October 29, 2005. 0230 z. The high energy system of "Beta."
Friday, October 28, 2005
UNISYS Enhanced Infrared Satellite 12 hour loop - "Click On"
October 29, 2005. 0230 z. The high energy system of "Beta."
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite 12 hour loop - click here
October 29, 2005. 0130 z.
Water Vapor Goes East. "Beta's Supporting vortex system. The heat intensity in the Caribbean is driven by the hotter waters where these storms are now depositing heat as well as being fueled by same.
"Beta" is a large and complex weather system encompassing the entire of the Caribbean Sea.
October 28, 2005. 1210 gmt.
Tropical Storm Beta is a serious and dangerous low pressure center. It is 'complimented' as all major storms before it by a system in the Pacific Ocean. "Beta" has the potential to move into the Gulf Stream and brushing southern Florida.
Morning Papers - It's Origins
Rooster "Cock-A-Doodle-Do"
"Okeydoke"
History
1636, Harvard College was founded in Massachusetts.
1798 Levi Coffin, who helped over 300 slaves escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad, is born.
1793, Eli Whitney applied for a patent for his cotton gin (the patent was granted the following March).
1886, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Cleveland.
1919, Congress enacted the Volstead Act, which provided for enforcement of Prohibition, over President Wilson's veto.
1922, fascism came to Italy as Benito Mussolini took control of the government.
1958, the Roman Catholic patriarch of Venice, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, was elected pope; he took the name John XXIII.
1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev informed the United States that he had ordered the dismantling of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.
1965, Pope Paul VI issued a decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
1965 Jazz saxophonist Earl Bostic dies in Rochester, NY.
1981 Edward M. McIntyre is elected first black mayor of Augusta, GA
Missing in Action
1967 KIRK THOMAS H. PORTSMOUNTH VA 03/14/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1968 CONNOR CHARLES R. SALT LAKE CITY UT
1968 RICKER WILLIAM E. PORTLAND OR
1968 STONEBRAKER KENNETH A. HOBART IN
1968 STROVEN WILLIAM H. FREMONT MI
1972 HALL JAMES W. LOS ANGELES CA PROB HEADED FOR HANOI REMAINS RETURNED 03/15/2000
Times - Picayune
NOPD cans 45 cops for abandonment
228 others under investigation
Forty-five officers and six civilians have been fired from the New Orleans Police Department for abandonment and failing to report for duty during Hurricane Katrina, officials said.
Another 15 officers resigned while under investigation for abandonment; 228 others remain under investigation for abandoment, said Acting Superintendent Warren Riley.
These officers "do not represent the heroes who remained in the city during extremely challenging times," Riley said. "We should not dwell on them because they did not have the best interest of the city of their colleagues at heart."
Additionally, 15 officers are under investigation for looting. Riley said he also has received 45 letters of resignation from officers citing "personal reasons," ranging from relocation with family members to landing new jobs.
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_10_28.html
Veterans of Hugo: Drop that crowbar
Group says homes often worth saving
Friday, October 28, 2005
By Tara Young Staff writer
The first inclination of most frustrated residents who return to New Orleans and find their homes damaged by floodwaters and mold is to rip out everything and start over.
It's a gut instinct that the Preservation Resource Center and the National Trust for Historic Preservation would like homeowners to ignore for now.
"There seems to be this important assumption that everything needs to be torn down and gutted," said Leigh Handal, a Charleston, S.C., native and preservationist who fought to protect that city's architectural history after Hurricane Hugo stripped swaths of it away in 1989. "No one here has really given voice to the option of saving what you've got."
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?/base/library-88/1130509254106630.xml
Company wanted out of body collection job, citing FEMA `quagmire'
10/28/2005, 4:21 p.m. CT
By KEVIN McGILL
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Days after federal authorities assigned it the delicate duty of collecting Hurricane Katrina's dead in Louisiana, a Houston-based company wanted out, complaining of a "bureaucratic quagmire" in its dealings with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Kenyon International asked FEMA to find someone else to do the job in a Sept. 11 letter to Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of FEMA's response to Katrina, which struck Aug. 29. The company stayed on the job, however, eventually signing a contract with the state of Louisiana.
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisiana/index.ssf?/base/news-20/1130530144143502.xml&storylist=louisiana
Levee wall problems too obvious, experts say
Engineers who designed them should have seen it, they say
Friday, October 28, 2005
By Bob Marshall and Mark Schleifstein Staff writers
Conditions suspected of causing the 17th Street Canal levee wall failure that flooded much of New Orleans should have been obvious to the engineers who designed the structure, a team of LSU researchers said after viewing documents obtained by The Times-Picayune.
The team said the soil analyses of the levee and the ground beneath it show a picture of such weak support that failure of the wall under maximum loads was almost a given for the design that the Army Corps of Engineers chose to use: a single wall of steel sheet pile that was not driven to reach below the bottom of the canal.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/library-88/1130509178106631.xml
Category 5 levees a hard sell to Bush aides
Recovery team member recalls Tuesday meeting
Friday, October 28, 2005
By Robert Travis Scott Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- A member of Gov. Kathleen Blanco's hurricane recovery advisory team said White House officials earlier this week were skeptical about building a levee system in south Louisiana to withstand Category 5 hurricanes, but were more positive on some suggested recovery measures.
Sean Reilly was one of a few members of Blanco's Louisiana Recovery Authority who met for 90 minutes Tuesday with President Bush's Chief of Staff Andy Card and Al Hubbard, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisors.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/capital/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1130509295106630.xml
Foti: Levee Board president broke law
Huey stepped down from post Thursday
Friday, October 28, 2005
By Frank Donze Staff writer
A unilateral decision in July by the Orleans Levee Board's then-president, Jim Huey, to pay himself nearly $100,000 in back salary was a clear violation of state law, Attorney General Charles Foti said Thursday in an opinion issued by his staff.
Furthermore, Foti wrote, the $1,000-a-month salary that Huey collected from June through October was illegal because Huey failed to get approval from the board of commissioners.
The opinion, written in response to an Oct. 17 request by state Inspector General Sharon Robinson, does not address whether Huey must repay the money. But the salary matter is expected to be a topic of discussion today when the board holds its monthly meeting.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/library-88/1130509245106631.xml
The Miami Herald
Power woes cause death, anguish
Three days after Hurricane Wilma struck, some Broward County residents lashed out at the government, while others were grateful for the help they got.
breinhard@herald.com
BY AMY SHERMAN, SARA OLKON AND BETH REINHARD
Hurricane Wilma's toll of death and misery in Broward County rose Thursday as a Deerfield Beach man apparently succumbed to carbon monoxide fumes from a generator, sewage started backing up in the streets and people struggled without power, water and gas.
Cloves Jose Dos Santos, 48, died and nine others -- including three fire-rescue workers -- were taken to the hospital. The others are expected to survive.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13016560.htm
Emergencies swamp area hospitals
FEMA medical teams began arriving Thursday to relieve pressure from South Florida's mobbed emergency rooms.
BY JACOB GOLDSTEIN, HOWARD COHEN AND EVAN S. BENN
jgoldstein@herald.com
Two men were hurt trying to siphon gasoline with a vacuum cleaner. Another scorched himself using rubbing alcohol as cooking fuel. A fourth was paralyzed after tumbling from a ladder.
Three days after Hurricane Wilma, South Florida hospitals found themselves overburdened by emergencies. On Thursday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency began setting up makeshift emergency rooms in the parking lots of South Florida hospitals. Each will have dozens of volunteer doctors, nurses and first-responders from around the country beneath a tent.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13015975.htm
Police, lack of gas keep roads safer
Police in Miami-Dade worked to keep up with fender-benders and staffed intersections to prevent them.
BY ROBERT L. STEINBACK
rsteinback@herald.com
Miami-Dade motorists are still having some difficulties getting safely through intersections where traffic lights have gone dark, but overall,authorities gave a cautiously optimistic assessment of county traffic conditions Thursday.
The Florida Highway Patrol, Miami-Dade Police and local municipal departments have made a diligent effort to put officers at lightless major intersections, but with 1,700 of the county's 2,600 light-controlled intersections still nonfunctional Thursday evening, accidents were inevitable.
At certain moments, there were more accidents than FHP troopers to respond to them, said department spokesman Lt. Pat Santangelo.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13017707.htm
Hourly workers suffer after the storm
Workers and small businesses that don't get paid if they don't put in the hours are finding Wilma's particular flavor of havoc is tough on the pocketbook.
BY JIM WYSS AND JANE BUSSEY
jwyss@herald.com
In the last 48 hours, Joseph Chevalier has put in a full day's work just buying gas. Inching his yellow cab along a line of cars that stretched four blocks and almost as many hours from a BP service station in downtown Miami, the 50-year-old cabbie said he probably wouldn't make enough money to cover his $350 weekly car payment.
''I've only done one job today, from the airport to Miami Beach, and then it was time to get in line again,'' said Chevalier. ``But I have to work, because I need money, because the bills come every day.''
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13017464.htm
Strict travel policies are hurting families
OUR OPINION: CASTRO, U.S. GOVERNMENT WRONG TO DIVIDE CUBAN KIN
A new report by Human Rights Watch puts a human face on the suffering caused by travel restrictions imposed by the governments in Cuba and the United States. The two countries have different motivations for their policy, but both result in painful family separations. We urge the international community to exert pressure on Cuba to stop violating the right of Cubans to travel freely into and out of the country. We also urge our own government to lift travel rules that severely limit Cuban Americans from visiting, helping and comforting relatives in Cuba.
Punished for leaving
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13017666.htm
The Jerusalem Post
Israel is up to it's neck in defending against 'the crazies.' Iran's president has called for the retaliation of every extremist alive against Israel. That is his plan. He sees no reason with Syria in the world's crosshairs and Iraq occupied to allow Israel to exist.
Libby indicted for perjury, obstruction, false testimony
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
US President George W. Bush issued a terse response to Friday's indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Libby's resignation as the chief of the vice president's staff.
Bush praised Libby for his service to the American people and stood by the fact that according to law, Libby was presumed innocent until proven guilty. Bush chose not to expand on the issue and not to answer any questions from reporters, stating that he "had a job to do."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540619506&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Times reporter Miller testifies
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON
New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified before a grand jury Friday, ending her silence in the investigation into whether White House officials leaked the name of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame.
Miller, out of jail after 85 days, said, "I was a journalist doing my job, protecting my source until my source freed me to perform my civic duty to testify."
Escorted by her lawyers and New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., Miller met with reporters for several minutes after spending more than four hours inside the courthouse, most of it behind closed doors with a grand jury.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1127746242362&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Nasrallah pledges to support Syria
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIRUT, Lebanon
The Hizbullah staged a massive military parade in southern Beirut on Friday as thousands of its guerillas marched in a show of force to counter international calls for the disarmament of Lebanese militias.
The groups' fiery leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, also backed Syria following a UN investigation that ties Lebanon's neighbor to the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
As tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters cheered and applauded, more than 6,000 guerrillas in black, olive and green military uniforms and fatigues marched in formation through Hizbullah's south Beirut stronghold. None were seen to be carrying weapons.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540623363&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Ahmadinejad justifies Israel comments
By HERB KEINON AND JPOST STAFF
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmandinejad on Friday rejected widespread condemnation of his remarks Wednesday calling to "wipe Israel off the map".
According to Ahmandinejad, the comments were both justified and correct, Israel Radio reported. "They reflect the words of the Iranian people," he said.
The hard-line leader added, "Israel and the United States believe that the entire world must abide by their rules although they are the ones that are responsible for destroying Palestinian families."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540617091&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Aksa Brigades far from ready to disarm
By MATTHEW GUTMAN
In a grove of date palms in the center of this Gaza Strip city, Palestinian gunmen contemplate their future.
It is 4 p.m., when thirst and the ache for a cigarette following the day's Ramadan fast are at their height. A cellphone rings and bears the news that dozens have been wounded in a suicide bombing in Hadera. The six members of the Fatah-linked Aksa Martyrs Brigades register the information and move on, talking about their own "resistance" against Israel.
The world may have thought otherwise, but in the warrens of Gaza's refugee camps the war against Israel is very much still on. The Palestinian Authority announced on Sunday that it planned to disarm the Brigades and absorb its members into the PA security forces, but these gunmen seem anything but ready to disarm.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540617122&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
IAF missile strike kills al-Aksa member
By ARIEH O'SULLIVAN, JPOST STAFF, AND AP
The IAF continued to strike Friday, sending two missiles into a moving car and killing Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades member Majid Natat, 28.
Security forces confirmed that Natat and the other passengers were on their way to launch Kassam rockets at Israel.
An Al Aksa spokesman, going by the code name Abu Ahmed, said an Israeli drone fired at the car after terrorists fired rockets at Sderot. "The occupation will pay a heavy price for this crime," he said.
The Israeli air force also fired two missiles at Kassam-launching grounds in the northern Gaza Strip early Friday afternoon, after Palestinians launched a Kassam rocket toward the western Negev.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540616276&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Czech extremists laud Holocaust denier
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
PRAGUE, Czech Republic
Dozens of right-wing extremists rallied Friday in front of the German Embassy in Prague, demanding that Ernst Zundel be set free or tried quickly on charges of inciting racial hatred.
Zundel was arrested in Germany in March after being deported from Canada. In July, he was charged with 14 counts of inciting racial hatred, for his decades of anti-Semitic activities, including repeatedly denying the Holocaust - a crime in Germany - in documents and on the Internet.
Zundel is scheduled to go on trial at a state court in Mannheim, Germany, on Nov. 8.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540621960&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Editor's Notes: Speaking his mind
By DAVID HOROVITZ
The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported that it is not persuaded of the claimed peaceful intent behind Iran's nuclear program. The United States is fairly certain that Iran's nuclear drive is anything but peaceful, and is moving toward seeking UN Security Council sanctions against Teheran. European diplomats are engaged in last-ditch efforts to avoid an escalating crisis, imploring Iran to suspend the program.
Hardly the most propitious time, you might imagine, for Iran's president to come out with the most unambiguously vicious declaration in years of belligerent intent against another sovereign state - ours.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540617134&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The Middle East Times
Viewpoint: The oil tsunami
Youssef M. Ibrahim
October 21, 2005
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The global oil market environment is becoming a target of opportunity for terrorists and world powers. The terrorists increasingly see disruptions of oil facilities as a valid strategy in their war against governments that they oppose. World powers like China, Japan, the United States and India are driven into increasing confrontation fighting for diminishing oil supplies.
These are sinister developments, ingredients for the next tsunami to hit the already turbulent world of oil where prices have gone so high that they are depressing world economies.
The trouble from insurgents blowing up oil facilities is no less dangerous than the pressures from China, India and Japan's voracious appetite for more oil.
China is a major superpower showing that it will not hesitate to use pressure to secure oil. The Chinese are developing a strong foothold in Pakistan, where thousands of Chinese workers are building a new port in Baluchistan at Gwadar, right at the entrance to the Persian Gulf.
One of the main causes of friction between China and Japan now involves access to oil and gas deposits in the East China Sea. When the Security Council tried to impose sanctions on Sudan - one of China's main oil suppliers - over the issue of Darfur, the Chinese said no.
In May when a massacre occurred in Uzbekistan with hundreds of people killed on the orders of President Islam Karimov, the United States and Europe asked for an international investigation. China, which had signed a $600 million gas deal with Uzbekistan, blocked it.
One needs to ring the alarm bell as this Asian pressure combines with terrorist attacks to form the elements of the perfect storm heading directly toward the Arabian Peninsula.
At the moment Iraq is the biggest model for jihadists seeking to spread chaos, fight the pro-American government there and eventually defeat the United States invasion - and the American project in the region by attacking oil facilities. But soon this tactic will travel to other oil-producing countries. There have already been attacks on oil installations in Chechnya, Pakistan, India, Russia, Azerbaijan and Nigeria.
Since the American invasion of Iraq, there have been more than 300 attacks on pipelines, refineries, and other facilities. Iraqi refineries have been looted to a point that the United States and Kuwait are supplying gasoline and heating oil to Iraq, which sits on top of one of the world's largest oil reserves.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051021-085254-6552r
Pakistan gang-rape victim to receive women's award in US
October 25, 2005
NEW YORK, NY, USA -- A Pakistani woman whose gang rape triggered an international outcry has arrived in the United States to receive an award from a women's magazine, organizers of the event said on Monday.
Mukhtaran Mai flew in over the weekend and will receive a Woman of the Year prize from Glamour magazine on November 2 at a ceremony in New York.
Mai, 33, was gang raped on the orders of a tribal council in 2002 as punishment for her brother's alleged love affair with a woman from another tribe.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051025-023651-1695r
'Islamic feminism' conference to be held in Spain
October 20, 2005
MADRID -- An international conference on "Islamic feminism" will take place later this month in Barcelona, bringing together numerous prominent Muslim women from across the world, organizers said on Wednesday.
Participants will include Amina Wadud, a US academic who caused a stir by leading Muslim Friday prayers at a church in New York earlier this year.
Scheduled for October 27, 28 and 29 and billed as the first such event of its kind, the gathering is organized by the Junta Islamica Catalana (Catalan Islamic Assembly) and a department of the Spanish ministry of labor and social affairs.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051020-030750-7348r
Iraqi parties register candidates for polls
Ammar Karim
AFP
October 28, 2005
BAGHDAD -- Iraqi parties on Friday were officially registering their candidates for the December 15 general elections after each of three main Sunni, Shia and Kurdish communities agreed on separate broad coalitions.
Meanwhile, two more US soldiers were killed as the Pentagon announced that US forces in Iraq have swelled to 161,000, their highest level since the March 2003 invasion.
