilometers from Moscow where GAZ, Russia's leading carmaker, is based.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40841610.html
continued ...
The Declaration of Independence
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
July 4, 2005
WHEN IN the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2005/07/04/the_declaration_of_independence/
For Iraqi family, scars slow to heal
Casualties of war struggling amid poverty, grief
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff July 4, 2005
BAGHDAD -- Benin Hamid, now a coquettish 4-year-old, swings the stuffed yellow duck that has been her constant companion in a short life punctuated by an invasion and two uprisings that forced her and her family to flee their home in Sadr City.
She has never named the duck, and it is not clear how well she remembers her older brother and her two sisters, who were killed with her aunt, on the catastrophic day in April 2003 when a mortar struck the house.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/07/04/for_iraqi_family_scars_slow_to_heal/
Michael Moore Today
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
Happy Birthday
Why the 4th?
Though the Fourth of July is almost iconic to Americans, some claim the date itself is somewhat arbitrary. New Englanders had been fighting Britain since April 1775. The first motion in the Continental Congress for independence was made on June 8. After hard debate, the Congress voted unanimously (12-0), but secretly, for independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain on July 2. The Congress reworked the text of the Declaration until a little after eleven o'clock, July 4th, when twelve colonies voted for adoption and released an unsigned copy to the printers. (New York abstained from both votes.) Philadelphia celebrated the Declaration with public readings and bonfires on July 8. Not until August 2 would a fair printing be signed by the members of the Congress, but even that was kept secret to protect the members from British reprisal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(United_States)
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence
National Archives
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3202
Soles evoke the souls of Americans killed in Iraq
With 1,746 pairs of boots spread across the lawn, "It's hard... not see the people who stood in them."
By Natalie Pompilio / Philadelphia Inquirer
In the undated letter to his family in Texas, Army Chief Warrant Officer Wesley C. Fortenberry wrote that the worst part of being in Iraq was not the heat - which was pretty bad - but the trauma of piloting a helicopter carrying the bodies of Marines from the field.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3203
Arlington Cemetery Undergoes Expansion
By Siobhan McDonough / Associated Press
ARLINGTON, Va. -- An excavator uproots trees. Rakes scrape the ground. A grinder turns limbs into mulch. Deer scramble for cover. For the first time in a decade, expansion is coming to the pre-eminent military burial ground in the United States. It means a major upheaval.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3204
U.S. Confirms Some Afghan Civilian Deaths
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.S. airstrike last week killed 17 Afghan villagers, including women and children, a provincial governor said Monday. The U.S. military confirmed some civilians were killed in the attack on what it called a known terrorist compound.
The bombing occurred in Kunar province last Friday, three days after an elite U.S. military team disappeared in the mountainous area.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3206
Michael Moore announces films for Traverse City festival
By John Flesher / Associated Press
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Excited movie buffs queued up Friday to buy tickets for the inaugural Traverse City Film Festival — and to meet its founder, the Oscar-winning director Michael Moore.
"It's a great thing you're doing," Mimi Bruder, the first person in line, told Moore, who stood behind the counter as sales got under way. More than 500 tickets were sold within two hours, organizers said.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3189
Guard unit monitored peace rally
By Cory Golden / Davis Enterprise
A new California National Guard intelligence unit meant to help local law enforcement deal with terrorist threats tracked a recent protest co-sponsored by the Davis chapter of Code Pink: Women for Peace.
Guard officials have said the unit will not violate long-standing rules barring the military from gathering information on American citizens.
According to e-mail messages obtained by the San Jose Mercury News, however, top National Guard officials were involved in tracking the Mother's Day event, held at the Vietnam War memorial on the state Capitol grounds.
Natalie Wormeli of the Davis group helped plan the rally. This morning, she said felt both angered and saddened to learn that the protest was monitored by the Guard.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3199
Washington Post
Devoted to God, but Not the Pledge
Beliefs Drive Man's Opposition to Oath In Virginia Schools
By Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 4, 2005; Page B01
Edward R. Myers used to ride motorcycles and fly his own airplane.
But all that seemed too dangerous after he got married and had children. So the Sterling man took up a new pastime: suing the government.
Edward R. Myers, a Mennonite, says members of the tradition oppose saying oaths to any entity but God. "To me, it's heresy," he says of the pledge. (By Rich Lipski -- The Washington Post)
He has pursued deeply held religious convictions in courtrooms in Loudoun County, Alexandria and North Carolina. He is most passionate about his opposition to reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, which Myers believes unconstitutionally mingles God and government and dilutes his religion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/03/AR2005070300895.html
News 24 dot com
'Promises are made but not kept'
04/07/2005 11:04 - (SA)
Sirte - With the media spotlight firmly on the world's poorest peoples as the G8 summit approaches, the African Union (AU) is calling on the world's richest nations to fulfil their promises of aid to the continent.
"The fact that we still have underdevelopment in Africa shows a lot still remains to be done, both by Africa and by our partners, and African participation in the G8 summit will be the occasion to get this message across", said Rene N'Guettia Kouassi, the AU's director of economic affairs.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_1731518,00.html
US strike: '17 civilians dead'
04/07/2005 10:33 - (SA)
US helicopter crash: 17 missing
Kabul - Seventeen people, including a number of women and children, died when US aircraft bombed a suspected militant hideout in eastern Afghanistan last week, a provincial governor said on Monday.
US forces launched the airstrike on Chichal village in the province of Kunar on Friday during a search for a missing American reconnaissance team.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1731613,00.html
BBC
Live 8 attracts 9.6m UK viewers
Bono and Paul McCartney opened London's Live 8 concert
The Live 8 concerts attracted a peak audience of 9.6 million viewers on BBC One on Saturday evening.
The channel's live coverage of the global concerts won an average audience of 6.6 million.
Rock band Pink Floyd's album sales soared by 1,343% after their comeback appearance at London's Live 8 concert.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4648051.stm
First hydrogen plane tested in US
By Richard Black
BBC environment correspondent
The plane has 50ft (15m) wings (picture courtesy of AeroVironment)
A US company says it has successfully completed test flights of a potentially environment-friendly aircraft powered by liquid hydrogen.
Liquid hydrogen stored on board and oxygen extracted from the air are combined in fuel cells. The electricity generated drives the propellers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4643575.stm
Blair's G8 climate change challenge
New research by Oxford scientists suggests global warming will stir up or "activate" African sand dunes
While researching an item for Newsnight on climate change I've found it's been analogies between the G8 process and Iraq that pop up most often.
One prominent member of Britain's science glitterati even suggested a wild card tactic for Tony Blair, for those final hours of diplomacy at next week's Gleneagles summit: "He should threaten to pull the troops out... it's that serious."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4637615.stm
Emission cuts 'vital' for oceans
Tiny coccolithophorids form vast populations
Marine species are under threat from rising levels of acidity in the oceans, says the UK's Royal Society.
Unless carbon dioxide emissions are cut, there could be irreversible damage to ecosystems, it warns.
It is further evidence of the need to take action at next week's G8 summit, says working group chair, John Raven.
"Failure to do so may mean that there is no place in the oceans of the future for many of the species and ecosystems that we know today," he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4633681.stm
Poverty
Africa is a key theme of this year's G8 summit. This is an overview of some of the economic challenges facing the continent.
Most of Sub-Saharan Africa is in the World Bank's lowest income category of less than $765 Gross National Income (GNI) per person per year. Ethiopia and Burundi are the worst off with just $90 GNI per person.
Even middle income countries like Gabon and Botswana have sizeable sections of the population living in poverty.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/africa/05/africa_economy/html/poverty.stm
Gross National Income per capita 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/africa/05/africa_economy/html/poverty.stm
Two missing US troops 'are dead'
The US launched a major hunt for the missing men
Two of the three US special forces soldiers missing in eastern Afghanistan for almost a week have been found dead, US government sources tell the BBC.
The whereabouts of the other team member remains unclear, while a fourth soldier was found alive on Saturday.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4650295.stm
'Ex-Saddam guards' in Syria clash
Mount Qassioun is a popular scenic spot overlooking Damascus
A Syrian security officer has died in a shootout with an armed group that includes former bodyguards of Iraq's ex-leader Saddam Hussein, reports say.
