Shooty's News and Current events

A senior U.S. military officer acknowledged today that the Americans have not achieved their goals in Fallujah despite the agreement to end the siege of the Sunni Muslim city and turn security over to an Iraqi force.

Ten U.S. Marines and hundreds of Iraqis were killed during the three-week siege of Fallujah, which was launched after four Americans working for the Blackwater USA security company were ambushed, killed, their bodies mutilated and hung from a Euphrates river bridge.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters that the city had been generally quiet since Marines lifted the siege in early May.

Kimmitt also said the U.S.-led coalition had demanded a return to Iraqi government control, handing over of heavy weapons and the arrest of those responsible for the killing of the Blackwater employees.

"We are not satisfied we are making active progress in the latter," Kimmitt said. "We are not satisfied that there has been progress on any of those objectives, with the exception of having Iraqi presence back inside the city."

Hard-line Islamic leaders have reasserted their power in Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad. Some were active in defending the city against the Marines and have profited by a perception -- both here and elsewhere in Iraq -- that the Fallujah fighters defeated a superpower.

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Advances in technology for personal digital assistants, made by Sony and other manufacturers, and for other wireless devices, such as the Blackberry, are making the notebook computer seem as dated as a manual typewriter. Faster processing power, in a package nearly as small as a mobile phone, with a keyboard for typing e-mail messages, enables travelers to stay linked with their business colleagues and families, and to continue to be productive, even on the road, without the need for a PC.

"The idea of being 'always on' is spreading," said Roger Hibbert, associate editor of Mobile PC magazine in San Francisco. "People always want to be available," he told United Press International. "With a Blackberry, or a PDA, you don't have to pop it open to get a message by e-mail. It's more convenient."

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Now, business travelers are "looking for ways to combine all the necessary applications into just one small gadget," Jannie Luong, a spokeswoman for Verizon SuperPages, a unit of the phone company, told UPI.

Developers, such as Nokia, are changing the way their products are designed to accommodate the trend.

The Scandinavian company's latest mobile phone -- the Series 60 devices -- are phones with PDA functionality, "and a whole lot more, built into them," Erik Schmollinger, a spokesman for Nokia, told UPI.

This trend is even causing e-commerce sites -- like Verizon's -- to change the way they present information. The information provided online is being streamlined, so customers can see white and yellow pages, travel guides, hotel reviews, and movie information, "all in the palm of your hand," Luong said.

Others are changing the way they do business as well, due to the growth of the technology, and keep the devices with them all the time, even in the office.

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The primary concern is security. The university worries about being linked to a public network with its entire computing infrastructure. The solution, Trinkle said, may be to have two networks.

"There could be multiple ways to get on the network," he added.

Trinkle noted, however, in more competitive, business environments, the PDA may become a primary computing tool.

"That is likely to happen in quite a few places, with the Blackberry, and the Sony trio, becoming the interface," Trinkle said. "Folks will use it to get their information. There will be a convergence of personal and business identity online. We're starting to see in this country what took off in Japan a while ago -- a mobile phone culture."

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Law-enforcement agents raided Orlando City Hall on Friday and carted off computers used by top managers in the Fire Department as part of their widening investigation into possible election fraud in the mayor's race.

Agents with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement would reveal few details of their inquiry, but a search warrant indicated that investigators are trying to determine whether city firefighters were improperly paid with taxpayer money while campaigning for Mayor Buddy Dyer.

"It's part of our ongoing criminal investigation of election fraud," FDLE legal adviser Steve Brady said. "It's all related to the same issue, the mayoral-election issue."

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The Italian warrant for the arrest of Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, 32, an Egyptian seized in a suburb of Milan last week, details transcripts of bugged conversations and telephone calls in which he not only boasted of his involvement in the Spanish attack of March 11 but also spoke of future plans. The Spanish government has said it will seek the extradition of Ahmed — also known as “Mohamed the Egyptian”.

Ahmed moved to Milan in early April. Police surveillance teams nicknamed him “the trainer” because of his practice of befriending Muslim immigrants, finding out who was most dissatisfied with the West and asking: “What are you doing to change the situation?” A former Egyptian army explosives expert, he bears a sign of his religious devotion on his forehead — a weal caused by striking his head hard on the ground during Muslim prayers.

