The Rooster
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Morning Papers - It's Origins
Rooster "Cock-A-Doodle-Do"
"Okeydoke"
History
Today is Tuesday, Nov. 15, the 319th day of 2005. There are 46 days left in the year.
1777, the Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation, a precursor to the Constitution of the United States.
1806, explorer Zebulon Pike sighted the mountaintop now known as "Pikes Peak."
1881 Payton Johnson patents a swinging chair.
1889, Brazil's monarchy was overthrown.
1921 William A. "Gus" Gaines, who will receive a U.S. patent for a shaving brush which automatically dispenses shaving cream, is born in Mamaroneck, NY.
1926, the National Broadcasting Company debuted with a radio network of 24 stations.
1932 Singer Clyde Lensley McPhatter, who will be honored with a U.S. postage stamp for rhythm & blues singers, is born in Durham, NC.
1939, President Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.
1948, William Lyon Mackenzie King retired as prime minister of Canada after 21 years; he was succeeded by Louis St. Laurent.
1966 Bill Russell, All-American and All-Pro basketball star, becomes first Black coach of a professional sports team. He will enter basketball's Hall of Fame on his first eligibility date.
1966, the flight of Gemini 12 ended successfully as astronauts James A. Lovell and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. splashed down safely in the Atlantic.
1969, 250,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration in Washington against the Vietnam War.
1979 Civil rights hero Rosa L. Parks is awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal.
1982, funeral services were held in Moscow's Red Square for the late Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev.
1985, Britain and Ireland signed an accord giving Dublin an official consultative role in governing Northern Ireland.
Ten years ago: A partial government shutdown stretched into a second day. The space shuttle Atlantis docked with the orbiting Russian space station Mir.
Five years ago: Al Gore made a surprise proposal for a statewide hand recount of Florida's 6 million ballots -- an idea immediately rejected by George W. Bush. Earlier, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris had rejected requests from the counties to update presidential vote totals with the results of hand recounts under way at Gore's urging.
One year ago: The White House announced that Secretary of State Colin Powell was leaving President Bush's Cabinet, along with Education Secretary Rod Paige, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
The U.N. Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Ivory Coast's hard-line government after its violent confrontation with France.
Missing in Action
1966 KEIPER JOHN C. RENOVO PA
1966 RAVENNA HARRY M. III SAN ANTONIO TX
1966 TIMMONS BRUCE ALLAN FORT LAUDERDALE FL CRAFT OVERTURNED SUBJ DROWNED
1968 BIRCHIM JAMES D. INDEPENDENCE CA
1969 GRAF JOHN G. GLENDALE CA DIED ESCAPING 02/15/70 WITH WHITE
1969 SUBER RANDOLPH B. BALLWIN MO
1969 WHITE ROBERT T. ST CHARLES IL 04/01/73 RELEASED BY PRG ALIVE IN 98
Pomegranates
One of my earliest memories is that of using money my grandmother had given me to buy candy to buy a pomegranate instead. Oh, I loved them. I loved the fact that we kids had to dress up special in our worst clothes in order to eat them. We had to eat them outside, too (it's still pretty warm in November in Los Angeles where we lived when I was a kid), and spit the seeds out into the shrubbery. Messy, juicy, sweet food that involves sanctioned spitting? We were in heaven.
http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001580pomegranates.php
San Francisco Chronicle
SACRAMENTO
Prisons' movie studio cost $500,000
Taxpayers funded foundation's film for drug counselors
Mark Martin, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Sacramento -- State prison officials, as they grappled last year with the largest deficit in the agency's history, allowed a private foundation that provides drug treatment to inmates to spend nearly $500,000 of taxpayer money to create a movie studio.
The money was earmarked for substance abuse programs but instead was used to buy everything from two high-tech cameras to two 50-inch plasma-screen televisions. It was spent in the same fiscal year that the state's prison system racked up a $543 million deficit.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/15/BAG8QFO8L81.DTL
Boy with rare disease still in limbo
C.W. Nevius
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Little Jack Zembsch got a standing ovation last week.
The Moraga 4-year-old with a rare bone condition was victorious in a battle with his HMO, Health Net, to see a spine specialist at the Alfred I. du Pont Hospital for Children in Delaware. So when he walked through the door last Thursday, the staff burst into spontaneous applause.
"You guys are helping a lot of sick kids," the specialist, Dr. William Mackenzie, told Jack and his parents, Kim and Mark Zembsch, Kim recalled.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/15/BAG8QFOARH1.DTL
Japan links Tamiflu to 2 teen suicides
64 cases of disorders connected to avian flu treatment
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
An expensive, hard-to-find flu drug that nations are stockpiling against a possible influenza pandemic has been linked to 64 cases of psychological disorders and two teenage suicides in Japan, according to media reports there.
The drug is Tamiflu, also known as oseltamivir, which will become the world's first line of defense if the avian influenza now spreading among migrating birds from Asia to Eastern Europe ever mutates into a form that transmits readily to people.
In February 2004, according to an online edition of Japan Times, a 17-year-old high school boy under treatment with Tamiflu died after he jumped in front of a truck.
A year later, a 14-year-old junior high student, also taking the drug for influenza, jumped to his death from the ninth floor of his condominium.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/15/MNG29FO9K71.DTL
Even moderate exercise boosts longevity, study says
Rob Stein, Washington Post
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Sorry, couch potatoes -- the verdict is in: People who exercise regularly really do live longer.
In fact, people who get a good workout almost daily can add nearly four years to their lives, according to the first study to quantify the impact of physical activity this way.
The researchers looked at records of more than 5,000 middle aged and elderly Americans and found that those who had moderate to high levels of activity lived 1.3 to 3.7 years longer than those who got little exercise, largely because they put off developing heart disease -- the nation's leading killer. Men and women benefited about equally.
"This shows that physical activity really does make a difference -- not only for how long you live but for how long you live a healthy life," said Oscar Franco of the Erasmus M.C. University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who led the study published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine. "Being more physically active can give you more time."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/15/MNG29FOAJP1.DTL
WORLD VIEWS: U.S. losing friends over torture; Africa's first elected female president
Edward M. Gomez, special to SF Gate
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
The seemingly unstoppable pattern of lies and lying about their lies that has become the hallmark of George W. Bush and his administration's top officials, spokespersons and supporters in the media reached something of a bizarre apotheosis last week.
As news analyst Michael Gawenda, writing in the Australian daily the Age, noted incredulously, "When the president of the United States, under repeated questioning and under pressure, has to declare, as he did [during a stop in Panama], 'We do not torture,' you know that even his allies in Congress no longer believe him."
http://sfgate.com/columnists/worldviews/
The Japan Times
Action plan for bird flu includes ban on gatherings
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry unveiled a plan Monday empowering the government to ban public gatherings and quarantine people to counter the potential outbreak of a new strain of bird flu against which humans have yet to develop an effective defense.
Bird flu has killed more than 60 people in Asia, and it is feared the virus may mutate into a form that can spread easily between humans.
The ministry has estimated that if 25 percent of the population contracts bird flu, the number of deaths in the worst-case scenario would reach some 640,000.
The thrust of the ministry's plan will be to boost stockpiles of the drug Tamiflu, which can treat the symptoms of bird flu. Other developed nations are taking similar steps.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051115a1.htm
Japan imports illegally caught tuna: WWF
Commission likely to slam Tokyo over bluefin bought from Turkey
Japan has imported thousands of tons of bluefin tuna caught by Turkey in the Eastern Atlantic in violation of international agreements, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Fisherman haul in bluefin tuna from a storage farm in the sea near Turkey. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WORLD WIDE FUND FOR NATURE/KYODO
The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna is expected to demand that Turkey observe international rules when it meets in Spain beginning Monday, sources said.
Japan is also likely to face criticism over its imports of illegally caught bluefin tuna.
The ICCAT does not allocate a national quota for bluefin tuna to Turkey but allows it, together with other countries, to catch a total of 1,146 tons a year in the Eastern Atlantic.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051115a2.htm
Reactor increase not needed to cut CO 2 drastically: research
Carbon dioxide emissions can be cut by 70 percent by 2050 in Japan even without adding nuclear power plants if the country improves energy efficiency and increases natural energy generation, a governmental environmental institute said.
The government aims to build more nuclear plants to cut carbon dioxide emissions, but the alternatives are "worth trying for future generations' sake," Junichi Fujino, a researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies, said last week.
According to research by the institute under the Environment Ministry, Japan can cut carbon dioxide emissions by increasing use of fuel cells, wind power generation and other new types of energy.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051115f2.htm
Fruit yields not very peachy as global warming fallout rises
By HIROMI OTSUKA
Kyodo News
In what appears to be fallout from global warming, abnormal fruit, including grapes not turning red and peaches with brown flesh, are becoming nationwide occurrences, forcing producers to seek countermeasures.
Red Aki Queen grapes (top) and green ones grow at the Hiroshima Prefectural Agriculture Technology Center.
"If the color is bad, prices are less than half," said researcher Takayoshi Yamane of the Hiroshima Prefectural Agriculture Technology Center's Fruit Tree Research Institute.
Usually large and red, the high-quality Aki Queen grape grown in mild coastal areas in Hiroshima Prefecture along the Seto Inland Sea remained green even in the harvest month of August, apparently because of the high temperatures when the grape should have begun to change color.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051115f3.htm
Team finds Buddhist caves on Afghanistan cliff
KELIGAN, Afghanistan (Kyodo) Japanese researchers have found Buddhist stone caves believed to date back to the eighth century about 120 km west of the Bamiyan ruins in central Afghanistan.
Light streams into a recently discovered cave near Keligan, Afghanistan, believed been used by Buddhist monks in the eighth century. PHOTO COURTESY OF AKIRA INOUE/KYODO
The team, headed by Ryukoku University professor Takashi Irisawa, confirmed in late October the discovery of a group of caves built on cliffs 1 km west of the Keligan ruins.
The discovery indicates the influence of Buddhism may have extended to the upper reaches of the the Band-e-Amir River, centering around the Keligan ruins, in about the eighth century, and that the religion's sphere of influence may have been greater than previously thought, team members said.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051112f1.htm
Beijing appears more apt to seek flu help
By FRANK CHING
HONG KONG -- China's appeal to the World Health Organization for help to determine whether three cases of "pneumonia caused by unknown factors" in Hunan province could have been the result of the H5N1 virus indicates that Beijing is taking the threat of bird flu seriously.
Previously, Chinese health authorities had denied that two children in Xiangtan county in Hunan province -- a 12-year-old girl who died and her younger brother, 9, both of whom had eaten a sick chicken -- had caught the bird flu virus. The third case is a 36-year-old teacher who had handled chickens with a wound in his hand.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?eo20051114fc.htm
Seattle Post Intelligencer
Government agrees to list Puget Sound orcas as endangered species
By LISA STIFFLER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
After years of legal challenges, Puget Sound orcas have been granted federal protection as an endangered species, officials announced this morning.
Citing new information and analysis, NOAA Fisheries Service officials acknowledged that the local killer whales were at risk of extinction and reversed an earlier decision not to give the iconic orcas protection under the Endangered Species Act.
By granting protection “we have a better chance of keeping this population alive for future generations,” said Bob Lohn, regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries Service’s Northwest region, in a prepared statement.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/248422_orca15ww.html
'Intersex' fish found off Calif. coast
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES -- Scientists have discovered sexually altered fish off the Southern California coast, raising concerns that treated sewage discharged into the ocean contains chemicals that can affect an animal's reproductive system.
So-called intersex animals are not new, but most previous instances were in freshwater. Environmentalists say this is among the first studies to document the effects in a marine environment.
Last year, federal scientists reported finding egg-growing male fish in Maryland's Potomac River. They think the abnormality may be caused by pollutants from sewage plants, feedlots and factories.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1501AP_Intersex_Fish.html
Seattle's job gains continue
By BRAD WONG
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
With a nearly month-long strike of Boeing Machinists in its wake, the Seattle economy has added some 6,300 jobs in the past two months -- continuing to account for 54 percent of the state's jobs growth, the Employment Security Department reported today.
An increase in the number of people looking for work in the region, which includes Bellevue and Everett, contributed to October's 4.9 percent unemployment rate, which was up slightly from 4.8 percent in September.
"It's pretty much more of the same," said Rick Kaglic, the department's chief economist. "In our jobs recovery, more of the same is a good thing."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/248427_unemployment16ww.html
Dangerous Navy escapee still at large
By MIKE BARBER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The brig at Naval Base Kitsap in Bangor will undergo an internal investigation after a prisoner convicted last month of stealing small-arms ammunition and considered armed and dangerous escaped Sunday afternoon.
The wife of the escaped former Whidbey Island Naval Air Station aviation technician, James Tait Praefke, 37, was moved from her home shortly after the escape, said Lt. Cmdr. John Daniels, spokesman for Navy Region Northwest.
Praefke has a history of domestic violence, according to the Navy. Praefke's wife is divorcing him, Daniels said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/248357_escape15.html
Resolution recognizes deceased homeless
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF
A resolution recognizing the dignity of homeless people who have died in the Seattle area was passed unanimously Monday by the City Council.
The resolution is in conjunction with a recent Design Challenge by AIA Seattle (American Institute of Architects), which received designs submitted for a "Place of Remembrance."
Seattle's Women in Black, a group that is part of a network of women who stand in silent vigil calling for peace, justice and non-violent solutions to conflict, have staged a vigil at Westlake Park in downtown Seattle for more than three years honoring the homeless.
Their supporters, Seattle religious leaders and members of the design profession have been working together to establish a homeless "Place of Remembrance" since 2003.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/248374_kcbriefs15.html
First-class stamps to go up 2 cents
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- The cost of mailing a letter will increase to 39 cents on Jan. 8.
The Postal Service's board of governors approved the two-cent increase in first-class postal rates late Monday. It is the first increase since June 2002.
The cost of mailing a postcard will increase a penny, to 24 cents, as part of the roughly 5.4 percent, across-the-board hike in most rates and fees.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1155AP_Postal_Rates.html
Moussaoui death penalty trial delayed
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- The death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui will be delayed a month as lawyers for the government and the admitted al-Qaida conspirator battle over classified information in the case.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said that the original Jan. 9 date for the start of jury selection would be moved back to Feb. 6. Final selection of the jury and opening statements in the case have been rescheduled for March 6. The jury will decide whether Moussaoui is to be sentenced to life imprisonment or death.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Moussaoui.html
Driver in Rita bus fire avoids indictment
By ABE LEVY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
SAN ANTONIO -- The driver of the bus that caught fire while carrying nursing home residents fleeing Hurricane Rita, killing 23 of them, is cooperating with federal authorities investigating the accident, his lawyer said Tuesday.
A grand jury on Monday refused to indict Juan Robles Gutierrez, 37, in the Sept. 23 accident near Dallas.
"The grand jury obviously saw that they would have suffered the same fate if it were any other driver," defense attorney George Shaffer said Tuesday.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Rita_Bus_Explosion.html
Funnel cloud seen in twister-hit Indiana
By RYAN LENZ
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- Just eight days after a deadly tornado struck southwestern Indiana, emergency warning sirens wailed Tuesday morning as a storm system produced at least one funnel cloud.
The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for the Evansville area and an adjacent section of Illinois. Flood warnings also were posted as more than 6 inches of rain fell in parts of the Ohio River Valley.
There were no immediate reports of tornadoes touching the ground.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Tornado_Warning.html
Boy died at Disney from heart condition
By TRAVIS REED
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
ORLANDO, Fla. -- A 4-year-old boy who died after riding a rocket-ship ride at Walt Disney World was killed by a heart condition that can be aggravated by physical or emotional stress, an autopsy said Tuesday.
Daudi Bamuwamye of Sellersville, Pa., died in June after riding "Mission: Space."
The boy had a condition that caused an abnormal thickening of the heart and produced an irregular heartbeat, the autopsy revealed. People who suffer from the condition are at risk of sudden death throughout their lives, the medical examiner's office said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Disney_World_Death.html
U.N. reinstates official fired in scandal
By NICK WADHAMS
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan reversed his decision to fire a key official in the Iraq oil-for-food probe, the United Nations said Tuesday, an embarrassing move as the world body recovers from one of the worst scandals in its history.
Annan's decision, made known as he traveled in the Middle East, came after an internal U.N. appeals panel exonerated Joseph Stephanides in a ruling disclosed last week. The Joint Disciplinary Committee agreed that he had been made a "sacrificial lamb" by U.N. officials responding to public scrutiny that surrounded revelations of corruption and mismanagement in the $64 billion operation.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_UN_Oil_for_Food.html
Princess chooses love over palace life
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
TOKYO -- The only daughter of Japan's Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko married a childhood friend Tuesday and began life as a commoner after moving out of the royal palace and giving up the title of princess.
Thousands of well-wishers cheered 36-year-old Princess Sayako as she was driven from the palace grounds to the Imperial Hotel, where she married Yoshiki Kuroda, a Tokyo city employee, in a low-key ceremony.
It was the first time an emperor's daughter had married a commoner, and the wedding was austere by royal standards. Afterward the former princess, now known as Sayako Kuroda, moved to a Tokyo apartment to begin life as a wife and taxpayer.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1104AP_Japan_Royal_Wedding.html
Karzai warns of more Afghan terror attacks
By DANIEL COONEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A U.S. soldier was killed Tuesday when a bomb exploded near a troop patrol in volatile eastern Afghanistan, while President Hamid Karzai said he expects terror attacks to continue in his country "for much more time to come."
The attack occurred a day after suicide bombers rammed cars filled with explosives into NATO peacekeepers in two attacks in the Afghan capital - the first major assault on foreign troops in Kabul in more than a year. The death toll rose to nine Tuesday as police found more bodies in a ditch and a wounded man died.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1104AP_Afghanistan.html
Jordan's national security adviser resigns
By PAUL GARWOOD
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
AMMAN, Jordan -- Eleven top Jordanian officials, including the national security adviser, resigned Tuesday and the government imposed tough new rules aimed at foreigners in the wake of the deadly hotel bombings.
A fourth American died of wounds sustained in the attacks, according to the U.S. Embassy, raising the death toll to 58, plus the three bombers. The American was not further identified.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Jordan_Bombings.html
Poll: New York Democrats look strong
By MARC HUMBERT
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
ALBANY, N.Y. -- A week after the 2005 elections, a new statewide poll showed Democrats in strong shape headed into the 2006 elections.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer hold huge leads over potential rivals in their respective races for Senate and governor, according to the poll released Monday by Siena College's Research Institute.
The biggest prize last week - New York City mayor - went to the GOP as Michael Bloomberg was re-elected, the fourth straight mayoral election won by Republicans in the heavily Democratic city. But elsewhere in the state, Democrats made significant gains in traditionally Republican strongholds.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1135AP_New_York_Democrats_2006.html
Blood vessels grown from patient's skin
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP MEDICAL WRITER
DALLAS -- Two kidney dialysis patients from Argentina have received the world's first blood vessels grown in a lab dish from snippets of their own skin, a promising step toward helping people with a variety of diseases.
Doctors hope the technique someday will offer a new source of arteries and veins for diabetics with poor circulation and patients of heart bypass or dialysis.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/1500AP_Growing_Veins.html
12 Nigerian children trampled to death
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAGOS, Nigeria -- Twelve children were trampled to death as panicked pupils fled what they thought was a fire in their northern Nigerian school, a police spokesman said Tuesday.
Children aged between 13 and 15 began fleeing their three-story school building in the city of Kaduna on Monday after it filled with smoke coming from a carpentry workshop next door, said Kaduna police spokesman Saad Yahaya.
The children mistakenly believed their building had caught fire. The carpenter was burning trash.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1105AP_Nigeria_School_Stampede.html
Mexico, Venezuela sever ties over spat
By WILL WEISSERT
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
MEXICO CITY -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accused Mexican leader Vicente Fox of being a "puppy" of President Bush and said: "Don't mess with me, sir." Fox shot back on Monday that "we have dignity in this country" and demanded an apology. Now the two nations are withdrawing their ambassadors.
The severing of diplomatic relations came after a week of verbal sparring that highlighted Latin America's differences over free trade and relations with the United States. The conservative Fox tends to side with Washington on many issues, while Chavez, a socialist and populist, has been one of the hemisphere's strongest critics of Bush.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1102AP_Mexico_Venezuela_Dispute.html
continued …
"Okeydoke"
History
Today is Tuesday, Nov. 15, the 319th day of 2005. There are 46 days left in the year.
1777, the Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation, a precursor to the Constitution of the United States.
1806, explorer Zebulon Pike sighted the mountaintop now known as "Pikes Peak."
1881 Payton Johnson patents a swinging chair.
1889, Brazil's monarchy was overthrown.
1921 William A. "Gus" Gaines, who will receive a U.S. patent for a shaving brush which automatically dispenses shaving cream, is born in Mamaroneck, NY.
1926, the National Broadcasting Company debuted with a radio network of 24 stations.
1932 Singer Clyde Lensley McPhatter, who will be honored with a U.S. postage stamp for rhythm & blues singers, is born in Durham, NC.
1939, President Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.
1948, William Lyon Mackenzie King retired as prime minister of Canada after 21 years; he was succeeded by Louis St. Laurent.
1966 Bill Russell, All-American and All-Pro basketball star, becomes first Black coach of a professional sports team. He will enter basketball's Hall of Fame on his first eligibility date.
1966, the flight of Gemini 12 ended successfully as astronauts James A. Lovell and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. splashed down safely in the Atlantic.
1969, 250,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration in Washington against the Vietnam War.
1979 Civil rights hero Rosa L. Parks is awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal.
1982, funeral services were held in Moscow's Red Square for the late Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev.
1985, Britain and Ireland signed an accord giving Dublin an official consultative role in governing Northern Ireland.
Ten years ago: A partial government shutdown stretched into a second day. The space shuttle Atlantis docked with the orbiting Russian space station Mir.
Five years ago: Al Gore made a surprise proposal for a statewide hand recount of Florida's 6 million ballots -- an idea immediately rejected by George W. Bush. Earlier, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris had rejected requests from the counties to update presidential vote totals with the results of hand recounts under way at Gore's urging.
One year ago: The White House announced that Secretary of State Colin Powell was leaving President Bush's Cabinet, along with Education Secretary Rod Paige, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
The U.N. Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Ivory Coast's hard-line government after its violent confrontation with France.