Iraq's dominant Shia parties, the two main Kurdish factions and three groups representing the minority Sunni community had announced ahead of Friday's registration deadline that they would each field single candidate lists for the poll.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051028-094502-8856r
Viewpoint: Dumb, but smart Feith
Arnaud de Borchgrave
October 24, 2005
WASHINGTON, DC -- What has Douglas Feith, the former No. 3 at the Pentagon, done to deserve so many high-ranking public hoots of derision? First he was lampooned by Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of both the 2001 Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Iraqi Freedom in 2003. "The stupidest guy on the face of the earth," Franks was quoted as saying.
The latest surprise sally came from Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff when he was secretary of state. "Seldom in my life," said Wilkerson, "have I met a dumber man". Wilkerson was Powell's most trusted adviser for almost 16 years.
Feith was a key cog in what Wilkerson calls the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked US foreign policy and marched the country to war in Iraq with disinformation about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The "cabal" is code for the neocons.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051024-094617-5345r
UN gets new draft of Syria resolution
October 28, 2005
UNITED NATIONS -- The United States, France and Great Britain circulated late on Thursday a revised UN draft resolution demanding Syrian cooperation in investigating the murder of Lebanon's former prime minister.
The new version still threatens Damascus with economic and diplomatic sanctions if it does not fully cooperate with the probe, but tones down some of the language and certain punitive measures, the application of which would now be overseen by a special committee.
Experts from the 15-member UN Security Council met on Thursday to reconcile strong differences about a Franco-US draft resolution, co-sponsored by Britain and presented on Wednesday, that calls for sanctions against Syrians implicated in the slaying of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri last February.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051028-082722-1841r
Israel resigned to Hamas participation in elections
Marius Schattner
October 24, 2005
JERUSALEM -- Israel was increasingly resigned on Sunday to Hamas standing in January's Palestinian elections after US President George W. Bush failed to voice opposition to the Islamic militant movement's participation.
Foreign minister Silvan Shalom had said last week that it would be "madness" for Hamas to be allowed to take part but the government now appears to have backed down from threats to disrupt January's ballot in the absence of support from its chief ally.
Israel had been hoping that Bush would use last week's summit with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to pressure him to bar Hamas from the elections.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051024-064027-9845r
Iranian president stands by 'just' Israel remark
Laurent Lozano
AFP
October 28, 2005
IN PROTEST: Iranian protestors burn Israel's flag while waving a Palestinian flag during a Jerusalem Day demonstration outside Tehran University before Friday prayers in Tehran on October 28.
(REUTERS)
TEHRAN -- President Mahmud Ahmadinejad on Friday dismissed international condemnation of his call for Israel to be "wiped off the map" as tens of thousands of Iranians massed to condemn the Jewish state.
"They are free to talk but their words do not have any validity. It is natural that if a word is right and just it will provoke a reaction," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA.
The hardline president went on to criticize "international Zionism and the expansionist policies of the world arrogance" - terminology usually used to refer to the
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051028-084510-3313r
Israel presses militant crackdown as tensions soar
Marius Schattner
AFP
October 28, 2005
ISLAMIC JIHAD: Palestinian gunman from the Islamic Jihad attends a news conference in Gaza on October 26.
(REUTERS)
JERUSALEM -- Israel's hardline defense minister dismissed the Palestinian leadership as a partner for peace and ruled out any Palestinian state in the foreseeable future after a night of attacks into Friday by Israeli warplanes.
In an echo of the Israeli stand against the late Yasser Arafat, defense minister Shaul Mofaz said: "I doubt very much that one day we can reach a peace accord with the present leadership of the Palestinians. We must wait for the next generation."
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051028-080812-4264r
The Guardian
Cheney aide resigns after indictment over CIA leak
Staff and agencies
Friday October 28, 2005
Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby. Photograph: AP
Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, resigned tonight after being charged in connection with the leaking of the identity of a covert CIA agent to the media.
Mr Libby, 55, a key member of the Bush administration, was indicted on obstruction of justice, false statement and perjury charges at the end of a 22-month investigation by a federal grand jury.
Papers released by the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed that Karl Rove, the chief political advisor to the US president, George Bush, will not be charged today in connection with the inquiry but will remain under investigation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1603933,00.html
Timeline: the Valerie Plame affair
Key events in the investigation into the leak of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame's name to the media
Associated Press
Friday October 28, 2005
2002
February
Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador, is asked by the Bush administration to travel to Niger to check out an intelligence report that the African country sold yellowcake uranium to Iraq in the late 1990s for use in nuclear weapons.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1603996,00.html
Humiliated Bush forced to retreat as moral right turns its guns on him
· Bush losing support among Christian right
· Withdrawal regarded as face-saving attempt
Julian Borger in Washington
Friday October 28, 2005
The Guardian
George Bush said one of the reasons he picked Harriet Miers for the supreme court was that he knew her so well. It says a lot about the president's current standing that the endorsement not only failed to save her: it may have helped sink her.
The withdrawal of a nominee before formal confirmation hearings have even begun is embarrassing enough. Dropping her after repeated personal endorsements, in the face of rancorous opposition from the president's own party, is an unprecedented humiliation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1602653,00.html
White House awaits Plame fallout
· Inquiry into naming of CIA agent presents findings
· Speculation continues over charges for top aides
Julian Borger in Washington and John Hooper in Rome
Thursday October 27, 2005
The Guardian
The White House was yesterday struggling to carry on business as usual amid feverish speculation that top officials were facing criminal charges in a potentially crippling political scandal.
Patrick Fitzgerald, a special federal prosecutor, arrived soon after dawn at a Washington courthouse to present a grand jury with the results so far of his 22-month investigation into the leak two years ago of a CIA agent's identity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1601462,00.html
Tehran defiant over Israel slur
Staff and agencies
Friday October 28, 2005
Israeli flags are burned during an anti-Israeli rally in Tehran to mark the last Friday of Ramadan. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP
The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, refused today to retract his call for Israel to be wiped off the map, while the Iranian embassy in Moscow attempted to calm the growing diplomatic crisis.
Mr Ahmadinejad appeared at an anti-Israeli rally attended by thousands of Iranians in Tehran and rejected the international condemnation of his comments as "invalid".
"My words were the Iranian nation's words. Westerners are free to comment, but their reactions are invalid," he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1602769,00.html
Blair rebukes Iran for threats against Israel
Ewen MacAskill, Michael White, Nicholas Watt and Robert Tait in Tehran
Friday October 28, 2005
The Guardian
Tony Blair warned Iran last night in his starkest terms yet that the world would soon start demanding direct action against Tehran if "totally unacceptable" threats to wipe out Israel were repeated by its government.
At the end of the EU's one day summit in Hampton Court, Surrey, where Iran's stance was roundly condemned Mr Blair recalled that many countries had been urging restraint from the international community over Tehran's nuclear programme. But he said that instead of people "telling us you are not going to do anything about Iran, the question people are going to ask is 'what are you going to do about Iran?' because can you imagine a state with an attitude like that having nuclear weapons".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1602507,00.html
EU offers to slash farm subsidies
Mark Tran, Oliver King and agencies
Friday October 28, 2005
Peter Mandelson offered to cut EU farm subsidies by 47% today in an attempt to prevent world trade talks collapsing, but his proposal received a cool response from both French officials and US farm groups.
The EU trade commissioner put a new offer to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that stated Europe would reduce the highest tariff rates by 60% and eliminate all subsidies for farm exports if trading partners made similar moves at a WTO meeting in December.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,7369,1603900,00.html
San Diego Union Tribune
See what caused a ruckus on the radio 67 years ago
UNION-TRIBUNE
October 26, 2005
It was Halloween eve 1938. Millions of war-jittery Americans listened as special news bulletins reported that the tiny town of Grover's Mill, N.J., had been captured by invaders from Mars.
It was only a radio play – a re-creation of H.G. Wells' story "War of the Worlds" – cleverly disguised as a newscast by the radio magic of Orson Welles.
Those who didn't know, however, were panic-stricken. Police and military switchboards lit up. And the quiet of this October Sunday evening was shattered by a horrible – yet totally imaginary – invasion from Mars.
If you've ever seen Mars at its best, you can certainly understand how the Red Planet has inspired the human imagination since people first began looking skyward ages ago. And now's a great time to see Mars at its very best – exactly 67 years after that famous radio broadcast.
Our official closest approach to Mars this year comes Saturday night, when the two worlds will be a mere 43.1 million miles from each other. Now this isn't quite as close as we came two years ago, but this approach may actually look better to viewers from the Earth's Northern Hemisphere.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20051026-9999-1c26star.html
Mother of suspect in Vitale killing arrested
By Justin M. Norton
ASSOCIATED PRESS
6:06 p.m. October 27, 2005
MARTINEZ – The mother of a teenager accused of killing his neighbor at her hilltop estate was arrested Thursday and held on suspicion of being an accessory to murder.
Esther Fielding, 53, was being held in lieu of $500,000 bail, according to a deputy at the Contra Costa County Jail.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20051027-1806-ca-attorneyswifeslain.html
Miers out as Supreme Court nominee in stinging defeat for Bush
By David Espo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
5:09 p.m. October 27, 2005
Under withering attack from conservatives, President Bush abandoned his push to put loyalist Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court and promised a quick replacement. Democrats accused him of bowing to the "radical right wing of the Republican Party.
WASHINGTON – In a striking defeat for President Bush, White House counsel Harriet Miers on Thursday abandoned her bid to become a Supreme Court justice after three weeks of brutal criticism from fellow conservatives. The Senate's top Republican predicted a replacement candidate within days.
Miers said she ended her quest for confirmation because the Senate was demanding documents and information detailing her private advice to the president. "I am concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House," she wrote in a letter to Bush expressing her wish to drop the nomination.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20051027-1709-mierswithdraws.html
Source of lead in Pendleton's water confounding state, military officials
High copper levels also bedevil drinking supply on Marine base
By Mike Lee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
October 28, 2005
Somewhere in Camp Pendleton's drinking-water system lurks something that is pushing lead levels too high. It is causing the Marines to issue health warnings and distribute up to 25,000 gallons of bottled water a week to people on the base.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20051028-9999-1n28lead.html
Alcoholism
Thorburn sheds light on alcoholism’s myths
By John Davis
Special to THE DAILY
Alcoholism: The very word evokes images in everyone's mind. Most of us envision an alcoholic as a drunkard who cannot function in society, whose very awareness of his surroundings is a blur. We might believe that all "alcoholics lack willpower" or that if a person is an alcoholic he will be an unsuccessful loser, or come from a bad family.
In each case, we would be wrong, for the disease of alcoholism is subtle, destructive and can afflict any family.
http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/books/051016/book1.shtml
Public may have been led to believe targets were drunk
Edmonton Journal
Friday, October 07, 2005
A senior Edmonton Police Service officer specifically produced a press release that would lead the public to believe that the high-profile targets of the controversial Overtime drunk-driving operation were intoxicated, newly released documents show.
That is the finding of Calgary Deputy Chief Murray Stooke, who reviewed an internal Edmonton police investigation. "Was the press release specifically constructed in a fashion to identify, by implication, Mr. Kerry Diotte and Mr. Martin Ignasiak as either drunk or intoxicated that night at the Overtime, this being the context it was meant to achieve?
"There is support for the conclusion that the press release was specifically constructed in a fashion to paint Mr. Diotte and Mr. Ignasiak as either drunk or intoxicated.?
Based on Stooke's recommendation, Insp. Bryan Boulanger was charged with discreditable conduct.
Journal reporter Charles Rusnell follows this story in Saturday's newspaper.
http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/news/local_story.html?id=43e268ce-c97d-46d4-911f-2e163d600510
Moderate drinking dilutes blood: study
Posted on : Sat, 15 Oct 2005 23:02:00 GMT Author : Steve Walters
News Category : Health
Those who think moderate consumption of alcohol has medicinal benefits without side effects may find this one surprising. A US study has found that alcohol contributes to the thinning of the blood, which though beneficial for preventing heart attacks ups the chances of bleeding strokes.
“The contrasting effects of alcohol are similar to the effects of blood thinners like aspirin, which clearly prevent heart attacks but at the expense of some additional bleeding strokes.
Alcohol acting as a blood thinner makes sense, because heart attacks are caused by blood clots that form in clogged arteries, and blood thinners can hasten bleeding from injured arteries,” said the study's lead author Dr Kenneth Mukamal, who is associated with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/4244.html
Mother on a mission to stop drunk driver
October 14, 2005
A man convicted in a deadly drunken driving wreck was released from prison in June. He's back in jail charged with DUI again. Thomas Bass pleaded guilty in 1999 to nine charges in a crash that killed a Lee County teenager. The victim's mother won't stop until Bass stays behind bars.
On a wall at the Victim Witness Assistance office, dozens of pictures serve as reminders of the many victims of violent deaths. Many of the deaths are due to drunk drivers. "I think it's the most preventable crime there is. All people have to do is don't drink and drive," says Victim Witness Assistance Director Sybil Collins.
http://www.walb.com/Global/story.asp?S=3982139&nav=5kZQ
Club staff stabbed by drunk youths
When security staff asked disorderly group to leave club, a riot broke out, and two guards were stabbed; one is moderately injured, another is lightly wounded
Raanan Ben-Zur
Yet another weekend of club violence - Police have arrested five suspects after two security staff were stabbed at a Herzliya nightclub in the early hours of Saturday morning.
One of the security staff was moderately injured and another was lightly injured. Both were evacuated to a Tel Aviv hospital.
Soldier shot dead at Haifa nightclub / Ahiya Raved
Nidal Mansoor, 20, is killed by shots fired at doormen and clubbers after group is refused entry to a south Haifa night club
The incident took place close to 4:30 Saturday morning, when a riot broke out in the Herzliya nightclub.
According to reports, a group of drunken youths at the began behaving in a disorderly way, causing others at the club to complain.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3155142,00.html
Want to stay out of jail? Tell the cops you've been drinking at Eddie V's
Sunday, October 16, 2005
So a Sixth Street bar called The Chuggin' Monkey finished fourth among Austin bars when police asked suspected drunken drivers where they had their last drink.
This is a testimony to the lack of creative thinking among Austin's drunk community.
Tell me this much. What kind of a genius would admit to a cop that he'd just been sucking down suds at a place called the Chuggin' Monkey? Why would you say that out loud to a cop? Was the Pukin' Gorilla closed? How about the Vomiting Giraffe?
http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/metro/stories/10/16kelso.html
Test proves mother legally drunk in crash that killed toddler
Thursday, October 27, 2005 - by Steve Mac Donald
Anchorage, Alaska - Alaska State Troopers say a woman's blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit when she caused a car wreck that killed her young son.
Milissa Delia, 23, was driving a pickup truck two weeks ago that left the Alaska Highway near Dot Lake and crashed into a utility pole. Her son, 22- month-old Brandon Duncan, was killed in the wreck. Delia’s blood alcohol level came in at .14 percent.
Delia remains jailed on charges of manslaughter, assault, driving under the influence of alcohol and endangering the welfare of a child.
http://www.ktuu.com/cms/templates/master.asp?articleid=1394&zoneid=1
Fairbanks woman charged with manslaughter in son’s death
Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - by Lee Bullington
Anchorage, Alaska - A Fairbanks nurse is charged with manslaughter in the death of her infant son.
A state magistrate denied a request yesterday to reduce the bail for 23-year-old Milissa Delia. Alaska State Troopers say she was drunk when she drove off the Alaska Highway near Dot Lake and smashed into a utility pole. The accident killed her son, 22-month-old Brandon Duncan.
Troopers say she smelled of alcohol and empty beer cans were found in her pickup.
Delia is charged with manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child. She is being held on $250,000 bail. Her attorney requested that the bail be reduced to $15,000, but the magistrate denied the request, saying that a funeral has not been scheduled and he disapproved of Delia's options for a third-party custodian.
http://www.ktuu.com/cms/templates/master.asp?articleid=825&zoneid=1
CHP out to haunt drunk drivers this Halloween
The Bakersfield Californian
Posted: Thursday October 27th, 2005, 6:21 PM
Last Updated: Thursday October 27th, 2005, 6:21 PM
No, California Highway Patrol Halloween costumes didn’t surge in popularity this year.
Up to 80 percent of CHP’s uniformed officers will be on the roads this weekend in an effort to scare up some drunken driving arrests.
Officer Greg Williams said Halloween is especially hazardous because large numbers of children take to the roads after dark.
“We want to make sure you pay attention when you’re behind the wheel,” he said.
Williams urged children to wear bright costumes, travel with adults and carry flashlights. He said face paint is safer than a mask, which can block a child’s vision.
With Halloween falling on a Monday, Williams said his agency picked the weekend for proactive, targeted enforcement.
The enforcement is part of Operation STAR, a yearlong program that designates numerous times during the year for extra enforcement activity, according to CHP.
Drivers who violate speed, drunken driving or seat belt laws are being specially targeted by the efforts.
“Those who don’t get the message may find themselves in our version of a haunted house — the county jail,” Bakersfield CHP Capt. Robert Clements said.
Halloween partying signals the beginning of the season for holiday and office parties, and Williams entreated the public to be safe.
“We want that sober driver behind the wheel,” he said. “If you drink and drive, we’re going to provide the chaser.”
http://www.bakersfield.com/updates/story/5652542p-5670435c.html
Drunk driving wins stricter penalties
By Bella Travaglini/ bella.travaglini@cnc.com
Thursday, October 27, 2005
New legislation to ratchet up penalties for repeat drunken drivers is sitting on Gov. Mitt Romney's desk, but many advocates for stricter laws are not totally sold on the bill.
"I want to know why 22 legislators voted against the bill at all," Brian Murphy of Danvers said on Monday. "What do they have to gain by voting against it?"
Murphy's son, Patrick, was killed last winter at the age of 17 by a repeat drunk driving offender who was traveling south on the north bound side of Route 128 near Manchester.
http://www2.townonline.com/danvers/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=356697
Halloween Drunk Driving
Marla Carter
Halloween comes in second to only the Forth of July when it comes to drunk driving fatalities.