Bugs placed by anti-terrorist police in Ahmed’s one-bedroom flat recorded a conversation on May 26 with Yahia Payumi, 21, a Palestinian who was also later arrested.

After denouncing the torture by American troops of “our brothers in Iraq”, Ahmed was quoted as saying: “Hotaf has been prepared with many medicinal products. If they throw one stick, they wipe out an American neighbourhood.”

Although the woman named Hotaf was said to have been discovered, other women were ready to replace her, Ahmed added. “Amal, Hanan, Fatiha — you only need to call them and they come. God is great.”

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, Fla. (AP) - Touchscreen voting machines in 11 counties have a software flaw that could make manual recounts impossible in November's presidential election, state officials said.

A spokeswoman for the secretary of state called the problems "minor technical hiccups" that can be resolved, but critics allege voting officials wrongly certified a voting system they knew had a bug.

The electronic voting machines are a response to Florida's 2000 presidential election

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The elections chief, Ed Kast, abruptly resigned Monday, saying he wanted a change of pace.

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"These are minor technical hiccups that happen," said Hood spokeswoman Nicole DeLara. "No votes are lost, or could be lost."

Wexler and coalition members said they want to know how the state can be sure that glitches will not prevent elections officials from even detecting computer malfunctions.

"How do you know that any votes were lost if your audit is wrong?" asked Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, chairwoman of the Miami-Dade coalition.

State officials say there is no need for recounts, or an audit trail, with the touchscreen system because it was designed to prevent people from voting in the same race more than once - an overvote - and provide multiple alerts to voters to warn them when they are skipping a race - an undervote.

They emphasize that the "glitch" in the touchscreen machines occurs when the audit is done after the election, not when the tally sheet is printed in each precinct when polls close.

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More than 12,000 former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party are in the process of reintegration into public service a year after losing their jobs under a now abandoned policy of punishing loyalists of the ousted regime, a senior official said Thursday.

In a backtrack on its once hardline stance, the so-called National De-Baathification Committee - a body created and headed by erstwhile Pentagon favourite Ahmad Chalabi - reinstated the public servants.

"Our committee, which fired 30,000 people, has decided to reintegrate 12,000 who have appealed the decision," Mithal Allussi, director of the committee, said.

"They come from a range of sectors, for example the interior ministry, education or electricity," he said.

"Some decided to restart active work and others chose retirement."

The softer stance on former Baath party members followed Chalabi's fall from favour in a head-on collision with his US allies last month.

When US overseer Paul Bremer arrived in Iraq one year ago, he issued a decree expelling all senior Baathists from the administration and dissolving the armed forces.

The policy was the result of Chalabi's intense lobbying with his well-placed friends in Washington at the expense of Bremer's predecessor Jay Garner, who saw administering the war-torn country as the priority, not a witch-hunt.

Some 6,000 teachers were among the 30,000 civil servants fired by the committee under Chalabi.

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Five years after the United Nations and Nato intervened to end the war in Kosovo, Belgrade insists the international mission has been a "stinging failure" and is demanding a change of strategy.

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"It is evident that after the recent violence the international community must count the costs of the stinging failure of its policies in Kosovo," said Dragan Marsicanin, a senior figure in the ruling coalition.

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Kosovo's outgoing UN mission chief, Harri Holkeri, warned Thursday the security situation there was "very fragile" and the province could turn into a hotbed for terrorism if it was abandoned by the international community.

"If the international community gives up, what would it be? That would be a carte blanche for terrorism, for violence... all kinds of actions against humanity," Holkeri said.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who visited the breakaway province last Monday for the second time since the anti-Serb riots, said a society plagued by such ethnic violence "does not belong to Europe".

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Serbia is now demanding a dramatic change in strategy to allow the province to be "decentralised" between Serb and Albanian areas - an idea that has been criticised as amounting to the ethnic division of Kosovo.

This policy, announced by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica earlier this year, has been unanimously adopted by the Serbian parliament and is seen here as the only practical solution to ensure security for the Serbs.

It would grant extended powers to five enclaves where Serbs were in the majority before their post-war exodus, when more than 200,000 fled in fear of reprisal attacks by the Albanian majority.