The clash erupted early in the morning on Mount Qassioun, which overlooks Damascus, the Sana news agency reports.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4648183.stm
Rwanda in court over Congo claims
Rwanda is accused of smuggling weapons into eastern DR Congo
The International Court of Justice in The Hague has begun hearing allegations of human rights atrocities committed by Rwandan troops in DR Congo.
DR Congo accuses its neighbour of armed aggression, mass slaughter, rape, abduction, looting and assassination.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4648599.stm
Rwanda denies DRC plundering
The Democratic Republic of Congo is rich in coltan
By Stefan Armbruster
BBC News Online business reporter
The Rwandan government has denied UN accusations that it is plundering the natural resources of neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
A UN report last year detailed how the Rwandan Government and army, the Ugandan army, and Congolese and Zimbabwean Government officials continued to exploit the DRC's resources.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2775029.stm
The Miami Herald
Fireworks become more high-tech to spark crowds
The high-tech fireworks that will dazzle the sky -- and the spectators -- tonight are a far cry from the old hand-fired displays of years past.
BY DAVID OVALLE
dovalle@herald.com
Fireworks, the legend goes, first appeared in mankind's skies in ancient China, when a cook accidentally mixed sulfur, saltpeter and charcoal.
People found it amusing.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12049656.htm
Older Trainer creates a new image
Monty Trainer, a one-time power broker who owned a chain of restaurants, has worked to overcome his conviction for tax fraud and is trying to recast himself as a philanthropist.
BY NOAKI SCHWARTZ
nschwartz@herald.com
There was a time when Monty Trainer owned a chain of seven restaurants, dazzled city and county officials with his hospitality and wielded so much power from a back table at his Coconut Grove establishment that some renamed Miami City Hall ``Monty's Hall.''
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12049658.htm
Toll or not, the roads aren't free
On this holiday Monday, as we celebrate our independence from the tyranny of taxation without representation, let us take a few moments to dispel one mistaken notion of freedom.
Some fairly smart people -- including a few elected officials who should know better -- continue to perpetuate the widely held, but incorrect, belief that all roads are ''free'' if you don't pay a toll.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
''It's one of those great fallacies,'' said Miami accountant Daryl Sharpton, who chairs the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority. ``There is no such thing as a free road.''
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12049657.htm
They are schooled. Under duress? These prisoners are stated to not cooperate. So, learning is measured how? By who?
U.S. schools prisoners in Guantánamo
A U.S. military pilot program allows terror suspects at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp to learn basic reading and math skills, but some lawmakers in Congress want to shut the program down.
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@herald.com
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- It's 8:30 on a Tuesday night, President Bush is addressing the nation on Iraq and two Afghan prisoners are sitting side by side at a picnic table here -- learning simple math and how to write in their native Pashto.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12050224.htm
Well, let's get over the election hump and we can ask for the money back later. Good job, Brother Jeb !!
FEMA wants money back
FORT MYERS - (AP) -- The Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked thousands of Floridians whose homes were damaged by last summer's four hurricanes to give back more than $27 million in aid overpayments, a newspaper reported.
FEMA earlier this year began mailing letters to residents in efforts to recoup the overpayments from people who received federal aid after Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne hit Florida last August and September.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12049595.htm
Interfax, working for decision makers
Sergei Yastrzhembsky:
Foreign journalists shouldn't advise us on Kaliningrad
1 July.
Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Russian presidential envoy to the European Union, complained on Friday about comments in Polish and Lithuanian media in connection with planned celebrations of the 750th anniversary of Kaliningrad.
"We are concerned about the speculative character of some publications in the mass media by the closest neighbors of the Kaliningrad region and about attempts by the authors of the publications to give us some advice, or even force on Russia, their vision of the format for the celebration of the city's jubilee," Yastrzhembsky told Interfax.
"If things keep going at this rate, soon we'll probably hear from the same sources what Russians should eat and drink, how they should dress and what they should say," he said.
http://www.interfax.com/17/74109/Interview.aspx>
Ukrainian premier determined to "bring order" for stability
June 28. Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has explained her position on a number of pressing problems in Ukraine's current domestic and foreign policies.
In the run-up to parliamentary elections to be held in Ukraine next year, Tymoshenko said she believes it is necessary for the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, Our Ukraine, and the People's Party led by speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn to set up a tripartite coalition.
“I want the people from the Our Ukraine Party, who are currently shaping the opinion of our president, to understand that I am satisfied with what I have and that I do not have high ambitions,” Tymoshenko said.
http://www.interfax.com/17/73006/Interview.aspx
Petro Poroshenko:
Euro-Atlantic Integration for Ukraine Means Accession to NATO
29 June. Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council secretary Petro Poroshenko expressed the Ukrainian leadership's position on several of the most important problems in Ukraine's domestic and foreign policy in an exclusive interview with Interfax.
Poroshenko confirmed that NATO membership is a strategic objective for Ukraine. He said that, back in 2003, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law on national security. "It is written in black and white in the law that Euro-Atlantic integration is the foundation of Ukraine's national security. Euro-Atlantic integration means NATO membership. And that's it," he said.
http://www.interfax.com/17/73403/Interview.aspx
Chechen militants kill head of village administration
GROZNY. July 4 (Interfax) - Several militants killed the a villageadministration chief of Zumsoi in Chechnya on Monday, said the regionalanti-terror headquarters."Several members of illegal armed groups who disguised themselvesby wearing federal military uniforms opened intensive fire at a carcarrying the head of the administration of Zumsoi," a spokesman toldInterfax.[RU EUROPE EEU EMRG VIO]
http://www.interfax.com/3/74390/news.aspx
RIA Novosti
Russia set to chair the G8
MOSCOW (RIA Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov).
The G8 Gleneagles (Scotland) summit that opens Wednesday will have special importance for Moscow: for the first time ever Russia will assume the presidency of this informal group of the world's most advanced nations. Next year it will host another summit that is expected to take place in the suburbs of St. Petersburg.
A mighty nuclear power, rich in manpower and natural resources, Russia still trails far behind the other seven members of the G8 in terms of per capita income. But there is one factor that makes Russia an influential and indispensable member of G8, if the latter's goal is indeed to make the world's economic advance more stable. This is Russia's growing role as a leading supplier of energy resources.
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20050704/40841537.html
Russians say their country should aim for full G8 membership
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - A poll released Monday by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) showed that a majority of Russians favor their country becoming a full member of the G8.
The poll put the percentage of those in favor at 58%, up from 51% earlier this year. Only 14% of respondents were opposed to full membership, while 28% found it difficult to give an answer.
A quarter of respondents said Russia was a full member already. However, 40% did not, while the other 35% could not assess Russia's role in the informal organization.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40840826.html
Putin sends Bush Independence Day telegram
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - President Vladimir Putin sent a telegram to U.S. President George W. Bush with a special message for Independence Day, the Kremlin press service said Monday.
"We should work hard to promote diverse Russian-U.S. cooperation," Putin wrote in his telegram. "The high level of cooperation achieved by our coordinated efforts will allow our countries to counter global threats and challenges, including international terrorism, and expand economic and public contacts."
"I am convinced that our practical efforts will show that cooperation is firmly grounded," he wrote.
Putin added that the joint celebrations of the 60th anniversary of VE Day in Moscow in May "demonstrated a new quality of Russian-U.S. relations based on partnership and mutual trust and the traditions of our joint fight against a common enemy."
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40841106.html
UN needs a peace-building commission - Russian foreign minister
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russia supports the creation of a UN peace-building commission, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday. The commission would help in conflict resolution and promote post-conflict development, Lavrov said after talks with his Irish counterpart, Dermot Ahern, who is also the UN Secretary General's special envoy ahead of the September 2005 summit. Lavrov said that effective conflict and crisis regulation was a key aspect of UN reform.
"The principle of universality should be maintained during discussion of UN reform," Lavrov said, adding that Russia backed Ahern's work as the summit's special envoy.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40840353.html
Iran to take part in Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kazakhstan
TEHRAN, July 4 (RIA Novosti, Nikolai Terekhov) - Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref was traveling to Kazakhstan Monday for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) slated to open in Astana on Tuesday.