Missing in Action
1966 KEIPER JOHN C. RENOVO PA
1966 RAVENNA HARRY M. III SAN ANTONIO TX
1966 TIMMONS BRUCE ALLAN FORT LAUDERDALE FL CRAFT OVERTURNED SUBJ DROWNED
1968 BIRCHIM JAMES D. INDEPENDENCE CA
1969 GRAF JOHN G. GLENDALE CA DIED ESCAPING 02/15/70 WITH WHITE
1969 SUBER RANDOLPH B. BALLWIN MO
1969 WHITE ROBERT T. ST CHARLES IL 04/01/73 RELEASED BY PRG ALIVE IN 98
Pomegranates
One of my earliest memories is that of using money my grandmother had given me to buy candy to buy a pomegranate instead. Oh, I loved them. I loved the fact that we kids had to dress up special in our worst clothes in order to eat them. We had to eat them outside, too (it's still pretty warm in November in Los Angeles where we lived when I was a kid), and spit the seeds out into the shrubbery. Messy, juicy, sweet food that involves sanctioned spitting? We were in heaven.
http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001580pomegranates.php
San Francisco Chronicle
SACRAMENTO
Prisons' movie studio cost $500,000
Taxpayers funded foundation's film for drug counselors
Mark Martin, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Sacramento -- State prison officials, as they grappled last year with the largest deficit in the agency's history, allowed a private foundation that provides drug treatment to inmates to spend nearly $500,000 of taxpayer money to create a movie studio.
The money was earmarked for substance abuse programs but instead was used to buy everything from two high-tech cameras to two 50-inch plasma-screen televisions. It was spent in the same fiscal year that the state's prison system racked up a $543 million deficit.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/15/BAG8QFO8L81.DTL
Boy with rare disease still in limbo
C.W. Nevius
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Little Jack Zembsch got a standing ovation last week.
The Moraga 4-year-old with a rare bone condition was victorious in a battle with his HMO, Health Net, to see a spine specialist at the Alfred I. du Pont Hospital for Children in Delaware. So when he walked through the door last Thursday, the staff burst into spontaneous applause.
"You guys are helping a lot of sick kids," the specialist, Dr. William Mackenzie, told Jack and his parents, Kim and Mark Zembsch, Kim recalled.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/15/BAG8QFOARH1.DTL
Japan links Tamiflu to 2 teen suicides
64 cases of disorders connected to avian flu treatment
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
An expensive, hard-to-find flu drug that nations are stockpiling against a possible influenza pandemic has been linked to 64 cases of psychological disorders and two teenage suicides in Japan, according to media reports there.
The drug is Tamiflu, also known as oseltamivir, which will become the world's first line of defense if the avian influenza now spreading among migrating birds from Asia to Eastern Europe ever mutates into a form that transmits readily to people.
In February 2004, according to an online edition of Japan Times, a 17-year-old high school boy under treatment with Tamiflu died after he jumped in front of a truck.
A year later, a 14-year-old junior high student, also taking the drug for influenza, jumped to his death from the ninth floor of his condominium.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/15/MNG29FO9K71.DTL
Even moderate exercise boosts longevity, study says
Rob Stein, Washington Post
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Sorry, couch potatoes -- the verdict is in: People who exercise regularly really do live longer.
In fact, people who get a good workout almost daily can add nearly four years to their lives, according to the first study to quantify the impact of physical activity this way.
The researchers looked at records of more than 5,000 middle aged and elderly Americans and found that those who had moderate to high levels of activity lived 1.3 to 3.7 years longer than those who got little exercise, largely because they put off developing heart disease -- the nation's leading killer. Men and women benefited about equally.
"This shows that physical activity really does make a difference -- not only for how long you live but for how long you live a healthy life," said Oscar Franco of the Erasmus M.C. University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who led the study published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine. "Being more physically active can give you more time."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/15/MNG29FOAJP1.DTL
WORLD VIEWS: U.S. losing friends over torture; Africa's first elected female president
Edward M. Gomez, special to SF Gate
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
The seemingly unstoppable pattern of lies and lying about their lies that has become the hallmark of George W. Bush and his administration's top officials, spokespersons and supporters in the media reached something of a bizarre apotheosis last week.
As news analyst Michael Gawenda, writing in the Australian daily the Age, noted incredulously, "When the president of the United States, under repeated questioning and under pressure, has to declare, as he did [during a stop in Panama], 'We do not torture,' you know that even his allies in Congress no longer believe him."
http://sfgate.com/columnists/worldviews/
The Japan Times
Action plan for bird flu includes ban on gatherings
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry unveiled a plan Monday empowering the government to ban public gatherings and quarantine people to counter the potential outbreak of a new strain of bird flu against which humans have yet to develop an effective defense.
Bird flu has killed more than 60 people in Asia, and it is feared the virus may mutate into a form that can spread easily between humans.
The ministry has estimated that if 25 percent of the population contracts bird flu, the number of deaths in the worst-case scenario would reach some 640,000.
The thrust of the ministry's plan will be to boost stockpiles of the drug Tamiflu, which can treat the symptoms of bird flu. Other developed nations are taking similar steps.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051115a1.htm
Japan imports illegally caught tuna: WWF
Commission likely to slam Tokyo over bluefin bought from Turkey
Japan has imported thousands of tons of bluefin tuna caught by Turkey in the Eastern Atlantic in violation of international agreements, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Fisherman haul in bluefin tuna from a storage farm in the sea near Turkey. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WORLD WIDE FUND FOR NATURE/KYODO
The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna is expected to demand that Turkey observe international rules when it meets in Spain beginning Monday, sources said.
Japan is also likely to face criticism over its imports of illegally caught bluefin tuna.
The ICCAT does not allocate a national quota for bluefin tuna to Turkey but allows it, together with other countries, to catch a total of 1,146 tons a year in the Eastern Atlantic.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051115a2.htm
Reactor increase not needed to cut CO 2 drastically: research
Carbon dioxide emissions can be cut by 70 percent by 2050 in Japan even without adding nuclear power plants if the country improves energy efficiency and increases natural energy generation, a governmental environmental institute said.
The government aims to build more nuclear plants to cut carbon dioxide emissions, but the alternatives are "worth trying for future generations' sake," Junichi Fujino, a researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies, said last week.
According to research by the institute under the Environment Ministry, Japan can cut carbon dioxide emissions by increasing use of fuel cells, wind power generation and other new types of energy.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051115f2.htm
Fruit yields not very peachy as global warming fallout rises
By HIROMI OTSUKA
Kyodo News
In what appears to be fallout from global warming, abnormal fruit, including grapes not turning red and peaches with brown flesh, are becoming nationwide occurrences, forcing producers to seek countermeasures.
Red Aki Queen grapes (top) and green ones grow at the Hiroshima Prefectural Agriculture Technology Center.
"If the color is bad, prices are less than half," said researcher Takayoshi Yamane of the Hiroshima Prefectural Agriculture Technology Center's Fruit Tree Research Institute.
Usually large and red, the high-quality Aki Queen grape grown in mild coastal areas in Hiroshima Prefecture along the Seto Inland Sea remained green even in the harvest month of August, apparently because of the high temperatures when the grape should have begun to change color.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051115f3.htm
Team finds Buddhist caves on Afghanistan cliff
KELIGAN, Afghanistan (Kyodo) Japanese researchers have found Buddhist stone caves believed to date back to the eighth century about 120 km west of the Bamiyan ruins in central Afghanistan.
Light streams into a recently discovered cave near Keligan, Afghanistan, believed been used by Buddhist monks in the eighth century. PHOTO COURTESY OF AKIRA INOUE/KYODO
The team, headed by Ryukoku University professor Takashi Irisawa, confirmed in late October the discovery of a group of caves built on cliffs 1 km west of the Keligan ruins.
The discovery indicates the influence of Buddhism may have extended to the upper reaches of the the Band-e-Amir River, centering around the Keligan ruins, in about the eighth century, and that the religion's sphere of influence may have been greater than previously thought, team members said.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051112f1.htm
Beijing appears more apt to seek flu help
By FRANK CHING
HONG KONG -- China's appeal to the World Health Organization for help to determine whether three cases of "pneumonia caused by unknown factors" in Hunan province could have been the result of the H5N1 virus indicates that Beijing is taking the threat of bird flu seriously.
Previously, Chinese health authorities had denied that two children in Xiangtan county in Hunan province -- a 12-year-old girl who died and her younger brother, 9, both of whom had eaten a sick chicken -- had caught the bird flu virus. The third case is a 36-year-old teacher who had handled chickens with a wound in his hand.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?eo20051114fc.htm
Seattle Post Intelligencer
Government agrees to list Puget Sound orcas as endangered species
By LISA STIFFLER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
After years of legal challenges, Puget Sound orcas have been granted federal protection as an endangered species, officials announced this morning.
Citing new information and analysis, NOAA Fisheries Service officials acknowledged that the local killer whales were at risk of extinction and reversed an earlier decision not to give the iconic orcas protection under the Endangered Species Act.
By granting protection “we have a better chance of keeping this population alive for future generations,” said Bob Lohn, regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries Service’s Northwest region, in a prepared statement.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/248422_orca15ww.html
'Intersex' fish found off Calif. coast
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES -- Scientists have discovered sexually altered fish off the Southern California coast, raising concerns that treated sewage discharged into the ocean contains chemicals that can affect an animal's reproductive system.
So-called intersex animals are not new, but most previous instances were in freshwater. Environmentalists say this is among the first studies to document the effects in a marine environment.
Last year, federal scientists reported finding egg-growing male fish in Maryland's Potomac River. They think the abnormality may be caused by pollutants from sewage plants, feedlots and factories.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1501AP_Intersex_Fish.html
Seattle's job gains continue
By BRAD WONG
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
With a nearly month-long strike of Boeing Machinists in its wake, the Seattle economy has added some 6,300 jobs in the past two months -- continuing to account for 54 percent of the state's jobs growth, the Employment Security Department reported today.
An increase in the number of people looking for work in the region, which includes Bellevue and Everett, contributed to October's 4.9 percent unemployment rate, which was up slightly from 4.8 percent in September.
"It's pretty much more of the same," said Rick Kaglic, the department's chief economist. "In our jobs recovery, more of the same is a good thing."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/248427_unemployment16ww.html
Dangerous Navy escapee still at large
By MIKE BARBER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The brig at Naval Base Kitsap in Bangor will undergo an internal investigation after a prisoner convicted last month of stealing small-arms ammunition and considered armed and dangerous escaped Sunday afternoon.
The wife of the escaped former Whidbey Island Naval Air Station aviation technician, James Tait Praefke, 37, was moved from her home shortly after the escape, said Lt. Cmdr. John Daniels, spokesman for Navy Region Northwest.
Praefke has a history of domestic violence, according to the Navy. Praefke's wife is divorcing him, Daniels said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/248357_escape15.html
Resolution recognizes deceased homeless
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF
A resolution recognizing the dignity of homeless people who have died in the Seattle area was passed unanimously Monday by the City Council.
The resolution is in conjunction with a recent Design Challenge by AIA Seattle (American Institute of Architects), which received designs submitted for a "Place of Remembrance."
Seattle's Women in Black, a group that is part of a network of women who stand in silent vigil calling for peace, justice and non-violent solutions to conflict, have staged a vigil at Westlake Park in downtown Seattle for more than three years honoring the homeless.
Their supporters, Seattle religious leaders and members of the design profession have been working together to establish a homeless "Place of Remembrance" since 2003.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/248374_kcbriefs15.html
First-class stamps to go up 2 cents
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- The cost of mailing a letter will increase to 39 cents on Jan. 8.
The Postal Service's board of governors approved the two-cent increase in first-class postal rates late Monday. It is the first increase since June 2002.
The cost of mailing a postcard will increase a penny, to 24 cents, as part of the roughly 5.4 percent, across-the-board hike in most rates and fees.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1155AP_Postal_Rates.html
Moussaoui death penalty trial delayed
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- The death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui will be delayed a month as lawyers for the government and the admitted al-Qaida conspirator battle over classified information in the case.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said that the original Jan. 9 date for the start of jury selection would be moved back to Feb. 6. Final selection of the jury and opening statements in the case have been rescheduled for March 6. The jury will decide whether Moussaoui is to be sentenced to life imprisonment or death.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Moussaoui.html
Driver in Rita bus fire avoids indictment
By ABE LEVY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
SAN ANTONIO -- The driver of the bus that caught fire while carrying nursing home residents fleeing Hurricane Rita, killing 23 of them, is cooperating with federal authorities investigating the accident, his lawyer said Tuesday.
A grand jury on Monday refused to indict Juan Robles Gutierrez, 37, in the Sept. 23 accident near Dallas.
"The grand jury obviously saw that they would have suffered the same fate if it were any other driver," defense attorney George Shaffer said Tuesday.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Rita_Bus_Explosion.html
Funnel cloud seen in twister-hit Indiana
By RYAN LENZ
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- Just eight days after a deadly tornado struck southwestern Indiana, emergency warning sirens wailed Tuesday morning as a storm system produced at least one funnel cloud.
The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for the Evansville area and an adjacent section of Illinois. Flood warnings also were posted as more than 6 inches of rain fell in parts of the Ohio River Valley.
There were no immediate reports of tornadoes touching the ground.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Tornado_Warning.html
Boy died at Disney from heart condition
By TRAVIS REED
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
ORLANDO, Fla. -- A 4-year-old boy who died after riding a rocket-ship ride at Walt Disney World was killed by a heart condition that can be aggravated by physical or emotional stress, an autopsy said Tuesday.
Daudi Bamuwamye of Sellersville, Pa., died in June after riding "Mission: Space."
The boy had a condition that caused an abnormal thickening of the heart and produced an irregular heartbeat, the autopsy revealed. People who suffer from the condition are at risk of sudden death throughout their lives, the medical examiner's office said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Disney_World_Death.html
U.N. reinstates official fired in scandal
By NICK WADHAMS
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan reversed his decision to fire a key official in the Iraq oil-for-food probe, the United Nations said Tuesday, an embarrassing move as the world body recovers from one of the worst scandals in its history.
Annan's decision, made known as he traveled in the Middle East, came after an internal U.N. appeals panel exonerated Joseph Stephanides in a ruling disclosed last week. The Joint Disciplinary Committee agreed that he had been made a "sacrificial lamb" by U.N. officials responding to public scrutiny that surrounded revelations of corruption and mismanagement in the $64 billion operation.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_UN_Oil_for_Food.html
Princess chooses love over palace life
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
TOKYO -- The only daughter of Japan's Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko married a childhood friend Tuesday and began life as a commoner after moving out of the royal palace and giving up the title of princess.
Thousands of well-wishers cheered 36-year-old Princess Sayako as she was driven from the palace grounds to the Imperial Hotel, where she married Yoshiki Kuroda, a Tokyo city employee, in a low-key ceremony.
It was the first time an emperor's daughter had married a commoner, and the wedding was austere by royal standards. Afterward the former princess, now known as Sayako Kuroda, moved to a Tokyo apartment to begin life as a wife and taxpayer.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1104AP_Japan_Royal_Wedding.html
Karzai warns of more Afghan terror attacks
By DANIEL COONEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A U.S. soldier was killed Tuesday when a bomb exploded near a troop patrol in volatile eastern Afghanistan, while President Hamid Karzai said he expects terror attacks to continue in his country "for much more time to come."
The attack occurred a day after suicide bombers rammed cars filled with explosives into NATO peacekeepers in two attacks in the Afghan capital - the first major assault on foreign troops in Kabul in more than a year. The death toll rose to nine Tuesday as police found more bodies in a ditch and a wounded man died.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1104AP_Afghanistan.html
Jordan's national security adviser resigns
By PAUL GARWOOD
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
AMMAN, Jordan -- Eleven top Jordanian officials, including the national security adviser, resigned Tuesday and the government imposed tough new rules aimed at foreigners in the wake of the deadly hotel bombings.
A fourth American died of wounds sustained in the attacks, according to the U.S. Embassy, raising the death toll to 58, plus the three bombers. The American was not further identified.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Jordan_Bombings.html
Poll: New York Democrats look strong
By MARC HUMBERT
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
ALBANY, N.Y. -- A week after the 2005 elections, a new statewide poll showed Democrats in strong shape headed into the 2006 elections.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer hold huge leads over potential rivals in their respective races for Senate and governor, according to the poll released Monday by Siena College's Research Institute.
The biggest prize last week - New York City mayor - went to the GOP as Michael Bloomberg was re-elected, the fourth straight mayoral election won by Republicans in the heavily Democratic city. But elsewhere in the state, Democrats made significant gains in traditionally Republican strongholds.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1135AP_New_York_Democrats_2006.html
Blood vessels grown from patient's skin
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP MEDICAL WRITER
DALLAS -- Two kidney dialysis patients from Argentina have received the world's first blood vessels grown in a lab dish from snippets of their own skin, a promising step toward helping people with a variety of diseases.
Doctors hope the technique someday will offer a new source of arteries and veins for diabetics with poor circulation and patients of heart bypass or dialysis.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/1500AP_Growing_Veins.html
12 Nigerian children trampled to death
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAGOS, Nigeria -- Twelve children were trampled to death as panicked pupils fled what they thought was a fire in their northern Nigerian school, a police spokesman said Tuesday.
Children aged between 13 and 15 began fleeing their three-story school building in the city of Kaduna on Monday after it filled with smoke coming from a carpentry workshop next door, said Kaduna police spokesman Saad Yahaya.
The children mistakenly believed their building had caught fire. The carpenter was burning trash.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1105AP_Nigeria_School_Stampede.html
Mexico, Venezuela sever ties over spat
By WILL WEISSERT
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
MEXICO CITY -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accused Mexican leader Vicente Fox of being a "puppy" of President Bush and said: "Don't mess with me, sir." Fox shot back on Monday that "we have dignity in this country" and demanded an apology. Now the two nations are withdrawing their ambassadors.
The severing of diplomatic relations came after a week of verbal sparring that highlighted Latin America's differences over free trade and relations with the United States. The conservative Fox tends to side with Washington on many issues, while Chavez, a socialist and populist, has been one of the hemisphere's strongest critics of Bush.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1102AP_Mexico_Venezuela_Dispute.html
continued …
November 15, 2005. 2127 gmt.
South America is experiencing a great of heat concentration in the north and over the Amazon. There is a peripheral reach of the Antarctica vortex to the equator. This is not abating and as long as there is increased heat in the waters of the Caribbean (as water holds heat longer than air) there is a chance the manifestation of these storms are permanent. In addition, there is a heat transfer system that has manifested over the Andes where there are icefields and glaciers. That then exits the SA continent over northern Argentina somewhat cooler and into the Antarctica Vortex. This is new this year in the Southern Hemisphere and direct effect of Global Warming under a thick blanket of carbon dioxide as Earth continues to try to cool.
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite 12 hour loop - click here
November 15, 2005. 2030z.
This water vapor satellite shows a lot of convention in the Caribbean. With every storm that drives heat into the water of the Caribbean the more possibility the storms will continue to spawn as this smaller body of water continues to heat with the absorption of that heat.
Tropical Depression is status quo with a central pressure of 1004 millibars.
UNISYS Enhanced Infrared Satellite 12 hour loop - "Click On"
November 15, 2005. 1930z (1:30 pm CST).
Enhanced Infrared Satellite of USA.
This is morning. Before the sun has heated terra firm. Below kindly not the heat building up as the sun rises higher in the sky.
November 15, 2005. 0940 am CST.
When sunlight reaches Earth it converts to infrared. It is what makes these satellites possible. If the infrared light wasn't there this view would not be possible.
With a combination of the heat from major fires, especially this many and the radiant heat of Earth these storm systems spring up.
As Earth heats under the sunlight the infrared heat stays even after sundown. A cooling air mass meets the heat and there are tornadoes. It isn't surprising these storms are occurring in the evening or night after a full day of sun.
You cannot remove the solar radiation or the infrared from it but if the fires were extinguished it might return a delicate balance.
The turbulence occurred between the two fire clusters. A lot of heat.
November 15, 2005. 1:40 pm CST (1940z)
Central Plains Enhanced Infrared Satellite with threat of tornadoes.
The Nations Wildfires - Could their heat along with the desending cold front be causing the tornadoes?
November 11, 2005.
This is the status of major wildfires in the country.
I might point out that all the tornadoes that are spawning occur between the clustered wildfires. It is my estimation if the fires were put out the tornadoes, F1 - low F3 would stop or grossly diminish.
Morning Papers - continuing
Michael Moore Today
Poll: Bush approval mark at all-time low
(CNN) -- Beset with an unpopular war and an American public increasingly less trusting, President Bush faces the lowest approval rating of his presidency, according to a national poll released Monday.
Bush also received his all-time worst marks in three other categories in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. The categories were terrorism, Bush's trustworthiness and whether the Iraq war was worthwhile.
Bush's 37 percent overall approval rating was two percentage points below his ranking in an October survey. Both polls had a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4870
Bush Escalates Bitter Iraq War Debate
By Terence Hunt / Associated Press
ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska - President Bush escalated the bitter debate over the Iraq war on Monday, hurling back at Democratic critics the worries they once expressed that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat to the world.
"They spoke the truth then and they're speaking politics now," Bush charged.
Bush went on the attack after Democrats accused the president of manipulating and withholding some pre-war intelligence and misleading Americans about the rationale for war.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4871
Camp Casey for Thanksgiving
When: November 22 - November 27, 2005
Where: Crawford, Texas (Camp Casey 2)
Sponsors
Gold Star Families For Peace
Crawford Peace House
Endorsed by
Iraq Veterans Against the War
Veterans For Peace
Code Pink
Schedule of Events
Tuesday, 11/22 - Civil Disobedience
Wednesday, 11/23 - Organization of Katrina relief/Meal Preparation
Thursday, 11/24 - Simple Thanksgiving Meal
Friday, 11/25 - Memorial Dedication
Saturday, 11/26 - March/Rally- Possible Interfaith Service
Thanksgiving is a time for families to gather to give thanks and celebrate the year's achievements. In this spirit, the family of Camp Casey and the Crawford Peace Movement will reunite in Crawford, Texas, this Thanksgiving to celebrate our work, remember those who are no longer with us, and share our stories, our lives, and the wealth of our community.
The past year has seen many tragic milestones in the war on Iraq. Despite the President's assertion that major combat ended last year, military operations have continued, and resulted in the destruction of the city of Falluja, 2,038 American deaths, 200,000 Iraqi deaths, 199 coalition deaths, and 15,353 American soldiers wounded. But this year has also been a year of victories for our movement (figures as of 11/04/05).
This past August, our community united in Crawford with Cindy Sheehan to demand that the President explain the "noble cause" for which he claims our troops have died. Then, on September 24, we massed over 200,000 people in Washington D.C. to send a clear message to the world that we do not consent to wars of conquest in our name and demand that the troops be brought home NOW!