When you think of Halloween, sweets and little ghosts and goblins come to mind, but there is a scarier side to the holiday.
"Halloween is a very dangerous holiday. It's the second largest holiday for traffic accidents and many of them are alcohol related," said Michelle Voth of Kansas Family Partnership.
Last year, there were 207 alcohol related crashes over Halloween in kansas, killing seven people.
"Young teenagers get caught up in the moment and what we're trying to do as law enforcement is say listen, stop and think about what you're doing there's nothing worse than a young teenager being lost," said Lt. Col. William Seck a Highway Patrol Superintendent.
The Highway Patrol will have a sobriety check point at I-470 and 21st. They found 16 impaired drivers at that location in just three hours last year.
http://www.wibw.com/home/headlines/1927792.html
Drink-driving mother wants to thank trucker
29.10.05
By Simon O'Rourke
The woman who drove drunk for hundreds of kilometres between Waiuku and Awakino with her 2-year-old in the passenger seat says she wants to publicly thank the truck driver who forced her off the road.
The mother appeared yesterday in the Te Kuiti District Court and pleaded guilty to the charge of drink-driving.
She was granted interim name suppression until her sentencing on Tuesday.
The woman arrived at court with the support of a friend, the pair briskly making their way through a waiting media scrum without word.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10352600
Drink-drive charge after woman killed in Grey Lynn
29.10.05
The driver of a car that hit and killed a woman pedestrian in Grey Lynn on Wednesday night has been charged with having excess breath alcohol.
Teremoana Bailey, 36, died after being struck near the Harcourt St-Williamson Ave intersection. Further charges are expected to be laid.
A woman hit and critically injured on a pedestrian crossing near the Royal Oak roundabout earlier in the week has been named. She was 91-year-old Ethel Plimmer, who died of her injuries in Auckland City Hospital. An investigation into that accident is continuing.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10352596
Detroit Free Press
Kickbacks in Iraqi deals have local ties
October 28, 2005
BY NIRAJ WARIKOO
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Investigators with a United Nations-sponsored committee looking into the Iraq oil-for-food program said in a report released Thursday that a West Bloomfield man was involved in kickbacks as he tried to build bridges between international companies and the regime of then-President Saddam Hussein.
The report described Shakir Al-Khafaji as a political player working to facilitate oil deals. But in doing so, he participated in illicit payments to the Iraqi government, the report said.
According to the Independent Inquiry Committee, more than 2,000 companies, including DaimlerChrysler, paid about $1.8 billion total in kickbacks and shady surcharges to Hussein's government.
http://www.freep.com/news/metro/oil28e_20051028.htm
Action by UAW could slow work at Delphi
N.Y. union tells plant workers not to go extra mile
October 28, 2005
BY JASON ROBERSON
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
Union leaders at one of Delphi Corp.'s largest plants are circulating a call for a work action that could slow down production at the nation's largest auto supplier. It was the first shot across the bow by unions since Delphi proposed severe pay and benefit cuts.
In a flyer obtained by the Free Press, UAW Local 686 in Lockport, N.Y., suggested to its more than 4,700 members who make radiators and other vital auto components that they not go above and beyond the call of duty, which essentially means the union seeks to slow down the plant.
A work slowdown or stoppage at Delphi plants could severely hamper automakers that depend on a steady flow of parts from the supplier, particularly former parent General Motors Corp., which remains its largest customer..
http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/delphi28e_20051028.htm
Detroit mayor's race gets odd as end nears
Facials, attack ads have voters talking
October 28, 2005
BY PATRICIA MONTEMURRI and KATHLEEN GRAY
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
Eleven days to the election, Detroit's mayoral campaign is spinning with odd twists:
•Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his wife are inviting Detroiters to hang out with them for conversation, free manicures and massages this weekend, with come-ons that blur the lines between mayoral outreach and political campaigning. •Kilpatrick also is getting late fund-raising help from DTE Energy Chief Anthony Early and noted Republican fund-raiser Jim Nicholson.
•Challenger Freman Hendrix, meanwhile, has had the only ads on major local television stations this week. Beginning this weekend, he'll outspend Kilpatrick 4 to 1 on ads running on WDIV-TV (Channel 4). He remains glued to his game plan of catering lunches where he talks to older voters and otherwise meeting voters in small groups.
http://www.freep.com/news/politics/campaign28e_20051028.htm
NOMINEE III: Bush should look beyond friends and politics
October 28, 2005
Now that the White House has written the book on how to bungle a Supreme Court nomination, President George W. Bush needs to think carefully about his next choice.
The nominee should be neither an ideologue nor someone to appease the rabid right wing of the Republican Party that makes up his base and effectively derailed Harriet Miers. While it's fine to select someone who has not been a judge, it's important for the president to choose someone with a healthy understanding of the Constitution and the nation's laws. Miers did not impress on that front.
Supreme Court justices should be among the smartest legal minds in the country. Of course, to make it to the bench, they have to survive the confirmation process.
http://www.freep.com/voices/editorials/emiers28e_20051028.htm
continued …
"Okeydoke"
History
1636, Harvard College was founded in Massachusetts.
1798 Levi Coffin, who helped over 300 slaves escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad, is born.
1793, Eli Whitney applied for a patent for his cotton gin (the patent was granted the following March).
1886, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Cleveland.
1919, Congress enacted the Volstead Act, which provided for enforcement of Prohibition, over President Wilson's veto.
1922, fascism came to Italy as Benito Mussolini took control of the government.
1958, the Roman Catholic patriarch of Venice, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, was elected pope; he took the name John XXIII.
1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev informed the United States that he had ordered the dismantling of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.
1965, Pope Paul VI issued a decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
1965 Jazz saxophonist Earl Bostic dies in Rochester, NY.
1981 Edward M. McIntyre is elected first black mayor of Augusta, GA
Missing in Action
1967 KIRK THOMAS H. PORTSMOUNTH VA 03/14/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE AND WELL 98
1968 CONNOR CHARLES R. SALT LAKE CITY UT
1968 RICKER WILLIAM E. PORTLAND OR
1968 STONEBRAKER KENNETH A. HOBART IN
1968 STROVEN WILLIAM H. FREMONT MI
1972 HALL JAMES W. LOS ANGELES CA PROB HEADED FOR HANOI REMAINS RETURNED 03/15/2000
Times - Picayune
NOPD cans 45 cops for abandonment
228 others under investigation
Forty-five officers and six civilians have been fired from the New Orleans Police Department for abandonment and failing to report for duty during Hurricane Katrina, officials said.
Another 15 officers resigned while under investigation for abandonment; 228 others remain under investigation for abandoment, said Acting Superintendent Warren Riley.
These officers "do not represent the heroes who remained in the city during extremely challenging times," Riley said. "We should not dwell on them because they did not have the best interest of the city of their colleagues at heart."
Additionally, 15 officers are under investigation for looting. Riley said he also has received 45 letters of resignation from officers citing "personal reasons," ranging from relocation with family members to landing new jobs.
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_10_28.html
Veterans of Hugo: Drop that crowbar
Group says homes often worth saving
Friday, October 28, 2005
By Tara Young Staff writer
The first inclination of most frustrated residents who return to New Orleans and find their homes damaged by floodwaters and mold is to rip out everything and start over.
It's a gut instinct that the Preservation Resource Center and the National Trust for Historic Preservation would like homeowners to ignore for now.
"There seems to be this important assumption that everything needs to be torn down and gutted," said Leigh Handal, a Charleston, S.C., native and preservationist who fought to protect that city's architectural history after Hurricane Hugo stripped swaths of it away in 1989. "No one here has really given voice to the option of saving what you've got."
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?/base/library-88/1130509254106630.xml
Company wanted out of body collection job, citing FEMA `quagmire'
10/28/2005, 4:21 p.m. CT
By KEVIN McGILL
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Days after federal authorities assigned it the delicate duty of collecting Hurricane Katrina's dead in Louisiana, a Houston-based company wanted out, complaining of a "bureaucratic quagmire" in its dealings with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Kenyon International asked FEMA to find someone else to do the job in a Sept. 11 letter to Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of FEMA's response to Katrina, which struck Aug. 29. The company stayed on the job, however, eventually signing a contract with the state of Louisiana.
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisiana/index.ssf?/base/news-20/1130530144143502.xml&storylist=louisiana
Levee wall problems too obvious, experts say
Engineers who designed them should have seen it, they say
Friday, October 28, 2005
By Bob Marshall and Mark Schleifstein Staff writers
Conditions suspected of causing the 17th Street Canal levee wall failure that flooded much of New Orleans should have been obvious to the engineers who designed the structure, a team of LSU researchers said after viewing documents obtained by The Times-Picayune.
The team said the soil analyses of the levee and the ground beneath it show a picture of such weak support that failure of the wall under maximum loads was almost a given for the design that the Army Corps of Engineers chose to use: a single wall of steel sheet pile that was not driven to reach below the bottom of the canal.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/library-88/1130509178106631.xml
Category 5 levees a hard sell to Bush aides
Recovery team member recalls Tuesday meeting
Friday, October 28, 2005
By Robert Travis Scott Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- A member of Gov. Kathleen Blanco's hurricane recovery advisory team said White House officials earlier this week were skeptical about building a levee system in south Louisiana to withstand Category 5 hurricanes, but were more positive on some suggested recovery measures.
Sean Reilly was one of a few members of Blanco's Louisiana Recovery Authority who met for 90 minutes Tuesday with President Bush's Chief of Staff Andy Card and Al Hubbard, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisors.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/capital/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1130509295106630.xml
Foti: Levee Board president broke law
Huey stepped down from post Thursday
Friday, October 28, 2005
By Frank Donze Staff writer
A unilateral decision in July by the Orleans Levee Board's then-president, Jim Huey, to pay himself nearly $100,000 in back salary was a clear violation of state law, Attorney General Charles Foti said Thursday in an opinion issued by his staff.
Furthermore, Foti wrote, the $1,000-a-month salary that Huey collected from June through October was illegal because Huey failed to get approval from the board of commissioners.
The opinion, written in response to an Oct. 17 request by state Inspector General Sharon Robinson, does not address whether Huey must repay the money. But the salary matter is expected to be a topic of discussion today when the board holds its monthly meeting.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/library-88/1130509245106631.xml
The Miami Herald
Power woes cause death, anguish
Three days after Hurricane Wilma struck, some Broward County residents lashed out at the government, while others were grateful for the help they got.
breinhard@herald.com
BY AMY SHERMAN, SARA OLKON AND BETH REINHARD
Hurricane Wilma's toll of death and misery in Broward County rose Thursday as a Deerfield Beach man apparently succumbed to carbon monoxide fumes from a generator, sewage started backing up in the streets and people struggled without power, water and gas.
Cloves Jose Dos Santos, 48, died and nine others -- including three fire-rescue workers -- were taken to the hospital. The others are expected to survive.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13016560.htm
Emergencies swamp area hospitals
FEMA medical teams began arriving Thursday to relieve pressure from South Florida's mobbed emergency rooms.
BY JACOB GOLDSTEIN, HOWARD COHEN AND EVAN S. BENN
jgoldstein@herald.com
Two men were hurt trying to siphon gasoline with a vacuum cleaner. Another scorched himself using rubbing alcohol as cooking fuel. A fourth was paralyzed after tumbling from a ladder.
Three days after Hurricane Wilma, South Florida hospitals found themselves overburdened by emergencies. On Thursday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency began setting up makeshift emergency rooms in the parking lots of South Florida hospitals. Each will have dozens of volunteer doctors, nurses and first-responders from around the country beneath a tent.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13015975.htm
Police, lack of gas keep roads safer
Police in Miami-Dade worked to keep up with fender-benders and staffed intersections to prevent them.
BY ROBERT L. STEINBACK
rsteinback@herald.com
Miami-Dade motorists are still having some difficulties getting safely through intersections where traffic lights have gone dark, but overall,authorities gave a cautiously optimistic assessment of county traffic conditions Thursday.
The Florida Highway Patrol, Miami-Dade Police and local municipal departments have made a diligent effort to put officers at lightless major intersections, but with 1,700 of the county's 2,600 light-controlled intersections still nonfunctional Thursday evening, accidents were inevitable.
At certain moments, there were more accidents than FHP troopers to respond to them, said department spokesman Lt. Pat Santangelo.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13017707.htm
Hourly workers suffer after the storm
Workers and small businesses that don't get paid if they don't put in the hours are finding Wilma's particular flavor of havoc is tough on the pocketbook.
BY JIM WYSS AND JANE BUSSEY
jwyss@herald.com
In the last 48 hours, Joseph Chevalier has put in a full day's work just buying gas. Inching his yellow cab along a line of cars that stretched four blocks and almost as many hours from a BP service station in downtown Miami, the 50-year-old cabbie said he probably wouldn't make enough money to cover his $350 weekly car payment.
''I've only done one job today, from the airport to Miami Beach, and then it was time to get in line again,'' said Chevalier. ``But I have to work, because I need money, because the bills come every day.''
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13017464.htm
Strict travel policies are hurting families
OUR OPINION: CASTRO, U.S. GOVERNMENT WRONG TO DIVIDE CUBAN KIN
A new report by Human Rights Watch puts a human face on the suffering caused by travel restrictions imposed by the governments in Cuba and the United States. The two countries have different motivations for their policy, but both result in painful family separations. We urge the international community to exert pressure on Cuba to stop violating the right of Cubans to travel freely into and out of the country. We also urge our own government to lift travel rules that severely limit Cuban Americans from visiting, helping and comforting relatives in Cuba.
Punished for leaving
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13017666.htm
The Jerusalem Post
Israel is up to it's neck in defending against 'the crazies.' Iran's president has called for the retaliation of every extremist alive against Israel. That is his plan. He sees no reason with Syria in the world's crosshairs and Iraq occupied to allow Israel to exist.
Libby indicted for perjury, obstruction, false testimony
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
US President George W. Bush issued a terse response to Friday's indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Libby's resignation as the chief of the vice president's staff.
Bush praised Libby for his service to the American people and stood by the fact that according to law, Libby was presumed innocent until proven guilty. Bush chose not to expand on the issue and not to answer any questions from reporters, stating that he "had a job to do."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540619506&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Times reporter Miller testifies
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON
New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified before a grand jury Friday, ending her silence in the investigation into whether White House officials leaked the name of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame.
Miller, out of jail after 85 days, said, "I was a journalist doing my job, protecting my source until my source freed me to perform my civic duty to testify."
Escorted by her lawyers and New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., Miller met with reporters for several minutes after spending more than four hours inside the courthouse, most of it behind closed doors with a grand jury.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1127746242362&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Nasrallah pledges to support Syria
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIRUT, Lebanon
The Hizbullah staged a massive military parade in southern Beirut on Friday as thousands of its guerillas marched in a show of force to counter international calls for the disarmament of Lebanese militias.
The groups' fiery leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, also backed Syria following a UN investigation that ties Lebanon's neighbor to the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
As tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters cheered and applauded, more than 6,000 guerrillas in black, olive and green military uniforms and fatigues marched in formation through Hizbullah's south Beirut stronghold. None were seen to be carrying weapons.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540623363&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Ahmadinejad justifies Israel comments
By HERB KEINON AND JPOST STAFF
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmandinejad on Friday rejected widespread condemnation of his remarks Wednesday calling to "wipe Israel off the map".
According to Ahmandinejad, the comments were both justified and correct, Israel Radio reported. "They reflect the words of the Iranian people," he said.
The hard-line leader added, "Israel and the United States believe that the entire world must abide by their rules although they are the ones that are responsible for destroying Palestinian families."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540617091&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Aksa Brigades far from ready to disarm
By MATTHEW GUTMAN
In a grove of date palms in the center of this Gaza Strip city, Palestinian gunmen contemplate their future.
It is 4 p.m., when thirst and the ache for a cigarette following the day's Ramadan fast are at their height. A cellphone rings and bears the news that dozens have been wounded in a suicide bombing in Hadera. The six members of the Fatah-linked Aksa Martyrs Brigades register the information and move on, talking about their own "resistance" against Israel.
The world may have thought otherwise, but in the warrens of Gaza's refugee camps the war against Israel is very much still on. The Palestinian Authority announced on Sunday that it planned to disarm the Brigades and absorb its members into the PA security forces, but these gunmen seem anything but ready to disarm.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540617122&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
IAF missile strike kills al-Aksa member
By ARIEH O'SULLIVAN, JPOST STAFF, AND AP
The IAF continued to strike Friday, sending two missiles into a moving car and killing Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades member Majid Natat, 28.
Security forces confirmed that Natat and the other passengers were on their way to launch Kassam rockets at Israel.
An Al Aksa spokesman, going by the code name Abu Ahmed, said an Israeli drone fired at the car after terrorists fired rockets at Sderot. "The occupation will pay a heavy price for this crime," he said.
The Israeli air force also fired two missiles at Kassam-launching grounds in the northern Gaza Strip early Friday afternoon, after Palestinians launched a Kassam rocket toward the western Negev.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540616276&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Czech extremists laud Holocaust denier
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
PRAGUE, Czech Republic
Dozens of right-wing extremists rallied Friday in front of the German Embassy in Prague, demanding that Ernst Zundel be set free or tried quickly on charges of inciting racial hatred.
Zundel was arrested in Germany in March after being deported from Canada. In July, he was charged with 14 counts of inciting racial hatred, for his decades of anti-Semitic activities, including repeatedly denying the Holocaust - a crime in Germany - in documents and on the Internet.
Zundel is scheduled to go on trial at a state court in Mannheim, Germany, on Nov. 8.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540621960&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Editor's Notes: Speaking his mind
By DAVID HOROVITZ
The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported that it is not persuaded of the claimed peaceful intent behind Iran's nuclear program. The United States is fairly certain that Iran's nuclear drive is anything but peaceful, and is moving toward seeking UN Security Council sanctions against Teheran. European diplomats are engaged in last-ditch efforts to avoid an escalating crisis, imploring Iran to suspend the program.