Only around 80 000 Serbs remain in Kosovo, out of a total population in the province of 1,8 million. Nato troops who are supposed to ensure security were completely overwhelmed by the organised mob violence in March.

Marsicanin said the decentralisation plan was the "only solution" which could "stabilise the region" in accord with UN Resolution 1244, which established the UN protectorate in Kosovo.

The plan has won the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who described it as a "very good base for work" after meeting Kostunica last week.

Western European leaders have been far more cautious, however one Western diplomat in Belgrade told AFP that Kostunica's plan was a "good point of departure" and that the "decentralisation of Kosovo is inevitable".

Kosovo Albanian Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi has condemned the idea as an emotional response to the March violence and a way of dividing the province or reintegrating it with Serbia.

The ethnic Albanian leadership of Kosovo demands nothing short of independence, however the province remains technically part of Serbia and its "final status" will be decided by the Security Council.

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Labour and the Tories have both seen their vote slump in the early UK results for the European elections.

After results from London, the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber and Wales, the Tory vote is down 7% and Labour has fallen 6%.

With turnout at a record high, the main winner seems to be the UK Independence Party, whose vote has doubled to 13%.

The Liberal Democrats are also doing well - up 3% - with the Greens, BNP and Respect also gaining.

Elsewhere in Europe early counts suggest governing parties in Germany and France are suffering losses.

Parties of the centre-right Europe-wide are expected to remain the biggest single block in the new parliament but Eurosceptic groups are tipped for striking successes.

Voting to select the UK's 78 MEPs took place on Thursday, although other European countries have held their polls on Sunday.

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The overall turnout across the EU has fallen to an all-time low at 44.6%, with the figure at 47.6% for the 15 long-standing members.

In the UK, the turnout is expected to run at 38% - topping the record of 37% for a European election set in 1989.

The UK Independence Party, which wants the UK to withdraw from Europe, has won 13.1% of the votes in the first three regions.

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Four Arab men posing as journalists were arrested this week when explosives residue was detected on them as they tried to enter the Baghdad headquarters of the U.S.-led administration, a senior U.S. army officer said.

The officer, a top security official in the compound which hosts news conferences given by senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and houses the U.S. consulate, said explosives were found in the men's hotel room after the arrests on Sunday.

They were posing as employees of an international television company and carried fake identification cards and were trying to drive a van into the compound when they were arrested, he said.

"The IDs looked real. But when we called the organization and asked if they were employees, they said they had not heard of them," the army officer, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters.

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"The four who were arrested may have just been gathering information on the compound or maybe they were just scouting it out. This case is serious," the officer said. He declined to comment on the nationality of the men.

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Iraq's new Oil Minister Thamir Ghadhban has reportedly said that all coalition advisers will leave Iraqi ministries after the 30 June handover.
Quoted by the UK's Financial Times, he said that the ministry would reassert full control over the country's lucrative oil industry.

However, the new UN resolution on Iraq limits the freedom of action of the interim government about to take power.

Mr Ghadhban also played down attacks by militants on oil infrastructure.

"When sovereignty is regained it means that there will be no more US advisers, not only in the ministry of oil, but in every ministry in Iraq," he was quoted as saying in Thursday's edition of the FT.

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The survey, the first of its kind in Canada, found that 76 per cent of respondents said news organizations are not independent, while only 19 per cent said they are mostly independent.

Five per cent had no opinion or refused to answer.

Young Canadians were even more cynical, with 81 per cent of 19 to 25-year-olds saying news organizations are influenced by powerful groups and individuals, the survey found.

When respondents were asked what outside groups influence the news, 42 per cent said politicians and government; 27 per cent, business and money interests; 12 per cent, media owners; 12 per cent, lobby groups; seven per cent, labour unions, and four per cent, advertisers.

Francophone Quebecers were less likely to mention political and business influences (38 and 27 per cent respectively) and more likely to pinpoint media owners (15 per cent) and labour unions (17 per cent).

The survey was conducted late last year by the Canadian Media Research Consortium, which includes the University of B.C. graduate school of journalism, the York/Ryerson Universities graduate program in communications and culture and Laval University's media studies.