Since Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana, claiming over 1,000 American lives, the Crawford coalition has been providing material assistance to the people of New Orleans while the government struggles under the weight of its own bureaucracy.
After we left Crawford at the end of August, McLennan County designated the county bar ditches "no speech zones" by making it illegal to camp, eat or erect a structure for "living" in them . Additionally, they created a "no parking zone" for a 7 mile radius around the Bush ranch. This is a violation of our constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly. On Tuesday, November 22, some of us will challenge this ordinance by gathering in the Camp Casey 1 ditch to let George Bush know that he cannot continue to turn a deaf ear to our grievances.
In solidarity with people who continue to suffer as a result of the President's failed war in Iraq, we will forgo the standard excessive American Thanksgiving feast for a simple Iraqi meal. We will organize food and monetary donations for a convoy coming through Crawford to take to New Orleans to those who continue to struggle to rebuild their lives.
Friday, we will dedicate the new Memorial Garden at the Crawford Peace House. This will include the carved stone that was started this summer.
Saturday, we will engage in a demonstration (march/rally/caravan, details to be announced). We will disband on Sunday to return to our local communities to continue our campaign to end the war and bring our troops home.
We are requesting that each organization collect from their membership and supporters donations of non-perishable food or contributions of funds, and that they post information about this event on their websites. We must keep the war at the forefront of public consciousness this holiday season. One more death is too many; tomorrow is too late. Let us come together in community to renew our commitment to end the suffering NOW!
Camping will be available at Camp Casey II; the Crawford Peace House will secure access to Tonkawa Falls State Park for overflow, if needed. Shuttles will also be organized.
Contact the Crawford Peace House at 254-486-0099 for more information. Keep checking the Crawford Peace House Website for updated information about the event.
Please RSVP to the Crawford Peace House to let them know if you plan to attend the Thanksgiving event, so that we can prepare for the correct number of people. When you call, please let the Peace House know if you are willing to volunteer. We will need the same kinds of volunteers that we did during the summer encampment and we know that you will all rise to this effort. Thanks so much. We look forward to seeing you again.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4872
BREAKING: Chalabi Meets with Cheney & Rumsfeld; White House Bans Photos, Press Access The Associated Press is reporting that Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met today with Ahmad Chalabi, the discredited neocon darling currently under FBI investigation for allegedly passing U.S. secrets to Iran:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld discussed Iraqi security and political developments on Monday with Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile tainted by the since-discredited claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. […]
Chalabi met later with Vice President Dick Cheney, and he also had talks with Robert Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state.
Not surprisingly, Cheney and Rumsfeld preferred to have their meetings stay under the radar. Here’s Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank from MSNBC’s Hardball [transcript updated]:
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/14/chalabi-cheney/
Haunted by "The Iceman"
Military Police at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison dubbed him the Iceman; others used the nickname Mr. Frosty. Some even called him Bernie, after the character in the 1989 movie Weekend at Bernie's, about a dead man whose associates carry him around as if he were still alive. The prisoner is listed as Manadel al-Jamadi in three official investigations of his death while in U.S. custody, a death that was ruled a homicide in a Defense Department autopsy. Photographs of his battered corpse -- iced to keep it from decomposing in order to hide the true circumstances of his dying -- were among the many made public in the spring of 2004, raising stark questions about America's treatment of enemy detainees.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4864
Documents Reveal Alito's Abortion Views
By Jesse J. Holland / Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in 1985 that he was proud of his Reagan-era work helping the government argue that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion," documents showed Monday.
Alito, who was applying in 1985 to become deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, boasted in a document that he helped "to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly."
"I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government argued that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion," he said.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4868
Bush Didn't Mislead on War, Adviser Says
By Douglass K. Daniel / Associated Press
WASHINGTON - While admitting "we were wrong" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, President Bush's national security adviser on Sunday rejected assertions that the president manipulated intelligence and misled the American people.
Bush relied on the collective judgment of the intelligence community when he determined that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, national security adviser Stephen Hadley said.
"Turns out, we were wrong," Hadley told "Late Edition" on CNN. "But I think the point that needs to be emphasized ... allegations now that the president somehow manipulated intelligence, somehow misled the American people, are flat wrong."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4863
Wednesday Night Protest
By Thomas E. Franklin / North Jersey Record
They're out there by the Teaneck Armory each Wednesday night at rush hour, as sure as the traffic that inches along Teaneck Road.
Bergen County residents, four of whom have sons in the military, protesting the war in Iraq. With chants like "Support the troops, bring them home now, no more body bags," the protest has become a fixture in front of the armory.
Mothers, teachers, ordinary citizens - angry about a war and its mounting casualties. Joann Sohl of Palisades Park says she comes out each week. Concerned and angry, Sohl has the harried look of a mother whose son has orders to go to Iraq in January.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4866
MIXED SIGNALS
According to George, if you no longer support the war in Iraq then you don't support our troops. You might even be aiding the enemy.
That was the mixed signal George let fly last night at an Air Force Base in Alaska. He was just passing through, flying off to Asia where there's an actual nuclear threat. (AP: Bush escalates bitter Iraq war debate)
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=542
"Yes, she's come so far and is such a sweet girl through it all."
By Andrew Pridgen / Tahoe Daily Tribune
She's finally home.
Savannah, the tawny-haired shepherd mix left homeless in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, experienced a journey that took her from Louisiana to Houston to San Francisco to Marin County to Sacramento and finally to Incline Village's Pet Network.
Friday, she boarded a plane in Reno headed for Louisiana.
"Yes, she's come so far and is such a sweet girl through it all," said adoption manager Susan Paul. "The staff here was elated when we found her home.
"But with that comes a little bit of sadness."
Savannah, as it turns out, is really named Brandy and her real home is Metairie, La.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/covington.php?id=58
Libby May Have Tried to Mask Cheney's Role
By Carol D. Leonnig and Jim VandeHei / Washington Post
In the opening days of the CIA leak investigation in early October 2003, FBI agents working the case already had in their possession a wealth of valuable evidence. There were White House phone and visitor logs, which clearly documented the administration's contacts with reporters.
And they had something that law enforcement officials would later describe as their "guidebook" for the opening phase of the investigation: the daily, diary-like notes compiled by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, that chronicled crucial events inside the White House in the weeks before the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame was publicly disclosed.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4861
"Yes, she's come so far and is such a sweet girl through it all."
By Andrew Pridgen / Tahoe Daily Tribune
She's finally home.
Savannah, the tawny-haired shepherd mix left homeless in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, experienced a journey that took her from Louisiana to Houston to San Francisco to Marin County to Sacramento and finally to Incline Village's Pet Network.
Friday, she boarded a plane in Reno headed for Louisiana.
"Yes, she's come so far and is such a sweet girl through it all," said adoption manager Susan Paul. "The staff here was elated when we found her home.
"But with that comes a little bit of sadness."
Savannah, as it turns out, is really named Brandy and her real home is Metairie, La.
By the time Tahoe Daily Tribune readers see her image in the paper today, Brandy and family will have been reunited.
Pet Network volunteers, upon receiving seven Katrina kittens and three dogs on Oct. 10, immediately began posting the dogs' images on petfinder.com, Paul said.
http://michaelmoore.com/mustread/covington.php
Haaretz
IDF court acquits officer accused of 'confirming kill' of Gaza girl
By Nir Hasson and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service
The Southern Command court on Tuesday acquitted Israel Defense Forces Captain "R" of all charges relating to the killing of a Palestinian girl in the Gaza Strip in October 2004.
The case received wide-spread media attention when R was suspected of "confirming the kill" and shooting the girl multiple times once she had already been hit by IDF gunfire and was lying on the ground.
R, of the Givati infantry brigade, was charged with manslaughter in the death of 13-year-old Iman al-Hamas. He was also charged with the illegal use of his weapon and with obstruction of court proceedings after asking his soldiers to alter testimonies they provided to military investigators probing the incident.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/645818.html
Supreme Court releases man accused of attack on Gaza youth
By Yuval Yoaz and Nir Hasson, Haaretz Correspondents
The Supreme Court on Tuesday accepted an appeal calling for the release from prison of Shimshon Sitrin, who allegedly led the attempted lynching of Palestinian teen Hilal Majaida in Gaza in June.
Majaida was attacked by a gang of settler youths, led by Sitrin, prior to Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip.
Israel Defense Forces soldiers came to the rescue of Majaida, but he was nevertheless wounded and hospitalized in Khan Younis.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/645838.html
Abbas: Israel pushing PA to civil war over Hamas disarmament
By Reuters
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel on Tuesday of trying to avoid peace talks and push Palestinians into civil war by insisting that militants be disarmed ahead of any negotiations on statehood.
Abbas said in a televised address that Israel was acting as though it had "no peace partner", shortly after a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meant to encourage peacemaking following Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
It was not the first time that Abbas had said that disarming militants could risk civil war, but it was some of his of Israel since the Gaza pullout in September.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/645803.html
A conscience still not quiet
By Shiri Lev-Ari
People from overseas sometimes ask Nadine Gordimer what she will do now, ten years after the end of the apartheid regime in her country. What will she write about now? But Gordimer doesn't even understand the question.
I never wrote about apartheid, says the South African writer in a telephone interview from her home in Johannesburg. She wrote, she says, about people who lived under apartheid and about how it influenced their actions and personalities. Now that apartheid no longer exists, she says - expressing thanks to "all the gods that may or may not exist" - and people live differently, they interact with each other in new ways.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/644932.html
Jewish life is good north of the border
By Shmuel Rosner
Toronto, which hosts the UJC General Assembly this week, is, without a doubt, the world's longest Jewish community. Some 80 percent of the Jewish population - which stands at about 200,000 - live on the 20-kilometer-long Bathurst Street and roads adjacent to it. Very few Jews live in the downtown area, and some of those who do pray at the old Beth Israel Anshei Minsk Synagogue, which was the victim of an arson attack in 2001. However, most prefer the synagogues in North York, which is north of the city, and houses almost one-third of Toronto's Jewish community. All along Bathurst Street in the north there are Jewish stores, kosher restaurants, street signs with Hebrew letters, Jewish schools and yeshivas.
The city's Jewish elders are very pleased with the state of their community, and do all they can to nurture it. Jewish Toronto, unlike Jewish communities in most other North American cities, is growing: within a single generation, the community has doubled its population. That growth is due to a number of factors including the city's financial clout, the mass Jewish exodus from Montreal - part of the separatist, nationalist province of Quebec, and a city that has experienced an upturn in anti-Semitic incidents - the depletion of small Jewish communities in towns across Ontario, and the widespread migration to the country's big cities.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/644533.html
Moscow chief rabbi's return seems closer
By Yossi Melman
Thursday's election of millionaire industrialist Vyacheslav Kantor as acting president of the Russian Jewish Congress could pave the way for the return to Moscow of the city's chief rabbi, Pinhas Goldschmidt, Jewish sources in the Russian capital said Friday.
Goldschmidt was deported from Russia six weeks ago after authorities claimed his visa had expired.
Kantor will replace Vladimir Slutsker, who has agreed to assume responsibility for the RJC's foreign and interfaith relations.
Russian Jewish sources assessed that Kantor's appointment to the post and the compromise reached with Slutsker have significantly boosted the chances of Goldschmidt's return. Since his deportation, the rabbi has been in Israel, while the governments of the United States, Switzerland (Goldschmidt
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/644504.html
Is a driver's license worth sex? Negev woman says no
By Haaretz Service
Police in the Negev have arrested a senior driver licensing inspector and a driving instructor on suspicion of having offered to grant a young woman a license if she agreed to have sexual relations with both of them, Israel Radio reported Tuesday.
It said the driving instructor made the offer to the woman, a resident of the southern town of Netivot, after she failed a licensing test for the third time.
"The instructor proposed that she have sexual relations with him and with the senior licensing inspector, and, in return, she would receive her driver's license," the radio said.
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The woman then informed the police, who began an undercover investigation. Detectives amassed evidence against the two on additional cases in which they allegedly arranged to grant licenses in return for favors, it said.
Acting on the advice of detectives, the woman invited the inspector to her apartment Monday night, after the two agreed that he was to have sex with her that night, whereupon she would re-take the driving test next week, and pass.
The inspector arrived at the house, and the ensuing conversation was taped by police who were hiding in the apartment. The officers then jumped from their hiding places and arrested the man, as well as the driving instructor.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/645705.html
The Miami Herald
Teen shot on Miramar school bus
By WANDA J. DEMARZO and JULIA NEYMAN
wdemarzo@herald.com
A 17-year-old girl shot another teenage girl this morning on a charter school bus in Miramar.
The victim's injuries are not life-threatening.
The two girls got into an argument yesterday, according to police, and the argument continued this morning after both girls got onto the school bus.
The bus was on its way to Parkway Academy Charter School at around 7:45 a.m. The bus picked up the suspect first, then the victim, and the argument continued.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13172567.htm
Blame traded over long lines at MIA
Sluggish passport lines at Miami International Airport pitted Homeland Security against the Miami-Dade aviation department.
BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@herald.com
Chronic delays that periodically dog international travelers at Miami International Airport are the product of too few passport control officers -- or outmoded facilities, depending on whom you ask.
The federal government insists that the problem stems from inadequate airport facilities and uneven distribution of gate assignments for arriving flights. Airport and airline managers blame delays on a shortage of passport control officers.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13169433.htm
Tropical Depression forms in Caribbean
Associated Press
MIAMI - A tropical depression that formed in the southeast Caribbean Sea was expected to strengthen into Tropical Storm Gamma later Tuesday, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said.
Tropical Depression 27 formed late Sunday, and was expected to be south of Jamaica by the end of the week, over Caribbean waters still warm enough to feed a major hurricane.
The depression could eventually strengthen into a hurricane but it is not expected to threaten the United States.
At 4 a.m. EST Tuesday, the depression was centered about 265 miles south of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Its maximum sustained winds were near 35 mph, which have not changed since Sunday night.
It was moving west-northwest near 12 mph.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13168002.htm
Rain causes more ceilings to collapse in Lauderhill
BY JENNIFER LEBOVICH
jlebovich@herald.com
Hurricane Wilma tore off a chunk of Sabrina Whitehead's roof, but it wasn't until the rains came Monday night that parts of the ceiling collapsed into her Lauderhill condominum.
The clear plastic tarp covering the roof was no match for the rain, which poured into the living room, Whitehead said.
''All of a sudden the roof came in, it just fell in'' said Chaquita Hall, who was watching Whitehead's children at the time.
A piece of drywall hit Whitehead's 3-year-old daughter, Angel Slocum, in the foot. At around 7:30 p.m., the fire department was called to the the 5300 block of Northwest 24th Court after the ceiling collapsed.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13168020.htm
Alito downplays 1985 abortion statement
JESSE J. HOLLAND
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito distanced himself Tuesday from his 1985 comments that there was no constitutional right to abortion, telling a senator in private that he had been "an advocate seeking a job."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., an abortion rights supporter and the only woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she asked the conservative judge about a document released Monday showing Alito in 1985 telling the Reagan administration he was particularly proud to help argue that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
"He said first of all it was different then," she said. "He said, 'I was an advocate seeking a job, it was a political job and that was 1985. I'm now a judge, I've been on the circuit court for 15 years and it's very different. I'm not an advocate, I don't give heed to my personal views, what I do is interpret the law.'"
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13166998.htm
Diplomacy unleashed
OUR OPINION: TIME FOR STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT SLAUGHTER IN DARFUR
The situation in the forlorn Darfur region of Sudan has gotten so bad that even unflappable diplomats are losing their etiquette. Last week, Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick engaged in a red-faced shouting match with a local leader who wasn't coming clean about a raid that killed scores of villagers.
According to a report in The New York Times, the argument ''looked as if it might come to blows.'' As a rule, such behavior should be frowned on, but Mr. Zoellick was right to be angry and deserves kudos for refusing to play along with another phony charade. Sudanese officials have been lying, dissembling and hiding the truth about the goings-on in Darfur for so long that it's pointless to engage in polite diplomacy. So far, at least 200,000 are dead and more than 2 million live in refugee camps, thanks to the evildoing of killers backed by the government in this conflicted region of Sudan.
Commendably, Mr. Zoellick has made four visits to the region over the past six months. The State Department must keep up the pressure to stop the slaughter in Darfur. It should make it clear to the Sudanese government's leaders that their see-no-evil act isn't fooling anyone.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13169183.htm
Doctor: Girl was strangled from behind
A medical examiner testified about the condition of an 11-year-old girl's body on the fifth day of the trial of her accused murderer.
BY MIKE SCHNEIDER
Associated Press
SARASOTA - Scrapes, marks and bruises on Carlie Brucia's body indicate the 11-year-old girl was bound, dragged on her side and strangled from behind with a cord or string, a medical examiner testified Monday on the fifth day of the trial of the man accused in the killing.
Carlie also appeared to be have been sexually assaulted, Dr. Russell Vega said as jurors were shown almost two dozen graphic images on a television screen of Carlie's decomposed body.
''My opinion remains that strangulation was the cause of death,'' said Vega, medical director for Florida's 12th district.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13168999.htm
Terror case handed to jury after 5 months
This morning a federal jury begins contemplating hours of testimony and recorded conversations in the trial of Sami Al-Arian and two associates.
BY MITCH STACY
Associated Press
TAMPA - The trial of a former Tampa college professor accused of being a key member of a notorious Palestinian terrorist group reached the hands of a federal jury Monday.
After hearing more than five months of testimony from dozens of witnesses, jurors will begin deliberating Tuesday morning in the case of Sami Al-Arian and three co-defendants charged with raising money in the United States to support the murderous mission of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13168824.htm
Judge halts war-crimes trial
By CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@herald.com
For the second time, a federal judge has stopped the Pentagon from holding a war-crimes trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba -- this time in the case of an Australian captive accused of fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a restraining order late Monday in Washington, D.C., forbidding a U.S. Army colonel from hearing motions later this week in the case of David Hicks, 30, one of the longest-held detainees at the prison for accused terrorists in southeast Cuba.
Kollar-Kotelly agreed with Hicks' lawyers that his Military Commissions should not sit until the Supreme Court rules in another Military Commissions case involving Osama bin Laden's driver. The high court is expected to hear that case -- Salim Hamdan of Yemen vs. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- in March and likely rule in June.
The war-crimes court was closed a year ago by another federal judge, U.S. District Court James Robertson, in the case of Hamdan, 35. The Pentagon had sought to resume hearings this week after an interim ruling by a federal appeals court in Washington.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13173358.htm
State's ban on felons voting stands
The nation's highest court rebuffed civil-rights groups by letting stand a Florida law that strips felons of their right to vote.
BY LESLEY CLARK AND GARY FINEOUT
lclark@herald.com
The U.S. Supreme Court let stand Monday a Civil War-era law that bars felons from voting in Florida, ending a five-year legal battle waged on behalf of 600,000 ex-felons by civil-rights groups who argued the lifetime ban is biased against blacks.
The court's refusal to hear the case leaves Florida as one of three states in the country that automatically prohibit felons from voting even after they've served their time.
The decision was a major blow to advocates for ex-felons who say the 137-year-old law is racially discriminatory because blacks comprise a disproportionate number of the former convicts.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13167948.htm
The Gulf News
Malnourished detainees found in Iraq
More than 170 malnourished Iraqi detainees found at an Interior Ministry detention center appear to have been tortured, Iraq’s Prime Minister has said.
A leading Sunni said the prisoners were Sunni Arabs and that the Shiite-led government had long ignored complaints of abuse there.
The announcement came two days after US troops surrounded and took control of an Interior Ministry building in the Baghdad neighborhood where the detainees were found.
An Iraqi Interior Ministry official also said that an investigation will be opened into allegations that ministry officers tortured suspects detained in connection with the country's insurgency.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=192591
Saddam trial lawyer flees Iraq
Baghdad: An assassination attempt has sent a lawyer who was working for two co-defendants in the trial of Saddam Hussein feeling Iraq in fright.
A lawyer who was working for two co-defendants in the trial of Saddam Hussein feeling Iraq in fright.
In a letter to the Emir of Qatar Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the lawyer, Thamer Hamoud Al Khuzaie makes an impassioned appeal for help.
He is said to be seeking asylum in Qatar.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=192564
Call for judicial system that protects human rights
By Barbara Bibbo', Correspondent
Doha: A world summit of justice ministers opened here yesterday with a call to establish fair judicial systems that protect human rights and grant citizens unwavering standards of justice.
The call was made at the Second World Summit of Attorneys-General, Prosecutors-General and Chief Prosecutors, where participants from over a hundred countries are discussing ways to enhance transnational cooperation against crime, corruption and terrorism.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=192355
Qatar gives $2.5m to combat drug trafficking
By Barbara Bibbo', Correspondent
Doha :
Qatar has granted $2.5 million to establish a fund to combat drug trafficking and organised crime, a senior Qatari official said here yesterday.
"Qatar will contribute with a donation of $2.5 million (Dh9.18 million) to the establishment of a fund to combat drug trafficking and other related crimes," Ali Al Merri, Qatar's Attorney General said.
The initiative was announced at the Second World Summit of Attorneys General, Prosecutors General and Chief Prosecutors, where participants from over a hundred countries discussed ways to enhance transnational cooperation against crime, corruption and terrorism.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=192356
Bahrain sets up institute to train judges and prosecutors
By Habib Toumi, Bureau Chief
Manama:
An institute for judicial and legal studies to train judges and prosecutors has been set up by Bahrain, the official Bahrain News Agency said yesterday.
"His Majesty King Hamad Bin Eisa Al Khalifa has issued a decree establishing an institute for judicial and legal studies under the Minister of Justice. The institute will provide judges, public prosecutors, legal consultants working with state institutions and attorneys with theoretical education and practical training," the agency said.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=192358
Iran stands up for Syria under UN pressure
Agencies
Tehran:
Iran has voiced strong support for Syria over the problems Damascus is facing with the United Nations over the inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri.
"We declare our support for uncovering the truth about the assassination of Mr Rafiq Al Hariri. Syrian officials are handling this issue in a satisfactory way Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters after talks with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad in Damascus on Monday.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=192565
continued …
Poll: Bush approval mark at all-time low
(CNN) -- Beset with an unpopular war and an American public increasingly less trusting, President Bush faces the lowest approval rating of his presidency, according to a national poll released Monday.
Bush also received his all-time worst marks in three other categories in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. The categories were terrorism, Bush's trustworthiness and whether the Iraq war was worthwhile.