Hardly the most propitious time, you might imagine, for Iran's president to come out with the most unambiguously vicious declaration in years of belligerent intent against another sovereign state - ours.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540617134&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The Middle East Times
Viewpoint: The oil tsunami
Youssef M. Ibrahim
October 21, 2005
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The global oil market environment is becoming a target of opportunity for terrorists and world powers. The terrorists increasingly see disruptions of oil facilities as a valid strategy in their war against governments that they oppose. World powers like China, Japan, the United States and India are driven into increasing confrontation fighting for diminishing oil supplies.
These are sinister developments, ingredients for the next tsunami to hit the already turbulent world of oil where prices have gone so high that they are depressing world economies.
The trouble from insurgents blowing up oil facilities is no less dangerous than the pressures from China, India and Japan's voracious appetite for more oil.
China is a major superpower showing that it will not hesitate to use pressure to secure oil. The Chinese are developing a strong foothold in Pakistan, where thousands of Chinese workers are building a new port in Baluchistan at Gwadar, right at the entrance to the Persian Gulf.
One of the main causes of friction between China and Japan now involves access to oil and gas deposits in the East China Sea. When the Security Council tried to impose sanctions on Sudan - one of China's main oil suppliers - over the issue of Darfur, the Chinese said no.
In May when a massacre occurred in Uzbekistan with hundreds of people killed on the orders of President Islam Karimov, the United States and Europe asked for an international investigation. China, which had signed a $600 million gas deal with Uzbekistan, blocked it.
One needs to ring the alarm bell as this Asian pressure combines with terrorist attacks to form the elements of the perfect storm heading directly toward the Arabian Peninsula.
At the moment Iraq is the biggest model for jihadists seeking to spread chaos, fight the pro-American government there and eventually defeat the United States invasion - and the American project in the region by attacking oil facilities. But soon this tactic will travel to other oil-producing countries. There have already been attacks on oil installations in Chechnya, Pakistan, India, Russia, Azerbaijan and Nigeria.
Since the American invasion of Iraq, there have been more than 300 attacks on pipelines, refineries, and other facilities. Iraqi refineries have been looted to a point that the United States and Kuwait are supplying gasoline and heating oil to Iraq, which sits on top of one of the world's largest oil reserves.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051021-085254-6552r
Pakistan gang-rape victim to receive women's award in US
October 25, 2005
NEW YORK, NY, USA -- A Pakistani woman whose gang rape triggered an international outcry has arrived in the United States to receive an award from a women's magazine, organizers of the event said on Monday.
Mukhtaran Mai flew in over the weekend and will receive a Woman of the Year prize from Glamour magazine on November 2 at a ceremony in New York.
Mai, 33, was gang raped on the orders of a tribal council in 2002 as punishment for her brother's alleged love affair with a woman from another tribe.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051025-023651-1695r
'Islamic feminism' conference to be held in Spain
October 20, 2005
MADRID -- An international conference on "Islamic feminism" will take place later this month in Barcelona, bringing together numerous prominent Muslim women from across the world, organizers said on Wednesday.
Participants will include Amina Wadud, a US academic who caused a stir by leading Muslim Friday prayers at a church in New York earlier this year.
Scheduled for October 27, 28 and 29 and billed as the first such event of its kind, the gathering is organized by the Junta Islamica Catalana (Catalan Islamic Assembly) and a department of the Spanish ministry of labor and social affairs.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051020-030750-7348r
Iraqi parties register candidates for polls
Ammar Karim
AFP
October 28, 2005
BAGHDAD -- Iraqi parties on Friday were officially registering their candidates for the December 15 general elections after each of three main Sunni, Shia and Kurdish communities agreed on separate broad coalitions.
Meanwhile, two more US soldiers were killed as the Pentagon announced that US forces in Iraq have swelled to 161,000, their highest level since the March 2003 invasion.
Iraq's dominant Shia parties, the two main Kurdish factions and three groups representing the minority Sunni community had announced ahead of Friday's registration deadline that they would each field single candidate lists for the poll.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051028-094502-8856r
Viewpoint: Dumb, but smart Feith
Arnaud de Borchgrave
October 24, 2005
WASHINGTON, DC -- What has Douglas Feith, the former No. 3 at the Pentagon, done to deserve so many high-ranking public hoots of derision? First he was lampooned by Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of both the 2001 Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Iraqi Freedom in 2003. "The stupidest guy on the face of the earth," Franks was quoted as saying.
The latest surprise sally came from Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff when he was secretary of state. "Seldom in my life," said Wilkerson, "have I met a dumber man". Wilkerson was Powell's most trusted adviser for almost 16 years.
Feith was a key cog in what Wilkerson calls the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked US foreign policy and marched the country to war in Iraq with disinformation about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The "cabal" is code for the neocons.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051024-094617-5345r
UN gets new draft of Syria resolution
October 28, 2005
UNITED NATIONS -- The United States, France and Great Britain circulated late on Thursday a revised UN draft resolution demanding Syrian cooperation in investigating the murder of Lebanon's former prime minister.
The new version still threatens Damascus with economic and diplomatic sanctions if it does not fully cooperate with the probe, but tones down some of the language and certain punitive measures, the application of which would now be overseen by a special committee.
Experts from the 15-member UN Security Council met on Thursday to reconcile strong differences about a Franco-US draft resolution, co-sponsored by Britain and presented on Wednesday, that calls for sanctions against Syrians implicated in the slaying of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri last February.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051028-082722-1841r
Israel resigned to Hamas participation in elections
Marius Schattner
October 24, 2005
JERUSALEM -- Israel was increasingly resigned on Sunday to Hamas standing in January's Palestinian elections after US President George W. Bush failed to voice opposition to the Islamic militant movement's participation.
Foreign minister Silvan Shalom had said last week that it would be "madness" for Hamas to be allowed to take part but the government now appears to have backed down from threats to disrupt January's ballot in the absence of support from its chief ally.
Israel had been hoping that Bush would use last week's summit with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to pressure him to bar Hamas from the elections.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051024-064027-9845r
Iranian president stands by 'just' Israel remark
Laurent Lozano
AFP
October 28, 2005
IN PROTEST: Iranian protestors burn Israel's flag while waving a Palestinian flag during a Jerusalem Day demonstration outside Tehran University before Friday prayers in Tehran on October 28.
(REUTERS)
TEHRAN -- President Mahmud Ahmadinejad on Friday dismissed international condemnation of his call for Israel to be "wiped off the map" as tens of thousands of Iranians massed to condemn the Jewish state.
"They are free to talk but their words do not have any validity. It is natural that if a word is right and just it will provoke a reaction," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA.
The hardline president went on to criticize "international Zionism and the expansionist policies of the world arrogance" - terminology usually used to refer to the
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051028-084510-3313r
Israel presses militant crackdown as tensions soar
Marius Schattner
AFP
October 28, 2005
ISLAMIC JIHAD: Palestinian gunman from the Islamic Jihad attends a news conference in Gaza on October 26.
(REUTERS)
JERUSALEM -- Israel's hardline defense minister dismissed the Palestinian leadership as a partner for peace and ruled out any Palestinian state in the foreseeable future after a night of attacks into Friday by Israeli warplanes.
In an echo of the Israeli stand against the late Yasser Arafat, defense minister Shaul Mofaz said: "I doubt very much that one day we can reach a peace accord with the present leadership of the Palestinians. We must wait for the next generation."
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20051028-080812-4264r
The Guardian
Cheney aide resigns after indictment over CIA leak
Staff and agencies
Friday October 28, 2005
Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby. Photograph: AP
Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, resigned tonight after being charged in connection with the leaking of the identity of a covert CIA agent to the media.
Mr Libby, 55, a key member of the Bush administration, was indicted on obstruction of justice, false statement and perjury charges at the end of a 22-month investigation by a federal grand jury.
Papers released by the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed that Karl Rove, the chief political advisor to the US president, George Bush, will not be charged today in connection with the inquiry but will remain under investigation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1603933,00.html
Timeline: the Valerie Plame affair
Key events in the investigation into the leak of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame's name to the media
Associated Press
Friday October 28, 2005
2002
February
Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador, is asked by the Bush administration to travel to Niger to check out an intelligence report that the African country sold yellowcake uranium to Iraq in the late 1990s for use in nuclear weapons.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1603996,00.html
Humiliated Bush forced to retreat as moral right turns its guns on him
· Bush losing support among Christian right
· Withdrawal regarded as face-saving attempt
Julian Borger in Washington
Friday October 28, 2005
The Guardian
George Bush said one of the reasons he picked Harriet Miers for the supreme court was that he knew her so well. It says a lot about the president's current standing that the endorsement not only failed to save her: it may have helped sink her.
The withdrawal of a nominee before formal confirmation hearings have even begun is embarrassing enough. Dropping her after repeated personal endorsements, in the face of rancorous opposition from the president's own party, is an unprecedented humiliation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1602653,00.html
White House awaits Plame fallout
· Inquiry into naming of CIA agent presents findings
· Speculation continues over charges for top aides
Julian Borger in Washington and John Hooper in Rome
Thursday October 27, 2005
The Guardian
The White House was yesterday struggling to carry on business as usual amid feverish speculation that top officials were facing criminal charges in a potentially crippling political scandal.
Patrick Fitzgerald, a special federal prosecutor, arrived soon after dawn at a Washington courthouse to present a grand jury with the results so far of his 22-month investigation into the leak two years ago of a CIA agent's identity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1601462,00.html
Tehran defiant over Israel slur
Staff and agencies
Friday October 28, 2005
Israeli flags are burned during an anti-Israeli rally in Tehran to mark the last Friday of Ramadan. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP
The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, refused today to retract his call for Israel to be wiped off the map, while the Iranian embassy in Moscow attempted to calm the growing diplomatic crisis.
Mr Ahmadinejad appeared at an anti-Israeli rally attended by thousands of Iranians in Tehran and rejected the international condemnation of his comments as "invalid".
"My words were the Iranian nation's words. Westerners are free to comment, but their reactions are invalid," he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1602769,00.html
Blair rebukes Iran for threats against Israel
Ewen MacAskill, Michael White, Nicholas Watt and Robert Tait in Tehran
Friday October 28, 2005
The Guardian
Tony Blair warned Iran last night in his starkest terms yet that the world would soon start demanding direct action against Tehran if "totally unacceptable" threats to wipe out Israel were repeated by its government.
At the end of the EU's one day summit in Hampton Court, Surrey, where Iran's stance was roundly condemned Mr Blair recalled that many countries had been urging restraint from the international community over Tehran's nuclear programme. But he said that instead of people "telling us you are not going to do anything about Iran, the question people are going to ask is 'what are you going to do about Iran?' because can you imagine a state with an attitude like that having nuclear weapons".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1602507,00.html
EU offers to slash farm subsidies
Mark Tran, Oliver King and agencies
Friday October 28, 2005
Peter Mandelson offered to cut EU farm subsidies by 47% today in an attempt to prevent world trade talks collapsing, but his proposal received a cool response from both French officials and US farm groups.
The EU trade commissioner put a new offer to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that stated Europe would reduce the highest tariff rates by 60% and eliminate all subsidies for farm exports if trading partners made similar moves at a WTO meeting in December.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,7369,1603900,00.html
San Diego Union Tribune
See what caused a ruckus on the radio 67 years ago
UNION-TRIBUNE
October 26, 2005
It was Halloween eve 1938. Millions of war-jittery Americans listened as special news bulletins reported that the tiny town of Grover's Mill, N.J., had been captured by invaders from Mars.
It was only a radio play – a re-creation of H.G. Wells' story "War of the Worlds" – cleverly disguised as a newscast by the radio magic of Orson Welles.
Those who didn't know, however, were panic-stricken. Police and military switchboards lit up. And the quiet of this October Sunday evening was shattered by a horrible – yet totally imaginary – invasion from Mars.
If you've ever seen Mars at its best, you can certainly understand how the Red Planet has inspired the human imagination since people first began looking skyward ages ago. And now's a great time to see Mars at its very best – exactly 67 years after that famous radio broadcast.
Our official closest approach to Mars this year comes Saturday night, when the two worlds will be a mere 43.1 million miles from each other. Now this isn't quite as close as we came two years ago, but this approach may actually look better to viewers from the Earth's Northern Hemisphere.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20051026-9999-1c26star.html
Mother of suspect in Vitale killing arrested
By Justin M. Norton
ASSOCIATED PRESS
6:06 p.m. October 27, 2005
MARTINEZ – The mother of a teenager accused of killing his neighbor at her hilltop estate was arrested Thursday and held on suspicion of being an accessory to murder.
Esther Fielding, 53, was being held in lieu of $500,000 bail, according to a deputy at the Contra Costa County Jail.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20051027-1806-ca-attorneyswifeslain.html
Miers out as Supreme Court nominee in stinging defeat for Bush
By David Espo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
5:09 p.m. October 27, 2005
Under withering attack from conservatives, President Bush abandoned his push to put loyalist Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court and promised a quick replacement. Democrats accused him of bowing to the "radical right wing of the Republican Party.
WASHINGTON – In a striking defeat for President Bush, White House counsel Harriet Miers on Thursday abandoned her bid to become a Supreme Court justice after three weeks of brutal criticism from fellow conservatives. The Senate's top Republican predicted a replacement candidate within days.
Miers said she ended her quest for confirmation because the Senate was demanding documents and information detailing her private advice to the president. "I am concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House," she wrote in a letter to Bush expressing her wish to drop the nomination.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20051027-1709-mierswithdraws.html
Source of lead in Pendleton's water confounding state, military officials
High copper levels also bedevil drinking supply on Marine base
By Mike Lee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
October 28, 2005
Somewhere in Camp Pendleton's drinking-water system lurks something that is pushing lead levels too high. It is causing the Marines to issue health warnings and distribute up to 25,000 gallons of bottled water a week to people on the base.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20051028-9999-1n28lead.html
Alcoholism
Thorburn sheds light on alcoholism’s myths
By John Davis
Special to THE DAILY
Alcoholism: The very word evokes images in everyone's mind. Most of us envision an alcoholic as a drunkard who cannot function in society, whose very awareness of his surroundings is a blur. We might believe that all "alcoholics lack willpower" or that if a person is an alcoholic he will be an unsuccessful loser, or come from a bad family.
In each case, we would be wrong, for the disease of alcoholism is subtle, destructive and can afflict any family.
http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/books/051016/book1.shtml
Public may have been led to believe targets were drunk
Edmonton Journal
Friday, October 07, 2005
A senior Edmonton Police Service officer specifically produced a press release that would lead the public to believe that the high-profile targets of the controversial Overtime drunk-driving operation were intoxicated, newly released documents show.
That is the finding of Calgary Deputy Chief Murray Stooke, who reviewed an internal Edmonton police investigation. "Was the press release specifically constructed in a fashion to identify, by implication, Mr. Kerry Diotte and Mr. Martin Ignasiak as either drunk or intoxicated that night at the Overtime, this being the context it was meant to achieve?
"There is support for the conclusion that the press release was specifically constructed in a fashion to paint Mr. Diotte and Mr. Ignasiak as either drunk or intoxicated.?
Based on Stooke's recommendation, Insp. Bryan Boulanger was charged with discreditable conduct.
Journal reporter Charles Rusnell follows this story in Saturday's newspaper.
http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/news/local_story.html?id=43e268ce-c97d-46d4-911f-2e163d600510
Moderate drinking dilutes blood: study
Posted on : Sat, 15 Oct 2005 23:02:00 GMT Author : Steve Walters
News Category : Health
Those who think moderate consumption of alcohol has medicinal benefits without side effects may find this one surprising. A US study has found that alcohol contributes to the thinning of the blood, which though beneficial for preventing heart attacks ups the chances of bleeding strokes.
“The contrasting effects of alcohol are similar to the effects of blood thinners like aspirin, which clearly prevent heart attacks but at the expense of some additional bleeding strokes.
Alcohol acting as a blood thinner makes sense, because heart attacks are caused by blood clots that form in clogged arteries, and blood thinners can hasten bleeding from injured arteries,” said the study's lead author Dr Kenneth Mukamal, who is associated with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/4244.html
Mother on a mission to stop drunk driver
October 14, 2005
A man convicted in a deadly drunken driving wreck was released from prison in June. He's back in jail charged with DUI again. Thomas Bass pleaded guilty in 1999 to nine charges in a crash that killed a Lee County teenager. The victim's mother won't stop until Bass stays behind bars.
On a wall at the Victim Witness Assistance office, dozens of pictures serve as reminders of the many victims of violent deaths. Many of the deaths are due to drunk drivers. "I think it's the most preventable crime there is. All people have to do is don't drink and drive," says Victim Witness Assistance Director Sybil Collins.
http://www.walb.com/Global/story.asp?S=3982139&nav=5kZQ
Club staff stabbed by drunk youths
When security staff asked disorderly group to leave club, a riot broke out, and two guards were stabbed; one is moderately injured, another is lightly wounded
Raanan Ben-Zur
Yet another weekend of club violence - Police have arrested five suspects after two security staff were stabbed at a Herzliya nightclub in the early hours of Saturday morning.
One of the security staff was moderately injured and another was lightly injured. Both were evacuated to a Tel Aviv hospital.
Soldier shot dead at Haifa nightclub / Ahiya Raved
Nidal Mansoor, 20, is killed by shots fired at doormen and clubbers after group is refused entry to a south Haifa night club
The incident took place close to 4:30 Saturday morning, when a riot broke out in the Herzliya nightclub.