"The SCO was established to promote regional cooperation, ensure stability and security, while Iran's membership in the organization meets our interests and the organization's interests," Aref told reporters before boarding his flight. "The issue has been put on the Iranian foreign ministry and government's agenda."
http://en.rian.ru/world/20050704/40841867.html
Sounds like a covert meeting of the Secondary Layer of Nuclear Powers.
Pakistan chasing observer status in Shanghai Cooperation Organization
ISLAMABAD, July 4 (RIA Novosti, Yevgeny Pakhomov) - Pakistan's Prime Minister said Monday that observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) would give Pakistan new opportunities to develop relations with the organization's members. Shaukat Aziz was traveling to the Kazakh capital, Astana, which will host the upcoming SCO summit. Pakistani news agencies said Aziz was going to Astana to secure observer status in the organization. "In Astana, Pakistan intends to put forward a series of proposals designed to encourage regional cooperation," said Aziz. "Pakistan has maintained friendly relations with the SCO countries and hopes the Shanghai forum will promote them further," he said.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20050704/40841616.html
Iran, India and Pakistan to become observers in international organization
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Iran, India and Pakistan will be given observer status at a July 5-6 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an international organization uniting four Eurasian states and China.
"The summit will formalize observer status for Iran, India and Pakistan," Sergei Prikhodko, an aide to the Russian president said.
The SCO member countries are Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Mongolia has observer status.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40837513.html
Moscow hopes Lithuania will take unbiased approach to Russia's Yukos inquiry
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Moscow hopes Lithuania will study the Russian Justice Ministry's inquiry about the Yukos oil major, the Foreign Ministry said Monday.
"We hope Lithuania's Justice Ministry will study the inquiry and will adopt a decision based exclusively on the rule of law," the ministry said in a statement. "This is a purely legal issue."
Russia's Justice Ministry approached the justice ministries of Lithuania and the Netherlands last Wednesday with a request to track down assets of Yukos' affiliates located in the countries and ban transactions with the oil company's 53.7% of shares in Lithuania's Mazeikiu nafta (MN). The requests were made to help Russia's tax authorities have Yukos pay its back taxes.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40842100.html
Deep Impact probe with names of 625,000 people to collide with comet
MOSCOW, July 3 (RIA Novosti) - A space probe with research equipment and a CD carrying names of 625,000 people including 5 RIA Novosti journalists is set to collide with the Tempel-1 comet on July 4.
The worldwide Internet campaign to register people wishing to go down in the space exploration history ended on January 31, 2004. The CD was put inside the probe which was installed on the Deep Impact-1 spacecraft. Deep Impact blasted off in January from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for its six-month 431-million-kilometer journey.
The probe is set to collide with the comet at a relative speed of 40,000kph. According to NASA experts, the probe will make a crater in Tempel-1 and let them study the ice surface of the comet.
As the comet closes in, the probe will transmit images of its target to the Deep Impact spacecraft. NASA's space telescopes Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra will observe the collision, as well.
http://en.rian.ru/science/20050703/40835708.html
Putin, Schroeder and Chirac discuss UN reform, Iraq in Kaliningrad
KALININGRAD, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed a broad range of issues, from UN reform to Iraq, with French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Sunday during a routine visit to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea.
Putin told a news conference after the talks that he hoped for productive cooperation with the Germany and France next year, when Russia holds the rotating presidency over the G8, an organization uniting the world's leading industrialized nations.
Putin said: "Energy security might become a priority on the G8 agenda in this period. I have no doubt that the G8 will borrow from the experience of the Russia-EU dialogue when making the relevant preparations."
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40837951.html
RICE'S takes 'stump speech' international. If it worked for Bush why shouldn't work for Putin?
Terrorist access to WMDs could lead to tragedy - Lavrov, Rice
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned in a newspaper article Monday of a potential catastrophe should weapons of mass destruction fall into the hands of terrorists.
The article, "Russia and the U.S. Against Nuclear Terrorism," warned that, should terrorists gain access to WMDs, it could lead to death and devastation on a scale far larger than the attacks of September 11 and other terrorist attacks combined.
The article appeared in Izvestiya to mark the second anniversary of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) announced on May 31, 2003, which Russia joined last year.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20050704/40840380.html
Russian scientists to join European aerohydrodynamics projects
MOSCOW, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI) is set to take part in all European research projects, deputy director Sergei Chernyshev said Monday.
The institute is currently involved in a project to develop a flexible or aeroelastic airplane, he added.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40840414.html
Ukraine threatening European consumers of Russian gas
KIEV, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Naftogaz Ukraine has told Gazprom that reducing supplies of natural gas to Ukraine could lead to a decline in Russian exports to Europe, Novosti-Ukraine agency reported Monday.
The warning came in an official telegram issued by Naftogaz in response to Gazprom's decision to consider 7.8 billion cubic meters of Russian gas lost and later discovered in underground storage in Ukraine as payment for the transit of Russian natural gas to Europe through the country.
Gazprom's decision was communicated by CEO Alexei Miller to Alexei Ivchenko, head of the Naftogaz board of directors and also Ukraine's first deputy fuel and energy minister, last week. Gazprom later notified Ukraine that it would provide up to 1.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas to pay for transit services by yearend.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20050704/40841424.html
Russia pledges to keep high import tariffs to protect carmakers
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's chief negotiator at WTO accession talks said Monday that the country would preserve high duties on imported cars for seven years after joining the World Trade Organization, and after that tariffs would be at least 50% above European levels. Duties on other imported products will be slashed by an average of 25%.
Maxim Medvedkov, the director of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry's trade talks department, was presiding over a three-hour-long seminar-cum-conference in Nizhny Novgorod, a city 400 kilometers from Moscow where GAZ, Russia's leading carmaker, is based.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20050704/40841610.html
continued ...
The Los Angeles Times
NASA Readies for Launch -- and Holds Its Breath
Human spaceflight is on the line. Despite shuttle upgrades, there are no guarantees.
By John Johnson Jr., Times Staff Writer
As NASA prepares for the return of human spaceflight, there is little talk of giant leaps for mankind.
If there's one phrase to describe the sober mood at America's space agency, it's: No more mistakes.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-shuttle4jul04,0,5092419.story?coll=la-home-headlines
China May Fuel Global Risks if U.S. Fails to Push Conservation
Both countries might be better off if the United States encouraged China to invest in hydrogen fuel cells or solar energy rather than an American oil company.
Since CNOOC Ltd., an oil company owned mostly by the Chinese government, made its unsolicited $18.5-billion bid for California-based Unocal Corp. last month, the Washington debate has revolved mostly around the deal's economic and national security implications.
But the energy and environmental ramifications may justify far more concern. The acquisition attempt, which the Unocal board is studying, suggests that China is anticipating enormous increases in its consumption of fossil fuels. The direct result for the United States and other nations could be a threatening rise in the carbon dioxide emissions associated with global warming, as well as higher gas prices at the pump.
http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-na-outlook4jul04,0,6494078.column?coll=la-home-headlines
Live 8's safety Net
AOL catches and conveys the action as MTV's coverage more than disappoints.
By Robert Hilburn, Times Staff Writer
Everyone knows MTV has long lost interest in pop music, so why doesn't the cable channel just admit it and leave the coverage of historic events, such as the humanitarian Live 8 concerts, to someone with respect for the music and its audience?
MTV's coverage of Saturday's event, designed to combat poverty in Africa, was beyond embarrassing. It was pitiful.
http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-et-notebook4jul04,0,7783746.story?coll=la-home-headlines&track=hppromobox
President Putin actually approves of this? I find that hard to believe. There is no honor in the Russian military? Their pay needs to be supplemented by plunder? There will be only resistance in Chechnya as long as the bitter battle for control victimizes citizens by both sides of the conflict. They see the Russian military not as their saviors but as bad if not worse as the terrorists. This is an eye opener I didn't expect. Knock it off !!! This is all human rights violations. There is no need for Russia to give up in Chechnya and leave at the demoralizing of their military but they need to provide the Chechens security and not exploitation. There is something grossly wrong in the 'Russian Military Culture' as realized in Chechnya.