Bush's 37 percent overall approval rating was two percentage points below his ranking in an October survey. Both polls had a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4870
Bush Escalates Bitter Iraq War Debate
By Terence Hunt / Associated Press
ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska - President Bush escalated the bitter debate over the Iraq war on Monday, hurling back at Democratic critics the worries they once expressed that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat to the world.
"They spoke the truth then and they're speaking politics now," Bush charged.
Bush went on the attack after Democrats accused the president of manipulating and withholding some pre-war intelligence and misleading Americans about the rationale for war.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4871
Camp Casey for Thanksgiving
When: November 22 - November 27, 2005
Where: Crawford, Texas (Camp Casey 2)
Sponsors
Gold Star Families For Peace
Crawford Peace House
Endorsed by
Iraq Veterans Against the War
Veterans For Peace
Code Pink
Schedule of Events
Tuesday, 11/22 - Civil Disobedience
Wednesday, 11/23 - Organization of Katrina relief/Meal Preparation
Thursday, 11/24 - Simple Thanksgiving Meal
Friday, 11/25 - Memorial Dedication
Saturday, 11/26 - March/Rally- Possible Interfaith Service
Thanksgiving is a time for families to gather to give thanks and celebrate the year's achievements. In this spirit, the family of Camp Casey and the Crawford Peace Movement will reunite in Crawford, Texas, this Thanksgiving to celebrate our work, remember those who are no longer with us, and share our stories, our lives, and the wealth of our community.
The past year has seen many tragic milestones in the war on Iraq. Despite the President's assertion that major combat ended last year, military operations have continued, and resulted in the destruction of the city of Falluja, 2,038 American deaths, 200,000 Iraqi deaths, 199 coalition deaths, and 15,353 American soldiers wounded. But this year has also been a year of victories for our movement (figures as of 11/04/05).
This past August, our community united in Crawford with Cindy Sheehan to demand that the President explain the "noble cause" for which he claims our troops have died. Then, on September 24, we massed over 200,000 people in Washington D.C. to send a clear message to the world that we do not consent to wars of conquest in our name and demand that the troops be brought home NOW!
Since Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana, claiming over 1,000 American lives, the Crawford coalition has been providing material assistance to the people of New Orleans while the government struggles under the weight of its own bureaucracy.
After we left Crawford at the end of August, McLennan County designated the county bar ditches "no speech zones" by making it illegal to camp, eat or erect a structure for "living" in them . Additionally, they created a "no parking zone" for a 7 mile radius around the Bush ranch. This is a violation of our constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly. On Tuesday, November 22, some of us will challenge this ordinance by gathering in the Camp Casey 1 ditch to let George Bush know that he cannot continue to turn a deaf ear to our grievances.
In solidarity with people who continue to suffer as a result of the President's failed war in Iraq, we will forgo the standard excessive American Thanksgiving feast for a simple Iraqi meal. We will organize food and monetary donations for a convoy coming through Crawford to take to New Orleans to those who continue to struggle to rebuild their lives.
Friday, we will dedicate the new Memorial Garden at the Crawford Peace House. This will include the carved stone that was started this summer.
Saturday, we will engage in a demonstration (march/rally/caravan, details to be announced). We will disband on Sunday to return to our local communities to continue our campaign to end the war and bring our troops home.
We are requesting that each organization collect from their membership and supporters donations of non-perishable food or contributions of funds, and that they post information about this event on their websites. We must keep the war at the forefront of public consciousness this holiday season. One more death is too many; tomorrow is too late. Let us come together in community to renew our commitment to end the suffering NOW!
Camping will be available at Camp Casey II; the Crawford Peace House will secure access to Tonkawa Falls State Park for overflow, if needed. Shuttles will also be organized.
Contact the Crawford Peace House at 254-486-0099 for more information. Keep checking the Crawford Peace House Website for updated information about the event.
Please RSVP to the Crawford Peace House to let them know if you plan to attend the Thanksgiving event, so that we can prepare for the correct number of people. When you call, please let the Peace House know if you are willing to volunteer. We will need the same kinds of volunteers that we did during the summer encampment and we know that you will all rise to this effort. Thanks so much. We look forward to seeing you again.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4872
BREAKING: Chalabi Meets with Cheney & Rumsfeld; White House Bans Photos, Press Access The Associated Press is reporting that Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met today with Ahmad Chalabi, the discredited neocon darling currently under FBI investigation for allegedly passing U.S. secrets to Iran:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld discussed Iraqi security and political developments on Monday with Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile tainted by the since-discredited claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. […]
Chalabi met later with Vice President Dick Cheney, and he also had talks with Robert Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state.
Not surprisingly, Cheney and Rumsfeld preferred to have their meetings stay under the radar. Here’s Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank from MSNBC’s Hardball [transcript updated]:
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/14/chalabi-cheney/
Haunted by "The Iceman"
Military Police at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison dubbed him the Iceman; others used the nickname Mr. Frosty. Some even called him Bernie, after the character in the 1989 movie Weekend at Bernie's, about a dead man whose associates carry him around as if he were still alive. The prisoner is listed as Manadel al-Jamadi in three official investigations of his death while in U.S. custody, a death that was ruled a homicide in a Defense Department autopsy. Photographs of his battered corpse -- iced to keep it from decomposing in order to hide the true circumstances of his dying -- were among the many made public in the spring of 2004, raising stark questions about America's treatment of enemy detainees.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4864
Documents Reveal Alito's Abortion Views
By Jesse J. Holland / Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in 1985 that he was proud of his Reagan-era work helping the government argue that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion," documents showed Monday.
Alito, who was applying in 1985 to become deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, boasted in a document that he helped "to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly."
"I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government argued that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion," he said.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4868
Bush Didn't Mislead on War, Adviser Says
By Douglass K. Daniel / Associated Press
WASHINGTON - While admitting "we were wrong" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, President Bush's national security adviser on Sunday rejected assertions that the president manipulated intelligence and misled the American people.
Bush relied on the collective judgment of the intelligence community when he determined that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, national security adviser Stephen Hadley said.
"Turns out, we were wrong," Hadley told "Late Edition" on CNN. "But I think the point that needs to be emphasized ... allegations now that the president somehow manipulated intelligence, somehow misled the American people, are flat wrong."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4863
Wednesday Night Protest
By Thomas E. Franklin / North Jersey Record
They're out there by the Teaneck Armory each Wednesday night at rush hour, as sure as the traffic that inches along Teaneck Road.
Bergen County residents, four of whom have sons in the military, protesting the war in Iraq. With chants like "Support the troops, bring them home now, no more body bags," the protest has become a fixture in front of the armory.
Mothers, teachers, ordinary citizens - angry about a war and its mounting casualties. Joann Sohl of Palisades Park says she comes out each week. Concerned and angry, Sohl has the harried look of a mother whose son has orders to go to Iraq in January.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4866
MIXED SIGNALS
According to George, if you no longer support the war in Iraq then you don't support our troops. You might even be aiding the enemy.
That was the mixed signal George let fly last night at an Air Force Base in Alaska. He was just passing through, flying off to Asia where there's an actual nuclear threat. (AP: Bush escalates bitter Iraq war debate)
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=542
"Yes, she's come so far and is such a sweet girl through it all."
By Andrew Pridgen / Tahoe Daily Tribune
She's finally home.
Savannah, the tawny-haired shepherd mix left homeless in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, experienced a journey that took her from Louisiana to Houston to San Francisco to Marin County to Sacramento and finally to Incline Village's Pet Network.
Friday, she boarded a plane in Reno headed for Louisiana.
"Yes, she's come so far and is such a sweet girl through it all," said adoption manager Susan Paul. "The staff here was elated when we found her home.
"But with that comes a little bit of sadness."
Savannah, as it turns out, is really named Brandy and her real home is Metairie, La.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/covington.php?id=58
Libby May Have Tried to Mask Cheney's Role
By Carol D. Leonnig and Jim VandeHei / Washington Post
In the opening days of the CIA leak investigation in early October 2003, FBI agents working the case already had in their possession a wealth of valuable evidence. There were White House phone and visitor logs, which clearly documented the administration's contacts with reporters.
And they had something that law enforcement officials would later describe as their "guidebook" for the opening phase of the investigation: the daily, diary-like notes compiled by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, that chronicled crucial events inside the White House in the weeks before the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame was publicly disclosed.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=4861
"Yes, she's come so far and is such a sweet girl through it all."
By Andrew Pridgen / Tahoe Daily Tribune
She's finally home.
Savannah, the tawny-haired shepherd mix left homeless in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, experienced a journey that took her from Louisiana to Houston to San Francisco to Marin County to Sacramento and finally to Incline Village's Pet Network.
Friday, she boarded a plane in Reno headed for Louisiana.
"Yes, she's come so far and is such a sweet girl through it all," said adoption manager Susan Paul. "The staff here was elated when we found her home.
"But with that comes a little bit of sadness."
Savannah, as it turns out, is really named Brandy and her real home is Metairie, La.
By the time Tahoe Daily Tribune readers see her image in the paper today, Brandy and family will have been reunited.
Pet Network volunteers, upon receiving seven Katrina kittens and three dogs on Oct. 10, immediately began posting the dogs' images on petfinder.com, Paul said.
http://michaelmoore.com/mustread/covington.php
Haaretz
IDF court acquits officer accused of 'confirming kill' of Gaza girl
By Nir Hasson and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service
The Southern Command court on Tuesday acquitted Israel Defense Forces Captain "R" of all charges relating to the killing of a Palestinian girl in the Gaza Strip in October 2004.
The case received wide-spread media attention when R was suspected of "confirming the kill" and shooting the girl multiple times once she had already been hit by IDF gunfire and was lying on the ground.
R, of the Givati infantry brigade, was charged with manslaughter in the death of 13-year-old Iman al-Hamas. He was also charged with the illegal use of his weapon and with obstruction of court proceedings after asking his soldiers to alter testimonies they provided to military investigators probing the incident.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/645818.html
Supreme Court releases man accused of attack on Gaza youth
By Yuval Yoaz and Nir Hasson, Haaretz Correspondents
The Supreme Court on Tuesday accepted an appeal calling for the release from prison of Shimshon Sitrin, who allegedly led the attempted lynching of Palestinian teen Hilal Majaida in Gaza in June.
Majaida was attacked by a gang of settler youths, led by Sitrin, prior to Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip.
Israel Defense Forces soldiers came to the rescue of Majaida, but he was nevertheless wounded and hospitalized in Khan Younis.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/645838.html
Abbas: Israel pushing PA to civil war over Hamas disarmament
By Reuters
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel on Tuesday of trying to avoid peace talks and push Palestinians into civil war by insisting that militants be disarmed ahead of any negotiations on statehood.
Abbas said in a televised address that Israel was acting as though it had "no peace partner", shortly after a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meant to encourage peacemaking following Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
It was not the first time that Abbas had said that disarming militants could risk civil war, but it was some of his of Israel since the Gaza pullout in September.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/645803.html
A conscience still not quiet
By Shiri Lev-Ari
People from overseas sometimes ask Nadine Gordimer what she will do now, ten years after the end of the apartheid regime in her country. What will she write about now? But Gordimer doesn't even understand the question.
I never wrote about apartheid, says the South African writer in a telephone interview from her home in Johannesburg. She wrote, she says, about people who lived under apartheid and about how it influenced their actions and personalities. Now that apartheid no longer exists, she says - expressing thanks to "all the gods that may or may not exist" - and people live differently, they interact with each other in new ways.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/644932.html
Jewish life is good north of the border
By Shmuel Rosner
Toronto, which hosts the UJC General Assembly this week, is, without a doubt, the world's longest Jewish community. Some 80 percent of the Jewish population - which stands at about 200,000 - live on the 20-kilometer-long Bathurst Street and roads adjacent to it. Very few Jews live in the downtown area, and some of those who do pray at the old Beth Israel Anshei Minsk Synagogue, which was the victim of an arson attack in 2001. However, most prefer the synagogues in North York, which is north of the city, and houses almost one-third of Toronto's Jewish community. All along Bathurst Street in the north there are Jewish stores, kosher restaurants, street signs with Hebrew letters, Jewish schools and yeshivas.
The city's Jewish elders are very pleased with the state of their community, and do all they can to nurture it. Jewish Toronto, unlike Jewish communities in most other North American cities, is growing: within a single generation, the community has doubled its population. That growth is due to a number of factors including the city's financial clout, the mass Jewish exodus from Montreal - part of the separatist, nationalist province of Quebec, and a city that has experienced an upturn in anti-Semitic incidents - the depletion of small Jewish communities in towns across Ontario, and the widespread migration to the country's big cities.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/644533.html
Moscow chief rabbi's return seems closer
By Yossi Melman
Thursday's election of millionaire industrialist Vyacheslav Kantor as acting president of the Russian Jewish Congress could pave the way for the return to Moscow of the city's chief rabbi, Pinhas Goldschmidt, Jewish sources in the Russian capital said Friday.
Goldschmidt was deported from Russia six weeks ago after authorities claimed his visa had expired.
Kantor will replace Vladimir Slutsker, who has agreed to assume responsibility for the RJC's foreign and interfaith relations.
Russian Jewish sources assessed that Kantor's appointment to the post and the compromise reached with Slutsker have significantly boosted the chances of Goldschmidt's return. Since his deportation, the rabbi has been in Israel, while the governments of the United States, Switzerland (Goldschmidt
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/644504.html
Is a driver's license worth sex? Negev woman says no
By Haaretz Service
Police in the Negev have arrested a senior driver licensing inspector and a driving instructor on suspicion of having offered to grant a young woman a license if she agreed to have sexual relations with both of them, Israel Radio reported Tuesday.
It said the driving instructor made the offer to the woman, a resident of the southern town of Netivot, after she failed a licensing test for the third time.
"The instructor proposed that she have sexual relations with him and with the senior licensing inspector, and, in return, she would receive her driver's license," the radio said.
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The woman then informed the police, who began an undercover investigation. Detectives amassed evidence against the two on additional cases in which they allegedly arranged to grant licenses in return for favors, it said.
Acting on the advice of detectives, the woman invited the inspector to her apartment Monday night, after the two agreed that he was to have sex with her that night, whereupon she would re-take the driving test next week, and pass.
The inspector arrived at the house, and the ensuing conversation was taped by police who were hiding in the apartment. The officers then jumped from their hiding places and arrested the man, as well as the driving instructor.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/645705.html
The Miami Herald
Teen shot on Miramar school bus
By WANDA J. DEMARZO and JULIA NEYMAN
wdemarzo@herald.com
A 17-year-old girl shot another teenage girl this morning on a charter school bus in Miramar.
The victim's injuries are not life-threatening.
The two girls got into an argument yesterday, according to police, and the argument continued this morning after both girls got onto the school bus.
The bus was on its way to Parkway Academy Charter School at around 7:45 a.m. The bus picked up the suspect first, then the victim, and the argument continued.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13172567.htm
Blame traded over long lines at MIA
Sluggish passport lines at Miami International Airport pitted Homeland Security against the Miami-Dade aviation department.
BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@herald.com
Chronic delays that periodically dog international travelers at Miami International Airport are the product of too few passport control officers -- or outmoded facilities, depending on whom you ask.
The federal government insists that the problem stems from inadequate airport facilities and uneven distribution of gate assignments for arriving flights. Airport and airline managers blame delays on a shortage of passport control officers.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13169433.htm
Tropical Depression forms in Caribbean
Associated Press
MIAMI - A tropical depression that formed in the southeast Caribbean Sea was expected to strengthen into Tropical Storm Gamma later Tuesday, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said.
Tropical Depression 27 formed late Sunday, and was expected to be south of Jamaica by the end of the week, over Caribbean waters still warm enough to feed a major hurricane.
The depression could eventually strengthen into a hurricane but it is not expected to threaten the United States.
At 4 a.m. EST Tuesday, the depression was centered about 265 miles south of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Its maximum sustained winds were near 35 mph, which have not changed since Sunday night.
It was moving west-northwest near 12 mph.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13168002.htm
Rain causes more ceilings to collapse in Lauderhill
BY JENNIFER LEBOVICH
jlebovich@herald.com
Hurricane Wilma tore off a chunk of Sabrina Whitehead's roof, but it wasn't until the rains came Monday night that parts of the ceiling collapsed into her Lauderhill condominum.
The clear plastic tarp covering the roof was no match for the rain, which poured into the living room, Whitehead said.
''All of a sudden the roof came in, it just fell in'' said Chaquita Hall, who was watching Whitehead's children at the time.
A piece of drywall hit Whitehead's 3-year-old daughter, Angel Slocum, in the foot. At around 7:30 p.m., the fire department was called to the the 5300 block of Northwest 24th Court after the ceiling collapsed.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13168020.htm
Alito downplays 1985 abortion statement
JESSE J. HOLLAND
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito distanced himself Tuesday from his 1985 comments that there was no constitutional right to abortion, telling a senator in private that he had been "an advocate seeking a job."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., an abortion rights supporter and the only woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she asked the conservative judge about a document released Monday showing Alito in 1985 telling the Reagan administration he was particularly proud to help argue that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
"He said first of all it was different then," she said. "He said, 'I was an advocate seeking a job, it was a political job and that was 1985. I'm now a judge, I've been on the circuit court for 15 years and it's very different. I'm not an advocate, I don't give heed to my personal views, what I do is interpret the law.'"
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13166998.htm
Diplomacy unleashed
OUR OPINION: TIME FOR STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT SLAUGHTER IN DARFUR
The situation in the forlorn Darfur region of Sudan has gotten so bad that even unflappable diplomats are losing their etiquette. Last week, Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick engaged in a red-faced shouting match with a local leader who wasn't coming clean about a raid that killed scores of villagers.
According to a report in The New York Times, the argument ''looked as if it might come to blows.'' As a rule, such behavior should be frowned on, but Mr. Zoellick was right to be angry and deserves kudos for refusing to play along with another phony charade. Sudanese officials have been lying, dissembling and hiding the truth about the goings-on in Darfur for so long that it's pointless to engage in polite diplomacy. So far, at least 200,000 are dead and more than 2 million live in refugee camps, thanks to the evildoing of killers backed by the government in this conflicted region of Sudan.
Commendably, Mr. Zoellick has made four visits to the region over the past six months. The State Department must keep up the pressure to stop the slaughter in Darfur. It should make it clear to the Sudanese government's leaders that their see-no-evil act isn't fooling anyone.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13169183.htm
Doctor: Girl was strangled from behind
A medical examiner testified about the condition of an 11-year-old girl's body on the fifth day of the trial of her accused murderer.
BY MIKE SCHNEIDER
Associated Press
SARASOTA - Scrapes, marks and bruises on Carlie Brucia's body indicate the 11-year-old girl was bound, dragged on her side and strangled from behind with a cord or string, a medical examiner testified Monday on the fifth day of the trial of the man accused in the killing.
Carlie also appeared to be have been sexually assaulted, Dr. Russell Vega said as jurors were shown almost two dozen graphic images on a television screen of Carlie's decomposed body.
''My opinion remains that strangulation was the cause of death,'' said Vega, medical director for Florida's 12th district.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13168999.htm
Terror case handed to jury after 5 months
This morning a federal jury begins contemplating hours of testimony and recorded conversations in the trial of Sami Al-Arian and two associates.
BY MITCH STACY
Associated Press
TAMPA - The trial of a former Tampa college professor accused of being a key member of a notorious Palestinian terrorist group reached the hands of a federal jury Monday.
After hearing more than five months of testimony from dozens of witnesses, jurors will begin deliberating Tuesday morning in the case of Sami Al-Arian and three co-defendants charged with raising money in the United States to support the murderous mission of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13168824.htm
Judge halts war-crimes trial
By CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@herald.com
For the second time, a federal judge has stopped the Pentagon from holding a war-crimes trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba -- this time in the case of an Australian captive accused of fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a restraining order late Monday in Washington, D.C., forbidding a U.S. Army colonel from hearing motions later this week in the case of David Hicks, 30, one of the longest-held detainees at the prison for accused terrorists in southeast Cuba.
Kollar-Kotelly agreed with Hicks' lawyers that his Military Commissions should not sit until the Supreme Court rules in another Military Commissions case involving Osama bin Laden's driver. The high court is expected to hear that case -- Salim Hamdan of Yemen vs. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- in March and likely rule in June.
The war-crimes court was closed a year ago by another federal judge, U.S. District Court James Robertson, in the case of Hamdan, 35. The Pentagon had sought to resume hearings this week after an interim ruling by a federal appeals court in Washington.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13173358.htm
State's ban on felons voting stands
The nation's highest court rebuffed civil-rights groups by letting stand a Florida law that strips felons of their right to vote.
BY LESLEY CLARK AND GARY FINEOUT
lclark@herald.com
The U.S. Supreme Court let stand Monday a Civil War-era law that bars felons from voting in Florida, ending a five-year legal battle waged on behalf of 600,000 ex-felons by civil-rights groups who argued the lifetime ban is biased against blacks.
The court's refusal to hear the case leaves Florida as one of three states in the country that automatically prohibit felons from voting even after they've served their time.
The decision was a major blow to advocates for ex-felons who say the 137-year-old law is racially discriminatory because blacks comprise a disproportionate number of the former convicts.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13167948.htm
The Gulf News
Malnourished detainees found in Iraq
More than 170 malnourished Iraqi detainees found at an Interior Ministry detention center appear to have been tortured, Iraq’s Prime Minister has said.
A leading Sunni said the prisoners were Sunni Arabs and that the Shiite-led government had long ignored complaints of abuse there.
The announcement came two days after US troops surrounded and took control of an Interior Ministry building in the Baghdad neighborhood where the detainees were found.
An Iraqi Interior Ministry official also said that an investigation will be opened into allegations that ministry officers tortured suspects detained in connection with the country's insurgency.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=192591
Saddam trial lawyer flees Iraq
Baghdad: An assassination attempt has sent a lawyer who was working for two co-defendants in the trial of Saddam Hussein feeling Iraq in fright.
A lawyer who was working for two co-defendants in the trial of Saddam Hussein feeling Iraq in fright.
In a letter to the Emir of Qatar Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the lawyer, Thamer Hamoud Al Khuzaie makes an impassioned appeal for help.
He is said to be seeking asylum in Qatar.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=192564
Call for judicial system that protects human rights
By Barbara Bibbo', Correspondent
Doha: A world summit of justice ministers opened here yesterday with a call to establish fair judicial systems that protect human rights and grant citizens unwavering standards of justice.