A slim majority of respondents, 52 per cent, said media coverage of the personal and ethical behaviour of political leaders is excessive but a much larger majority, 64 per cent, said criticism of their policies and proposals is not.

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Justice Department lawyers, fearing a crushing defeat before the U.S. Supreme Court in the next few weeks, are scrambling to develop a conventional criminal case against “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla that would charge him with providing “material support” to Al Qaeda, NEWSWEEK has learned.

The prospective case against Padilla would rely in part on material seized by the FBI in Afghanistan—principally an Al Qaeda “new applicant form” that, authorities said, the former Chicago gang member filled out in July 2000 to enter a terrorist training camp run by Osama bin Laden's organization.

But officials acknowledge that the charges could well be difficult to bring and that none of Padilla’s admissions to interrogators—including an apparent confession that he met with top Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah and agreed to undertake a terror mission—would ever be admissible in court.

Even more significant, administration officials now concede that the principal claim they have been making about Padilla ever since his detention—that he was dispatched to the United States for the specific purpose of setting off a radiological “dirty bomb”—has turned out to be wrong and most likely can never be used against him in court.

The reassessments of Padilla come amid a growing sense of gloom within Justice that the Supreme Court is likely to rule decisively against the Bush administration not just in the Padilla case but in two other pivotal cases in the war on terror: one involving the detention of another “enemy combatant,” Yasir Hamden, and another involving the treatment of Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In the Padilla and Hambdi cases, the administration is arguing it has the right to hold the two U.S. citizens indefinitely without trial. In the Guantanamo case, the administration argues that foreign nationals being interrogated there do not have the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.

Lawyers within the Justice Department are now bracing for defeat in both the enemy-combatant and Guantanamo cases, both of which are expected to be decided before the Supreme Court ends its term at the end of the month, according to one conservative and politically well-connected lawyer. “They are 99 percent certain they are going to lose,” said the lawyer, who asked not to be identified. “It’s a very sobering realization.”

While Supreme Court forecasts are hazardous at best, the conventional wisdom among former Supreme Court clerks is that recent disclosures about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and internal administration memos disavowing compliance with international treaties involving treatment of prisoners has badly hurt the government’s arguments before the court and turned two key “swing” justices—Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy—against it, the lawyer said.

Insider thinking within Justice has the Supreme Court voting six to three against the administration on Guantanamo and by a perhaps even larger margin in the Padilla and Hamdi cases.

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Former US Marine and initiator of the Human Shield Action to Iraq, Ken O'Keefe, was jailed last night by Israeli authorities attempting to enter the Gaza Strip. He wished to discuss with the people and leaders of Gaza the P10K plan to bring 10,000 western citizens to act as international observers in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. P10K also calls for a cessation of offensive operations from the Israeli Government and the militant Palestinian Resistance, upon the arrival of the 10,000 strong P10K Force.

O'Keefe and P10K coordinator Ian Hodgson were detained by ten Israeli Soldiers at 2pm Thursday as they walked along the beach into Palestinian Gaza from an area of Jewish Settlements at the northern end of the Gaza Strip. Knowing that Israel would refuse entry through the usual checkpoints into Gaza, the pair nearly caught Israeli soldiers off guard with their unconventional approach along the coastline.

O'Keefe said: 'I desperately wanted to discuss this idea with people in Gaza, and would not simply accept Israel's refusal to admit me entry. P10K aims to save life on both sides of the conflict, and uphold international law by ending Israel's illegal and immoral occupation, which is the root cause of Palestinian violence."

"Israeli state terrorism is fueling the conflict; Israel must stop its assassinations, incursions, house demolitions and building of the wall, and fully withdraw its illegal settlements and military from the occupied territories until there can be any movement towards a peaceful resolution of this conflict. Palestinian human rights must be respected, most importantly the right to life, but also the right to travel, which I was denied today."

O'Keefe is being held at Sohar Prison in the Negev region of Israel, close to the Egyptian border. Last night Ammon Golan from Erez Police Station said that O'Keefe would be deported to London in the next two days.

Israel effectively imprisons over a million Palestinian in Gaza, with access granted only to selected media and NGO's. P10K would bring more than 3,500 western citizens into the Gaza Strip to prevent widespread human rights abuses such as the destructive incursions into Rafah two weeks ago.