An Unlikely Antiwar Hero for Russians
An ex-police officer is accused of war crimes in Chechnya. For some, his case illustrates Moscow's misguided policy on the republic.
By Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — In a war of horrors, it was one of the worst chapters. On the morning of Feb. 5, 2000, more than 100 Russian contract soldiers and riot police entered the village of Novye Aldi in Chechnya, sweeping from house to house in a futile search for separatist rebels.
What followed was what human rights investigators would later describe as "an orgy of killing, arson and rape."
. . . The incident in Novye Aldi, outside Grozny, is one of the most thoroughly investigated of the Chechen war, and Moscow has been under intense pressure from human rights advocates at home and elsewhere in Europe to bring the perpetrators to justice.
But here in St. Petersburg, Babin supporters say they believe the assertion of the former riot policeman and his superior officers that he was in a village about 60 miles from Novye Aldi on the day of the operation. They also support the former officer's decision to go into hiding, based on his fears that he would be slain if he were transferred to a Chechen prison.
"I was a police officer. And now I am a fugitive. Now I know what it's like on both sides," Babin said in an interview last month, arranged at a location that was not disclosed in advance.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-officer3jul03,0,5167390.story?coll=la-home-world
Jerusalem Post
Settlers to draw up pullout conduct code
By MATTHEW GUTMAN
Settler leaders and rabbis met in the Gush Katif settlement bloc Monday morning to hammer out a code of conduct meant to put the brakes on an anti-disengagement struggle that appears to be careening out of control.
The declaration follows a rash of violence both in Gush Katif and in road protests across Israel in the past week – a contagion that settlement leaders fear could critically weaken their campaign against the government's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank later this summer.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1120443547649
Israel, Egypt close to Philadelphi deal
By JPOST.COM STAFF
Israel and Egypt expect to reach an agreement on Egyptian troop deployment along the Philadelphi route within 10 days, officials said Monday.
The comment comes following meetings Sunday night in Egypt between Maj.-Gen. (Res.) Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry's political bureau, and head of Egyptian intelligence Gen. Omar Suleiman.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1120443547415
Polish leader: Iran is gravest threat
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
WARSAW, Poland
An Iranian attempt to develop nuclear weapons would be the greatest threat to peace on earth, the speaker of the Polish parliament and leading presidential candidate said.
"There is no doubt that if the real intention of the Iranian authorities is to reach capability to attain nuclear weapons [then] it would be greatest threat to peace not only in this part of the world... but theoretically it can be the greatest threat to world peace," Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post in his office in the Polish parliament.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1120468320021
Hamas bans 'immoral' festival in Kalkilya
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
The Hamas-controlled Kalkilya municipal council is under pressure to host outdoor music and dance performances as part of a Palestinian summertime festival.
Last week, however, the municipality announced a decision to ban the performances under the pretext that the crowds might trample the grass at the local stadium.
However, the organizers of the festival rejected the claim, accusing the municipality of seeking to impose strict Islamic rules in the city.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1120357179290
Jordan refuses entry to Kalkilya mayor
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Advertisement
Jordanian authorities on Sunday banned the deputy mayor of Kalkilya, Hashem al-Masri, from entering the kingdom.
Masri, who serves as acting mayor, arrived earlier in the day at the Jordanian side of the Allenby Bridge, where Jordanian security officials surprised him by ordering him to return home. The Jordanian authorities cited "security reasons" for banning Masri from entering the kingdom.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1120357178640
Seattle Post Intelligencer
Floods in India, Pakistan leave 131 dead
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW DELHI -- Monsoon floods in India's western Gujarat state have inundated more than 7,200 villages, left about 175,000 homeless and killed at least 131 people over the past week, officials and news reports said Sunday.
One of the world's 359 remaining Asiatic lions also was found drowned Friday near Gujarat's Droneshwar dam, down river from its home in the Gir wildlife sanctuary, according to the Hindustan Times newspaper.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Asia%20Monsoon%20Floods
Good intentions often go bad in Africa
By CHRIS TOMLINSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Former South African President Nelson Mandela, left, his wife Graca Machel, right, during the Live 8 concert in Johannesburg, South Africa, Saturday, July 2, 2005. African musicians lent their voices Saturday to Live 8's global call for a fairer deal for the world's poorest continent. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
NAIROBI, Kenya -- Africa is filled with good intentions that ended badly. Half-completed hydroelectric dams covered with weeds, empty irrigation pipes decaying in the equatorial sun and roads that literally lead to nowhere dot the continent, testaments to corruption and bad judgment. Despite billions of dollars in aid, Africa has gone backward since the 1970s on every measurable level.
When the leaders of the Group of Eight wealthy nations meet this week in Scotland to discuss helping the poorest people on the planet, they will try to ensure any new pledges will not be good money following bad.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apafrica_story.asp?category=1105&slug=Africa%20Aid
U.S. confirms some Afghan civilian deaths
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A U.S. airstrike last week killed 17 Afghan villagers, including women and children, a provincial governor said Monday. The U.S. military confirmed some civilians were killed in the attack on what it called a known terrorist compound.
The bombing occurred in Kunar province last Friday, three days after an elite U.S. military team disappeared in the mountainous area.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Afghan%20US%20Bombing
Getting There: Drivers not entitled to 'free rights'
By JANE HADLEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Question: We are so pleased to receive this query, because it is one that has occurred to us more than once. Verna Garton asks: When exactly is it OK to make a right turn on a red light?
Verna says that recently a number of vehicles have taken their "free right" from Cherry Street onto Sixth Avenue downtown during the evening rush hour when traffic is backed up.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/transportation/231164_get04.html
Ex-felons face roadblocks in regaining voting rights
By RACHEL LA CORTE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Voter registration card in hand, Jesse Miller stood in line for 20 minutes in November to cast her vote for governor. But fear turned her away before she got the chance.
Convicted on a drug charge more than a decade ago, Miller feared that the stigma of her felony would cause her problems, because even though she had served her time, and paid her court-ordered fines, she never received an official certificate of discharge restoring her rights.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231136_gfelon04.html
Dancing helped put man once paralyzed back on his feet
By ATHIMA CHANSANCHAI
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Daryl Schmidt doesn't look like a man who some doctors said would never walk again.
He's not only standing on both feet, he also was twirling his partner in practiced routines around a dance floor as they prepared yesterday to compete in the Northwest DanceSport Championships in SeaTac.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231191_dancer04.html
Cold Stone ice cream linked to salmonella
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF
Five people in Washington have contracted food poisoning after eating cake batter-flavored ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery stores.
The victims -- a woman in King County, a man in Whatcom County, two girls in Snohomish County and a woman in Spokane -- were infected with a rare strain of the salmonella bacteria called salmonella typhimurium, according to the state Department of Health.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231034_icecream02.html
First West Nile virus case in state feared
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF
A woman from the Spokane area has tested positive for the West Nile virus, apparently becoming the first known case of the virus infecting a human in Washington, according to the state Health Department.
The woman, in her 20s, appears to have caught the virus in the state, the Health Department said last night. The case is listed as "probable" while more tests are done.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231096_westnile02.html
Plane crashes off Lopez Island; two dead
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER NEWS SERVICES
LOPEZ -- A light plane from Sisters, Ore., with five people aboard crashed and sank last evening off the southwest tip of Lopez Island in the San Juans, killing two people and injuring three, a San Juan County sheriff's officer said.
The five were members of a Sisters family, Undersheriff Jon Zerby said. Four people reached shore, where medics pronounced a 57-year-old man dead. Divers found the plane in about 25 feet of water, with one person dead inside.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231101_crash02.html
She'll circle the States by kayak, bike, skates
Adventure becomes memorial to fiancé
By KRISTIN DIZON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The first thing you notice about Renata Chlumska is that she's head-turningly beautiful.
And that, for a woman who's about to circumnavigate the United States by kayak, boat and inline skates, Chlumska is remarkably calm.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231065_renata02.html
She'll circle the States by kayak, bike, skates
Adventure becomes memorial to fiancé
By KRISTIN DIZON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The first thing you notice about Renata Chlumska is that she's head-turningly beautiful.