The call was made at the Second World Summit of Attorneys-General, Prosecutors-General and Chief Prosecutors, where participants from over a hundred countries are discussing ways to enhance transnational cooperation against crime, corruption and terrorism.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=192355
Qatar gives $2.5m to combat drug trafficking
By Barbara Bibbo', Correspondent
Doha :
Qatar has granted $2.5 million to establish a fund to combat drug trafficking and organised crime, a senior Qatari official said here yesterday.
"Qatar will contribute with a donation of $2.5 million (Dh9.18 million) to the establishment of a fund to combat drug trafficking and other related crimes," Ali Al Merri, Qatar's Attorney General said.
The initiative was announced at the Second World Summit of Attorneys General, Prosecutors General and Chief Prosecutors, where participants from over a hundred countries discussed ways to enhance transnational cooperation against crime, corruption and terrorism.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=192356
Bahrain sets up institute to train judges and prosecutors
By Habib Toumi, Bureau Chief
Manama:
An institute for judicial and legal studies to train judges and prosecutors has been set up by Bahrain, the official Bahrain News Agency said yesterday.
"His Majesty King Hamad Bin Eisa Al Khalifa has issued a decree establishing an institute for judicial and legal studies under the Minister of Justice. The institute will provide judges, public prosecutors, legal consultants working with state institutions and attorneys with theoretical education and practical training," the agency said.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=192358
Iran stands up for Syria under UN pressure
Agencies
Tehran:
Iran has voiced strong support for Syria over the problems Damascus is facing with the United Nations over the inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri.
"We declare our support for uncovering the truth about the assassination of Mr Rafiq Al Hariri. Syrian officials are handling this issue in a satisfactory way Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters after talks with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad in Damascus on Monday.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=192565
continued …
Morning Papers - concluding
Chicago Sun Times
The weather in Chicago on November 14, 2005 is 'Tranquil.'
The weather in Chicago on November 15, 2005 is 'It's Back !'
Class conflict hits home
November 14, 2005
BY CHERYL L. REED Staff Reporter
Rashaun Williams, a 26-year-old investment banker, owns two houses, drives a BMW, and his annual salary is well above middle class. But Williams doesn't live on the North Shore or in Lincoln Park or on the Gold Coast, as many in his income bracket might.
Home for Williams is the North Kenwood/Oakland neighborhood on the South Side, an area once in the shadow of towering public housing complexes. As recently as 2000, it was one of the city's poorest communities.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bmcgent14.html
Slighted in the suburbs
November 15, 2005
BY MONIFA THOMAS Staff Reporter
"Disadvantaged" hardly seems a word that would apply to people living in $200,000 homes with prize-worthy yards and sporty trucks and coupes tucked inside two-car garages.
Yet amid these hallmarks of prosperity hides a deeper truth: Middle-class and affluent blacks in the suburbs are concentrated in areas that provide fewer economic opportunities in terms of rising home values and access to good schools and jobs, making it harder for them to catch up, and keep up, financially with whites.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bmcsub15.html
Senate calls for '06 transition in Iraq
November 15, 2005
BY LIZ SIDOTI ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON-- Mindful that the Iraq war is growing increasingly unpopular, the Senate is calling for 2006 to be a period of significant political and military transition in Iraq that will create conditions for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops.
The GOP-controlled chamber was voting Tuesday on a pair of proposals-- one Republican and one Democratic-- that tell President Bush what the Senate believes the U.S. diplomatic and military policy on Iraq should be.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/senate15.html
Jordan hotel bomber had 3 brothers killed
November 15, 2005
BY PAUL GARWOO ASSOCIATED PRESS
AMMAN, Jordan-- The Iraqi woman who failed in her bid to blow herself up in an Amman hotel had three brothers killed by U.S. forces, friends of the woman said Tuesday. In a response to the bombings, Jordanian officials unveiled tough new anti-terror measures.
The killings of Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi's three brothers in Iraq's volatile Anbar province is being considered as a possible motivation behind her bid to take part in last week's triple bombings, which killed 60 people, including her husband and two Iraqi bombers.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/terror/jordan15.html
Study: New moms should walk to avoid clot risk
November 15, 2005
PHILADELPHIA -- New moms should get up and start walking as soon as possible to prevent the risk of a potentially fatal blood clot, doctors advise.
Although the chances of such clots are rare, they are four times greater for pregnant women and new mothers, a large 30-year study found, confirming what doctors long have observed.
Mayo Clinic researchers looked at medical records from 1966 to 1995 of 50,000 pregnant women who lived in Olmsted County, Minn.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/health/cst-nws-blood15.html
Forget sheep, scientists are now cloning hair
November 15, 2005
BY MALCOLM RITTER
NEW YORK -- Look around a crowd, and you'll see that lots of middle-aged men are losing their hair. As baby boomers, they have every right to demand -- What is science doing about this?
Quite a bit, it turns out.
A British company says five guys are walking around with hundreds more hairs than they had before, thanks to an early test of what has been called hair cloning. An American outfit hopes to start testing a similar approach next year.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/health/cst-nws-hair15.html
Firm's free defense of Ryan sparks skirmish
November 14, 2005
BY MIKE ROBINSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
George Ryan's lawyers urged the judge at his racketeering and fraud trial Monday to tell jurors that they shouldn't assume the former governor is wealthy just because he is being defended by one of Chicago's biggest law firms.
Defense attorney Dan K. Webb said the firm of Winston & Strawn is footing the bill for Ryan's legal defense and that the former governor is paying his large legal team nothing.
"The truth is that he hasn't paid us a nickel," Webb told Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/ryan14.html
The Cheney Observer
Joe Wilson, the man the White House loves to hate, on spies, Scooter, and citizenship
BERKELEY — Depicting himself as merely a citizen doing his civic duty — his undeniable star power notwithstanding — retired U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson told a campus crowd last Wednesday that he'd expected the White House to retaliate against him for publicly debunking its pre-war claims that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Niger. The surprise, he said, was that top administration officials would reveal the identity of his deep-undercover wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.
"I was ready for these guys to come at me," said Wilson, whose July 2003 opinion piece in the New York Times punched a gaping hole in President Bush's justification for invading Iraq. "But I never believed that they would be so foolish as to compromise the identity of one of their own, somebody who every day came to work to ensure that weapons of mass destruction would not explode in an American city."
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/11/14_jwilson.shtml
CIA Leak Case “Bigger than Libby” for Most Americans
(Angus Reid Global Scan) – Most adults in the United States think the alleged leak of an undercover Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer’s identity involved more people than Lewis Libby, according to a poll by Hart/McInturff released by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News. 78 per cent of respondents believe other people in the Bush administration may have acted illegally along with vice-president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.
On Oct. 28, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced that Libby had been indicted on one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and two counts of making false statements. According to the indictment, Libby lied to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and a federal grand jury about his conversations regarding the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame with both Time reporter Matthew Cooper and Tim Russert of NBC News.
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/9847
DeLay's Lawyer to Ask Court for Early December Trial Date
Associated Press
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; A02
AUSTIN, Nov. 14 -- An attorney for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said Monday that he will request an early December trial date for the former House majority leader, if the case gets that far.
Lawyer Dick DeGuerin said in a letter that "time is of the essence" in the case that has forced DeLay to temporarily step down from his House post.
Judge Pat Priest has set a hearing for next Tuesday to consider requests to drop the charges against DeLay and his co-defendants. Defense attorneys have asked that the charges be dropped for various reasons, including alleged misconduct by a prosecutor.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/14/AR2005111401264_pf.html
S.F. firms to serve Air Force missions
Bechtel, URS win chunk of $10 billion worldwide contract
San Francisco engineering giants Bechtel Corp. and URS Corp. have won pieces of a 10-year, $10 billion contract to support U.S. Air Force operations around the world.
Both firms will aid the Air Force on missions ranging from natural disaster relief to military operations. Under the contract, the companies can be called upon on short notice to design, build and help manage bases, or to provide logistic support to Air Force units deploying overseas.
Bechtel and URS are not
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/14/MNGDFFO0JP1.DTL
New Orleans Evictions Surging as Contractors, FEMA Bid Up Rents
Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Thomas Marr spent 11 months patrolling Baghdad in the gun turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. He returned home to Kenner, Louisiana, just in time to face eviction from his mobile home park.
``I came home from one war zone to this,'' says Marr, 39, who plans to start over again in Austin, Texas, where his wife and two children sought refuge from Hurricane Katrina.
The permanent relocation of evacuees has already shrunk the local labor pool in the New Orleans area. Now, 2 1/2 months after Katrina hit on Aug. 29, a second exodus may be developing as many longtime residents are forced out by a housing squeeze that has caused rents to surge by as much as 100 percent.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nifea&&sid=agG93kh7FxyA
Nagin: Two more ZIP codes open for returning residents
NEW ORLEANS — The city of New Orleans has opened two additional ZIP codes where displaced residents who previously have been barred will be allowed to return, Mayor Ray Nagin announced today.
Residents who live in the 70125 and 70119 ZIP codes are now allowed to move back into homes there that are habitable, however utility services in the ZIP codes are still spotty.
Approximately 80 percent of electricity services have been restored to homes that can receive power in 70119, and more than 90 percent of services have been restored in 70125, Nagin said. Gas services vary.
http://bizneworleans.com/109+M53d7c20f10e.html
New Orleans Hosts Mayors´ Institute on City Design
Cities
(New Orleans, LA) Mayor C. Ray Nagin and other City officials will host a special session with the U.S. Conference of Mayors in partnership with the Mayors’ Institute on City Design on Tuesday, November 15, 2005.
Attendees will discuss design principles, priorities and strategies for rebuilding their communities with a nationally-renowned team of experts headed by Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., who founded the Mayors’ Institute on City Design in 1986 and led his city’s revitalization following the devastation of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
http://www.bayoubuzz.com/articles.aspx?aid=5500
Congress' misplaced priorities
Talk about misplaced priorities. Republican congressional leaders are calling for an investigation into the disclosure of secret prisons used to detain terror suspects abroad - rather than investigating the existence and legality of such prisons themselves.
Using these so-called "black sites" may have solved an immediate problem when the first detainees were taken into custody after Sept. 11, but the administration will have difficulty proving that they're needed today.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., are making two blunders in their call for the Senate and House intelligence committees to investigate how The Washington Post discovered the existence of CIA-run detention and interrogation facilities in eight foreign countries.
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_3215711
Gulf Coast slaves
Halliburton and its subcontractors hired hundreds of undocumented Latino workers to clean up after Katrina -- only to mistreat them and throw them out without pay.
By Roberto Lovato
Arnulfo Martinez recalls seeing lots of hombres del ejercito standing at attention. Though he was living on the Belle Chasse Naval Base near New Orleans when President Bush spoke there on Oct. 11, he didn't understand anything the ruddy man in the rolled-up sleeves was saying to the troops.
Martinez, 16, speaks no English; his mother tongue is Zapotec. He had left the cornfields of Oaxaca, Mexico, four weeks earlier for the promise that he would make $8 an hour, plus room and board, while working for a subcontractor of KBR, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton that was awarded a major contract by the Bush administration for disaster relief work. The job was helping to clean up a Gulf Coast naval base in the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina. "I was cleaning up the base, picking up branches and doing other work," Martinez said, speaking to me in broken Spanish.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/15/halliburton_katrina/index_np.html?x
Cheetah Oil and Gas Ltd.: Kuru # 2 Re-Entry Program Update
CALGARY, ALBERTA--(CCNMatthews - Nov. 14, 2005) - Cheetah Oil and Gas Ltd., (OTCBB:COGL) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that all major equipment has arrived and has been set up for the Kuru # 2 workover and drilling out of the cement plugs has commenced .
...This news release contains "forward looking statements, as that term is defined in Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Statements in this press release, which are not purely historical, are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such forward-looking statemnents include, among other things the successful evaluation and re-completion of the Kuru#2 well and the release of any data arising from the testing and evaluation of the Kuru #2 well".
http://www.ccnmatthews.com/news/releases/show.jsp?action=showRelease&searchText=false&showText=all&actionFor=567368
The Global Hedge Book, two authoritative surveys for the third quarter
By: Rhona O'Connell
Posted: '14-NOV-05 14:55' GMT © Mineweb 1997-2004
LONDON (Mineweb.com) -- GFMS in alliance with investment bank Investec and Brady, the quantitative analysts, and Virtual Metals, in conjunction with Mitsui Precious Metals and Halliburton Minerals Services, have produced their respective reviews of the gold miners’ global hedge book and its developments during the September quarter.
http://www.mineweb.net/columns/london_beat/555864.htm
Dow Jones Seeks Access To Documents In Libby Case
By Pete Yost
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; Page A05
The prosecutor in the CIA leak case has sparked another fight with the news media, this time over access to material that prosecutors will turn over to attorneys for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald is seeking a protective court order that would bar Libby and his legal team from publicly disclosing "all materials produced by the government."
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Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, went to court yesterday to fight the proposal.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/14/AR2005111401296.html
John Roberts, The Supreme Court, And Me
by I. Nelson Rose filed under Poker and the Law [Originally appeared in the November 14, 2005 issue of Poker Player]
I. Nelson Rose
It was the New York Times calling, wanting to know what I thought of the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. My first thought was, "Yes!! I've made it!"
Then reality struck me, "Wait a minute." So I asked, "Why ask me?"
The reporter replied, "You went to school with him for three years."
I checked the 1979 Harvard Law School yearbook. There it was: Roberts, Rose... his photo was right above mine.
I'd like to say that John and I were great pals. But we didn't hang out together. He spent his time at the Law Review office. I spent mine playing poker.
http://www.pokerplayernewspaper.com/viewarticle.php?id=820
Why Western governments fall apart
By Spengler
Never have the governments of the old Atlantic alliance appeared as weak as they do today. President George W Bush, his popularity ruined and his political agenda junked, is boxed into a corner, but his position seems enviable compared to that of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who just lost a decisive battle over anti-terror measures.
But both appear strong compared to President Jacques Chirac, who has let France slip into civil unrest. Germany, despite last week's appointment of Angela Merkel as federal chancellor, in effect has no government, for the parallelogram of political forces neutralizes all parties. Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GK15Aa01.html
SAP's Agassi denies anti-open source remarks
But SAP executive still warns of IP socialist menace
Tom Sanders in California, vnunet.com
SAP has back-peddled on some controversial statements about open source that one of its executives made during a speaking engagement at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.
As vnunet.com reported last week, president of SAP's product and technology group Shai Agassi last week got flamed for comparing open source to "IP socialism", among other statements.
In a blog posting titled " I LOVE Open Source---Really!" Agassi called vnunet.com's reporting "wrong" and argues that his quotes were taken "out of context".
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2146052/agassi-denies-anti-open-source
Miller Surprised by Withdrawal of Support
Tuesday November 15, 2005 3:46 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller said Monday she has ``nothing but admiration'' for the newspaper but its editors' withdrawal of support ``surprised and disappointed'' her.
The newspaper staunchly defended Miller when she spent 85 days in jail for refusing to identify confidential sources during the investigation into the disclosure of a CIA agent's identity. That support disintegrated in recent weeks as editors and reporters publicly questioned her reporting in the run-up to the Iraq war. Last week, she resigned after 28 years at the Times.
She said jail was difficult but ``not nearly as difficult as the time coming out.''
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5415514,00.html
State moves to take over New Orleans schools
Associated Press
BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana legislators made it clear tonight they are ready for the state to take over New Orleans' long-troubled public schools.
First, the state Senate voted quickly and overwhelmingly for Gov. Kathleen Blanco's proposal that would let the state take over most of the schools. Later, the state House approved its own version of the Blanco bill — plus tougher rival legislation allowing the state to take over all the city's schools.
To become law, one of the bills will have to make it all the way through each chamber and to Blanco's desk before the current legislative special session ends on Nov. 22.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3460747
Historic New Orleans battlefield fights Katrina damage
14 Nov 2005 18:12:31 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Kevin Krolicki
NEW ORLEANS, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Gen. Andrew Jackson repelled the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, but the siege of Hurricane Katrina proved too much for the battlefield site commemorating the American victory.
The flooding that followed the Aug. 29 storm was high in Chalmette, just south of New Orleans, where Jackson won a lopsided battle over battle-hardened British troops at the end of the War of 1812.
"We took the storm surge," said David Muth, chief of resource management at Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, who estimates damage to the now-shuttered historic site at over $1.5 million. "The museum displays were hopelessly ruined."
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N14483420.htm
Zurich Classic returning to New Orleans in 2006
Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS -- The Zurich Classic will be played in New Orleans next spring, but not at the Tournament Players Club of Louisiana.
Because of extensive damage to the TPA course, the tournament will be played at English Turn, its home from 1989 through 2004. The event will be held in its traditional late April date, with the competitive dates scheduled for April 27-30.
"We are extremely pleased that we will be able to return to New Orleans in 2006," said PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem.
http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=2223807
New Orleans judge orders action on stalled cases
Mon Nov 14, 2005 8:47 PM ET
By Kevin Krolicki
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A New Orleans judge on Monday ordered the release of two people arrested before Hurricane Katrina but never charged and threatened to free 21 other suspects this week if the city's crippled criminal justice system does not get moving.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-11-15T014707Z_01_SCH506392_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-COURTS.xml
State Official Says Delay New Orleans Vote
Tuesday November 15, 2005 12:46 am
By MELINDA DESLATTE
Associated Press Writer
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A top state official recommended Monday that elections scheduled for February in New Orleans be delayed because of Hurricane Katrina, which displaced thousands of residents and demolished polling places.
Elections Commissioner Angie LaPlace told a legislative committee that she believes the Feb. 4 mayoral primary - which would also include city council races and referendums - should be postponed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5415142,00.html
Iraqi Chalabi meets Cheney, Rumsfeld
Mon Nov 14, 2005 6:43 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, once embraced and then shunned by the Bush administration, held talks with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Monday but the Pentagon did not allow television cameras to record the event.
He also held a private meeting at the White House with Vice President Dick Cheney after his 45 minutes of talks with Rumsfeld, but Cheney's office would not provide details.
Chalabi's trip to Washington has angered Iraq war critics who have denounced the visit of the man most associated with discredited prewar intelligence on Iraq.
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-11-14T234329Z_01_MCC485376_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-CHALABI.xml
Cheney expected at UT Howard H. Baker Center
“I would put on record my conviction that Independence in fact would be a farce, if the British Troops are in India even for peace and order within or danger from without.” -- Mohandas Gandhi on occupation
Taking notice of the escalating deaths and military failure of the United States to subdue the Iraqi armed resistance after 32 months of a Hitlerian-like occupation, during which the Bush regime used every weapon imaginable except a nuclear bomb, imperialists across Europe and the United States began circulating a buzzword for a fictitious withdrawal from Iraq called, “exit strategy."
What is an exit strategy in the general sense? Is it a plan to withdraw forces while still under fire? Is it just a plan to just exit from an occupied place or country? If the United States wants to exit Iraq, why does it need a strategy? Would not a workable plan would be sufficient? Alternatively, what if the United States instead of seeking an “exit strategy” is actually is pondering a staying strategy?
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_181.shtml
THEY ONLY STARTED THIS? WE HAVE BEEN OVER THERE SINCE MARCH 2003 AND APPROPRIATED $87 BILLION RIGHT OFF THE TOP WITH $20 BILLION FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND THIS IS ONLY OCCURRING NOW !!! WHAT ????
Condi Rice stands up first PRT in Iraq
By Polli Keller
MOSUL, Iraq (Army News Service, Nov. 14, 2005) -- Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice made a surprise appearance at the inauguration of the Ninewa Provincial Reconstruction Team. Asbestos settlement completed and record quarterly revenue for ESGHOUSTON, Jan. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Halliburton (NYSE: HAL)announced today that fourth quarter 2004 income from continuing operations was $183 million, or $0.41 per diluted share.Net loss for the quarter was $201 million, or $0.45 per diluted share, andincluded a loss from discontinued operations of $384 million, or $0.86 per diluted share. The loss from discontinued operations resulted primarily from the fourth quarter revaluation charge arising from the increase in the value of the 59.5 million shares of Halliburton common stock that have subsequently been contributed to the trust for the benefit of asbestos claimants. Consolidated revenue was $5.2 billion in the fourth quarter 2004, down 5% from the fourth quarter 2003. This decrease was largely attributable to lower activity on government services projects in the Middle East in KBR, and was partially offset by record quarterly revenue in the Energy Services Group(ESG).
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/01-28-2005/0002913181&EDATE=
Iran MPs blast oil accord with Halliburton
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - ©2004 IranMania.com
LONDON, Jan 19 (IranMania) - Three Iranian MPs sharply lashed out at Iranian oil company Kish Oriental?s cooperation with the US-based Halliburton Co, describing the move as ?a threat to Iran?s nuclear stance?, Iran?s Etemad Daily reported.
Effat Shariati, Fatemeh Ajorlou and Eshrat Shaeq in a joint letter said: ?A senior Iranian diplomat and member of Iran?s nuclear negotiating team with the help of an official of the UN bureau in Iran has registered his private oil company in Britain and Dubai [apparently referring to Sirous Naseri and his Kish Oriental Company] and now for his own benefit has signed an agreement with Halliburton, run by US vice President Dick Cheney.?
Halliburton has recently won a tender to drill a huge Iranian gas field. This is while Washington has imposed sanctions to prevent companies doing business with OPEC's second-biggest producer, which it accuses of developing atomic warheads and sponsoring terror networks.
Tehran denies the charges and says it has no objection to working with U.S. firms.
http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=28895&NewsKind=Business%20%26%20Economy
Halliburton to stop activities in Iran and sell KBR
Company's activities breach U.S. embargo
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Compiled by Daily Star staff
Monday, January 31, 2005
U.S. oil giant Halliburton is to end its activities in Iran and also plans to divest itself of subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root, group chairman and chief executive Dave Lesar said.
"The business environment currently in Iran is not conducive to our overall strategies and objectives. As a result we have decided to exit Iran and wind down our operations there," Lesar said Friday during a conference with investors.
Halliburton, once chaired by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, has come under investigation in the United States since July for its dealings with Iran through a Cayman Islands subsidiary in breach of a U.S. embargo. Halliburton becomes the second energy giant to pull out of Iran after U.K. oil major BP announced it's decision to not do business with the Islamic Republic two weeks ago. BP executive John Browne said the decision was based on concerns over the effects on their American business interests.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=3&article_id=12225
Halliburton says will exit Iran when work complete
HOUSTON – U.S. oilfield services company Halliburton Co. will pull out of Iran after its current contracts there are wound down, its chief executive said Friday, citing a poor business climate in the Islamic Republic.