The P10K plan is explained in full at www.P10K.net.

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The Justice Department is looking for a missing laptop computer that contains sensitive data about Drug Enforcement Administration investigations and confidential informants, Newsweek reported.

The computer doesn't contain the names of the informants, the magazine said, citing an unidentified law enforcement official. It contains more than 4,000 pages of case-file data, including details about the informants' activities, which could enable drug traffickers to figure out their identities, the magazine said.

An auditor for the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General, which was conducting a routine investigation of DEA payments to informants, reported the computer stolen three weeks ago, Newsweek said. The auditor last week changed his story and said that he had accidentally damaged the computer and had thrown it out to avoid embarrassment, the magazine reported.

Investigators are trying to verify the auditor's account, Newsweek said.

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Tuesday's fake crash set off an ever-worsening cascade of simulated events for Indian Point plant operators and emergency responders. By the time the drill ended, a containment building was portrayed as filling with radioactive steam and portions of surrounding counties had been "evacuated" and residents advised to swallow anti-radiation pills. The actual residents, however, had no part in the drill.

Plant owner Entergy Nuclear Northeast and federal regulators have been criticized for not taking terror into account in emergency planning since the World Trade Center attack, 40 miles to the south in lower Manhattan. At the site are the mothballed Indian Point 1 plant and the active Indian Point 2 and 3 plants.

The critics were not assuaged by Tuesday's drill. The scenario did not include a simulated release of radiation into the atmosphere -- an omission that "speaks to the farcical nature of this exercise," said Kyle Rabin, of Riverkeeper, one of the organizations in the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition.

"We want to know if the public can be protected from a release of radiation," he said.

He also criticized as "unbelievable" the announcement that there were no traffic control problems during the simulated evacuations.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency will evaluate the exercise at a public meeting on Thursday.

The drill began with word that a group of men had been stopped on a Connecticut highway in a car laden with weapons and documents pointing to an attack on Indian Point. Then the North American Aerospace Defense Command alerted the NRC that a 767 cargo jet seemed to be heading for Indian Point.

The "crash" wiped out offsite power to the reactor as it was being shut down. Backup generators failed and a leak of reactor coolant raised the specter of a meltdown.

A fake general emergency was declared, and Westchester County ordered the evacuation and advised those who have potassium iodide to "swallow one dose now." Potassium iodide is meant to inhibit the effect of radiation on the human thyroid.

The scenario of the crash included no damage to the reactor's concrete containment building. Brian Holian, of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said recent studies showed "most plane crashes into containment buildings would not result in significant releases of radiation."

Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano, who has called for a shutdown of the Indian Point plants, took part in the drill but "still feels the evacuation wouldn't work in a fast-breaking scenario of radiation escaping," said his chief adviser, Susan Tolchin.

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The Centers for Disease Control is investigating how live anthrax was mistakenly shipped from Maryland to California, exposing five people to the deadly agent.

Researchers at the Southern Research Institute in Frederick, Md., intended to send dead samples of the bacteria to colleagues at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in Oakland, Calif., so they could produce antibodies against the disease by injecting the dead anthrax into mice. When nearly all of the mice died, government health officials were notified, and the scientists who had been exposed to the anthrax were given the antibiotic Cipro, The Baltimore Sun reported.

FBI bioterrorism experts based in San Francisco collected the samples from the Oakland hospital Wednesday.

No wrongdoing is suspected, and no criminal investigation is planned, said Bill Carter, a spokesman at FBI's Washington headquarters.

The deadly material was shipped in March but wasn't injected into the mice until months later. On May 28, 10 mice were injected; all 10 died three days later. On June 4, 40 mice were injected; 39 were dead three days later.

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The whole idea of releasing an intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was misguided and has damaged public confidence in the secret service, the former head of MI5 said yesterday.

"I feel the dossier was a mistake," said Dame Stella Rimington. "Formally putting intelligence into the public domain was not, in my view, a sensible thing to do.

"The whole point about intelligence is that it changes. What you think is the case today may be different tomorrow because of new information. The trouble is, if you put something out as a dossier, it is frozen in time."

She added: "That whole episode has probably damaged the reputation of the intelligence service, at least momentarily, in the eyes of the public, which is a great pity."