And that, for a woman who's about to circumnavigate the United States by kayak, boat and inline skates, Chlumska is remarkably calm.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231065_renata02.html
N.C. boy, 7, drowns in Fla. hotel pool
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- A 7-year-old boy vacationing with his family drowned in a hotel pool and remained unnoticed for a couple of hours as deputies and others searched for him, authorities said.
A tourist wearing goggles found the boy at the bottom of the 8-foot-deep pool at the Howard Johnson's Enchanted Land Resort at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Osceola County sheriff's spokeswoman Twis Lizasuain said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Boy%20Drowns
Schwarzenegger urges global warming action
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks to the media, during a news conference at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., in this June 21, 2005 file photo. Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor of California, has urged governments - including that of President Bush - to face up the reality of global warming. "The debate is over," he wrote in Britain's Independent on Sunday, July 3, 2005, newspaper. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
LONDON -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is urging governments - including that of President Bush - to face up the reality of global warming.
"The debate is over," he wrote in Britain's Independent on Sunday newspaper. "We know the science. We see the threat posed by changes in our climate. And we know the time for action is now."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Schwarzenegger%20Climate
Poor writing costs Americans millions
By JUSTIN POPE
AP EDUCATION WRITER
States spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on remedial writing instruction for their employees, according to a new report that says the indirect costs of sloppy writing probably hurt taxpayers even more.
The National Commission on Writing, in a report to be released Tuesday, says that good writing skills are at least as important in the public sector as in private industry. Poor writing not only befuddles citizens but also slows down the government as bureaucrats struggle with unclear instructions or have to redo poorly written work.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Government%20Bad%20Writing
Iran: U.S., Israel waging smear campaign
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
A veiled Iranian woman walks past an anti U.S painting on the wall of the former U.S Embassy in Tehran, Saturday, July 2, 2005. A top former secret agent Saeed Hajjarian, said Saturday that the hostage-taker in a photograph that has recently come under intense scrutiny is not President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but a former militant who committed suicide in jail. Hajjarian, a top adviser to outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, identified the man in the photo dating to the 1979 U.S. Embassy siege as Taqi Mohammadi. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran accused the U.S. and Israel on Sunday of a smear campaign against its president-elect and warned Europe, which is in tricky nuclear negotiations with Tehran, not to join in the mudslinging.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Iran%20Fights%20Back
S.Korea hopeful N.Korea will come to talks
By JI-SOO KIM
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
SEOUL, South Korea -- Senior South Korean officials said Monday they are optimistic North Korea will return this month to nuclear disarmament talks after Seoul's point man on the discussions made a visit to the United States last week.
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told his ministry it should focus on achieving a resumption of the talks this month. "We must make creative efforts for resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue, once the six-party framework is activated and opened," Chung said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Koreas%20Nuclear
SYRIA is allowing Hezbollah to act as their agent in the area. Hezbollah has been attacking Israel in hopes of the United Nations taking measure against Israel when they should be taking action against Syria for turning their sovereign land over to terrorists.
Hezbollah guerrilla dies in Israel clashes
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The militant Hezbollah group acknowledged on Monday that one its guerrillas was killed in last week's clashes with Israeli troops in a disputed part of the south Lebanon border.
Last Wednesday, Hezbollah guerrillas attacked Israeli positions at the disputed Chebaa Farms with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, killing one soldier and wounding several others. It was Israel's first fatality on the Lebanese border in six months. The borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet at the Chebaa Farms area.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apmideast_story.asp?category=1107&slug=Lebanon%20Israel
Syrian forces arrest two militants
By ALBERT AJI
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
A Syrian famiy look at the view of Damascus from Qassioun Mountain about three kilometers (two miles) southwest of the capital, Monday, July 4, 2005. Syrian security forces clashed with militants, including former bodyguards of toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, on Qassioun Mountain early Monday, leaving one policeman dead and two militants in custody, the state-run SANA news agency said. (AP Photo/Bassem Tellawi).
DAMASCUS, Syria -- Syrian security forces arrested two members of a militant group that allegedly included former bodyguards of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the state-run news agency reported Monday.
The two were detained after a fight on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus. One policeman was killed in the violence and two soldiers and two policemen were wounded, the news agency SANA reported.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apmideast_story.asp?category=1107&slug=Syria%20Clash
Britain upholds Cambodian adoption ban
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON -- A British court on Monday upheld the government's ban on adoptions of Cambodian children. Six couples had gone to court to challenge the ban, which was imposed in June of last year.
Justice James Munby said the evidence of abuses and corruption in the Cambodian adoption system "amply justify" the government's action.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=Britain%20Cambodia%20Adoption
Anti-nuke campaigners protest in Scotland
By ED JOHNSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Police officers stand guard behind a lone buddhist drummer by the gates of Faslane submarine base in Scotland, where protestors gathered, on Monday July 4, 2005. Campaigners say they expect thousands of activists to join the planned blockade of Faslane naval base on the Clyde. (AP Photo/PA, Kirsty Wigglesworth)
FASLANE, Scotland -- In a protest aimed at this week's Group of Eight summit in Scotland, anti-nuclear campaigners demonstrated outside the major naval base for Britain's nuclear-armed Trident submarine fleet on Monday.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=G8%20Protest
IAEA to weigh strengthening nuclear laws
By DANICA KIRKA
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
VIENNA, Austria -- Representatives of more than 100 countries gathered at the U.N. nuclear agency's Vienna headquarters Monday to consider strengthening international laws meant to safeguard nuclear materials from theft and prevent terrorist attacks on atomic power plants.
The push to shield nuclear materials has gained urgency since Sept. 11, which focused attention on other potential targets of catastrophic terrorist attacks.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=UN%20Nuclear%20Agency
HE SHOULD BE GRATEFUL. IT'S A WAR ZONE. YOU HAVE AN ARMY ACCOMPANYING YOU?
Kasparov: Russians interfering with trip
By MIKE ECKEL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Garry Kasparov speaks during a news conference in Moscow Monday, July 4, 2005. Garry Kasparov, who quit chess to focus on political activities, on Monday accused Russian officials of actively interfering with his four-day trip to the troubled Caucasus region. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
MOSCOW -- Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion who quit to focus on political activities, on Monday accused Russian officials of interfering in his four-day trip to the troubled Caucasus region.
Kasparov, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, told a news conference that officials conspired to prevent him from meeting with local residents and organized hooligans to throw eggs and tomatoes at him and his entourage. In one city, authorities denied permission for his chartered plane to land, he said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=Russia%20Kasparov
Gadhafi urges Africans to stop 'begging'
By KHALED AL-DEEB
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
SIRTE, Libya -- Amid global calls to combat poverty in Africa, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi called on African nations to stop "begging" during the opening Monday of an African summit attended by more than 50 leaders from this crisis-wracked continent.
Gadhafi also urged African countries to overcome past failures during a rambling speech that lasted more than 30 minutes, which received muted applause from leaders of African states.
"Pleading to the G-8 to lift debts won't make a future for Africa," said Gadhafi, wearing his traditional African dress while praising Africa's natural resources and treasures. "We need cooperation between the big and the small countries in the world."
"Begging won't make a future for Africa," he added.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apafrica_story.asp?category=1105&slug=Libya%20African%20Summit
Notorious Canadian prisoner to be freed
By BETH DUFF-BROWN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Correctional officers check the exit of motorists from a special checkpoint and barricades set up for the media near the Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines institution July 1, 2005. Karla Homolka is believed to be detained at the prison where media are awaiting her release. (AP PHOTO/Canadian Press,Jacques Boissinot)
MONTREAL -- The most reviled woman in Canada is set to walk out of prison Monday, facing death threats and rage from a public still bitter that she only served 12 years for the rapes and murders of teenage girls, including her younger sister.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apcanada_story.asp?category=1101&slug=Canada%20Devil%27s%20Deal
American 14-year-old girl killed in Tobago
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad -- A 14-year-old American girl was stabbed and killed in a quiet seaside village on the island of Tobago, police said Saturday.