Halliburton reports smaller loss for fourth quarter
"The business environment currently in Iran is not conducive to our overall strategy and objectives. As a result, we have decided to exit Iran and wind down our operations there while fulfilling our existing contracts and commitments," CEO Dave Lesar said on a conference call with investors.
The Houston-based company, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has also been criticized for its work for the Pentagon in Iraq, where it is the largest private contractor with revenues totaling more than $10 billion.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050128-1205-energy-halliburton-iran..html
Cheney's Epitaph: Ruminations from the VP at Auschwitz
By Mike Whitney
Al-Jazeerah, January 30, 2005
The appearance of Dick Cheney at the 60 year commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz is an affront to anyone who has even minimal regard for the horrendous suffering of the victims of the Holocaust. Cheney is the driving force behind America’s global resource-war and is personally liable for the estimated 100,000 dead Iraqis and countless others maimed or wounded. To hear Cheney recite his duplicitous platitudes about “freedom” and “evil” is enough to leave even the most hardened cynic among us retching.
“The story of the camps reminds us that evil is real and it must be called by its name and it must be confronted,” Cheney opined. Yes, Dick, and we also appreciate the “banality of evil” that appears in the form of dumpy, mid-level, plant managers whose meaningless lives of plodding mediocrity are only enriched by rising to power, where their fascination with inflicting pain on other human beings can be fully realized. Is there a more apt summary of Cheney’s miserable tenure in government?
How could the architect of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air force base and the countless other gulags in the Cheney archipelago of concentration camps, be invited to speak at Auschwitz? It boggles the mind? Are the Jews who suffered under Hitler’s despotic boot-heel comforted by the idea that the latest flourish of racism and sectarian hatred is now directed at Muslims rather than Jews? If so, that’s false comfort, indeed. The root of racism is everywhere the same; only the names and the groups are changed. Cheney’s record on the topic is entirely straightforward. He fought to defend Africa’s apartheid government to the very end. He supported the Reagan administration’s decision to put Nelson Mandela on the State Dept “list of terrorists”. He resisted “tooth-and-nail” the movement to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday. And, now, he presides over a chain of prison camps that exclusively houses Muslims; the unwitting victims of his apocryphal war on terror. Is there a difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Islam? Or is it just part of a broader political calculation?
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2005%20Opinion%20Editorials/January/30%20o/Cheney's%20Epitaph%20%20Ruminations%20from%20the%20VP%20at%20Auschwitz%20By%20Mike%20Whitney.htm
Who should we believe Bush or Cheney?
On Inauguration Day, George W. Bush was giving us the gist of his messianic convictions and his visions of a world free from all sorts of oppression, etc. Very nice indeed. But no matter how one may regard the authenticity of Mr. Bush’s convictions, he has not spoken to the world about what it is that the observer and most conscientious thinkers of the world wanted to hear. What is happening in Iraq and is there a way out of the predicament, for both the Americans and of course the Iraqis. Where is America heading for over the next four years, domestically and internationally and is it safe to assume that there is really no light at the end of the3 tunnel with a new Bush Administration. Oh sure, there were those commentators who claimed that this was one of the best Inauguration Speeches (“top four or five”). But are these paid commentators (it is hard to tell these days in US media land) or really opinion makers who know what is in store for the rest of humanity to ponder about as But then one cannot blame Mr. Bush. He has inherited so much mess leftover from his previous term, which apparently a good size of the American electorate failed to ponder about, when they went to the polls, so what need is there to lay them out now. No matter, it is easier to get into a world of visions then to delve into reality, because no really takes visions seriously anyway.
http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=812&p=opinion&a=1
Hey Cheney: Worried About Al Jazeera? How About Fox News?
Part of the Bush administration's effort to "spread democracy" to the Middle East includes an effort to shut down or remake the Qatar-based television station Al Jazeera. In an article in today's New York Times titled, Under Pressure, Qatar May Sell Jazeera Station, reporter Steven R. Wesiman says:
Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other Bush administration officials have complained heatedly to Qatari leaders that Al Jazeera's broadcasts have been inflammatory, misleading and occasionally false, especially on Iraq.
On April 29, 2004, Dick Cheney said (Cheney Praises Fox News Channel), "It's easy to complain about the press -- I've been doing it for a good part of my career," Cheney said. "It's part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events."
http://www.newshounds.us/2005/01/30/hey_cheney_worried_about_al_jazeera_how_about_fox_news.php
Thirteen Guests for Bush, One Against
Fox News aired a special Sunday version of Your World w/Neil Cavuto today (January 30, 2005). The show was devoted to the Iraq election and Geroge Bush. Fox rolled out a new theme - that today's election makes the death of over 1,425 of our young people worthwhile.
Fourteen guests appeared on the show:
-Dan Senor, former spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority.
-Oliver North, Fox News Employee and former Iran-Contra liar.
-Rep. Roy Blunt, (R-MO), House Majority Leader.
-Steve Forbes, Forbes Magazine and Fox's Saturday morning program "Forbes on Fox."
-Jack Welsh, former CEO of General Motors.
-Jim Hake, CEO of Spirit of America.
-Jan Schakowsky, (D-IL).
-David Drier (R-CA).
-Juan Williams, "Fox Political Contributor."
-Cpl. J.R. Martinez, of the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes.
-Wall Street round table participants Jonathan Hoenig, Mike Norman, Wayne Rogers and Gary B. Smith.
Fourteen guests and only one, Jean Schakowsky (D-Il), spoke with a Democrat/progressive voice. Thirteen to one. I don't think much detail about the show is needed - you can imagine what it was like with "balance" like this.
http://www.newshounds.us/2005/01/30/thirteen_guests_for_bush_one_against.php
Everyone Deserves A Chance
As I was reading through the "A section" of The Morning News on January 25, 2005, I came across a letter in the public viewpoint section. It was a very angry letter written by Margaret Wissmann of Rogers.
In her letter she asserts that the "governing forces of our country" are allowing "illegals" to "invade" our country and take advantage of the freedoms of the land. The letter is quite long and with out actually saying it, she singles out one culture. While there is a noticeable change in the cultural melting pot of Northwest Arkansas, it's certainly not something to become so angry about.
In trying to make her point, Ms. Wissmann attempts to relate the influx of Hispanics to an invasion of welfare-hungry intruders who want nothing to do with the country except for free stuff. As most people with her opinion assert, it is upsetting to her that immigrants to our area do not learn English.
http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2005/01/30/opinion/07opletters.txt
Boycotting the Hegemony
by Gerard Donnelly Smith
Several weeks ago, I urged you to practice abstinence, give up smoking, grow your own food, buy a horse, get off the grid, move back to the country and start a commune or a co-op. Did you make much progress? No? Well, don't feel bad; I didn't either. That corncob was a bad idea too. Now to another war profiteer.
How does one boycott a corporation like Bechtel whose business is to build or rebuild damaged infrastructure like telecommunications, water, electrical (hydro and fusion generated) or transportation structures such as tunnels, bridges and airports? Imagine trying to boycott Bechtel by not using the public water system, turning off your electricity because it comes from Hoover Dam or driving only on bridges not built or rebuilt by Bechtel. Bechtel has even been involved in environmental restoration and currently holds the contract for cleaning up the Hanford nuclear waste facility. How does one boycott that? Virtually impossible.
Perhaps the only way would be to divest. So if you're serious about starving the hegemony, resisting those who profit from war, then sell your stock in Bechtel. Purge your 401K and make sure your TIA-CREF account is hegemony-free. Boycotting Bechtel for making huge profits from rebuilding war-ravaged Iraq might be a good reason to divest; there are others.
http://www.swans.com/library/art11/gsmith39.html
Read His Lips: Bush's Exercise in Fiscal Restraint
By Dana Milbank
Sunday, January 30, 2005; Page A05
President Bush tucked a rather startling revelation into the middle of his news conference Wednesday. Discussing the upcoming release of a budget for 2006, he vowed: "I'll promote a package that will show the budget being cut in half over the next five years."
One suspects that the president means he will be cutting the budget deficit in half over five years, and not that he will be halving everything from military spending to agriculture subsidies. But he made the mistake four times in the news conference, saying last year's "projected budget" was $527 billion, that the actual "budget was $412 billion" and that this year's "budget is projected to be at $427 billion." In fact, the fiscal 2005 budget is forecast to be about $2.43 trillion -- and nobody's thinking about cutting that in half.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47784-2005Jan29.html
Dick Cheney, Dressing Down
Parka, Ski Cap at Odds With Solemnity of Auschwitz Ceremony
By Robin Givhan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 28, 2005; Page C01
At yesterday's gathering of world leaders in southern Poland to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the United States was represented by Vice President Cheney. The ceremony at the Nazi death camp was outdoors, so those in attendance, such as French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, were wearing dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes or boots. Because it was cold and snowing, they were also wearing gentlemen's hats. In short, they were dressed for the inclement weather as well as the sobriety and dignity of the event.
The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43247-2005Jan27.html
After Harry, it's Cheney
By: Agencies
January 29, 2005
Washington: US Vice President Dick Cheney raised eyebrows on Friday for wearing an olive-drab parka, hiking boots and knit ski cap to represent the United States at a solemn ceremony remembering the liberation of Auschwitz.
Other leaders at the event in Poland on Thursday marking the 60th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation, such as French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, wore dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes.
“The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower,” Robin Givhan, The Washington Post’s fashion writer, wrote in the newspaper’s Friday edition.
Between the sombre, dark-coated leaders at the ceremony sat Cheney, in a green parka embroidered with his name and featuring a fur-trimmed hood, the laced brown boots and a knit ski cap reading Staff 2001.
“And, indeed, the vice president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults,” Givhan wrote.
http://web.mid-day.com/news/world/2005/january/102488.htm
Jeb, Marvin & Neil - 3 Profiteering Bush Brothers
January 28, 2005
By: Evelyn Pringle
Independent Media TV
Its time to take a closer look at First Brothers, Jeb, Neil, and Marvin Bush, and see how much they stand to benefit from W's presidency and his perpetual war on the world.
First, there's brother Marvin. He's the quietest member of the Bush clan. Marvin is co-founder and partner in Winston Partners, a private investment firm. In turn, Winston Partners is part of a larger firm called the Chatterjee Group.
Here's where it gets complicated. Marvin is obviously the family member with a sound criminal mind. He has managed to bury almost all the evidence of his profiteering profits inside a host of corporations and entities, with many being located offshore. Its not easy to track the money through such a tangled web. But it can be done.
SEC filings show that the Chatterjee Group consists of Winston Partners, LP; Chatterjee Fund Management, LP; Winston Partners II LDC, a Cayman Islands-based company; Winston Partners II LLC; Chatterjee Advisors LLC; Chatterjee Management Company; Mr. Chatterjee himself; and Furxedown Trading Limited, a company organized under the laws of the Isle of Man. The address for Winston Partners II LDC is in the Netherlands Antilles. The other subsidiaries were organized in Delaware
Marvin is not the only family member plugged into the group. Brother Jeb is also an investor in the Winston Capital Fund, which happens to be managed by Marvin's firm.
Profits From Iraq
Following the tangled web of Winston this and Winston that, is difficult in itself, but tracing the links to Iraq is even more difficult. A good place to start is with a company known as Nour USA. According to the Sept 30, 2003, issue of Mother Jones, an $80 million Iraq contract was awarded to Nour, a company with ties to Winston Partners.
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=10336&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported
Halliburton Announces Fourth Quarter Results
Asbestos settlement completed and record quarterly revenue for ESGHOUSTON, Jan. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) announced today that fourth quarter 2004 income from continuing operations was $183 million, or $0.41 per diluted share. Net loss for the quarter was $201 million, or $0.45 per diluted share, and included a loss from discontinued operations of $384 million, or $0.86 per diluted share. The loss from discontinued operations resulted primarily from the fourth quarter revaluation charge arising from the increase in the value of the 59.5 million shares of Halliburton common stock that have subsequently been contributed to the trust for the benefit of asbestos claimants. Consolidated revenue was $5.2 billion in the fourth quarter 2004, down 5% from the fourth quarter 2003. This decrease was largely attributable to lower activity on government services projects in the Middle East in KBR, and was partially offset by record quarterly revenue in the Energy Services Group (ESG).
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/01-28-2005/0002913181&EDATE=
Smuggling suspects awarded Pentagon Iraq contract
By Claudio Gatti
Published: January 21 2005 01:07 Last updated: January 21 2005 01:07
A Jordanian family implicated in oil smuggling in violation of United Nations sanctions against Iraq was awarded a $72m (€55.5m, £38m) Pentagon contract to supply fuel to coalition forces after the fall of the Saddam regime.
The contract was cancelled after just one week, once it became clear that the company, which had little experience in the fuel supply and transportation sector, would be unable to meet its obligations.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/4b4bcee8-6b2f-11d9-9357-00000e2511c8.html
A Man of Integrity: Sgt. Kevin Benderman—“No To War”
By Jack Dalton, Vietnam Vet
Jan 19, 2005, 18:49
One can only imagine the struggle, the agonizing process Sgt. Kevin Benderman has gone through which culminated in his decision to refuse orders for deployment to Iraq a little over a week ago—which would have been his second deployment. Having spoken with Kevin and his wife Monica multiple times, I have a real good idea of the internal struggle they went through over an extended period of time. What I came away with from some of our conversations is the simple fact Kevin’s decision was not a snap decision, but was very carefully though out—good, bad and everything in-between, all was weighed, carefully and deeply.
… Kevin Benderman has made the decision to stand against death, destruction, inhumanity; in short, he has chosen to stand against war. One can only hope that others will come to know and realize that to stop war, one need only refuse to be a participant. And yes, it is that simple. Here is the link to Kevin’s statement as to how and why he came to his decision. http://www.oldamericancentury.org/voices_006.htm
All the war lovers (Bush and company) and all the war-profiteers (like Halliburton and Bechtel) would be up a creek without a paddle, if one day they looked around to see everyone just put down their guns and stop participating in their war schemes.
In this decision to apply for Conscientious Objector status and to walk away from war, I support Kevin and Monica Benderman totally. This old Nam vet considers Kevin Benderman a man of ethics, integrity and honor and feels it is one of life’s great pleasures to be able to call and be called by Kevin and Monica, “friend.”
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_15160.shtml
Bechtel's Big Dig patch not enough for state
By Casey Ross
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Four months after a Big Dig wall panel sprang a massive leak, contractors and state officials are still debating a permanent fix as private managers push a patch job instead of an extensive restoration recommended by an expert.
Project officials say the private management firm Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff...
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=64186
Judge orders release of documents in Halliburton scandal
Published in: Legalbrief Africa
Date: Mon 17 January 2005
Category: Nigeria
Issue No: 113
An Abuja High Court has ruled that the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petition, currently investigating the alleged payment of a $180m bribe by Halliburton and TSKJ consortium for LNG contracts, be allowed access to the accounts of some of the suspects in the bribe scandal.
The court also requested the judge of the French Tribunal that first launched the probe in 2003 to allow the committee to inspect documents relating to evidence deposed to the Tribunal by former Nigerian oil minister, Dan Etete, as well as those of Halliburton and the TSKJ consortium, reports THISDAY. The Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris was probing allegations that the TSKJ consortium bribed Nigerian Government officials to win the $4bn Bonny Liquefied Natural Gas contract in 1995.
Full report in THISDAY
http://legalbrief.wnd.co.za/article.php?story=20050117162622267
Halliburton driver's body found in Iraq
Galveston man killed in ambush nine months ago
By DAVID IVANOVICH
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - A truck driver from Galveston who had been missing in Iraq since his convoy was ambushed nine months ago is dead, Halliburton Co. said Thursday.
Bill Bradley's remains were discovered Monday in a shallow grave near the site of the attack west of Baghdad, said Suzanne Behringer of Galveston, who described herself as Bradley's wife.
Bradley, 50, had suffered a gunshot to the head, quite possibly during the firefight that occurred during the April 9 ambush, Behringer said.
Bradley's remains did not suggest he had been killed execution-style, Behringer said. "My greatest relief is he wasn't tortured," she said.
Halliburton had no new information about another truck driver, Tim Bell of Mobile, Ala., who also has been missing since the attack.
Besides Bradley, five other Halliburton drivers died in the Good Friday ambush, when insurgents used rocket-propelled grenades and rifle fire to attack the convoy of tanker trucks near Abu Ghraib.
The bodies of four of those victims also were found in a shallow grave.
In all, 60 of Halliburton's employees and subcontractors have been killed while working in Iraq and Kuwait.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2981527
HALLIBURTON: Halliburton Completes the Sale of Subsea 7
Publication Date: Jan 06,2005, 15:10
SUMMARY: Halliburton announced today the completion of the previously announced sale of its 50% interest in Subsea 7, Inc. to its joint venture partner, Siem Offshore, for $200 million in cash.
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New Zealand Herald
US asks for more European help in Iraq
15.11.05 4.00pm
BERLIN - Germany and other European countries that opposed the war in Iraq should do more to help there and recognise the Iraqi leadership as a legitimate and democratic government, a senior US official said.
US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried said Washington did not expect Germany to send troops to Iraq, but he urged Europe to provide more support for what he described as "one of the most democratically constituted regimes" in the Middle East.
"It should not be treated as a pariah and its leaders should not be treated as if they are second class citizens. Now I am not accusing Germany of doing that, though there is a kind of asterisk often put near Iraq and the government and that needs to be removed," Fried told reporters at a US embassy briefing.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355328
Protests 'biggest in Australian history'
15.11.05 1.00pm
CANBERRA - The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) says today's mass protests against the Government's controversial workplace overhaul are the start of a long campaign to fight the proposed changes.
Unions expect the biggest political protest in Australian history, with hundreds of thousands of workers set to walk off the job in a national day of action.
Some businesses have warned employees they could face legal action if they ditch work to join the union-organised protest.
The protest is being supported in New Zealand, with similar rallies organised in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch this afternoon.
New Zealand Council of Trade Unions president Ross Wilson said the Australian proposals would allow employers in worksites with less than 100 employees to fire people for no reason.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355314
US plans no more delay in Hicks Guantanamo trial
15.11.05 2.20pm
WASHINGTON - The United States plans to resume the war crimes trial of an Australian Guantanamo Bay prisoner this week without waiting for a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of these military tribunals.
The Supreme Court said last week it would decide whether President George W Bush had the power to create the military commissions to put Guantanamo prisoners on trial for war crimes.
The case before the high court involves Yemeni prisoner Salim Ahmed Hamdan.
The justices could find the trials unconstitutional or endorse them as legal, among other possible outcomes.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355329
US plans no more delay in Hicks Guantanamo trial
15.11.05 2.20pm
WASHINGTON - The United States plans to resume the war crimes trial of an Australian Guantanamo Bay prisoner this week without waiting for a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of these military tribunals.
The Supreme Court said last week it would decide whether President George W Bush had the power to create the military commissions to put Guantanamo prisoners on trial for war crimes.
The case before the high court involves Yemeni prisoner Salim Ahmed Hamdan.
The justices could find the trials unconstitutional or endorse them as legal, among other possible outcomes.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355329
Foreign contractors killed, US pursues offensive
15.11.05 1.20pm
BAGHDAD - Roadside bombs killed nearly a dozen people in Iraq, as US-led forces launched the latest phase of an offensive, killing 37 insurgents near the Syrian border, in a bid to secure the nation for December polls.
In the first roadside bomb attack, two South African private security contractors were killed by a roadside bomb near the heavily fortified "Green Zone" in central Baghdad, the US embassy spokesman's office said.
Three others, an American, an Iraqi, and another South African, were wounded in the attack, two of them seriously. Earlier Iraqi police had said three people were killed.
The contractors work for Dyncorp, a US-based firm that has a range of security operations in Iraq, including employing Westerners to protect convoys and reconstruction projects.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355330
Relief body seeks US$13m to help Iraqi families
15.11.05 11.20am
GENEVA - The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies appealed to its members for nearly $13 million (NZ$19.1 million) to help 60,000 Iraqi families cope with the coming winter.
The Geneva-based federation said the funds would also go towards rebuilding healthcare centres, training of 5000 first aid workers, supporting immunisation campaigns and restoring water treatment plants in rural areas.
"A positive response to this emergency appeal will enable us to continue providing badly needed humanitarian assistance during the winter period to the most vulnerable groups," it quoted Iraqi Red Crescent chief Mazin Salloum as saying.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355313
Goliath's name found in Israeli archaeological dig
15.11.05
ISRAEL - Archaeologists digging at the biblical home of Goliath have unearthed a shard of pottery bearing the Philistine's name, lending credence to the Biblical tale of David's battle.
While the discovery does not prove Goliath's existence, it does support the Bible's depiction of life at the time of the supposed battle, said Dr Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
"It means there were people there named Goliath at the time. It shows David's story reflects the cultural reality of the time."
Some scholars believe that the story of David slaying the giant Goliath is a myth written down hundreds of years later, but Maeir said finding the scraps gave credence to the biblical story.
The shard dates to about 950BC, within 70 years of when biblical chronology says David squared off against Goliath, making it the oldest Philistine inscription found.
It was at Tel es-Safi in southern Israel, thought to be the site of the Philistine city of Gath.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355223
Relief body seeks US$13m to help Iraqi families
15.11.05 11.20am
GENEVA - The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies appealed to its members for nearly $13 million (NZ$19.1 million) to help 60,000 Iraqi families cope with the coming winter.
The Geneva-based federation said the funds would also go towards rebuilding healthcare centres, training of 5000 first aid workers, supporting immunisation campaigns and restoring water treatment plants in rural areas.
"A positive response to this emergency appeal will enable us to continue providing badly needed humanitarian assistance during the winter period to the most vulnerable groups," it quoted Iraqi Red Crescent chief Mazin Salloum as saying.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355313
Bird flu claims rising toll among people
15.11.05 1.00pm
JAKARTA - Indonesia said today a 20-year-old woman had died of bird flu while several countries reported new suspected human cases of the deadly virus.
The H5N1 bird flu virus has killed more than 60 people in Asia and is endemic in most poultry flocks in the region.
It remains hard for humans to catch but scientists fear it will mutate into a form that passes easily among people. If it does so, millions could die as happened during three flu pandemics in the 20th century.
Japan set out plans to cope with any outbreak among humans, including declaring a state of emergency, shutting down schools and banning large gatherings.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10355293
War of words between Mexico and Venezuela
15.11.05 5.20am
A diplomatic fight between Mexico and Venezuela worsened yesterday.
Days after branding Mexican President Vicente Fox a "lapdog" of United States imperialism, his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez warned: "Don't mess with me, mister, because you'll get pricked."