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Asked whether, as director general, she would have resisted Tony Blair's request for a dossier, Dame Stella said: "I can't say, as I don't know the circumstances . . . but I expect I would have thought: no good will come of this."

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The Central Intelligence Agency has yet to come up with a plan to address what senior officials have described as a major flaw in its operations, despite a pledge four months ago that the problem would be resolved within 30 days.

The problem, which contributed to errors in the agency’s prewar estimates on Iraq, is rooted in procedures that severely limit how much information about human sources is shared with analysts who produce intelligence assessments, according to senior intelligence officials.

In a Feb. 11 speech, a senior CIA official, Jami Miscik, described the problem as an example of ‘‘imperfections in our system’’ and said that George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, had given subordinates 30 days ‘‘to devise a permanent and lasting solution.’’ But this week, a senior intelligence official said that a team headed by the agency’s executive director, A. B. Krongard, was ‘‘still working out the modalities’’ of a new arrangement.

A senior intelligence official said this week that the recently announced departures of Tenet and James Pavitt, the deputy director for operations, meant that it was unlikely that the new arrangements would be worked out soon.

The difficulty of working out a solution reflects a deep gulf between the CIA’s operations directorate, which recruits and run spies around the world, and its intelligence directorate, which is in charge of sifting intelligence from those spies and from satellites and eavesdropping devices and drawing broad conclusions.

In the case of Iraq, analysts who wrote reports stating that the country possessed illicit weapons did so without knowing that some of the central sources they cited were defectors linked to Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, according to senior intelligence officials.

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In these and other cases, the prewar assessments about Iraq’s illicit weapons were based on reports from sources who did not have firsthand information about what they described.

That fact, too, was sometimes known by intelligence officers but was rarely shared with intelligence analysts, ac cording to the senior intelligence officials.

In her speech, Miscik said that ‘‘the biggest lesson’’ to have emerged from the apparent mistakes in the agency’s prewar assessments on Iraq was ‘‘the importance of getting the analyst as much information as possible about a source’s access.

‘‘Analysts can no longer be put in a position of making a judgment on a critical issue without a full and comprehensive understanding of the source’s access to the information on which they are reporting,’’ Miscik said in the speech to intelligence analysts at the agency, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times.

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Under the longstanding arrangements that Miscik said would be changed, the directorate of operations typically shields information about sources’ identity, motivations and even access to information from the directorate of intelligence.

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In her speech, Miscik did not cite specific examples in which inadequate sharing of information had led to mistakes in the prewar intelligence on Iraq.

But she said an internal review of that intelligence had found cases in which a single source had been described in different ways, so that an intelligence analyst might believe the same information actually had come from multiple sources.

‘‘In an age where policymakers are relying on intelligence to inform their decision-making, we cannot let these imperfections in our system continue,’’ Miscik said in the speech.

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MONTREAL - A Montreal woman who underwent intense electroshock treatment in a program funded by the CIA 50 years ago has been awarded $100,000.

Gail Kastner was given massive electroshock therapy to treat depression in 1953 at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal.

She was told on Wednesday of the compensation award.

She was left out of a federal compensation package in 1994 because her treatment was deemed to have been less intense than that of other victims of the experiments. Her treatment was also found to have had fewer long-term effects.

A Federal Court judge reversed that ruling, and awarded her the same amount Ottawa gave to 77 others as compensation for their treatment.

There were 253 claims rejected.

Dr. Ewan Cameron, who was director of the Allan Memorial Institute, conducted experiments using electroshock and drug-induced sleep. The research was funded from 1950 to 1965 by the CIA and by the Canadian government.

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All 50,000 troops who served in the first Gulf war might have been exposed to low levels of chemical warfare agents during the fighting and its aftermath, a US investigation has suggested.

The implication of a Congressional report that large numbers of civilians and troops in Iraq and neighbouring countries could have been exposed will galvanise the controversy over illnesses suffered by more than 5,000 British veterans since 1991 that have been linked to their service in the Gulf.

The report indicates that possible chemical contamination of troops could have been much more widespread than suggested by previous official government estimates, based on US research for the Pentagon and CIA.

Lord Morris, the Labour peer who has led the campaign on Gulf war illnesses, yesterday demanded answers from the government, saying it appeared the entire British deployment of more than 50,000 troops could have been at risk.