According to reports, a group of drunken youths at the began behaving in a disorderly way, causing others at the club to complain.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3155142,00.html
Want to stay out of jail? Tell the cops you've been drinking at Eddie V's
Sunday, October 16, 2005
So a Sixth Street bar called The Chuggin' Monkey finished fourth among Austin bars when police asked suspected drunken drivers where they had their last drink.
This is a testimony to the lack of creative thinking among Austin's drunk community.
Tell me this much. What kind of a genius would admit to a cop that he'd just been sucking down suds at a place called the Chuggin' Monkey? Why would you say that out loud to a cop? Was the Pukin' Gorilla closed? How about the Vomiting Giraffe?
http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/metro/stories/10/16kelso.html
Test proves mother legally drunk in crash that killed toddler
Thursday, October 27, 2005 - by Steve Mac Donald
Anchorage, Alaska - Alaska State Troopers say a woman's blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit when she caused a car wreck that killed her young son.
Milissa Delia, 23, was driving a pickup truck two weeks ago that left the Alaska Highway near Dot Lake and crashed into a utility pole. Her son, 22- month-old Brandon Duncan, was killed in the wreck. Delia’s blood alcohol level came in at .14 percent.
Delia remains jailed on charges of manslaughter, assault, driving under the influence of alcohol and endangering the welfare of a child.
http://www.ktuu.com/cms/templates/master.asp?articleid=1394&zoneid=1
Fairbanks woman charged with manslaughter in son’s death
Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - by Lee Bullington
Anchorage, Alaska - A Fairbanks nurse is charged with manslaughter in the death of her infant son.
A state magistrate denied a request yesterday to reduce the bail for 23-year-old Milissa Delia. Alaska State Troopers say she was drunk when she drove off the Alaska Highway near Dot Lake and smashed into a utility pole. The accident killed her son, 22-month-old Brandon Duncan.
Troopers say she smelled of alcohol and empty beer cans were found in her pickup.
Delia is charged with manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child. She is being held on $250,000 bail. Her attorney requested that the bail be reduced to $15,000, but the magistrate denied the request, saying that a funeral has not been scheduled and he disapproved of Delia's options for a third-party custodian.
http://www.ktuu.com/cms/templates/master.asp?articleid=825&zoneid=1
CHP out to haunt drunk drivers this Halloween
The Bakersfield Californian
Posted: Thursday October 27th, 2005, 6:21 PM
Last Updated: Thursday October 27th, 2005, 6:21 PM
No, California Highway Patrol Halloween costumes didn’t surge in popularity this year.
Up to 80 percent of CHP’s uniformed officers will be on the roads this weekend in an effort to scare up some drunken driving arrests.
Officer Greg Williams said Halloween is especially hazardous because large numbers of children take to the roads after dark.
“We want to make sure you pay attention when you’re behind the wheel,” he said.
Williams urged children to wear bright costumes, travel with adults and carry flashlights. He said face paint is safer than a mask, which can block a child’s vision.
With Halloween falling on a Monday, Williams said his agency picked the weekend for proactive, targeted enforcement.
The enforcement is part of Operation STAR, a yearlong program that designates numerous times during the year for extra enforcement activity, according to CHP.
Drivers who violate speed, drunken driving or seat belt laws are being specially targeted by the efforts.
“Those who don’t get the message may find themselves in our version of a haunted house — the county jail,” Bakersfield CHP Capt. Robert Clements said.
Halloween partying signals the beginning of the season for holiday and office parties, and Williams entreated the public to be safe.
“We want that sober driver behind the wheel,” he said. “If you drink and drive, we’re going to provide the chaser.”
http://www.bakersfield.com/updates/story/5652542p-5670435c.html
Drunk driving wins stricter penalties
By Bella Travaglini/ bella.travaglini@cnc.com
Thursday, October 27, 2005
New legislation to ratchet up penalties for repeat drunken drivers is sitting on Gov. Mitt Romney's desk, but many advocates for stricter laws are not totally sold on the bill.
"I want to know why 22 legislators voted against the bill at all," Brian Murphy of Danvers said on Monday. "What do they have to gain by voting against it?"
Murphy's son, Patrick, was killed last winter at the age of 17 by a repeat drunk driving offender who was traveling south on the north bound side of Route 128 near Manchester.
http://www2.townonline.com/danvers/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=356697
Halloween Drunk Driving
Marla Carter
Halloween comes in second to only the Forth of July when it comes to drunk driving fatalities.
When you think of Halloween, sweets and little ghosts and goblins come to mind, but there is a scarier side to the holiday.
"Halloween is a very dangerous holiday. It's the second largest holiday for traffic accidents and many of them are alcohol related," said Michelle Voth of Kansas Family Partnership.
Last year, there were 207 alcohol related crashes over Halloween in kansas, killing seven people.
"Young teenagers get caught up in the moment and what we're trying to do as law enforcement is say listen, stop and think about what you're doing there's nothing worse than a young teenager being lost," said Lt. Col. William Seck a Highway Patrol Superintendent.
The Highway Patrol will have a sobriety check point at I-470 and 21st. They found 16 impaired drivers at that location in just three hours last year.
http://www.wibw.com/home/headlines/1927792.html
Drink-driving mother wants to thank trucker
29.10.05
By Simon O'Rourke
The woman who drove drunk for hundreds of kilometres between Waiuku and Awakino with her 2-year-old in the passenger seat says she wants to publicly thank the truck driver who forced her off the road.
The mother appeared yesterday in the Te Kuiti District Court and pleaded guilty to the charge of drink-driving.
She was granted interim name suppression until her sentencing on Tuesday.
The woman arrived at court with the support of a friend, the pair briskly making their way through a waiting media scrum without word.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10352600
Drink-drive charge after woman killed in Grey Lynn
29.10.05
The driver of a car that hit and killed a woman pedestrian in Grey Lynn on Wednesday night has been charged with having excess breath alcohol.
Teremoana Bailey, 36, died after being struck near the Harcourt St-Williamson Ave intersection. Further charges are expected to be laid.
A woman hit and critically injured on a pedestrian crossing near the Royal Oak roundabout earlier in the week has been named. She was 91-year-old Ethel Plimmer, who died of her injuries in Auckland City Hospital. An investigation into that accident is continuing.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10352596
Detroit Free Press
Kickbacks in Iraqi deals have local ties
October 28, 2005
BY NIRAJ WARIKOO
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Investigators with a United Nations-sponsored committee looking into the Iraq oil-for-food program said in a report released Thursday that a West Bloomfield man was involved in kickbacks as he tried to build bridges between international companies and the regime of then-President Saddam Hussein.
The report described Shakir Al-Khafaji as a political player working to facilitate oil deals. But in doing so, he participated in illicit payments to the Iraqi government, the report said.
According to the Independent Inquiry Committee, more than 2,000 companies, including DaimlerChrysler, paid about $1.8 billion total in kickbacks and shady surcharges to Hussein's government.
http://www.freep.com/news/metro/oil28e_20051028.htm
Action by UAW could slow work at Delphi
N.Y. union tells plant workers not to go extra mile
October 28, 2005
BY JASON ROBERSON
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
Union leaders at one of Delphi Corp.'s largest plants are circulating a call for a work action that could slow down production at the nation's largest auto supplier. It was the first shot across the bow by unions since Delphi proposed severe pay and benefit cuts.
In a flyer obtained by the Free Press, UAW Local 686 in Lockport, N.Y., suggested to its more than 4,700 members who make radiators and other vital auto components that they not go above and beyond the call of duty, which essentially means the union seeks to slow down the plant.
A work slowdown or stoppage at Delphi plants could severely hamper automakers that depend on a steady flow of parts from the supplier, particularly former parent General Motors Corp., which remains its largest customer..
http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/delphi28e_20051028.htm
Detroit mayor's race gets odd as end nears
Facials, attack ads have voters talking
October 28, 2005
BY PATRICIA MONTEMURRI and KATHLEEN GRAY
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
Eleven days to the election, Detroit's mayoral campaign is spinning with odd twists:
•Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his wife are inviting Detroiters to hang out with them for conversation, free manicures and massages this weekend, with come-ons that blur the lines between mayoral outreach and political campaigning. •Kilpatrick also is getting late fund-raising help from DTE Energy Chief Anthony Early and noted Republican fund-raiser Jim Nicholson.
•Challenger Freman Hendrix, meanwhile, has had the only ads on major local television stations this week. Beginning this weekend, he'll outspend Kilpatrick 4 to 1 on ads running on WDIV-TV (Channel 4). He remains glued to his game plan of catering lunches where he talks to older voters and otherwise meeting voters in small groups.
http://www.freep.com/news/politics/campaign28e_20051028.htm
NOMINEE III: Bush should look beyond friends and politics
October 28, 2005
Now that the White House has written the book on how to bungle a Supreme Court nomination, President George W. Bush needs to think carefully about his next choice.
The nominee should be neither an ideologue nor someone to appease the rabid right wing of the Republican Party that makes up his base and effectively derailed Harriet Miers. While it's fine to select someone who has not been a judge, it's important for the president to choose someone with a healthy understanding of the Constitution and the nation's laws. Miers did not impress on that front.
Supreme Court justices should be among the smartest legal minds in the country. Of course, to make it to the bench, they have to survive the confirmation process.
http://www.freep.com/voices/editorials/emiers28e_20051028.htm
continued …
Morning Papers - continued
San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO
Mexico extradites man wanted for rape
Joe Garofoli
Thursday, October 27, 2005
FBI agents arrested a 28-year-old San Francisco man in Guadalajara, Mexico, who was wanted for rape in the Bay Area, the agency said Wednesday.
Edwin Adelson Palacios was arrested without incident Tuesday in Mexico and extradited to San Francisco, where he will face local and federal charges.
He is suspected of raping a 19-year-old woman in his Ford Expedition near Larkin and Polk streets on Aug. 26, 2004, according to court records. He allegedly attacked her after seeing her leave her boyfriend's car during a dispute, police said.
He let her go but pinned her against a wall with his sport utility vehicle and "threatened to kill the victim if she told anyone about the incident," according to an FBI affidavit filed last year in federal court in San Francisco.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/27/BABADIGEST3.DTL
Ex-CIA agents differ on import of outing Plame
Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, October 28, 2005
When Larry Johnson heard from a friend that Valerie Plame, an old classmate from his CIA training class, had been identified in a newspaper column as a CIA operative, his first reaction was shock.
"I was furious," said Johnson, who left the CIA in 1989 for the U.S. State Department's Office of Counterterrorism and now runs a business consulting firm. His growing sense that Plame was outed for the political benefit of the White House has only heightened his sense of outrage. "People ought to be fired, lose their jobs and face prosecution," he said.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former case officer in the CIA's clandestine service who is now a resident fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, had a different reaction.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/28/MNGUJFFFSJ1.DTL
George Takei, 'Mr. Sulu' of Star Trek fame, comes out
Thursday, October 27, 2005
(10-27) 19:48 PDT Los Angeles (AP) --
George Takei, who as helmsman Sulu steered the Starship Enterprise through three television seasons and six movies, has come out as a homosexual in the current issue of Frontiers, a biweekly Los Angeles magazine covering the gay and lesbian community.
Takei told The Associated Press on Thursday that his new onstage role as psychologist Martin Dysart in "Equus," helped inspire him to publicly discuss his sexuality. He described the character as a "very contained but turbulently frustrated man." The play opened Wednesday at the David Henry Hwang Theater in Los Angeles, the same day that Frontiers magazine featured a story on Takei's coming out.
The current social and political climate also motivated Takei's disclosure, he said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/10/27/entertainment/e165838D33.DTL
The NFL's nasty little secret
Betting Fool, SFGate
Thursday, October 27, 2005
I shall preface all this by saying that I have purchased NFL Sunday Ticket and I enjoy it and it has instant fantasy stats and my right thumb is ready for a marathon.
Of course, Sunday Ticket is a lot better and much more useful if you can manage a sports bar hookup and have three different TVs in front of you. Trying to catch the action on one screen can be really frustrating.
But I bought into it because, after all, watching sports is part of my job.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/10/27/fool386.DTL
Michael Moore Today
The Lies of the State of the Union Address, January 2003
"... the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, ..."
United States of America v. I. Lewis Libby
"Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA"
The Indictment - Justice is Sweet
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/documents/libby_indictment_28102005.pdf
Libby indictment likely, Rove investigation continues
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
Top Cheney Aide Resigns
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28, 2005 (CBS/AP) Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby resigned Friday after being charged with obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury in the CIA leak case.
President Bush's top political adviser Karl Rove escaped charges for the time being but will remain under investigation by a new grand jury.
The indictment charged Libby, 55, with one count of obstruction of justice, two of perjury and two false statement counts. If convicted on all five counts, he could face as much as 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4694
Cheney's top aide indicted on five counts
Cheney Adviser Resigns After Indictment
By JOHN SOLOMON and PETE YOST, Associated Press Writers 8 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., was indicted Friday on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements in the
CIA leak investigation, a politically charged case that casts a harsh light on President Bush's push to war.
Libby, 55, resigned and left the White House.
Karl Rove, Bush's closest adviser, escaped indictment Friday but remained under investigation, his legal status casting a dark cloud over a White House already in trouble. The U.S. military death toll in
Iraq exceeded 2,000 this week, and the president's approval ratings are at the lowest point since he took office in 2001.
Friday's charges stemmed from
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051028/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak_investigation
Libby's rise to power comes down in a crash
(AP) -- I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby quietly rose to the highest corridors of power in Washington only to be brought down in a scandal that thrust him into the limelight that he so explicitly avoided.
Libby's behind-the-scenes involvement in the public exposure of a covert CIA agent led to his indictment Friday on obstruction, false statement and perjury charges, depriving Vice President Dick Cheney of his closest adviser.
The Columbia University-trained lawyer has foreign policy expertise as a former aide in the Defense and State departments. He has been extremely loyal to Cheney and, in return, had the vice president's unwavering trust.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4692
Indictment Adds to White House's Woes
By Ron Fournier / Associated Press
These are dark days for the White House. And they could get darker.
Less than a year after winning re-election by a comfortable margin, President Bush's approval ratings are at the lowest since he took office in 2001 and he is being whipsawed this week by events, some of his own making.
_The U.S. death toll in Iraq hit 2,000 on Tuesday, a fresh reminder of the president's push to war over weapons of mass destruction that were never found.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4695
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar may weaken, along with stock and bond prices, analysts say, if the investigation of the leak of a CIA agent's name results in indictments against White House insiders.
The grand jury investigation is due to conclude by Friday, amid signs the prosecutor in the case is preparing to seek criminal charges over the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003 after her diplomat husband Joseph Wilson accused the Bush administration of misusing intelligence prior to the war on Iraq.
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_atrios_archive.html
F.B.I. Is Still Seeking Source of Forged Uranium Reports
By Douglas Jehl / The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - A two-year inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation has yet to uncover the origin of forged documents that formed a basis for sending an envoy on a fact-finding trip to Niger, a mission that eventually exploded into the C.I.A. leak inquiry, law enforcement and intelligence officials say.
A counterespionage official said Wednesday that the inquiry into the documents, which were intended to show that Iraq was seeking uranium for a nuclear weapons program, had yielded some intriguing but unproved theories. One is the possibility that associates of Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile who was a leading champion of the American campaign to topple Saddam Hussein, had a hand in the forgery. A second hypothesis, described by some officials as more likely, is that the documents were forged at Niger's embassy in Rome, in a moneymaking scheme. The official said the matter was being investigated as a counterintelligence case, not a criminal one.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4693
Cheney, Libby Blocked Papers To Senate Intelligence Panel
By Murray Waas / National Journal
Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.
Among the White House materials withheld from the committee were Libby-authored passages in drafts of a speech that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered to the United Nations in February 2003 to argue the Bush administration's case for war with Iraq, according to congressional and administration sources. The withheld documents also included intelligence data that Cheney's office -- and Libby in particular -- pushed to be included in Powell's speech, the sources said.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4686
Nomination Was Plagued By Missteps From the Start
By Peter Baker and Amy Goldstein / Washington Post
For Harriet Miers, the "murder boards" were aptly named. Day after day in a room in the Justice Department, colleagues from the Bush administration grilled her on constitutional law, her legal background and her past speeches in practice sessions meant to mimic Senate hearings.
Her uncertain, underwhelming responses left her confirmation managers so disturbed they decided not to open up the sessions to the friendly outside lawyers they usually invite to participate in prepping key nominees.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4687
The Rift's Repercussions Could Last Rest of Term
By Jonathan Weisman / Washington Post
The withdrawal of Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court yesterday was a triumph for conservative activists, but some of the drama's lead players said the bruising battle between erstwhile allies may have left scars for the remainder of President Bush's term.
Those who opposed Miers as insufficiently qualified and unreliably conservative said yesterday they would use their new zeal and organization to drive Bush not only to pick an outwardly conservative nominee but also to press a more conservative agenda through his last three years in office. Some accused those who stuck with Miers as showing themselves more loyal to the White House than their stated conservative principles.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4690
Republican Candidate Kilgore Shuns Bush in Tight Virginia Governor's Race
Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Jerry Kilgore, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, was happy to have President George W. Bush at his side at a fundraiser last July. Kilgore won't be there today when the president makes a speech in Norfolk.
Kilgore, 44, is in a tight race with Democrat Tim Kaine in the Nov. 8 election, and Bush -- weighed down by the prolonged Iraq war, criticism of the government's response to hurricanes, high gasoline prices and the legal troubles of top Republican officials -- isn't an asset anymore.
``Bush is a drag, even in Virginia,'' said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics in Charlottesville.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4691
Strong Profits Put Oil Giants on Defensive
By Jad Mouawad and Simon Romero / The New York Times
A sudden interruption in oil supplies sent prices and profits skyrocketing, prompting Exxon's chief executive to call a news conference right after his company announced that it had chalked up record earnings.
"I am not embarrassed," he said. "This is no windfall."