Mexico's Foreign Ministry responded, saying it would withdraw its Ambassador to Venezuela unless it received a formal apology.
"The Venezuelan President's declarations hurt the dignity of the people and Government of Mexico," it said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355249
Chinese pirates and yuan top Bush agenda
15.11.05
By Caren Bohan
WASHINGTON - A push for China to embrace more currency flexibility and crack down on trade in fake United States goods will dominate President George W. Bush's economic agenda on a four-nation trip to Asia.
Bush's tour this week, which includes a visit to Beijing, comes after a report showed the US trade deficit with the rest of the world surged to a record monthly high of US$66.1 billion ($96.3 billion) in September amid a flood of imports from China.
Such figures add to political pressure on Bush to take a tough line on trade issues with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355217
concluding ...
The weather in Chicago on November 14, 2005 is 'Tranquil.'
The weather in Chicago on November 15, 2005 is 'It's Back !'
Class conflict hits home
November 14, 2005
BY CHERYL L. REED Staff Reporter
Rashaun Williams, a 26-year-old investment banker, owns two houses, drives a BMW, and his annual salary is well above middle class. But Williams doesn't live on the North Shore or in Lincoln Park or on the Gold Coast, as many in his income bracket might.
Home for Williams is the North Kenwood/Oakland neighborhood on the South Side, an area once in the shadow of towering public housing complexes. As recently as 2000, it was one of the city's poorest communities.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bmcgent14.html
Slighted in the suburbs
November 15, 2005
BY MONIFA THOMAS Staff Reporter
"Disadvantaged" hardly seems a word that would apply to people living in $200,000 homes with prize-worthy yards and sporty trucks and coupes tucked inside two-car garages.
Yet amid these hallmarks of prosperity hides a deeper truth: Middle-class and affluent blacks in the suburbs are concentrated in areas that provide fewer economic opportunities in terms of rising home values and access to good schools and jobs, making it harder for them to catch up, and keep up, financially with whites.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bmcsub15.html
Senate calls for '06 transition in Iraq
November 15, 2005
BY LIZ SIDOTI ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON-- Mindful that the Iraq war is growing increasingly unpopular, the Senate is calling for 2006 to be a period of significant political and military transition in Iraq that will create conditions for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops.
The GOP-controlled chamber was voting Tuesday on a pair of proposals-- one Republican and one Democratic-- that tell President Bush what the Senate believes the U.S. diplomatic and military policy on Iraq should be.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/senate15.html
Jordan hotel bomber had 3 brothers killed
November 15, 2005
BY PAUL GARWOO ASSOCIATED PRESS
AMMAN, Jordan-- The Iraqi woman who failed in her bid to blow herself up in an Amman hotel had three brothers killed by U.S. forces, friends of the woman said Tuesday. In a response to the bombings, Jordanian officials unveiled tough new anti-terror measures.
The killings of Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi's three brothers in Iraq's volatile Anbar province is being considered as a possible motivation behind her bid to take part in last week's triple bombings, which killed 60 people, including her husband and two Iraqi bombers.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/terror/jordan15.html
Study: New moms should walk to avoid clot risk
November 15, 2005
PHILADELPHIA -- New moms should get up and start walking as soon as possible to prevent the risk of a potentially fatal blood clot, doctors advise.
Although the chances of such clots are rare, they are four times greater for pregnant women and new mothers, a large 30-year study found, confirming what doctors long have observed.
Mayo Clinic researchers looked at medical records from 1966 to 1995 of 50,000 pregnant women who lived in Olmsted County, Minn.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/health/cst-nws-blood15.html
Forget sheep, scientists are now cloning hair
November 15, 2005
BY MALCOLM RITTER
NEW YORK -- Look around a crowd, and you'll see that lots of middle-aged men are losing their hair. As baby boomers, they have every right to demand -- What is science doing about this?
Quite a bit, it turns out.
A British company says five guys are walking around with hundreds more hairs than they had before, thanks to an early test of what has been called hair cloning. An American outfit hopes to start testing a similar approach next year.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/health/cst-nws-hair15.html
Firm's free defense of Ryan sparks skirmish
November 14, 2005
BY MIKE ROBINSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
George Ryan's lawyers urged the judge at his racketeering and fraud trial Monday to tell jurors that they shouldn't assume the former governor is wealthy just because he is being defended by one of Chicago's biggest law firms.
Defense attorney Dan K. Webb said the firm of Winston & Strawn is footing the bill for Ryan's legal defense and that the former governor is paying his large legal team nothing.
"The truth is that he hasn't paid us a nickel," Webb told Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/ryan14.html
The Cheney Observer
A few of the articles are dated, but, I can't say they are irrelivant. Quite the contrary.
Joe Wilson, the man the White House loves to hate, on spies, Scooter, and citizenship
BERKELEY — Depicting himself as merely a citizen doing his civic duty — his undeniable star power notwithstanding — retired U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson told a campus crowd last Wednesday that he'd expected the White House to retaliate against him for publicly debunking its pre-war claims that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Niger. The surprise, he said, was that top administration officials would reveal the identity of his deep-undercover wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.
"I was ready for these guys to come at me," said Wilson, whose July 2003 opinion piece in the New York Times punched a gaping hole in President Bush's justification for invading Iraq. "But I never believed that they would be so foolish as to compromise the identity of one of their own, somebody who every day came to work to ensure that weapons of mass destruction would not explode in an American city."
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/11/14_jwilson.shtml
CIA Leak Case “Bigger than Libby” for Most Americans
(Angus Reid Global Scan) – Most adults in the United States think the alleged leak of an undercover Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer’s identity involved more people than Lewis Libby, according to a poll by Hart/McInturff released by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News. 78 per cent of respondents believe other people in the Bush administration may have acted illegally along with vice-president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.
On Oct. 28, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced that Libby had been indicted on one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and two counts of making false statements. According to the indictment, Libby lied to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and a federal grand jury about his conversations regarding the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame with both Time reporter Matthew Cooper and Tim Russert of NBC News.
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/9847
DeLay's Lawyer to Ask Court for Early December Trial Date
Associated Press
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; A02
AUSTIN, Nov. 14 -- An attorney for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said Monday that he will request an early December trial date for the former House majority leader, if the case gets that far.
Lawyer Dick DeGuerin said in a letter that "time is of the essence" in the case that has forced DeLay to temporarily step down from his House post.
Judge Pat Priest has set a hearing for next Tuesday to consider requests to drop the charges against DeLay and his co-defendants. Defense attorneys have asked that the charges be dropped for various reasons, including alleged misconduct by a prosecutor.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/14/AR2005111401264_pf.html
S.F. firms to serve Air Force missions
Bechtel, URS win chunk of $10 billion worldwide contract
San Francisco engineering giants Bechtel Corp. and URS Corp. have won pieces of a 10-year, $10 billion contract to support U.S. Air Force operations around the world.
Both firms will aid the Air Force on missions ranging from natural disaster relief to military operations. Under the contract, the companies can be called upon on short notice to design, build and help manage bases, or to provide logistic support to Air Force units deploying overseas.
Bechtel and URS are not
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/14/MNGDFFO0JP1.DTL
New Orleans Evictions Surging as Contractors, FEMA Bid Up Rents
Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Thomas Marr spent 11 months patrolling Baghdad in the gun turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. He returned home to Kenner, Louisiana, just in time to face eviction from his mobile home park.
``I came home from one war zone to this,'' says Marr, 39, who plans to start over again in Austin, Texas, where his wife and two children sought refuge from Hurricane Katrina.
The permanent relocation of evacuees has already shrunk the local labor pool in the New Orleans area. Now, 2 1/2 months after Katrina hit on Aug. 29, a second exodus may be developing as many longtime residents are forced out by a housing squeeze that has caused rents to surge by as much as 100 percent.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nifea&&sid=agG93kh7FxyA
Nagin: Two more ZIP codes open for returning residents
NEW ORLEANS — The city of New Orleans has opened two additional ZIP codes where displaced residents who previously have been barred will be allowed to return, Mayor Ray Nagin announced today.
Residents who live in the 70125 and 70119 ZIP codes are now allowed to move back into homes there that are habitable, however utility services in the ZIP codes are still spotty.
Approximately 80 percent of electricity services have been restored to homes that can receive power in 70119, and more than 90 percent of services have been restored in 70125, Nagin said. Gas services vary.
http://bizneworleans.com/109+M53d7c20f10e.html
New Orleans Hosts Mayors´ Institute on City Design
Cities
(New Orleans, LA) Mayor C. Ray Nagin and other City officials will host a special session with the U.S. Conference of Mayors in partnership with the Mayors’ Institute on City Design on Tuesday, November 15, 2005.
Attendees will discuss design principles, priorities and strategies for rebuilding their communities with a nationally-renowned team of experts headed by Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., who founded the Mayors’ Institute on City Design in 1986 and led his city’s revitalization following the devastation of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
http://www.bayoubuzz.com/articles.aspx?aid=5500
Congress' misplaced priorities
Talk about misplaced priorities. Republican congressional leaders are calling for an investigation into the disclosure of secret prisons used to detain terror suspects abroad - rather than investigating the existence and legality of such prisons themselves.
Using these so-called "black sites" may have solved an immediate problem when the first detainees were taken into custody after Sept. 11, but the administration will have difficulty proving that they're needed today.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., are making two blunders in their call for the Senate and House intelligence committees to investigate how The Washington Post discovered the existence of CIA-run detention and interrogation facilities in eight foreign countries.
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_3215711
Gulf Coast slaves
Halliburton and its subcontractors hired hundreds of undocumented Latino workers to clean up after Katrina -- only to mistreat them and throw them out without pay.
By Roberto Lovato
Arnulfo Martinez recalls seeing lots of hombres del ejercito standing at attention. Though he was living on the Belle Chasse Naval Base near New Orleans when President Bush spoke there on Oct. 11, he didn't understand anything the ruddy man in the rolled-up sleeves was saying to the troops.
Martinez, 16, speaks no English; his mother tongue is Zapotec. He had left the cornfields of Oaxaca, Mexico, four weeks earlier for the promise that he would make $8 an hour, plus room and board, while working for a subcontractor of KBR, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton that was awarded a major contract by the Bush administration for disaster relief work. The job was helping to clean up a Gulf Coast naval base in the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina. "I was cleaning up the base, picking up branches and doing other work," Martinez said, speaking to me in broken Spanish.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/15/halliburton_katrina/index_np.html?x
Cheetah Oil and Gas Ltd.: Kuru # 2 Re-Entry Program Update
CALGARY, ALBERTA--(CCNMatthews - Nov. 14, 2005) - Cheetah Oil and Gas Ltd., (OTCBB:COGL) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that all major equipment has arrived and has been set up for the Kuru # 2 workover and drilling out of the cement plugs has commenced .
...This news release contains "forward looking statements, as that term is defined in Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Statements in this press release, which are not purely historical, are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such forward-looking statemnents include, among other things the successful evaluation and re-completion of the Kuru#2 well and the release of any data arising from the testing and evaluation of the Kuru #2 well".
http://www.ccnmatthews.com/news/releases/show.jsp?action=showRelease&searchText=false&showText=all&actionFor=567368
The Global Hedge Book, two authoritative surveys for the third quarter
By: Rhona O'Connell
Posted: '14-NOV-05 14:55' GMT © Mineweb 1997-2004
LONDON (Mineweb.com) -- GFMS in alliance with investment bank Investec and Brady, the quantitative analysts, and Virtual Metals, in conjunction with Mitsui Precious Metals and Halliburton Minerals Services, have produced their respective reviews of the gold miners’ global hedge book and its developments during the September quarter.
http://www.mineweb.net/columns/london_beat/555864.htm
Dow Jones Seeks Access To Documents In Libby Case
By Pete Yost
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; Page A05
The prosecutor in the CIA leak case has sparked another fight with the news media, this time over access to material that prosecutors will turn over to attorneys for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald is seeking a protective court order that would bar Libby and his legal team from publicly disclosing "all materials produced by the government."
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Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, went to court yesterday to fight the proposal.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/14/AR2005111401296.html
John Roberts, The Supreme Court, And Me
by I. Nelson Rose filed under Poker and the Law [Originally appeared in the November 14, 2005 issue of Poker Player]
I. Nelson Rose
It was the New York Times calling, wanting to know what I thought of the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. My first thought was, "Yes!! I've made it!"
Then reality struck me, "Wait a minute." So I asked, "Why ask me?"
The reporter replied, "You went to school with him for three years."
I checked the 1979 Harvard Law School yearbook. There it was: Roberts, Rose... his photo was right above mine.
I'd like to say that John and I were great pals. But we didn't hang out together. He spent his time at the Law Review office. I spent mine playing poker.
http://www.pokerplayernewspaper.com/viewarticle.php?id=820
Why Western governments fall apart
By Spengler
Never have the governments of the old Atlantic alliance appeared as weak as they do today. President George W Bush, his popularity ruined and his political agenda junked, is boxed into a corner, but his position seems enviable compared to that of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who just lost a decisive battle over anti-terror measures.
But both appear strong compared to President Jacques Chirac, who has let France slip into civil unrest. Germany, despite last week's appointment of Angela Merkel as federal chancellor, in effect has no government, for the parallelogram of political forces neutralizes all parties. Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GK15Aa01.html
SAP's Agassi denies anti-open source remarks
But SAP executive still warns of IP socialist menace
Tom Sanders in California, vnunet.com
SAP has back-peddled on some controversial statements about open source that one of its executives made during a speaking engagement at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.
As vnunet.com reported last week, president of SAP's product and technology group Shai Agassi last week got flamed for comparing open source to "IP socialism", among other statements.
In a blog posting titled " I LOVE Open Source---Really!" Agassi called vnunet.com's reporting "wrong" and argues that his quotes were taken "out of context".
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2146052/agassi-denies-anti-open-source
Miller Surprised by Withdrawal of Support
Tuesday November 15, 2005 3:46 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller said Monday she has ``nothing but admiration'' for the newspaper but its editors' withdrawal of support ``surprised and disappointed'' her.
The newspaper staunchly defended Miller when she spent 85 days in jail for refusing to identify confidential sources during the investigation into the disclosure of a CIA agent's identity. That support disintegrated in recent weeks as editors and reporters publicly questioned her reporting in the run-up to the Iraq war. Last week, she resigned after 28 years at the Times.
She said jail was difficult but ``not nearly as difficult as the time coming out.''
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5415514,00.html
State moves to take over New Orleans schools
Associated Press
BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana legislators made it clear tonight they are ready for the state to take over New Orleans' long-troubled public schools.
First, the state Senate voted quickly and overwhelmingly for Gov. Kathleen Blanco's proposal that would let the state take over most of the schools. Later, the state House approved its own version of the Blanco bill — plus tougher rival legislation allowing the state to take over all the city's schools.
To become law, one of the bills will have to make it all the way through each chamber and to Blanco's desk before the current legislative special session ends on Nov. 22.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3460747
Historic New Orleans battlefield fights Katrina damage
14 Nov 2005 18:12:31 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Kevin Krolicki
NEW ORLEANS, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Gen. Andrew Jackson repelled the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, but the siege of Hurricane Katrina proved too much for the battlefield site commemorating the American victory.
The flooding that followed the Aug. 29 storm was high in Chalmette, just south of New Orleans, where Jackson won a lopsided battle over battle-hardened British troops at the end of the War of 1812.
"We took the storm surge," said David Muth, chief of resource management at Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, who estimates damage to the now-shuttered historic site at over $1.5 million. "The museum displays were hopelessly ruined."
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N14483420.htm
Zurich Classic returning to New Orleans in 2006
Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS -- The Zurich Classic will be played in New Orleans next spring, but not at the Tournament Players Club of Louisiana.
Because of extensive damage to the TPA course, the tournament will be played at English Turn, its home from 1989 through 2004. The event will be held in its traditional late April date, with the competitive dates scheduled for April 27-30.
"We are extremely pleased that we will be able to return to New Orleans in 2006," said PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem.
http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=2223807
New Orleans judge orders action on stalled cases
Mon Nov 14, 2005 8:47 PM ET
By Kevin Krolicki
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A New Orleans judge on Monday ordered the release of two people arrested before Hurricane Katrina but never charged and threatened to free 21 other suspects this week if the city's crippled criminal justice system does not get moving.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2005-11-15T014707Z_01_SCH506392_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-COURTS.xml
State Official Says Delay New Orleans Vote
Tuesday November 15, 2005 12:46 am
By MELINDA DESLATTE
Associated Press Writer
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A top state official recommended Monday that elections scheduled for February in New Orleans be delayed because of Hurricane Katrina, which displaced thousands of residents and demolished polling places.
Elections Commissioner Angie LaPlace told a legislative committee that she believes the Feb. 4 mayoral primary - which would also include city council races and referendums - should be postponed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5415142,00.html
Iraqi Chalabi meets Cheney, Rumsfeld
Mon Nov 14, 2005 6:43 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, once embraced and then shunned by the Bush administration, held talks with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Monday but the Pentagon did not allow television cameras to record the event.
He also held a private meeting at the White House with Vice President Dick Cheney after his 45 minutes of talks with Rumsfeld, but Cheney's office would not provide details.
Chalabi's trip to Washington has angered Iraq war critics who have denounced the visit of the man most associated with discredited prewar intelligence on Iraq.
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-11-14T234329Z_01_MCC485376_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-CHALABI.xml
Cheney expected at UT Howard H. Baker Center
“I would put on record my conviction that Independence in fact would be a farce, if the British Troops are in India even for peace and order within or danger from without.” -- Mohandas Gandhi on occupation
Taking notice of the escalating deaths and military failure of the United States to subdue the Iraqi armed resistance after 32 months of a Hitlerian-like occupation, during which the Bush regime used every weapon imaginable except a nuclear bomb, imperialists across Europe and the United States began circulating a buzzword for a fictitious withdrawal from Iraq called, “exit strategy."
What is an exit strategy in the general sense? Is it a plan to withdraw forces while still under fire? Is it just a plan to just exit from an occupied place or country? If the United States wants to exit Iraq, why does it need a strategy? Would not a workable plan would be sufficient? Alternatively, what if the United States instead of seeking an “exit strategy” is actually is pondering a staying strategy?
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_181.shtml
THEY ONLY STARTED THIS? WE HAVE BEEN OVER THERE SINCE MARCH 2003 AND APPROPRIATED $87 BILLION RIGHT OFF THE TOP WITH $20 BILLION FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND THIS IS ONLY OCCURRING NOW !!! WHAT ????
Condi Rice stands up first PRT in Iraq
By Polli Keller
MOSUL, Iraq (Army News Service, Nov. 14, 2005) -- Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice made a surprise appearance at the inauguration of the Ninewa Provincial Reconstruction Team. Asbestos settlement completed and record quarterly revenue for ESGHOUSTON, Jan. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Halliburton (NYSE: HAL)announced today that fourth quarter 2004 income from continuing operations was $183 million, or $0.41 per diluted share.Net loss for the quarter was $201 million, or $0.45 per diluted share, andincluded a loss from discontinued operations of $384 million, or $0.86 per diluted share. The loss from discontinued operations resulted primarily from the fourth quarter revaluation charge arising from the increase in the value of the 59.5 million shares of Halliburton common stock that have subsequently been contributed to the trust for the benefit of asbestos claimants. Consolidated revenue was $5.2 billion in the fourth quarter 2004, down 5% from the fourth quarter 2003. This decrease was largely attributable to lower activity on government services projects in the Middle East in KBR, and was partially offset by record quarterly revenue in the Energy Services Group(ESG).
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/01-28-2005/0002913181&EDATE=
Iran MPs blast oil accord with Halliburton
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - ©2004 IranMania.com
LONDON, Jan 19 (IranMania) - Three Iranian MPs sharply lashed out at Iranian oil company Kish Oriental?s cooperation with the US-based Halliburton Co, describing the move as ?a threat to Iran?s nuclear stance?, Iran?s Etemad Daily reported.
Effat Shariati, Fatemeh Ajorlou and Eshrat Shaeq in a joint letter said: ?A senior Iranian diplomat and member of Iran?s nuclear negotiating team with the help of an official of the UN bureau in Iran has registered his private oil company in Britain and Dubai [apparently referring to Sirous Naseri and his Kish Oriental Company] and now for his own benefit has signed an agreement with Halliburton, run by US vice President Dick Cheney.?
Halliburton has recently won a tender to drill a huge Iranian gas field. This is while Washington has imposed sanctions to prevent companies doing business with OPEC's second-biggest producer, which it accuses of developing atomic warheads and sponsoring terror networks.
Tehran denies the charges and says it has no objection to working with U.S. firms.
http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=28895&NewsKind=Business%20%26%20Economy
Halliburton to stop activities in Iran and sell KBR
Company's activities breach U.S. embargo
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Compiled by Daily Star staff
Monday, January 31, 2005
U.S. oil giant Halliburton is to end its activities in Iran and also plans to divest itself of subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root, group chairman and chief executive Dave Lesar said.
"The business environment currently in Iran is not conducive to our overall strategies and objectives. As a result we have decided to exit Iran and wind down our operations there," Lesar said Friday during a conference with investors.
Halliburton, once chaired by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, has come under investigation in the United States since July for its dealings with Iran through a Cayman Islands subsidiary in breach of a U.S. embargo. Halliburton becomes the second energy giant to pull out of Iran after U.K. oil major BP announced it's decision to not do business with the Islamic Republic two weeks ago. BP executive John Browne said the decision was based on concerns over the effects on their American business interests.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=3&article_id=12225
Halliburton says will exit Iran when work complete
HOUSTON – U.S. oilfield services company Halliburton Co. will pull out of Iran after its current contracts there are wound down, its chief executive said Friday, citing a poor business climate in the Islamic Republic.
Halliburton reports smaller loss for fourth quarter
"The business environment currently in Iran is not conducive to our overall strategy and objectives. As a result, we have decided to exit Iran and wind down our operations there while fulfilling our existing contracts and commitments," CEO Dave Lesar said on a conference call with investors.
The Houston-based company, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has also been criticized for its work for the Pentagon in Iraq, where it is the largest private contractor with revenues totaling more than $10 billion.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050128-1205-energy-halliburton-iran..html
Cheney's Epitaph: Ruminations from the VP at Auschwitz
By Mike Whitney
Al-Jazeerah, January 30, 2005
The appearance of Dick Cheney at the 60 year commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz is an affront to anyone who has even minimal regard for the horrendous suffering of the victims of the Holocaust. Cheney is the driving force behind America’s global resource-war and is personally liable for the estimated 100,000 dead Iraqis and countless others maimed or wounded. To hear Cheney recite his duplicitous platitudes about “freedom” and “evil” is enough to leave even the most hardened cynic among us retching.