The MoD used the US defence department models to estimate that 9,000 British troops were within the chemical plume that might have been released from the destruction of chemical agents at Khamisaya, in southern Iraq, in March 1991. This figure was revealed in 1999. Previously, the government said no British units would have been affected, although one Briton might have been under a plume.

More than 5,000 British veterans have reported illnesses they believe related to the Gulf war or the inoculations they received before deployment and more than 600 have died. The government has refused to accept any suggestion that there is a "syndrome" but points to its £8.5m research programme to prove its commitment to finding answers.

The government's current position is that the possible level of nerve agent exposure from Khamisaya would have had "no detectable effect" on human health, and the Pentagon still insists the information was the best available and any researcher would know limitations of the data. The CIA also agreed with the report.

But the general accounting office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, last week said the assumptions used by the Pentagon were based on incomplete and uncertain data and that postwar testing to replicate the size of the plume "did not realistically simulate the actual conditions of bombings or demolitions".

The Pentagon, including the bombing of other sites in Iraq, estimated that nearly 102,000 US troops were potentially exposed. But the GAO concluded that, given the significant methodological flaws, neither the Pentagon nor the MoD could know which troops were and which troops were not exposed.

Lord Morris, an honorary member of a US congressional sub-committee investigating undiagnosed illnesses, said: "This is a profoundly significant report not only for US veterans but for ours as well."

He has tabled a parliamentary question to ministers on the issue.

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Speaking on the final day of a three-day conference on Asian security, Najib said his country would not allow American "troops or assets" to set foot in the Strait of Malacca - a narrow 900-kilometer, or 550-mile, waterway straddling Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore that handles a third of the world's trade and more than half its oil.

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"However, what we should avoid is the presence of foreign forces in Southeast Asia to help us deal with this threat," he said, "not because we distrust those outside the region, but because foreign military presence will set us back in our ideological battle against extremism and militancy."

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Actually, if the woman knew what was happening inside the nondescript office building at 3701 Fairfax Drive, she might think it really does matter because the building houses the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Total Information Awareness Program, the “big brother” program Congress thought it killed.

When the woman in line deposited her paycheck at the Bank of America branch, a record of that deposit showed up immediately in the computer databanks in the office across the street, just as financial, travel and other personal transactions of virtually every American do millions of time every minute.

Despite Congressional action cutting funding, and the resignation of the program’s controversial director, retired admiral John Poindexter, DARPA’s TIA program is alive and well and prying into the personal business of Americans 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“When Congress cut the funding, the Pentagon – with administration approval – simply moved the program into a ‘black bag’ account,” says a security consultant who worked on the DARPA project. “Black bag programs don’t require Congressional approval and are exempt from traditional oversight.”

DARPA also hired private contractors to fill many of the roles in the program, which helped evade detection by Congressional auditors. Using a private security firm like Cantwell, instead of the Federal Protective Service, helped keep TIA off the radar screen.

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Lt. Col. Doug Dyer, a program manager for DARPA, defends TIA as a necessary sacrifice in the war on terrorism.

“Americans must trade some privacy for security,” he says. “Three thousand people died on 9/11. When you consider the potential effect of a terrorist attack against the privacy of an entire population, there has to be some trade-off.”

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“Basically, TIA builds a profile of every American who has a bank account, uses credit cards and has a credit record,” says security expert Allen Banks. “The profile establishes norms based on the person’s spending and travel habits. Then the system looks for patterns that break from the norms, such of purchases of materials that are considered likely for terrorist activity, travel to specific areas or a change in spending habits.”

Patterns that fit pre-defined criteria result in an investigative alert and the individual becomes a “person of interest” who is referred to the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, Banks says.

[..]

Missouri Congressman William Clay, ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform's Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, and Intergovernmental Relations, worries that DARPA is skirting the law by letting private contractors handle the data mining.

"The agencies involved in data mining are trying to skirt the Privacy Act by claiming that they hold no data," said Clay. Instead, they use private companies to maintain and sift through the data, he said.

"Technically, that gets them out from under the Privacy Act," he said. "Ethically, it does not."

[..]