Kitty Nichole Pepe was killed late Friday night in the apartment she had been sharing with her mother in Charlotteville, a village on the northeastern tip of Tobago, said police inspector Glen Sharpe.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/aplatin_story.asp?category=1102&slug=Tobago%20Girl%20Killed
The New Zealand Herald
Children demand action on poverty from G8
04.07.05 1.00pm
DUNBLANE, Scotland - Children from some of the world's poorest nations have made a plea to the leaders of the richest countries as they prepare for their Scottish summit: act now to end child prostitution, child labour and trafficking.
"Now is the moment to help poor children because we have suffered too much. I want the G8 leaders to make it stop. It is time to listen to the children," 17-year-old Assiatou Drame told reporters on Sunday.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10334119
Corby case to be reopened
Schapelle Corby
04.07.05 7.00pm
PERTH - The drug trafficking case against Australian Schapelle Corby will be reopened after the High Court in Bali agreed to hear new evidence about the ownership of more than 4kg of marijuana.
The judges who presided at Corby's trial have given her lawyers the opportunity to present witnesses who can show the 27-year-old did not own the marijuana found in her luggage at Bali airport last October.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10334160
Power line opponents say radiation standard too high
04.07.05 1.00pm
Miscarriage rates could nearly double if Transpower's electricity line through the Waikato goes ahead in its planned form, according to a scientific study.
A United States study showing an 80 per cent likelihood of increased miscarriages was presented by video link at a health forum organised by power line opponents at the University of Waikato at the weekend.
Excessive exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) has also been linked to childhood leukaemia, brain cancer, Lou Gehrigs motor neuron disease, and depression.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10334102
China counting down to next men in space
04.07.05
BEIJING - China has begun training six pilots for spaceflight, two of whom will enter orbit on September's Shenzhou VI mission, domestic media said today, in the next step in the country's lofty space ambitions.
The astronaut candidates were training in teams and the pair that showed the best teamwork would be the next Chinese in space, Huang Chunping, the man who pushed the launch button for China's first manned spaceflight in 2003, was quoted as saying by the website Chinanews.com.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10334237
Government blocks visit by Zimbabwe bankers
04.07.05 2.00pm
The Government is taking steps to refuse visas to a delegation from the Zimbabwe Reserve Bank.
Green Party co-leader Rod Donald today called on the Government to prevent the delegation coming here, saying they would encourage expatriates to send money home to boost the bank's foreign exchange.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10334124
Zimbabwe immigrant policy a 'one-off'
Paul Swain
04.07.05 1.00pm
A Government policy allowing some Zimbabweans to apply for permanent residence without fulfilling the normal criteria is a one-off, Immigration Minister Paul Swain says.
Under a special policy, which starts today, Zimbabweans who entered New Zealand before September 23 last year can apply for permanent residence even if they do not meet the normal entry rules.
Mr Swain today told National Radio the policy had been devised last year when the political situation in Zimbabwe was "very rugged".
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10334097
continued . . .
NASA Readies for Launch -- and Holds Its Breath
Human spaceflight is on the line. Despite shuttle upgrades, there are no guarantees.
By John Johnson Jr., Times Staff Writer
As NASA prepares for the return of human spaceflight, there is little talk of giant leaps for mankind.
If there's one phrase to describe the sober mood at America's space agency, it's: No more mistakes.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-shuttle4jul04,0,5092419.story?coll=la-home-headlines
China May Fuel Global Risks if U.S. Fails to Push Conservation
Both countries might be better off if the United States encouraged China to invest in hydrogen fuel cells or solar energy rather than an American oil company.
Since CNOOC Ltd., an oil company owned mostly by the Chinese government, made its unsolicited $18.5-billion bid for California-based Unocal Corp. last month, the Washington debate has revolved mostly around the deal's economic and national security implications.
But the energy and environmental ramifications may justify far more concern. The acquisition attempt, which the Unocal board is studying, suggests that China is anticipating enormous increases in its consumption of fossil fuels. The direct result for the United States and other nations could be a threatening rise in the carbon dioxide emissions associated with global warming, as well as higher gas prices at the pump.
http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-na-outlook4jul04,0,6494078.column?coll=la-home-headlines
Live 8's safety Net
AOL catches and conveys the action as MTV's coverage more than disappoints.
By Robert Hilburn, Times Staff Writer
Everyone knows MTV has long lost interest in pop music, so why doesn't the cable channel just admit it and leave the coverage of historic events, such as the humanitarian Live 8 concerts, to someone with respect for the music and its audience?
MTV's coverage of Saturday's event, designed to combat poverty in Africa, was beyond embarrassing. It was pitiful.
http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-et-notebook4jul04,0,7783746.story?coll=la-home-headlines&track=hppromobox
President Putin actually approves of this? I find that hard to believe. There is no honor in the Russian military? Their pay needs to be supplemented by plunder? There will be only resistance in Chechnya as long as the bitter battle for control victimizes citizens by both sides of the conflict. They see the Russian military not as their saviors but as bad if not worse as the terrorists. This is an eye opener I didn't expect. Knock it off !!! This is all human rights violations. There is no need for Russia to give up in Chechnya and leave at the demoralizing of their military but they need to provide the Chechens security and not exploitation. There is something grossly wrong in the 'Russian Military Culture' as realized in Chechnya.
An Unlikely Antiwar Hero for Russians
An ex-police officer is accused of war crimes in Chechnya. For some, his case illustrates Moscow's misguided policy on the republic.
By Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — In a war of horrors, it was one of the worst chapters. On the morning of Feb. 5, 2000, more than 100 Russian contract soldiers and riot police entered the village of Novye Aldi in Chechnya, sweeping from house to house in a futile search for separatist rebels.
What followed was what human rights investigators would later describe as "an orgy of killing, arson and rape."
. . . The incident in Novye Aldi, outside Grozny, is one of the most thoroughly investigated of the Chechen war, and Moscow has been under intense pressure from human rights advocates at home and elsewhere in Europe to bring the perpetrators to justice.
But here in St. Petersburg, Babin supporters say they believe the assertion of the former riot policeman and his superior officers that he was in a village about 60 miles from Novye Aldi on the day of the operation. They also support the former officer's decision to go into hiding, based on his fears that he would be slain if he were transferred to a Chechen prison.
"I was a police officer. And now I am a fugitive. Now I know what it's like on both sides," Babin said in an interview last month, arranged at a location that was not disclosed in advance.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-officer3jul03,0,5167390.story?coll=la-home-world
Jerusalem Post
Settlers to draw up pullout conduct code
By MATTHEW GUTMAN
Settler leaders and rabbis met in the Gush Katif settlement bloc Monday morning to hammer out a code of conduct meant to put the brakes on an anti-disengagement struggle that appears to be careening out of control.
The declaration follows a rash of violence both in Gush Katif and in road protests across Israel in the past week – a contagion that settlement leaders fear could critically weaken their campaign against the government's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank later this summer.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1120443547649
Israel, Egypt close to Philadelphi deal
By JPOST.COM STAFF
Israel and Egypt expect to reach an agreement on Egyptian troop deployment along the Philadelphi route within 10 days, officials said Monday.
The comment comes following meetings Sunday night in Egypt between Maj.-Gen. (Res.) Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry's political bureau, and head of Egyptian intelligence Gen. Omar Suleiman.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1120443547415
Polish leader: Iran is gravest threat
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
WARSAW, Poland
An Iranian attempt to develop nuclear weapons would be the greatest threat to peace on earth, the speaker of the Polish parliament and leading presidential candidate said.
"There is no doubt that if the real intention of the Iranian authorities is to reach capability to attain nuclear weapons [then] it would be greatest threat to peace not only in this part of the world... but theoretically it can be the greatest threat to world peace," Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post in his office in the Polish parliament.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1120468320021
Hamas bans 'immoral' festival in Kalkilya
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
The Hamas-controlled Kalkilya municipal council is under pressure to host outdoor music and dance performances as part of a Palestinian summertime festival.
Last week, however, the municipality announced a decision to ban the performances under the pretext that the crowds might trample the grass at the local stadium.