“The story of the camps reminds us that evil is real and it must be called by its name and it must be confronted,” Cheney opined. Yes, Dick, and we also appreciate the “banality of evil” that appears in the form of dumpy, mid-level, plant managers whose meaningless lives of plodding mediocrity are only enriched by rising to power, where their fascination with inflicting pain on other human beings can be fully realized. Is there a more apt summary of Cheney’s miserable tenure in government?
How could the architect of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air force base and the countless other gulags in the Cheney archipelago of concentration camps, be invited to speak at Auschwitz? It boggles the mind? Are the Jews who suffered under Hitler’s despotic boot-heel comforted by the idea that the latest flourish of racism and sectarian hatred is now directed at Muslims rather than Jews? If so, that’s false comfort, indeed. The root of racism is everywhere the same; only the names and the groups are changed. Cheney’s record on the topic is entirely straightforward. He fought to defend Africa’s apartheid government to the very end. He supported the Reagan administration’s decision to put Nelson Mandela on the State Dept “list of terrorists”. He resisted “tooth-and-nail” the movement to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday. And, now, he presides over a chain of prison camps that exclusively houses Muslims; the unwitting victims of his apocryphal war on terror. Is there a difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Islam? Or is it just part of a broader political calculation?
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2005%20Opinion%20Editorials/January/30%20o/Cheney's%20Epitaph%20%20Ruminations%20from%20the%20VP%20at%20Auschwitz%20By%20Mike%20Whitney.htm
Who should we believe Bush or Cheney?
On Inauguration Day, George W. Bush was giving us the gist of his messianic convictions and his visions of a world free from all sorts of oppression, etc. Very nice indeed. But no matter how one may regard the authenticity of Mr. Bush’s convictions, he has not spoken to the world about what it is that the observer and most conscientious thinkers of the world wanted to hear. What is happening in Iraq and is there a way out of the predicament, for both the Americans and of course the Iraqis. Where is America heading for over the next four years, domestically and internationally and is it safe to assume that there is really no light at the end of the3 tunnel with a new Bush Administration. Oh sure, there were those commentators who claimed that this was one of the best Inauguration Speeches (“top four or five”). But are these paid commentators (it is hard to tell these days in US media land) or really opinion makers who know what is in store for the rest of humanity to ponder about as But then one cannot blame Mr. Bush. He has inherited so much mess leftover from his previous term, which apparently a good size of the American electorate failed to ponder about, when they went to the polls, so what need is there to lay them out now. No matter, it is easier to get into a world of visions then to delve into reality, because no really takes visions seriously anyway.
http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=812&p=opinion&a=1
Hey Cheney: Worried About Al Jazeera? How About Fox News?
Part of the Bush administration's effort to "spread democracy" to the Middle East includes an effort to shut down or remake the Qatar-based television station Al Jazeera. In an article in today's New York Times titled, Under Pressure, Qatar May Sell Jazeera Station, reporter Steven R. Wesiman says:
Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other Bush administration officials have complained heatedly to Qatari leaders that Al Jazeera's broadcasts have been inflammatory, misleading and occasionally false, especially on Iraq.
On April 29, 2004, Dick Cheney said (Cheney Praises Fox News Channel), "It's easy to complain about the press -- I've been doing it for a good part of my career," Cheney said. "It's part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events."
http://www.newshounds.us/2005/01/30/hey_cheney_worried_about_al_jazeera_how_about_fox_news.php
Thirteen Guests for Bush, One Against
Fox News aired a special Sunday version of Your World w/Neil Cavuto today (January 30, 2005). The show was devoted to the Iraq election and Geroge Bush. Fox rolled out a new theme - that today's election makes the death of over 1,425 of our young people worthwhile.
Fourteen guests appeared on the show:
-Dan Senor, former spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority.
-Oliver North, Fox News Employee and former Iran-Contra liar.
-Rep. Roy Blunt, (R-MO), House Majority Leader.
-Steve Forbes, Forbes Magazine and Fox's Saturday morning program "Forbes on Fox."
-Jack Welsh, former CEO of General Motors.
-Jim Hake, CEO of Spirit of America.
-Jan Schakowsky, (D-IL).
-David Drier (R-CA).
-Juan Williams, "Fox Political Contributor."
-Cpl. J.R. Martinez, of the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes.
-Wall Street round table participants Jonathan Hoenig, Mike Norman, Wayne Rogers and Gary B. Smith.
Fourteen guests and only one, Jean Schakowsky (D-Il), spoke with a Democrat/progressive voice. Thirteen to one. I don't think much detail about the show is needed - you can imagine what it was like with "balance" like this.
http://www.newshounds.us/2005/01/30/thirteen_guests_for_bush_one_against.php
Everyone Deserves A Chance
As I was reading through the "A section" of The Morning News on January 25, 2005, I came across a letter in the public viewpoint section. It was a very angry letter written by Margaret Wissmann of Rogers.
In her letter she asserts that the "governing forces of our country" are allowing "illegals" to "invade" our country and take advantage of the freedoms of the land. The letter is quite long and with out actually saying it, she singles out one culture. While there is a noticeable change in the cultural melting pot of Northwest Arkansas, it's certainly not something to become so angry about.
In trying to make her point, Ms. Wissmann attempts to relate the influx of Hispanics to an invasion of welfare-hungry intruders who want nothing to do with the country except for free stuff. As most people with her opinion assert, it is upsetting to her that immigrants to our area do not learn English.
http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2005/01/30/opinion/07opletters.txt
Boycotting the Hegemony
by Gerard Donnelly Smith
Several weeks ago, I urged you to practice abstinence, give up smoking, grow your own food, buy a horse, get off the grid, move back to the country and start a commune or a co-op. Did you make much progress? No? Well, don't feel bad; I didn't either. That corncob was a bad idea too. Now to another war profiteer.
How does one boycott a corporation like Bechtel whose business is to build or rebuild damaged infrastructure like telecommunications, water, electrical (hydro and fusion generated) or transportation structures such as tunnels, bridges and airports? Imagine trying to boycott Bechtel by not using the public water system, turning off your electricity because it comes from Hoover Dam or driving only on bridges not built or rebuilt by Bechtel. Bechtel has even been involved in environmental restoration and currently holds the contract for cleaning up the Hanford nuclear waste facility. How does one boycott that? Virtually impossible.
Perhaps the only way would be to divest. So if you're serious about starving the hegemony, resisting those who profit from war, then sell your stock in Bechtel. Purge your 401K and make sure your TIA-CREF account is hegemony-free. Boycotting Bechtel for making huge profits from rebuilding war-ravaged Iraq might be a good reason to divest; there are others.
http://www.swans.com/library/art11/gsmith39.html
Read His Lips: Bush's Exercise in Fiscal Restraint
By Dana Milbank
Sunday, January 30, 2005; Page A05
President Bush tucked a rather startling revelation into the middle of his news conference Wednesday. Discussing the upcoming release of a budget for 2006, he vowed: "I'll promote a package that will show the budget being cut in half over the next five years."
One suspects that the president means he will be cutting the budget deficit in half over five years, and not that he will be halving everything from military spending to agriculture subsidies. But he made the mistake four times in the news conference, saying last year's "projected budget" was $527 billion, that the actual "budget was $412 billion" and that this year's "budget is projected to be at $427 billion." In fact, the fiscal 2005 budget is forecast to be about $2.43 trillion -- and nobody's thinking about cutting that in half.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47784-2005Jan29.html
Dick Cheney, Dressing Down
Parka, Ski Cap at Odds With Solemnity of Auschwitz Ceremony
By Robin Givhan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 28, 2005; Page C01
At yesterday's gathering of world leaders in southern Poland to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the United States was represented by Vice President Cheney. The ceremony at the Nazi death camp was outdoors, so those in attendance, such as French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, were wearing dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes or boots. Because it was cold and snowing, they were also wearing gentlemen's hats. In short, they were dressed for the inclement weather as well as the sobriety and dignity of the event.
The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43247-2005Jan27.html
After Harry, it's Cheney
By: Agencies
January 29, 2005
Washington: US Vice President Dick Cheney raised eyebrows on Friday for wearing an olive-drab parka, hiking boots and knit ski cap to represent the United States at a solemn ceremony remembering the liberation of Auschwitz.
Other leaders at the event in Poland on Thursday marking the 60th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation, such as French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, wore dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes.
“The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower,” Robin Givhan, The Washington Post’s fashion writer, wrote in the newspaper’s Friday edition.
Between the sombre, dark-coated leaders at the ceremony sat Cheney, in a green parka embroidered with his name and featuring a fur-trimmed hood, the laced brown boots and a knit ski cap reading Staff 2001.
“And, indeed, the vice president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults,” Givhan wrote.
http://web.mid-day.com/news/world/2005/january/102488.htm
Jeb, Marvin & Neil - 3 Profiteering Bush Brothers
January 28, 2005
By: Evelyn Pringle
Independent Media TV
Its time to take a closer look at First Brothers, Jeb, Neil, and Marvin Bush, and see how much they stand to benefit from W's presidency and his perpetual war on the world.
First, there's brother Marvin. He's the quietest member of the Bush clan. Marvin is co-founder and partner in Winston Partners, a private investment firm. In turn, Winston Partners is part of a larger firm called the Chatterjee Group.
Here's where it gets complicated. Marvin is obviously the family member with a sound criminal mind. He has managed to bury almost all the evidence of his profiteering profits inside a host of corporations and entities, with many being located offshore. Its not easy to track the money through such a tangled web. But it can be done.
SEC filings show that the Chatterjee Group consists of Winston Partners, LP; Chatterjee Fund Management, LP; Winston Partners II LDC, a Cayman Islands-based company; Winston Partners II LLC; Chatterjee Advisors LLC; Chatterjee Management Company; Mr. Chatterjee himself; and Furxedown Trading Limited, a company organized under the laws of the Isle of Man. The address for Winston Partners II LDC is in the Netherlands Antilles. The other subsidiaries were organized in Delaware
Marvin is not the only family member plugged into the group. Brother Jeb is also an investor in the Winston Capital Fund, which happens to be managed by Marvin's firm.
Profits From Iraq
Following the tangled web of Winston this and Winston that, is difficult in itself, but tracing the links to Iraq is even more difficult. A good place to start is with a company known as Nour USA. According to the Sept 30, 2003, issue of Mother Jones, an $80 million Iraq contract was awarded to Nour, a company with ties to Winston Partners.
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=10336&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported
Halliburton Announces Fourth Quarter Results
Asbestos settlement completed and record quarterly revenue for ESGHOUSTON, Jan. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) announced today that fourth quarter 2004 income from continuing operations was $183 million, or $0.41 per diluted share. Net loss for the quarter was $201 million, or $0.45 per diluted share, and included a loss from discontinued operations of $384 million, or $0.86 per diluted share. The loss from discontinued operations resulted primarily from the fourth quarter revaluation charge arising from the increase in the value of the 59.5 million shares of Halliburton common stock that have subsequently been contributed to the trust for the benefit of asbestos claimants. Consolidated revenue was $5.2 billion in the fourth quarter 2004, down 5% from the fourth quarter 2003. This decrease was largely attributable to lower activity on government services projects in the Middle East in KBR, and was partially offset by record quarterly revenue in the Energy Services Group (ESG).
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/01-28-2005/0002913181&EDATE=
Smuggling suspects awarded Pentagon Iraq contract
By Claudio Gatti
Published: January 21 2005 01:07 Last updated: January 21 2005 01:07
A Jordanian family implicated in oil smuggling in violation of United Nations sanctions against Iraq was awarded a $72m (€55.5m, £38m) Pentagon contract to supply fuel to coalition forces after the fall of the Saddam regime.
The contract was cancelled after just one week, once it became clear that the company, which had little experience in the fuel supply and transportation sector, would be unable to meet its obligations.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/4b4bcee8-6b2f-11d9-9357-00000e2511c8.html
A Man of Integrity: Sgt. Kevin Benderman—“No To War”
By Jack Dalton, Vietnam Vet
Jan 19, 2005, 18:49
One can only imagine the struggle, the agonizing process Sgt. Kevin Benderman has gone through which culminated in his decision to refuse orders for deployment to Iraq a little over a week ago—which would have been his second deployment. Having spoken with Kevin and his wife Monica multiple times, I have a real good idea of the internal struggle they went through over an extended period of time. What I came away with from some of our conversations is the simple fact Kevin’s decision was not a snap decision, but was very carefully though out—good, bad and everything in-between, all was weighed, carefully and deeply.
… Kevin Benderman has made the decision to stand against death, destruction, inhumanity; in short, he has chosen to stand against war. One can only hope that others will come to know and realize that to stop war, one need only refuse to be a participant. And yes, it is that simple. Here is the link to Kevin’s statement as to how and why he came to his decision. http://www.oldamericancentury.org/voices_006.htm
All the war lovers (Bush and company) and all the war-profiteers (like Halliburton and Bechtel) would be up a creek without a paddle, if one day they looked around to see everyone just put down their guns and stop participating in their war schemes.
In this decision to apply for Conscientious Objector status and to walk away from war, I support Kevin and Monica Benderman totally. This old Nam vet considers Kevin Benderman a man of ethics, integrity and honor and feels it is one of life’s great pleasures to be able to call and be called by Kevin and Monica, “friend.”
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_15160.shtml
Bechtel's Big Dig patch not enough for state
By Casey Ross
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Four months after a Big Dig wall panel sprang a massive leak, contractors and state officials are still debating a permanent fix as private managers push a patch job instead of an extensive restoration recommended by an expert.
Project officials say the private management firm Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff...
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=64186
Judge orders release of documents in Halliburton scandal
Published in: Legalbrief Africa
Date: Mon 17 January 2005
Category: Nigeria
Issue No: 113
An Abuja High Court has ruled that the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petition, currently investigating the alleged payment of a $180m bribe by Halliburton and TSKJ consortium for LNG contracts, be allowed access to the accounts of some of the suspects in the bribe scandal.
The court also requested the judge of the French Tribunal that first launched the probe in 2003 to allow the committee to inspect documents relating to evidence deposed to the Tribunal by former Nigerian oil minister, Dan Etete, as well as those of Halliburton and the TSKJ consortium, reports THISDAY. The Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris was probing allegations that the TSKJ consortium bribed Nigerian Government officials to win the $4bn Bonny Liquefied Natural Gas contract in 1995.
Full report in THISDAY
http://legalbrief.wnd.co.za/article.php?story=20050117162622267
Halliburton driver's body found in Iraq
Galveston man killed in ambush nine months ago
By DAVID IVANOVICH
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - A truck driver from Galveston who had been missing in Iraq since his convoy was ambushed nine months ago is dead, Halliburton Co. said Thursday.
Bill Bradley's remains were discovered Monday in a shallow grave near the site of the attack west of Baghdad, said Suzanne Behringer of Galveston, who described herself as Bradley's wife.
Bradley, 50, had suffered a gunshot to the head, quite possibly during the firefight that occurred during the April 9 ambush, Behringer said.
Bradley's remains did not suggest he had been killed execution-style, Behringer said. "My greatest relief is he wasn't tortured," she said.
Halliburton had no new information about another truck driver, Tim Bell of Mobile, Ala., who also has been missing since the attack.
Besides Bradley, five other Halliburton drivers died in the Good Friday ambush, when insurgents used rocket-propelled grenades and rifle fire to attack the convoy of tanker trucks near Abu Ghraib.
The bodies of four of those victims also were found in a shallow grave.
In all, 60 of Halliburton's employees and subcontractors have been killed while working in Iraq and Kuwait.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2981527
HALLIBURTON: Halliburton Completes the Sale of Subsea 7
Publication Date: Jan 06,2005, 15:10
SUMMARY: Halliburton announced today the completion of the previously announced sale of its 50% interest in Subsea 7, Inc. to its joint venture partner, Siem Offshore, for $200 million in cash.
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New Zealand Herald
US asks for more European help in Iraq
15.11.05 4.00pm
BERLIN - Germany and other European countries that opposed the war in Iraq should do more to help there and recognise the Iraqi leadership as a legitimate and democratic government, a senior US official said.
US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried said Washington did not expect Germany to send troops to Iraq, but he urged Europe to provide more support for what he described as "one of the most democratically constituted regimes" in the Middle East.
"It should not be treated as a pariah and its leaders should not be treated as if they are second class citizens. Now I am not accusing Germany of doing that, though there is a kind of asterisk often put near Iraq and the government and that needs to be removed," Fried told reporters at a US embassy briefing.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355328
Protests 'biggest in Australian history'
15.11.05 1.00pm
CANBERRA - The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) says today's mass protests against the Government's controversial workplace overhaul are the start of a long campaign to fight the proposed changes.
Unions expect the biggest political protest in Australian history, with hundreds of thousands of workers set to walk off the job in a national day of action.
Some businesses have warned employees they could face legal action if they ditch work to join the union-organised protest.
The protest is being supported in New Zealand, with similar rallies organised in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch this afternoon.
New Zealand Council of Trade Unions president Ross Wilson said the Australian proposals would allow employers in worksites with less than 100 employees to fire people for no reason.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355314
US plans no more delay in Hicks Guantanamo trial
15.11.05 2.20pm
WASHINGTON - The United States plans to resume the war crimes trial of an Australian Guantanamo Bay prisoner this week without waiting for a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of these military tribunals.
The Supreme Court said last week it would decide whether President George W Bush had the power to create the military commissions to put Guantanamo prisoners on trial for war crimes.
The case before the high court involves Yemeni prisoner Salim Ahmed Hamdan.
The justices could find the trials unconstitutional or endorse them as legal, among other possible outcomes.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355329
US plans no more delay in Hicks Guantanamo trial
15.11.05 2.20pm
WASHINGTON - The United States plans to resume the war crimes trial of an Australian Guantanamo Bay prisoner this week without waiting for a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of these military tribunals.
The Supreme Court said last week it would decide whether President George W Bush had the power to create the military commissions to put Guantanamo prisoners on trial for war crimes.
The case before the high court involves Yemeni prisoner Salim Ahmed Hamdan.
The justices could find the trials unconstitutional or endorse them as legal, among other possible outcomes.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355329
Foreign contractors killed, US pursues offensive
15.11.05 1.20pm
BAGHDAD - Roadside bombs killed nearly a dozen people in Iraq, as US-led forces launched the latest phase of an offensive, killing 37 insurgents near the Syrian border, in a bid to secure the nation for December polls.
In the first roadside bomb attack, two South African private security contractors were killed by a roadside bomb near the heavily fortified "Green Zone" in central Baghdad, the US embassy spokesman's office said.
Three others, an American, an Iraqi, and another South African, were wounded in the attack, two of them seriously. Earlier Iraqi police had said three people were killed.
The contractors work for Dyncorp, a US-based firm that has a range of security operations in Iraq, including employing Westerners to protect convoys and reconstruction projects.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355330
Relief body seeks US$13m to help Iraqi families
15.11.05 11.20am
GENEVA - The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies appealed to its members for nearly $13 million (NZ$19.1 million) to help 60,000 Iraqi families cope with the coming winter.
The Geneva-based federation said the funds would also go towards rebuilding healthcare centres, training of 5000 first aid workers, supporting immunisation campaigns and restoring water treatment plants in rural areas.
"A positive response to this emergency appeal will enable us to continue providing badly needed humanitarian assistance during the winter period to the most vulnerable groups," it quoted Iraqi Red Crescent chief Mazin Salloum as saying.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355313
Goliath's name found in Israeli archaeological dig
15.11.05
ISRAEL - Archaeologists digging at the biblical home of Goliath have unearthed a shard of pottery bearing the Philistine's name, lending credence to the Biblical tale of David's battle.
While the discovery does not prove Goliath's existence, it does support the Bible's depiction of life at the time of the supposed battle, said Dr Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
"It means there were people there named Goliath at the time. It shows David's story reflects the cultural reality of the time."
Some scholars believe that the story of David slaying the giant Goliath is a myth written down hundreds of years later, but Maeir said finding the scraps gave credence to the biblical story.
The shard dates to about 950BC, within 70 years of when biblical chronology says David squared off against Goliath, making it the oldest Philistine inscription found.
It was at Tel es-Safi in southern Israel, thought to be the site of the Philistine city of Gath.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355223
Relief body seeks US$13m to help Iraqi families
15.11.05 11.20am
GENEVA - The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies appealed to its members for nearly $13 million (NZ$19.1 million) to help 60,000 Iraqi families cope with the coming winter.
The Geneva-based federation said the funds would also go towards rebuilding healthcare centres, training of 5000 first aid workers, supporting immunisation campaigns and restoring water treatment plants in rural areas.
"A positive response to this emergency appeal will enable us to continue providing badly needed humanitarian assistance during the winter period to the most vulnerable groups," it quoted Iraqi Red Crescent chief Mazin Salloum as saying.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355313
Bird flu claims rising toll among people
15.11.05 1.00pm
JAKARTA - Indonesia said today a 20-year-old woman had died of bird flu while several countries reported new suspected human cases of the deadly virus.
The H5N1 bird flu virus has killed more than 60 people in Asia and is endemic in most poultry flocks in the region.
It remains hard for humans to catch but scientists fear it will mutate into a form that passes easily among people. If it does so, millions could die as happened during three flu pandemics in the 20th century.
Japan set out plans to cope with any outbreak among humans, including declaring a state of emergency, shutting down schools and banning large gatherings.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10355293
War of words between Mexico and Venezuela
15.11.05 5.20am
A diplomatic fight between Mexico and Venezuela worsened yesterday.
Days after branding Mexican President Vicente Fox a "lapdog" of United States imperialism, his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez warned: "Don't mess with me, mister, because you'll get pricked."
Mexico's Foreign Ministry responded, saying it would withdraw its Ambassador to Venezuela unless it received a formal apology.
"The Venezuelan President's declarations hurt the dignity of the people and Government of Mexico," it said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355249
Chinese pirates and yuan top Bush agenda
15.11.05
By Caren Bohan
WASHINGTON - A push for China to embrace more currency flexibility and crack down on trade in fake United States goods will dominate President George W. Bush's economic agenda on a four-nation trip to Asia.
Bush's tour this week, which includes a visit to Beijing, comes after a report showed the US trade deficit with the rest of the world surged to a record monthly high of US$66.1 billion ($96.3 billion) in September amid a flood of imports from China.
Such figures add to political pressure on Bush to take a tough line on trade issues with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10355217
concluding ...
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