That was January 1974, a few months after Arab oil producers cut back on supplies and imposed their short-lived embargo on exports to the United States. Oil executives, including J. K. Jamieson, Exxon's chief executive at the time, were put on the defensive, forced to justify their soaring profits while the nation was facing its first energy crisis.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4684
Grand Jury Issues New Subpoenas for DeLay
By April Castro / Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas - A Texas prosecutor asked Thursday for all e-mail sent and received in 2002 by three indicted associates of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay as part of an investigation into an alleged campaign finance scheme.
The latest subpoenas issued by District Attorney Ronnie Earle request correspondence to and from e-mail addresses belonging to John Colyandro, Jim Ellis and Warren RoBold. He did not ask DeLay to provide e-mails.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4680
Noe indicted for laundering money to Bush campaign
By Christopher D. Kirkpatrick / Toledo Blade
A federal grand jury has indicted Tom Noe, the former Toledo-area coin dealer at the center of a state investment scandal, of illegally laundering money into President Bush’s re-election campaign.
The three-count indictment (view the indictment below) states that beginning in October 2003, Mr. Noe contributed to President Bush’s election campaign “over and above the limits established by the Federal Election Campaign Act."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4681
Grand Jury Issues New Subpoenas for DeLay
By April Castro / Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas - A Texas prosecutor asked Thursday for all e-mail sent and received in 2002 by three indicted associates of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay as part of an investigation into an alleged campaign finance scheme.
The latest subpoenas issued by District Attorney Ronnie Earle request correspondence to and from e-mail addresses belonging to John Colyandro, Jim Ellis and Warren RoBold. He did not ask DeLay to provide e-mails.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4680
Island pair off to help in New Orleans
By Karla Araujo / Martha's Vineyard Times
When most of us watched the news coverage of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we reacted with shock and disbelief. Some reached for checkbooks to make donations to charities, others simply returned to their daily lives, grateful that we live on an island off the coast of New England rather than in Louisiana. But two Island women, Wendy Breiby and Jennifer (J.J.) Johnston, decided to do something about their growing concern: they put out a call to friends and family to donate much-needed supplies, borrowed a truck from local painter David Morris, and hit the road for New Orleans this week.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/covington.php?id=50
The New York Times
Winds Crumple Sugar Cane, a Staple of Florida Economy
Barbara P. Fernandez for The New York Times
Flattened sugar cane crops near South Bay, Fla. Agricultural losses in the region may run into the tens of millions of dollars, if not billions.
Published: October 28, 2005
SOUTH BAY, Fla., Oct. 27 - The green fields of sugar cane stretched to the horizon here on the southern edge of Lake Okeechobee. Normally the stalks rise ramrod straight, like battalions of soldiers in orderly ranks.
HOW TO HELP A partial list of relief organizations and other information on the Web.
YOUR STORY Share your experiences via e-mail or in this forum.
But after being beaten for hours by winds of more than 100 miles an hour from Hurricane Wilma, the columns of cane bent forward in defeat on Thursday, some nearly flat against the rich black soil of the Everglades, others tangled and twisted in sad bunches.
"This is going to have a huge economic impact, not only on growers, but on workers living paycheck to paycheck," said Representative Mark Foley, Republican of Florida, as he visited the emergency operations center in nearby Clewiston and a shelter for storm victims.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/national/nationalspecial/28wilma.html?hp&ex=1130558400&en=ac371b460285ea2b&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Israeli Airstrikes Kill Gaza Militant
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: October 28, 2005
JERUSALEM, Oct. 28 - Israel launched new airstrikes on northern Gaza this evening, killing one Fatah militant in his car and wounding another as they were on their way to fire rockets toward Israel, according to the Israeli army, which cited unspecified intelligence.
The strikes came as the Israeli defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, expressed doubt that Israel could make peace "with the present leadership of the Palestinians," given their reluctance to crack down on terrorist groups, adding: "I don't think a Palestinian state will see the light of day in the coming years."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/international/middleeast/28cnd-mideast.html?hp&ex=1130558400&en=58ed6b92c48917c2&ei=5094&partner=homepage
W.H.O. Wants China to Run Tests in Girl's Death
By JIM YARDLEY
Published: October 28, 2005
BEIJING, Oct. 28 - The World Health Organization asked China today to conduct further tests to determine whether a 12-year-old girl died of avian influenza, cautioning that provincial health officials may have acted prematurely in declaring that her death was not linked to the deadly disease.
The new request by the health organization comes a day after China's state media quoted health officials in Hunan Province as saying that the girl had tested negative for bird flu and had instead died of pneumonia. The girl's younger brother, hospitalized with flu-like symptoms, was also reported to have tested negative.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/international/asia/28cnd-flu.html?hp&ex=1130558400&en=7f2ab6a69b10af39&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Firefighters Reach Accord With the City
By KAREEM FAHIM
Published: October 28, 2005
The city and the firefighters' union announced yesterday that they had agreed to a tentative 50-month contract that gives firefighters a raise of more than 17 percent. The two sides also extended an agreement that will keep 64 engine companies staffed with five people each.
In return, the firefighters agreed to several concessions, including a steep cut in wages for new hires, a reduction in vacation time and the withdrawal of several grievances against the city. The concessions follow a pattern that has characterized the city's negotiations with other municipal unions over the last few months.
"There has never been any question that these brave men and women deserve a raise," said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, announcing the tentative contract at a City Hall news conference. "The challenge has been finding ways to provide it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/nyregion/28firefighters.html
E.P.A. Backs Bush Plan to Cut Air Pollution by Power Plants
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
Published: October 28, 2005
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - After its apparent demise in Congress six months ago, the Bush administration's plan to reduce air pollution from power plants returned to life on Thursday as the Environmental Protection Agency said the plan would cost less than competing proposals.
The assessment came after Stephen L. Johnson, the agency administrator, presented members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee with a detailed comparison of the administration plan, known as Clear Skies, and several others. All of the bills that were analyzed by the E.P.A. staff are intended to curb emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/politics/28enviro.html
Chiron Hired to Produce Bird Flu Vaccine
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: October 28, 2005
Stepping up its preparations for a possible flu pandemic, the government has awarded a $62.5 million contract to the Chiron Corporation to manufacture millions of doses of a vaccine against the strain of bird flu that authorities fear.
The contract with Chiron, announced yesterday by Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, is the second one for the manufacture of large quantities of bulk vaccine that would be stored in a government stockpile.
Sanofi-Aventis received a $100 million contract in September and is expected to deliver its vaccine by the end of this year. Chiron, a biotechnology company based in Emeryville, Calif., is expected to deliver its vaccine in the first half of next year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/business/28chiron.html
Mammograms Validated as Key in Cancer Fight
By GINA KOLATA
Published: October 27, 2005
Addressing a major unknown in the longstanding debate over mammograms, a new study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute found that the screening test contributed to a pronounced drop in the death rate from breast cancer.
The study, being published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, concludes that 28 to 65 percent of the sharp decrease in breast cancer deaths from 1990 to 2000 was due to mammograms. The rest was attributed to powerful new drugs to treat breast cancer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/27/health/27breast.html
Kansas Fight on Evolution Escalates
By JODI WILGOREN
Published: October 28, 2005
Two leading science organizations have denied the Kansas Board of Education permission to use their copyrighted materials as part of the state's proposed new science standards because of the standards' critical approach to evolution.
The rebuke from the two groups, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association, comes less than two weeks before the board's expected adoption of the controversial new standards, which will serve as a template for statewide tests and thus have great influence on what is taught.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/science/sciencespecial2/28kansas.html
The Australian
West Wing tempest
Geoff Elliott
October 29, 2005
PRESIDENT George W. Bush, looking tired and privately seething, flew to Florida yesterday to assess the damage from the latest hurricane to hit the US. He'd be forgiven for thinking on his tour of the home state of his brother and fellow Republican, Governor Jeb Bush, that the mayhem from Wilma has nothing on the destruction he has been witnessing to his second-term administration.
Hours earlier, Bush's choice for a new judge for the US Supreme Court, his official legal adviser Harriet Miers, withdrew her nomination after an extraordinary backlash from Bush's conservative base.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17068345%255E28737,00.html
Blair warns of action against Iran
Philip Webster, Hampton Court, England
October 29, 2005
BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair served warning yesterday that the West might have to take military action against Iran after worldwide condemnation of its President's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map".
Ending a one-day EU summit in Britain, Mr Blair called the explosive declaration by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday a "disgrace".
Promising discussions with Washington and other allies over how to react, Mr Blair said he had often been urged not to take action against Iran.
But, he continued: "If they carry on like this the question people will be asking us is - 'When are you going to do something about Iran?'
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17070358%255E601,00.html
More Aussies named in Iraq scam
Blair Speedy and Annabelle MacDonald
October 29, 2005
TWO more Australian companies have been accused of paying kickbacks to the Saddam Hussein regime under the UN's corrupt $12.8 billion oil-for-food program.
As AWB, whose sales of Australian wheat to Iraq were used to illegally funnel $US222 million ($296 million) to Saddam, appeared likely to escape punishment, two privately owned companies denied they had paid bribes to win contracts.
Queensland Alkaloids of Australia and Melbourne-based Rhine Ruhr said last night their contracts under the Iraqi aid program had been handled through the UN with its full approval and knowledge.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17070651%255E601,00.html
Aussie suppliers deny Iraq kickbacks
Annabelle MacDonald and Clive Mathieson
October 29, 2005
TWO private Australian companies drawn into the escalating oil-for-food scandal last night denied paying kickbacks to the government of Saddam Hussein to win contracts.
Queensland-based Alkaloids of Australia and Rhine Ruhr of Melbourne said last night they had provided goods to Iraq under the humanitarian program.
But both said they had always complied with UN rules and had never paid bribes.
The Volcker report names 2253 suppliers of humanitarian goods "for which the committee had evidence of actual or projected illicit payments". These payments were allegedly made through after-sales service fees (ASSFs) or inland transportation fees, which the report claims went to Saddam's regime.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17070670%255E601,00.html
Annan urges kickback charges
David Nason, New York correspondent
October 29, 2005
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on the governments of member nations to prosecute companies and individuals in their jurisdictions involved in paying bribes and kickbacks to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein under the UN's ill-fated oil-for-food program.
Mr Annan's call followed the release of the 623-page final report of Paul Volcker's oil-for-food inquiry, which identified more than 2200 companies that made illegal payments to Saddam between 1999 and 2003.
The report named some of the world's best-known companies, including Volvo and DaimlerChrysler, and a string of political figures. They included British MP George Galloway, former French UN ambassador Jean-Bernard Merrimee, and Jean-Marie Benjamin, a priest tied to the Vatican.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17070329%255E601,00.html
Growing fat with Saddam
David Nason, New York correspondent
October 29, 2005
INVESTIGATOR Paul Volcker yesterday called it the "mother of all humanitarian programs". An Australian may have been tempted to use "money for jam". In the end, the best term for the UN's oil-for-food program remains that coined by Iraqi insiders who always knew the truth.
For them, the program that operated in Iraq from 1996 to 2003 was always "Saddam's bribery system", a suitably candid description that accurately conveyed the modus operandi as well as the identity of the chief beneficiary.
But as the long-awaited final report into oil-for-food, handed down by Volcker at UN headquarters in New York on Thursday, makes clear, it's the unprecedented international scale of the corruption rather than Saddam's fingerprints that makes this one of the great financial scandals of modern times.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17069974%255E601,00.html
$US1m bid for Lenin body
From correspondents in Moscow
October 29, 2005
THE head of the Russian Buddhist region of Kalmykia said today he was willing to pay $US1 million ($1.31 million) to give a new home to the embalmed body of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.
Last month a top aide to President Vladimir Putin suggested burying Lenin, now a tourist attraction in a guarded mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square, prompting a debate about the revolutionary's place in post-Soviet Russia.
Kalmykia's leader, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, offered to put Lenin on permanent display in Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, which lies on the Caspian Sea.
Some historians say Lenin was one quarter Kalmyk.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17072029%255E1702,00.html
Diva vs Phar Lap
Rhett Kirkwood
October 29, 2005
EVEN 75 years after the most famous Melbourne Cup of them all, Phar Lap's hero status continues to thrive. His name will be mentioned many times between now and Tuesday's great race, not necessarily because of the anniversary of his 1930 success, but because he is still the benchmark for any Australasian horse with a claim to greatness.
Already some pundits are asking where brilliant mare Makybe Diva will sit in comparison to 'Big Red' should she win a record third Melbourne Cup on Tuesday.
She is the best mare Australia has seen. But as far as comparisons are concerned, she will not be No.1 in the 'turf hero premiership' - and no other Australasian horse will ever take that mantle from Phar Lap.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17069961%255E2722,00.html
New Zealand Herald
Climate change to hit the Med most
29.10.05
Mediterranean countries will suffer the most in Europe because of global warming, facing severe water shortages, forest fires, a loss of agricultural land and an influx of potentially invasive species from the south.
The economy and landscape of the Alpine regions are also vulnerable to increased temperatures because a warmer climate will cause the mountain snow lines to rise, a study found.
International researchers said Europe would experience large changes. The study, published by the online version of the journal Science, tried to assess the wider impacts of climate change on a range of ecosystems that provide services such as forestry, farming or tourism.
In 1995, about 193 million people out of an EU population of 383 million faced water shortages. Several climate models predicted between 20 per cent and 38 per cent of the Mediterranean population would be living under "increased water stress".
Water scarcity was likely to be aggravated by greater demand for water for irrigation and tourism. Increasing rainfall was predicted for much of northern Europe, with higher levels of forestation and less land used for agriculture. Mountain areas were also likely to be hit hard by global warming, said the researchers.
Changes to the "run-off" from melting snow and ice would reduce water supply at peak times and increase the risk of winter floods.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352533
Tropical Storm Beta bears down on Central America
28.10.05 1.20pm
By Ivan Castro
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Rain and wind from Tropical Storm Beta lashed Caribbean islands off Nicaragua's jungle-clad coast today and was forecast to strengthen to a hurricane and dump water onto already sodden hills inland.
Strong winds and light rain swept over the idyllic Corn Islands, many of whose lobster-fishing residents are of British-West Indian descent.
"There's a lot of wind," said Naomi Gaitan, speaking by telephone from the island hotel where she works. "Since yesterday we've been without electricity."
Beta is the 23rd named tropical cyclone of an unrelenting Atlantic-Caribbean hurricane season, the most active since records began 150 years ago.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352471
Storms hit South India, death toll crosses 100
28.10.05 12.20pm
CHENNAI, India - Heavy rain and storms paralysed life in southern India today, flooding roads, snapping power and phone lines and disrupting flights as the death toll due to the bad weather this month crossed 100.
Tamil Nadu state was the worst hit by the latest downpour as many areas in the capital Chennai were inundated and cut off, while people and vehicles waded through waist-high water in some parts of the city, witnesses said.
Strong winds uprooted trees and snapped power and phone links in some parts of the city.
"We seem to be passing from one disaster to another since the tsunami," state relief commissioner R Santhanam said. Tamil Nadu took the brunt of the December's Indian Ocean tsunami on the Indian mainland.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352466
Fourth guard assaulted as prison crisis deepens
29.10.05
Tensions in Upper Hutt's Rimutaka Prison are at boiling point after the fourth staff assault in 48 hours.
A prison officers union says inmates are running riot at the jail, with management choosing to "bury its head in the sand" over the situation.
The assaults have occurred during a nationwide prison muster crisis, with inmate numbers at their highest ever.
The Corrections Department, which briefly used vans to house prisoners and a rugby club to shower and exercise them, has also had to cope with several escapes in recent days.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10352594
E-passports by end of year
29.10.05
By Helen Tunnah
Microchips holding a person's digital photograph and personal information will be embedded in passports by the end of the year.
The new e-passports will use face-scanning technologies, but will not yet hold sensitive and more invasive information from iris or finger scans, or DNA profiles.
New Zealand will become one of the first countries in the world to use e-passports, following Australia, which launched its version of the new travel document this week.
Some New Zealanders have already been issued with the microchip-carrying passport as trials are conducted on the technology in the United States.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10352591
Iran protesters denounce israel, back Ahmadinejad
29.10.05
TEHRAN - Chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America", thousands marched through Tehran on Friday in support of the Palestinians, days after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map".
The demonstrations, which also took place in other parts of Iran, were organised by Islamic hardliners to mark "Qods Day" (Jerusalem Day), which the Islamic republic observes on the last Friday of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Iran says Israel has no right to exist. Tehran denies US allegations that it backs Islamic groups opposing Arab-Israeli peace accords and says it gives them only moral support.
The demonstrators, marching from nine different points in the Iranian capital, trampled on Israeli flags and set fire to both Israeli and US flags.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352578
Anti-Israeli comments nothing new, Iran public laments
29.10.05
By Angus McDowall
Iranians shrugged off their President's anti-Israeli diatribe as part of everyday rhetoric emanating from the leadership, as they predicted further isolation for their country.
"This is not anything new. Ayatollah Khomeini had said this before but I think it is irrational to say a whole country should be wiped off the face of the Earth, said 30-year-old civil engineer Mehran.
"When the heads of a state say such irrational things it's natural that opinion in the international community will turn against Iran."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352537
Australian wheat cash fed Saddam, says report
28.10.05 11.20am
SYDNEY - Australian wheat sales to Iraq were used to illegally funnel about US$200 million ($285.28 million) from the UN humanitarian oil-for-food programme to prop up Saddam Hussein's murderous regime, The Australian newspaper reported today.
The paper says the Howard Government is bracing itself for an explosive United Nations report, which identifies the AWB, formerly the Australian Wheat Board, as one of 3000 companies involved in a corruption scandal that syphoned US$12.8 billion to Saddam over the seven years the programme operated.