However, the organizers of the festival rejected the claim, accusing the municipality of seeking to impose strict Islamic rules in the city.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1120357179290
Jordan refuses entry to Kalkilya mayor
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Advertisement
Jordanian authorities on Sunday banned the deputy mayor of Kalkilya, Hashem al-Masri, from entering the kingdom.
Masri, who serves as acting mayor, arrived earlier in the day at the Jordanian side of the Allenby Bridge, where Jordanian security officials surprised him by ordering him to return home. The Jordanian authorities cited "security reasons" for banning Masri from entering the kingdom.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1120357178640
Seattle Post Intelligencer
Floods in India, Pakistan leave 131 dead
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW DELHI -- Monsoon floods in India's western Gujarat state have inundated more than 7,200 villages, left about 175,000 homeless and killed at least 131 people over the past week, officials and news reports said Sunday.
One of the world's 359 remaining Asiatic lions also was found drowned Friday near Gujarat's Droneshwar dam, down river from its home in the Gir wildlife sanctuary, according to the Hindustan Times newspaper.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Asia%20Monsoon%20Floods
Good intentions often go bad in Africa
By CHRIS TOMLINSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Former South African President Nelson Mandela, left, his wife Graca Machel, right, during the Live 8 concert in Johannesburg, South Africa, Saturday, July 2, 2005. African musicians lent their voices Saturday to Live 8's global call for a fairer deal for the world's poorest continent. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
NAIROBI, Kenya -- Africa is filled with good intentions that ended badly. Half-completed hydroelectric dams covered with weeds, empty irrigation pipes decaying in the equatorial sun and roads that literally lead to nowhere dot the continent, testaments to corruption and bad judgment. Despite billions of dollars in aid, Africa has gone backward since the 1970s on every measurable level.
When the leaders of the Group of Eight wealthy nations meet this week in Scotland to discuss helping the poorest people on the planet, they will try to ensure any new pledges will not be good money following bad.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apafrica_story.asp?category=1105&slug=Africa%20Aid
U.S. confirms some Afghan civilian deaths
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A U.S. airstrike last week killed 17 Afghan villagers, including women and children, a provincial governor said Monday. The U.S. military confirmed some civilians were killed in the attack on what it called a known terrorist compound.
The bombing occurred in Kunar province last Friday, three days after an elite U.S. military team disappeared in the mountainous area.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Afghan%20US%20Bombing
Getting There: Drivers not entitled to 'free rights'
By JANE HADLEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Question: We are so pleased to receive this query, because it is one that has occurred to us more than once. Verna Garton asks: When exactly is it OK to make a right turn on a red light?
Verna says that recently a number of vehicles have taken their "free right" from Cherry Street onto Sixth Avenue downtown during the evening rush hour when traffic is backed up.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/transportation/231164_get04.html
Ex-felons face roadblocks in regaining voting rights
By RACHEL LA CORTE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Voter registration card in hand, Jesse Miller stood in line for 20 minutes in November to cast her vote for governor. But fear turned her away before she got the chance.
Convicted on a drug charge more than a decade ago, Miller feared that the stigma of her felony would cause her problems, because even though she had served her time, and paid her court-ordered fines, she never received an official certificate of discharge restoring her rights.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231136_gfelon04.html
Dancing helped put man once paralyzed back on his feet
By ATHIMA CHANSANCHAI
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Daryl Schmidt doesn't look like a man who some doctors said would never walk again.
He's not only standing on both feet, he also was twirling his partner in practiced routines around a dance floor as they prepared yesterday to compete in the Northwest DanceSport Championships in SeaTac.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231191_dancer04.html
Cold Stone ice cream linked to salmonella
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF
Five people in Washington have contracted food poisoning after eating cake batter-flavored ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery stores.
The victims -- a woman in King County, a man in Whatcom County, two girls in Snohomish County and a woman in Spokane -- were infected with a rare strain of the salmonella bacteria called salmonella typhimurium, according to the state Department of Health.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231034_icecream02.html
First West Nile virus case in state feared
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF
A woman from the Spokane area has tested positive for the West Nile virus, apparently becoming the first known case of the virus infecting a human in Washington, according to the state Health Department.
The woman, in her 20s, appears to have caught the virus in the state, the Health Department said last night. The case is listed as "probable" while more tests are done.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231096_westnile02.html
Plane crashes off Lopez Island; two dead
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER NEWS SERVICES
LOPEZ -- A light plane from Sisters, Ore., with five people aboard crashed and sank last evening off the southwest tip of Lopez Island in the San Juans, killing two people and injuring three, a San Juan County sheriff's officer said.
The five were members of a Sisters family, Undersheriff Jon Zerby said. Four people reached shore, where medics pronounced a 57-year-old man dead. Divers found the plane in about 25 feet of water, with one person dead inside.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231101_crash02.html
She'll circle the States by kayak, bike, skates
Adventure becomes memorial to fiancé
By KRISTIN DIZON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The first thing you notice about Renata Chlumska is that she's head-turningly beautiful.
And that, for a woman who's about to circumnavigate the United States by kayak, boat and inline skates, Chlumska is remarkably calm.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231065_renata02.html
She'll circle the States by kayak, bike, skates
Adventure becomes memorial to fiancé
By KRISTIN DIZON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The first thing you notice about Renata Chlumska is that she's head-turningly beautiful.
And that, for a woman who's about to circumnavigate the United States by kayak, boat and inline skates, Chlumska is remarkably calm.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/231065_renata02.html
N.C. boy, 7, drowns in Fla. hotel pool
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- A 7-year-old boy vacationing with his family drowned in a hotel pool and remained unnoticed for a couple of hours as deputies and others searched for him, authorities said.
A tourist wearing goggles found the boy at the bottom of the 8-foot-deep pool at the Howard Johnson's Enchanted Land Resort at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Osceola County sheriff's spokeswoman Twis Lizasuain said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Boy%20Drowns
Schwarzenegger urges global warming action
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks to the media, during a news conference at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., in this June 21, 2005 file photo. Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor of California, has urged governments - including that of President Bush - to face up the reality of global warming. "The debate is over," he wrote in Britain's Independent on Sunday, July 3, 2005, newspaper. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
LONDON -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is urging governments - including that of President Bush - to face up the reality of global warming.
"The debate is over," he wrote in Britain's Independent on Sunday newspaper. "We know the science. We see the threat posed by changes in our climate. And we know the time for action is now."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Schwarzenegger%20Climate
Poor writing costs Americans millions
By JUSTIN POPE
AP EDUCATION WRITER
States spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on remedial writing instruction for their employees, according to a new report that says the indirect costs of sloppy writing probably hurt taxpayers even more.
The National Commission on Writing, in a report to be released Tuesday, says that good writing skills are at least as important in the public sector as in private industry. Poor writing not only befuddles citizens but also slows down the government as bureaucrats struggle with unclear instructions or have to redo poorly written work.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Government%20Bad%20Writing
Iran: U.S., Israel waging smear campaign
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
A veiled Iranian woman walks past an anti U.S painting on the wall of the former U.S Embassy in Tehran, Saturday, July 2, 2005. A top former secret agent Saeed Hajjarian, said Saturday that the hostage-taker in a photograph that has recently come under intense scrutiny is not President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but a former militant who committed suicide in jail. Hajjarian, a top adviser to outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, identified the man in the photo dating to the 1979 U.S. Embassy siege as Taqi Mohammadi. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran accused the U.S. and Israel on Sunday of a smear campaign against its president-elect and warned Europe, which is in tricky nuclear negotiations with Tehran, not to join in the mudslinging.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Iran%20Fights%20Back
S.Korea hopeful N.Korea will come to talks
By JI-SOO KIM
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
SEOUL, South Korea -- Senior South Korean officials said Monday they are optimistic North Korea will return this month to nuclear disarmament talks after Seoul's point man on the discussions made a visit to the United States last week.
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told his ministry it should focus on achieving a resumption of the talks this month. "We must make creative efforts for resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue, once the six-party framework is activated and opened," Chung said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Koreas%20Nuclear
SYRIA is allowing Hezbollah to act as their agent in the area. Hezbollah has been attacking Israel in hopes of the United Nations taking measure against Israel when they should be taking action against Syria for turning their sovereign land over to terrorists.