According to The Australian, the report, by UN chief investigator Paul Volcker and due to be released early today, says the AWB was involved in providing US$200 million in payments to a transport firm.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10352459
British MP faces further Iraqi oil deal accusations
29.10.05
George Galloway faces fresh allegations of benefiting from Saddam Hussein's regime in a report into corruption in the United Nations' oil-for-food programme for Iraq.
The independent investigation by Paul Volcker has charged that the MP received an allocation of 18 million barrels of oil from the regime. It also claims US$120,000 ($169,856) in revenues from oil sales was paid into the bank account of Galloway's estranged wife.
The money allegedly paid to Amineh Abu Zayyad is a separate sum from the US$150,000 ($212,291) that another investigation, by the United States Senate, claimed she had received from oil sales.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10352532
Prosecutor jokes about the truth with Bali 9's Sukumaran
29.10.05
DENPASAR, Bali, - With a laugh and a slap on the back, the man trying to send accused Bali Nine ringleader Myuran Sukumaran to the firing squad today urged him to tell the truth in his fight to beat the death penalty.
As the Australian martial arts expert was led to the court room, prosecutor Olopan Nainggolan strode beside Sukumaran from a cell at the rear of the Denpasar District Court.
"In front of the court you have to tell the truth, okay? Don't lie," he told him in English.
He then explained he was "only joking", prompting a rare smile in reply.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352538
No exceptions, death row Australian's supporters told
29.10.05
Singapore is standing firm with its plans to hang an Australian drug smuggler, despite a growing chorus of appeals to spare the Melbourne man.
The Singaporean Government said today it could not make an exception for former businessman Nguyen Tuong Van, 25, after rejecting his appeal for clemency.
It said Nguyen had been given a fair trial and the decision to execute him was consistent with past cases involving Singaporeans and foreigners alike.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352534
Seven Palestinians killed in Gaza air strike
28.10.05 9.20am
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
JABALYA, Gaza Strip - Israel killed an Islamic Jihad leader and six other Palestinians in an air strike in Gaza, hours after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed a broad offensive against Palestinian militants.
A missile blew apart a car carrying Shadi Mhanna in Jabalya refugee camp, witnesses said. At least one of the other Palestinians killed was also an Islamic Jihad militant. Ten people, among them bystanders, were wounded.
It was the deadliest such strike since March 2004, when Israeli missiles killed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and seven others in Gaza.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10352426
Colombian paramilitary combat leaves 80 dead
28.10.05 2.20pm
BOGOTA, Colombia - About 80 right-wing paramilitaries and Marxist rebels died in battle over lucrative cocaine-producing land in western Colombia, a local official said, a day after the morning to night gunfight.
"There was combat all day, from five in the morning to nine at night. The confrontations left 40 paramilitaries dead and an equal number of guerrillas," Federico Cuellar, a local official in the jungle town of San Jose del Palmar in Choco province said.
He said he got the information from fighters evacuated to the town after the battle in a nearby area that is home to large plantations of coca plants used in the production of cocaine.
Police and army officials confirmed there was fighting in the area but did not provide casualty numbers.
Both the rebels, who say they are fighting a 41-year war for socialist revolution despite very little public support, and the paramilitaries, guilty of some of the worst human rights atrocities of the conflict, use the Andean country's cocaine business to fund their activities.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352478
Bird flu drugmaker halts US supplies
28.10.05 10.20am
ZURICH - Drug maker Roche halted supplies of its antiviral drug to the United States to head off hoarding by consumers fearing bird flu, as another firm, and Vietnam, said they were preparing to make their own medicines.
Tests on the latest suspected human cases of the disease produced negative results yesterday, but fear remained high that bird flu was spreading around the world among wild birds and poultry and threatened to produce a human pandemic.
Roche Holding AG said it had halted deliveries of Tamiflu to pharmacists in the United States and Canada until the start of the flu season.
Media coverage of the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has driven sales higher, the company said.
"This resulted in increased demand for Tamiflu in part from individuals who are doing private stockpiling and at the moment there is no influenza circulating and the threat of a pandemic has not (materialised)," a spokeswoman said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352429
US Senate approves US$8b to fight avian flu
28.10.05 1.00pm
By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON - The US Senate, increasingly concerned with the possibility of a deadly influenza pandemic, approved nearly US$8 billion ($11.46 billion) to help the government stockpile vaccines and other drugs to fight the disease.
Avian flu, which is widespread among flocks of poultry in Asia and has spread west into Eastern Europe, has only infected about 120 people, killing half of them. The deaths were in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia.
But scientists fear that if the virus mutates in a way that humans could easily pass it among themselves, millions of people would succumb.
"What this pandemic could do to us as a people is even more threatening than what a few terrorists could do, even a few terrorists with a nuclear device," said Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who led the drive for the emergency funds.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10352461
continued ...
SAN FRANCISCO
Mexico extradites man wanted for rape
Joe Garofoli
Thursday, October 27, 2005
FBI agents arrested a 28-year-old San Francisco man in Guadalajara, Mexico, who was wanted for rape in the Bay Area, the agency said Wednesday.
Edwin Adelson Palacios was arrested without incident Tuesday in Mexico and extradited to San Francisco, where he will face local and federal charges.
He is suspected of raping a 19-year-old woman in his Ford Expedition near Larkin and Polk streets on Aug. 26, 2004, according to court records. He allegedly attacked her after seeing her leave her boyfriend's car during a dispute, police said.
He let her go but pinned her against a wall with his sport utility vehicle and "threatened to kill the victim if she told anyone about the incident," according to an FBI affidavit filed last year in federal court in San Francisco.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/27/BABADIGEST3.DTL
Ex-CIA agents differ on import of outing Plame
Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, October 28, 2005
When Larry Johnson heard from a friend that Valerie Plame, an old classmate from his CIA training class, had been identified in a newspaper column as a CIA operative, his first reaction was shock.
"I was furious," said Johnson, who left the CIA in 1989 for the U.S. State Department's Office of Counterterrorism and now runs a business consulting firm. His growing sense that Plame was outed for the political benefit of the White House has only heightened his sense of outrage. "People ought to be fired, lose their jobs and face prosecution," he said.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former case officer in the CIA's clandestine service who is now a resident fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, had a different reaction.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/28/MNGUJFFFSJ1.DTL
George Takei, 'Mr. Sulu' of Star Trek fame, comes out
Thursday, October 27, 2005
(10-27) 19:48 PDT Los Angeles (AP) --
George Takei, who as helmsman Sulu steered the Starship Enterprise through three television seasons and six movies, has come out as a homosexual in the current issue of Frontiers, a biweekly Los Angeles magazine covering the gay and lesbian community.
Takei told The Associated Press on Thursday that his new onstage role as psychologist Martin Dysart in "Equus," helped inspire him to publicly discuss his sexuality. He described the character as a "very contained but turbulently frustrated man." The play opened Wednesday at the David Henry Hwang Theater in Los Angeles, the same day that Frontiers magazine featured a story on Takei's coming out.
The current social and political climate also motivated Takei's disclosure, he said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/10/27/entertainment/e165838D33.DTL
The NFL's nasty little secret
Betting Fool, SFGate
Thursday, October 27, 2005
I shall preface all this by saying that I have purchased NFL Sunday Ticket and I enjoy it and it has instant fantasy stats and my right thumb is ready for a marathon.
Of course, Sunday Ticket is a lot better and much more useful if you can manage a sports bar hookup and have three different TVs in front of you. Trying to catch the action on one screen can be really frustrating.
But I bought into it because, after all, watching sports is part of my job.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/10/27/fool386.DTL
Michael Moore Today
The Lies of the State of the Union Address, January 2003
"... the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, ..."
United States of America v. I. Lewis Libby
"Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA"
The Indictment - Justice is Sweet
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/documents/libby_indictment_28102005.pdf
Libby indictment likely, Rove investigation continues
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
Top Cheney Aide Resigns
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28, 2005 (CBS/AP) Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby resigned Friday after being charged with obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury in the CIA leak case.
President Bush's top political adviser Karl Rove escaped charges for the time being but will remain under investigation by a new grand jury.
The indictment charged Libby, 55, with one count of obstruction of justice, two of perjury and two false statement counts. If convicted on all five counts, he could face as much as 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4694
Cheney's top aide indicted on five counts
Cheney Adviser Resigns After Indictment
By JOHN SOLOMON and PETE YOST, Associated Press Writers 8 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., was indicted Friday on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements in the
CIA leak investigation, a politically charged case that casts a harsh light on President Bush's push to war.
Libby, 55, resigned and left the White House.
Karl Rove, Bush's closest adviser, escaped indictment Friday but remained under investigation, his legal status casting a dark cloud over a White House already in trouble. The U.S. military death toll in
Iraq exceeded 2,000 this week, and the president's approval ratings are at the lowest point since he took office in 2001.
Friday's charges stemmed from
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051028/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak_investigation
Libby's rise to power comes down in a crash
(AP) -- I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby quietly rose to the highest corridors of power in Washington only to be brought down in a scandal that thrust him into the limelight that he so explicitly avoided.
Libby's behind-the-scenes involvement in the public exposure of a covert CIA agent led to his indictment Friday on obstruction, false statement and perjury charges, depriving Vice President Dick Cheney of his closest adviser.
The Columbia University-trained lawyer has foreign policy expertise as a former aide in the Defense and State departments. He has been extremely loyal to Cheney and, in return, had the vice president's unwavering trust.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4692
Indictment Adds to White House's Woes
By Ron Fournier / Associated Press
These are dark days for the White House. And they could get darker.
Less than a year after winning re-election by a comfortable margin, President Bush's approval ratings are at the lowest since he took office in 2001 and he is being whipsawed this week by events, some of his own making.
_The U.S. death toll in Iraq hit 2,000 on Tuesday, a fresh reminder of the president's push to war over weapons of mass destruction that were never found.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4695
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar may weaken, along with stock and bond prices, analysts say, if the investigation of the leak of a CIA agent's name results in indictments against White House insiders.
The grand jury investigation is due to conclude by Friday, amid signs the prosecutor in the case is preparing to seek criminal charges over the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003 after her diplomat husband Joseph Wilson accused the Bush administration of misusing intelligence prior to the war on Iraq.
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_atrios_archive.html
F.B.I. Is Still Seeking Source of Forged Uranium Reports
By Douglas Jehl / The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - A two-year inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation has yet to uncover the origin of forged documents that formed a basis for sending an envoy on a fact-finding trip to Niger, a mission that eventually exploded into the C.I.A. leak inquiry, law enforcement and intelligence officials say.
A counterespionage official said Wednesday that the inquiry into the documents, which were intended to show that Iraq was seeking uranium for a nuclear weapons program, had yielded some intriguing but unproved theories. One is the possibility that associates of Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile who was a leading champion of the American campaign to topple Saddam Hussein, had a hand in the forgery. A second hypothesis, described by some officials as more likely, is that the documents were forged at Niger's embassy in Rome, in a moneymaking scheme. The official said the matter was being investigated as a counterintelligence case, not a criminal one.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4693
Cheney, Libby Blocked Papers To Senate Intelligence Panel
By Murray Waas / National Journal
Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.
Among the White House materials withheld from the committee were Libby-authored passages in drafts of a speech that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered to the United Nations in February 2003 to argue the Bush administration's case for war with Iraq, according to congressional and administration sources. The withheld documents also included intelligence data that Cheney's office -- and Libby in particular -- pushed to be included in Powell's speech, the sources said.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4686
Nomination Was Plagued By Missteps From the Start
By Peter Baker and Amy Goldstein / Washington Post
For Harriet Miers, the "murder boards" were aptly named. Day after day in a room in the Justice Department, colleagues from the Bush administration grilled her on constitutional law, her legal background and her past speeches in practice sessions meant to mimic Senate hearings.
Her uncertain, underwhelming responses left her confirmation managers so disturbed they decided not to open up the sessions to the friendly outside lawyers they usually invite to participate in prepping key nominees.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4687
The Rift's Repercussions Could Last Rest of Term
By Jonathan Weisman / Washington Post
The withdrawal of Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court yesterday was a triumph for conservative activists, but some of the drama's lead players said the bruising battle between erstwhile allies may have left scars for the remainder of President Bush's term.
Those who opposed Miers as insufficiently qualified and unreliably conservative said yesterday they would use their new zeal and organization to drive Bush not only to pick an outwardly conservative nominee but also to press a more conservative agenda through his last three years in office. Some accused those who stuck with Miers as showing themselves more loyal to the White House than their stated conservative principles.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4690
Republican Candidate Kilgore Shuns Bush in Tight Virginia Governor's Race
Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Jerry Kilgore, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, was happy to have President George W. Bush at his side at a fundraiser last July. Kilgore won't be there today when the president makes a speech in Norfolk.
Kilgore, 44, is in a tight race with Democrat Tim Kaine in the Nov. 8 election, and Bush -- weighed down by the prolonged Iraq war, criticism of the government's response to hurricanes, high gasoline prices and the legal troubles of top Republican officials -- isn't an asset anymore.
``Bush is a drag, even in Virginia,'' said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics in Charlottesville.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4691
Strong Profits Put Oil Giants on Defensive
By Jad Mouawad and Simon Romero / The New York Times
A sudden interruption in oil supplies sent prices and profits skyrocketing, prompting Exxon's chief executive to call a news conference right after his company announced that it had chalked up record earnings.
"I am not embarrassed," he said. "This is no windfall."
That was January 1974, a few months after Arab oil producers cut back on supplies and imposed their short-lived embargo on exports to the United States. Oil executives, including J. K. Jamieson, Exxon's chief executive at the time, were put on the defensive, forced to justify their soaring profits while the nation was facing its first energy crisis.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4684
Grand Jury Issues New Subpoenas for DeLay
By April Castro / Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas - A Texas prosecutor asked Thursday for all e-mail sent and received in 2002 by three indicted associates of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay as part of an investigation into an alleged campaign finance scheme.
The latest subpoenas issued by District Attorney Ronnie Earle request correspondence to and from e-mail addresses belonging to John Colyandro, Jim Ellis and Warren RoBold. He did not ask DeLay to provide e-mails.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4680
Noe indicted for laundering money to Bush campaign
By Christopher D. Kirkpatrick / Toledo Blade
A federal grand jury has indicted Tom Noe, the former Toledo-area coin dealer at the center of a state investment scandal, of illegally laundering money into President Bush’s re-election campaign.
The three-count indictment (view the indictment below) states that beginning in October 2003, Mr. Noe contributed to President Bush’s election campaign “over and above the limits established by the Federal Election Campaign Act."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4681
Grand Jury Issues New Subpoenas for DeLay
By April Castro / Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas - A Texas prosecutor asked Thursday for all e-mail sent and received in 2002 by three indicted associates of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay as part of an investigation into an alleged campaign finance scheme.
The latest subpoenas issued by District Attorney Ronnie Earle request correspondence to and from e-mail addresses belonging to John Colyandro, Jim Ellis and Warren RoBold. He did not ask DeLay to provide e-mails.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4680
Island pair off to help in New Orleans
By Karla Araujo / Martha's Vineyard Times
When most of us watched the news coverage of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we reacted with shock and disbelief. Some reached for checkbooks to make donations to charities, others simply returned to their daily lives, grateful that we live on an island off the coast of New England rather than in Louisiana. But two Island women, Wendy Breiby and Jennifer (J.J.) Johnston, decided to do something about their growing concern: they put out a call to friends and family to donate much-needed supplies, borrowed a truck from local painter David Morris, and hit the road for New Orleans this week.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/covington.php?id=50
The New York Times
Winds Crumple Sugar Cane, a Staple of Florida Economy
Barbara P. Fernandez for The New York Times
Flattened sugar cane crops near South Bay, Fla. Agricultural losses in the region may run into the tens of millions of dollars, if not billions.
Published: October 28, 2005
SOUTH BAY, Fla., Oct. 27 - The green fields of sugar cane stretched to the horizon here on the southern edge of Lake Okeechobee. Normally the stalks rise ramrod straight, like battalions of soldiers in orderly ranks.
HOW TO HELP A partial list of relief organizations and other information on the Web.
YOUR STORY Share your experiences via e-mail or in this forum.
But after being beaten for hours by winds of more than 100 miles an hour from Hurricane Wilma, the columns of cane bent forward in defeat on Thursday, some nearly flat against the rich black soil of the Everglades, others tangled and twisted in sad bunches.
"This is going to have a huge economic impact, not only on growers, but on workers living paycheck to paycheck," said Representative Mark Foley, Republican of Florida, as he visited the emergency operations center in nearby Clewiston and a shelter for storm victims.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/national/nationalspecial/28wilma.html?hp&ex=1130558400&en=ac371b460285ea2b&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Israeli Airstrikes Kill Gaza Militant
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: October 28, 2005
JERUSALEM, Oct. 28 - Israel launched new airstrikes on northern Gaza this evening, killing one Fatah militant in his car and wounding another as they were on their way to fire rockets toward Israel, according to the Israeli army, which cited unspecified intelligence.
The strikes came as the Israeli defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, expressed doubt that Israel could make peace "with the present leadership of the Palestinians," given their reluctance to crack down on terrorist groups, adding: "I don't think a Palestinian state will see the light of day in the coming years."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/international/middleeast/28cnd-mideast.html?hp&ex=1130558400&en=58ed6b92c48917c2&ei=5094&partner=homepage
W.H.O. Wants China to Run Tests in Girl's Death
By JIM YARDLEY
Published: October 28, 2005
BEIJING, Oct. 28 - The World Health Organization asked China today to conduct further tests to determine whether a 12-year-old girl died of avian influenza, cautioning that provincial health officials may have acted prematurely in declaring that her death was not linked to the deadly disease.