Hezbollah guerrilla dies in Israel clashes
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The militant Hezbollah group acknowledged on Monday that one its guerrillas was killed in last week's clashes with Israeli troops in a disputed part of the south Lebanon border.
Last Wednesday, Hezbollah guerrillas attacked Israeli positions at the disputed Chebaa Farms with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, killing one soldier and wounding several others. It was Israel's first fatality on the Lebanese border in six months. The borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet at the Chebaa Farms area.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apmideast_story.asp?category=1107&slug=Lebanon%20Israel
Syrian forces arrest two militants
By ALBERT AJI
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
A Syrian famiy look at the view of Damascus from Qassioun Mountain about three kilometers (two miles) southwest of the capital, Monday, July 4, 2005. Syrian security forces clashed with militants, including former bodyguards of toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, on Qassioun Mountain early Monday, leaving one policeman dead and two militants in custody, the state-run SANA news agency said. (AP Photo/Bassem Tellawi).
DAMASCUS, Syria -- Syrian security forces arrested two members of a militant group that allegedly included former bodyguards of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the state-run news agency reported Monday.
The two were detained after a fight on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus. One policeman was killed in the violence and two soldiers and two policemen were wounded, the news agency SANA reported.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apmideast_story.asp?category=1107&slug=Syria%20Clash
Britain upholds Cambodian adoption ban
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON -- A British court on Monday upheld the government's ban on adoptions of Cambodian children. Six couples had gone to court to challenge the ban, which was imposed in June of last year.
Justice James Munby said the evidence of abuses and corruption in the Cambodian adoption system "amply justify" the government's action.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=Britain%20Cambodia%20Adoption
Anti-nuke campaigners protest in Scotland
By ED JOHNSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Police officers stand guard behind a lone buddhist drummer by the gates of Faslane submarine base in Scotland, where protestors gathered, on Monday July 4, 2005. Campaigners say they expect thousands of activists to join the planned blockade of Faslane naval base on the Clyde. (AP Photo/PA, Kirsty Wigglesworth)
FASLANE, Scotland -- In a protest aimed at this week's Group of Eight summit in Scotland, anti-nuclear campaigners demonstrated outside the major naval base for Britain's nuclear-armed Trident submarine fleet on Monday.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=G8%20Protest
IAEA to weigh strengthening nuclear laws
By DANICA KIRKA
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
VIENNA, Austria -- Representatives of more than 100 countries gathered at the U.N. nuclear agency's Vienna headquarters Monday to consider strengthening international laws meant to safeguard nuclear materials from theft and prevent terrorist attacks on atomic power plants.
The push to shield nuclear materials has gained urgency since Sept. 11, which focused attention on other potential targets of catastrophic terrorist attacks.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=UN%20Nuclear%20Agency
HE SHOULD BE GRATEFUL. IT'S A WAR ZONE. YOU HAVE AN ARMY ACCOMPANYING YOU?
Kasparov: Russians interfering with trip
By MIKE ECKEL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Garry Kasparov speaks during a news conference in Moscow Monday, July 4, 2005. Garry Kasparov, who quit chess to focus on political activities, on Monday accused Russian officials of actively interfering with his four-day trip to the troubled Caucasus region. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
MOSCOW -- Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion who quit to focus on political activities, on Monday accused Russian officials of interfering in his four-day trip to the troubled Caucasus region.
Kasparov, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, told a news conference that officials conspired to prevent him from meeting with local residents and organized hooligans to throw eggs and tomatoes at him and his entourage. In one city, authorities denied permission for his chartered plane to land, he said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=Russia%20Kasparov
Gadhafi urges Africans to stop 'begging'
By KHALED AL-DEEB
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
SIRTE, Libya -- Amid global calls to combat poverty in Africa, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi called on African nations to stop "begging" during the opening Monday of an African summit attended by more than 50 leaders from this crisis-wracked continent.
Gadhafi also urged African countries to overcome past failures during a rambling speech that lasted more than 30 minutes, which received muted applause from leaders of African states.
"Pleading to the G-8 to lift debts won't make a future for Africa," said Gadhafi, wearing his traditional African dress while praising Africa's natural resources and treasures. "We need cooperation between the big and the small countries in the world."
"Begging won't make a future for Africa," he added.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apafrica_story.asp?category=1105&slug=Libya%20African%20Summit
Notorious Canadian prisoner to be freed
By BETH DUFF-BROWN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Correctional officers check the exit of motorists from a special checkpoint and barricades set up for the media near the Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines institution July 1, 2005. Karla Homolka is believed to be detained at the prison where media are awaiting her release. (AP PHOTO/Canadian Press,Jacques Boissinot)
MONTREAL -- The most reviled woman in Canada is set to walk out of prison Monday, facing death threats and rage from a public still bitter that she only served 12 years for the rapes and murders of teenage girls, including her younger sister.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apcanada_story.asp?category=1101&slug=Canada%20Devil%27s%20Deal
American 14-year-old girl killed in Tobago
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad -- A 14-year-old American girl was stabbed and killed in a quiet seaside village on the island of Tobago, police said Saturday.
Kitty Nichole Pepe was killed late Friday night in the apartment she had been sharing with her mother in Charlotteville, a village on the northeastern tip of Tobago, said police inspector Glen Sharpe.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/aplatin_story.asp?category=1102&slug=Tobago%20Girl%20Killed
The New Zealand Herald
Children demand action on poverty from G8
04.07.05 1.00pm
DUNBLANE, Scotland - Children from some of the world's poorest nations have made a plea to the leaders of the richest countries as they prepare for their Scottish summit: act now to end child prostitution, child labour and trafficking.
"Now is the moment to help poor children because we have suffered too much. I want the G8 leaders to make it stop. It is time to listen to the children," 17-year-old Assiatou Drame told reporters on Sunday.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10334119
Corby case to be reopened
Schapelle Corby
04.07.05 7.00pm
PERTH - The drug trafficking case against Australian Schapelle Corby will be reopened after the High Court in Bali agreed to hear new evidence about the ownership of more than 4kg of marijuana.
The judges who presided at Corby's trial have given her lawyers the opportunity to present witnesses who can show the 27-year-old did not own the marijuana found in her luggage at Bali airport last October.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10334160
Power line opponents say radiation standard too high
04.07.05 1.00pm
Miscarriage rates could nearly double if Transpower's electricity line through the Waikato goes ahead in its planned form, according to a scientific study.
A United States study showing an 80 per cent likelihood of increased miscarriages was presented by video link at a health forum organised by power line opponents at the University of Waikato at the weekend.
Excessive exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) has also been linked to childhood leukaemia, brain cancer, Lou Gehrigs motor neuron disease, and depression.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10334102
China counting down to next men in space
04.07.05
BEIJING - China has begun training six pilots for spaceflight, two of whom will enter orbit on September's Shenzhou VI mission, domestic media said today, in the next step in the country's lofty space ambitions.
The astronaut candidates were training in teams and the pair that showed the best teamwork would be the next Chinese in space, Huang Chunping, the man who pushed the launch button for China's first manned spaceflight in 2003, was quoted as saying by the website Chinanews.com.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10334237
Government blocks visit by Zimbabwe bankers
04.07.05 2.00pm
The Government is taking steps to refuse visas to a delegation from the Zimbabwe Reserve Bank.
Green Party co-leader Rod Donald today called on the Government to prevent the delegation coming here, saying they would encourage expatriates to send money home to boost the bank's foreign exchange.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10334124
Zimbabwe immigrant policy a 'one-off'
Paul Swain
04.07.05 1.00pm
A Government policy allowing some Zimbabweans to apply for permanent residence without fulfilling the normal criteria is a one-off, Immigration Minister Paul Swain says.
Under a special policy, which starts today, Zimbabweans who entered New Zealand before September 23 last year can apply for permanent residence even if they do not meet the normal entry rules.
Mr Swain today told National Radio the policy had been devised last year when the political situation in Zimbabwe was "very rugged".
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10334097
continued . . .
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