The new request by the health organization comes a day after China's state media quoted health officials in Hunan Province as saying that the girl had tested negative for bird flu and had instead died of pneumonia. The girl's younger brother, hospitalized with flu-like symptoms, was also reported to have tested negative.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/international/asia/28cnd-flu.html?hp&ex=1130558400&en=7f2ab6a69b10af39&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Firefighters Reach Accord With the City
By KAREEM FAHIM
Published: October 28, 2005
The city and the firefighters' union announced yesterday that they had agreed to a tentative 50-month contract that gives firefighters a raise of more than 17 percent. The two sides also extended an agreement that will keep 64 engine companies staffed with five people each.
In return, the firefighters agreed to several concessions, including a steep cut in wages for new hires, a reduction in vacation time and the withdrawal of several grievances against the city. The concessions follow a pattern that has characterized the city's negotiations with other municipal unions over the last few months.
"There has never been any question that these brave men and women deserve a raise," said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, announcing the tentative contract at a City Hall news conference. "The challenge has been finding ways to provide it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/nyregion/28firefighters.html
E.P.A. Backs Bush Plan to Cut Air Pollution by Power Plants
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
Published: October 28, 2005
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - After its apparent demise in Congress six months ago, the Bush administration's plan to reduce air pollution from power plants returned to life on Thursday as the Environmental Protection Agency said the plan would cost less than competing proposals.
The assessment came after Stephen L. Johnson, the agency administrator, presented members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee with a detailed comparison of the administration plan, known as Clear Skies, and several others. All of the bills that were analyzed by the E.P.A. staff are intended to curb emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/politics/28enviro.html
Chiron Hired to Produce Bird Flu Vaccine
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: October 28, 2005
Stepping up its preparations for a possible flu pandemic, the government has awarded a $62.5 million contract to the Chiron Corporation to manufacture millions of doses of a vaccine against the strain of bird flu that authorities fear.
The contract with Chiron, announced yesterday by Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, is the second one for the manufacture of large quantities of bulk vaccine that would be stored in a government stockpile.
Sanofi-Aventis received a $100 million contract in September and is expected to deliver its vaccine by the end of this year. Chiron, a biotechnology company based in Emeryville, Calif., is expected to deliver its vaccine in the first half of next year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/business/28chiron.html
Mammograms Validated as Key in Cancer Fight
By GINA KOLATA
Published: October 27, 2005
Addressing a major unknown in the longstanding debate over mammograms, a new study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute found that the screening test contributed to a pronounced drop in the death rate from breast cancer.
The study, being published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, concludes that 28 to 65 percent of the sharp decrease in breast cancer deaths from 1990 to 2000 was due to mammograms. The rest was attributed to powerful new drugs to treat breast cancer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/27/health/27breast.html
Kansas Fight on Evolution Escalates
By JODI WILGOREN
Published: October 28, 2005
Two leading science organizations have denied the Kansas Board of Education permission to use their copyrighted materials as part of the state's proposed new science standards because of the standards' critical approach to evolution.
The rebuke from the two groups, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association, comes less than two weeks before the board's expected adoption of the controversial new standards, which will serve as a template for statewide tests and thus have great influence on what is taught.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/science/sciencespecial2/28kansas.html
The Australian
West Wing tempest
Geoff Elliott
October 29, 2005
PRESIDENT George W. Bush, looking tired and privately seething, flew to Florida yesterday to assess the damage from the latest hurricane to hit the US. He'd be forgiven for thinking on his tour of the home state of his brother and fellow Republican, Governor Jeb Bush, that the mayhem from Wilma has nothing on the destruction he has been witnessing to his second-term administration.
Hours earlier, Bush's choice for a new judge for the US Supreme Court, his official legal adviser Harriet Miers, withdrew her nomination after an extraordinary backlash from Bush's conservative base.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17068345%255E28737,00.html
Blair warns of action against Iran
Philip Webster, Hampton Court, England
October 29, 2005
BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair served warning yesterday that the West might have to take military action against Iran after worldwide condemnation of its President's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map".
Ending a one-day EU summit in Britain, Mr Blair called the explosive declaration by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday a "disgrace".
Promising discussions with Washington and other allies over how to react, Mr Blair said he had often been urged not to take action against Iran.
But, he continued: "If they carry on like this the question people will be asking us is - 'When are you going to do something about Iran?'
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17070358%255E601,00.html
More Aussies named in Iraq scam
Blair Speedy and Annabelle MacDonald
October 29, 2005
TWO more Australian companies have been accused of paying kickbacks to the Saddam Hussein regime under the UN's corrupt $12.8 billion oil-for-food program.
As AWB, whose sales of Australian wheat to Iraq were used to illegally funnel $US222 million ($296 million) to Saddam, appeared likely to escape punishment, two privately owned companies denied they had paid bribes to win contracts.
Queensland Alkaloids of Australia and Melbourne-based Rhine Ruhr said last night their contracts under the Iraqi aid program had been handled through the UN with its full approval and knowledge.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17070651%255E601,00.html
Aussie suppliers deny Iraq kickbacks
Annabelle MacDonald and Clive Mathieson
October 29, 2005
TWO private Australian companies drawn into the escalating oil-for-food scandal last night denied paying kickbacks to the government of Saddam Hussein to win contracts.
Queensland-based Alkaloids of Australia and Rhine Ruhr of Melbourne said last night they had provided goods to Iraq under the humanitarian program.
But both said they had always complied with UN rules and had never paid bribes.
The Volcker report names 2253 suppliers of humanitarian goods "for which the committee had evidence of actual or projected illicit payments". These payments were allegedly made through after-sales service fees (ASSFs) or inland transportation fees, which the report claims went to Saddam's regime.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17070670%255E601,00.html
Annan urges kickback charges
David Nason, New York correspondent
October 29, 2005
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on the governments of member nations to prosecute companies and individuals in their jurisdictions involved in paying bribes and kickbacks to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein under the UN's ill-fated oil-for-food program.
Mr Annan's call followed the release of the 623-page final report of Paul Volcker's oil-for-food inquiry, which identified more than 2200 companies that made illegal payments to Saddam between 1999 and 2003.
The report named some of the world's best-known companies, including Volvo and DaimlerChrysler, and a string of political figures. They included British MP George Galloway, former French UN ambassador Jean-Bernard Merrimee, and Jean-Marie Benjamin, a priest tied to the Vatican.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17070329%255E601,00.html
Growing fat with Saddam
David Nason, New York correspondent
October 29, 2005
INVESTIGATOR Paul Volcker yesterday called it the "mother of all humanitarian programs". An Australian may have been tempted to use "money for jam". In the end, the best term for the UN's oil-for-food program remains that coined by Iraqi insiders who always knew the truth.
For them, the program that operated in Iraq from 1996 to 2003 was always "Saddam's bribery system", a suitably candid description that accurately conveyed the modus operandi as well as the identity of the chief beneficiary.
But as the long-awaited final report into oil-for-food, handed down by Volcker at UN headquarters in New York on Thursday, makes clear, it's the unprecedented international scale of the corruption rather than Saddam's fingerprints that makes this one of the great financial scandals of modern times.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17069974%255E601,00.html
$US1m bid for Lenin body
From correspondents in Moscow
October 29, 2005
THE head of the Russian Buddhist region of Kalmykia said today he was willing to pay $US1 million ($1.31 million) to give a new home to the embalmed body of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.
Last month a top aide to President Vladimir Putin suggested burying Lenin, now a tourist attraction in a guarded mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square, prompting a debate about the revolutionary's place in post-Soviet Russia.
Kalmykia's leader, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, offered to put Lenin on permanent display in Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, which lies on the Caspian Sea.
Some historians say Lenin was one quarter Kalmyk.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17072029%255E1702,00.html
Diva vs Phar Lap
Rhett Kirkwood
October 29, 2005
EVEN 75 years after the most famous Melbourne Cup of them all, Phar Lap's hero status continues to thrive. His name will be mentioned many times between now and Tuesday's great race, not necessarily because of the anniversary of his 1930 success, but because he is still the benchmark for any Australasian horse with a claim to greatness.
Already some pundits are asking where brilliant mare Makybe Diva will sit in comparison to 'Big Red' should she win a record third Melbourne Cup on Tuesday.
She is the best mare Australia has seen. But as far as comparisons are concerned, she will not be No.1 in the 'turf hero premiership' - and no other Australasian horse will ever take that mantle from Phar Lap.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17069961%255E2722,00.html
New Zealand Herald
Climate change to hit the Med most
29.10.05
Mediterranean countries will suffer the most in Europe because of global warming, facing severe water shortages, forest fires, a loss of agricultural land and an influx of potentially invasive species from the south.
The economy and landscape of the Alpine regions are also vulnerable to increased temperatures because a warmer climate will cause the mountain snow lines to rise, a study found.
International researchers said Europe would experience large changes. The study, published by the online version of the journal Science, tried to assess the wider impacts of climate change on a range of ecosystems that provide services such as forestry, farming or tourism.
In 1995, about 193 million people out of an EU population of 383 million faced water shortages. Several climate models predicted between 20 per cent and 38 per cent of the Mediterranean population would be living under "increased water stress".
Water scarcity was likely to be aggravated by greater demand for water for irrigation and tourism. Increasing rainfall was predicted for much of northern Europe, with higher levels of forestation and less land used for agriculture. Mountain areas were also likely to be hit hard by global warming, said the researchers.
Changes to the "run-off" from melting snow and ice would reduce water supply at peak times and increase the risk of winter floods.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352533
Tropical Storm Beta bears down on Central America
28.10.05 1.20pm
By Ivan Castro
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Rain and wind from Tropical Storm Beta lashed Caribbean islands off Nicaragua's jungle-clad coast today and was forecast to strengthen to a hurricane and dump water onto already sodden hills inland.
Strong winds and light rain swept over the idyllic Corn Islands, many of whose lobster-fishing residents are of British-West Indian descent.
"There's a lot of wind," said Naomi Gaitan, speaking by telephone from the island hotel where she works. "Since yesterday we've been without electricity."
Beta is the 23rd named tropical cyclone of an unrelenting Atlantic-Caribbean hurricane season, the most active since records began 150 years ago.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352471
Storms hit South India, death toll crosses 100
28.10.05 12.20pm
CHENNAI, India - Heavy rain and storms paralysed life in southern India today, flooding roads, snapping power and phone lines and disrupting flights as the death toll due to the bad weather this month crossed 100.
Tamil Nadu state was the worst hit by the latest downpour as many areas in the capital Chennai were inundated and cut off, while people and vehicles waded through waist-high water in some parts of the city, witnesses said.
Strong winds uprooted trees and snapped power and phone links in some parts of the city.
"We seem to be passing from one disaster to another since the tsunami," state relief commissioner R Santhanam said. Tamil Nadu took the brunt of the December's Indian Ocean tsunami on the Indian mainland.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352466
Fourth guard assaulted as prison crisis deepens
29.10.05
Tensions in Upper Hutt's Rimutaka Prison are at boiling point after the fourth staff assault in 48 hours.
A prison officers union says inmates are running riot at the jail, with management choosing to "bury its head in the sand" over the situation.
The assaults have occurred during a nationwide prison muster crisis, with inmate numbers at their highest ever.
The Corrections Department, which briefly used vans to house prisoners and a rugby club to shower and exercise them, has also had to cope with several escapes in recent days.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10352594
E-passports by end of year
29.10.05
By Helen Tunnah
Microchips holding a person's digital photograph and personal information will be embedded in passports by the end of the year.
The new e-passports will use face-scanning technologies, but will not yet hold sensitive and more invasive information from iris or finger scans, or DNA profiles.
New Zealand will become one of the first countries in the world to use e-passports, following Australia, which launched its version of the new travel document this week.
Some New Zealanders have already been issued with the microchip-carrying passport as trials are conducted on the technology in the United States.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10352591
Iran protesters denounce israel, back Ahmadinejad
29.10.05
TEHRAN - Chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America", thousands marched through Tehran on Friday in support of the Palestinians, days after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map".
The demonstrations, which also took place in other parts of Iran, were organised by Islamic hardliners to mark "Qods Day" (Jerusalem Day), which the Islamic republic observes on the last Friday of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Iran says Israel has no right to exist. Tehran denies US allegations that it backs Islamic groups opposing Arab-Israeli peace accords and says it gives them only moral support.
The demonstrators, marching from nine different points in the Iranian capital, trampled on Israeli flags and set fire to both Israeli and US flags.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352578
Anti-Israeli comments nothing new, Iran public laments
29.10.05
By Angus McDowall
Iranians shrugged off their President's anti-Israeli diatribe as part of everyday rhetoric emanating from the leadership, as they predicted further isolation for their country.
"This is not anything new. Ayatollah Khomeini had said this before but I think it is irrational to say a whole country should be wiped off the face of the Earth, said 30-year-old civil engineer Mehran.
"When the heads of a state say such irrational things it's natural that opinion in the international community will turn against Iran."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352537
Australian wheat cash fed Saddam, says report
28.10.05 11.20am
SYDNEY - Australian wheat sales to Iraq were used to illegally funnel about US$200 million ($285.28 million) from the UN humanitarian oil-for-food programme to prop up Saddam Hussein's murderous regime, The Australian newspaper reported today.
The paper says the Howard Government is bracing itself for an explosive United Nations report, which identifies the AWB, formerly the Australian Wheat Board, as one of 3000 companies involved in a corruption scandal that syphoned US$12.8 billion to Saddam over the seven years the programme operated.
According to The Australian, the report, by UN chief investigator Paul Volcker and due to be released early today, says the AWB was involved in providing US$200 million in payments to a transport firm.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10352459
British MP faces further Iraqi oil deal accusations
29.10.05
George Galloway faces fresh allegations of benefiting from Saddam Hussein's regime in a report into corruption in the United Nations' oil-for-food programme for Iraq.
The independent investigation by Paul Volcker has charged that the MP received an allocation of 18 million barrels of oil from the regime. It also claims US$120,000 ($169,856) in revenues from oil sales was paid into the bank account of Galloway's estranged wife.
The money allegedly paid to Amineh Abu Zayyad is a separate sum from the US$150,000 ($212,291) that another investigation, by the United States Senate, claimed she had received from oil sales.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10352532
Prosecutor jokes about the truth with Bali 9's Sukumaran
29.10.05
DENPASAR, Bali, - With a laugh and a slap on the back, the man trying to send accused Bali Nine ringleader Myuran Sukumaran to the firing squad today urged him to tell the truth in his fight to beat the death penalty.
As the Australian martial arts expert was led to the court room, prosecutor Olopan Nainggolan strode beside Sukumaran from a cell at the rear of the Denpasar District Court.
"In front of the court you have to tell the truth, okay? Don't lie," he told him in English.
He then explained he was "only joking", prompting a rare smile in reply.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352538
No exceptions, death row Australian's supporters told
29.10.05
Singapore is standing firm with its plans to hang an Australian drug smuggler, despite a growing chorus of appeals to spare the Melbourne man.
The Singaporean Government said today it could not make an exception for former businessman Nguyen Tuong Van, 25, after rejecting his appeal for clemency.
It said Nguyen had been given a fair trial and the decision to execute him was consistent with past cases involving Singaporeans and foreigners alike.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352534
Seven Palestinians killed in Gaza air strike
28.10.05 9.20am
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
JABALYA, Gaza Strip - Israel killed an Islamic Jihad leader and six other Palestinians in an air strike in Gaza, hours after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed a broad offensive against Palestinian militants.
A missile blew apart a car carrying Shadi Mhanna in Jabalya refugee camp, witnesses said. At least one of the other Palestinians killed was also an Islamic Jihad militant. Ten people, among them bystanders, were wounded.
It was the deadliest such strike since March 2004, when Israeli missiles killed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and seven others in Gaza.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10352426
Colombian paramilitary combat leaves 80 dead
28.10.05 2.20pm
BOGOTA, Colombia - About 80 right-wing paramilitaries and Marxist rebels died in battle over lucrative cocaine-producing land in western Colombia, a local official said, a day after the morning to night gunfight.
"There was combat all day, from five in the morning to nine at night. The confrontations left 40 paramilitaries dead and an equal number of guerrillas," Federico Cuellar, a local official in the jungle town of San Jose del Palmar in Choco province said.
He said he got the information from fighters evacuated to the town after the battle in a nearby area that is home to large plantations of coca plants used in the production of cocaine.
Police and army officials confirmed there was fighting in the area but did not provide casualty numbers.
Both the rebels, who say they are fighting a 41-year war for socialist revolution despite very little public support, and the paramilitaries, guilty of some of the worst human rights atrocities of the conflict, use the Andean country's cocaine business to fund their activities.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352478
Bird flu drugmaker halts US supplies
28.10.05 10.20am
ZURICH - Drug maker Roche halted supplies of its antiviral drug to the United States to head off hoarding by consumers fearing bird flu, as another firm, and Vietnam, said they were preparing to make their own medicines.
Tests on the latest suspected human cases of the disease produced negative results yesterday, but fear remained high that bird flu was spreading around the world among wild birds and poultry and threatened to produce a human pandemic.
Roche Holding AG said it had halted deliveries of Tamiflu to pharmacists in the United States and Canada until the start of the flu season.
Media coverage of the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has driven sales higher, the company said.
"This resulted in increased demand for Tamiflu in part from individuals who are doing private stockpiling and at the moment there is no influenza circulating and the threat of a pandemic has not (materialised)," a spokeswoman said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10352429
US Senate approves US$8b to fight avian flu
28.10.05 1.00pm
By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON - The US Senate, increasingly concerned with the possibility of a deadly influenza pandemic, approved nearly US$8 billion ($11.46 billion) to help the government stockpile vaccines and other drugs to fight the disease.
Avian flu, which is widespread among flocks of poultry in Asia and has spread west into Eastern Europe, has only infected about 120 people, killing half of them. The deaths were in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia.
But scientists fear that if the virus mutates in a way that humans could easily pass it among themselves, millions of people would succumb.
"What this pandemic could do to us as a people is even more threatening than what a few terrorists could do, even a few terrorists with a nuclear device," said Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who led the drive for the emergency funds.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10352461
continued ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)