When Congress voted to cut the funded, the operation at 3701 Fairfax Drive should have shut down and Arlington County should have returned the officers assigned there to normal duty. However, the officers remained in place and additional security was added to the detail.

According to construction records on file in the Arlington County building and zoning office, more than 20 high-speed data lines have been installed at the location in the last 18 months. Microwave data antennas are also installed on the roof.

Pentagon spokesmen refuse to discuss what is happening in the building, citing "national security" as the reason.

[..]

“With meaningful pattern recognition, the order of magnitude of errors from inferences is huge, something like ten to the third (power),” says Paul Hawken, author of The Ecology of Commerce and the chairman of information mapping software company Groxis. “There would be an incalculable expense to monitor a thousand wrong hits for one correct inference.”

DARPA tried to interest Groxis in becoming part of the TIA project but the company declined, saying the project was neither feasible nor ethical. Hawken says he knows people with the National Security Agency who refused to work on TIA because of ethical concerns.

(end of excerpt)

It's no secret that the new voting technology--paperless, electronic voting machines--has increased the risk of fraud and incorrect totals. You have only to read the daily newspapers to see story after story of possible tampering and elections gone wrong.

Take Indiana, for instance. WISH TV, an Indiana television station, did a recent in-depth investigation of the election woes plaguing some Indiana counties after some precincts ran out of republican ballots shortly after the polls opened, and after some counties reported thousands more votes than registered voters.

What the WISH-TV news team uncovered was something far deeper even than a lack of ballots. A look beyond the present failings toward the fall election revealed possibilities for tampering that would scare even the most complacent of voters.

Top state election officials tend to work closely with the vendors of voting equipment. Republican Kathy Richardson, an Indiana State Representative who was Indiana's Hamilton County Clerk, purchased $1.3 million worth of electronic voting equipment from MicroVote, and says she plans to purchase $700,000 more. She told WISH-TV, “When you work with a vendor, you develop a relationship.” She works closely indeed. MicroVote's president, James Ries Jr., has donated to Richardson's campaign. Apparently, voting equipment companies don't see that as a conflict.

(end of excerpt)

A popular anti-drug program provided free to schools in San Francisco and elsewhere teaches concepts straight out of the Church of Scientology, including medical theories that some addiction experts described as "irresponsible" and "pseudoscience."

As a result, students are being introduced to somebeliefs and methods of Scientology without their knowledge.

[..]

Narconon's anti-drug instruction rests on these key church concepts: that the body stores all kinds of toxins indefinitely in fat, where they wreak havoc on the mind until "sweated" out. Those ideas are rejected by the five medical experts contacted by The Chronicle, who say there is no evidence to support them.

Narconon was created by L. Ron Hubbard, the late science-fiction writer who founded Scientology, a religion that claims to improve the well-being of followers through courses aimed at self-improvement and global serenity. Narconon operates a global network of drug treatment centers, as well as education programs for elementary, middle and high school students.

Its lectures have reached 1.7 million children around the nation in the last decade, Narconon officials said, and more than 30,000 San Francisco students since 1991. Meanwhile, Narconon's anti-drug message and charismatic speakers earn rave reviews from students and teachers.

[..]

"It's pseudoscience, right up there with colonic irrigation," said Dr. Peter Banys, director of substance abuse programs at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco.

Dr. Igor Grant, professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UC San Diego, agreed: "I'm not aware of any data that show that going into a sauna detoxifies you from toxins of any kind. " Three other addiction experts contacted by The Chronicle echoed their skepticism.

[..]

"Narconon's orders come from the Church of Scientology's senior management," said Tory Christman, a former church member who worked briefly at Narconon International. "Their programs, policies -- it's all church policy. There's no question about this to anyone involved."

[..]

"Where's the evidence that supports what they're saying?" asked Dr. Timmen Cermak, medical director of Ohlhoff Recovery Programs in San Francisco and Marin County and author of "Marijuana: What's a Parent to Believe?"

"They're certainly spouting this as though it's proven, but it's not considered important enough to be talked about within the addiction medicine field," he said. "It's irresponsible."

[..]

"The longest we know that THC (the active substance in marijuana) stays in the fat is about a month. For ecstasy and LSD, we're talking about a day or two," said Dr. Neal Benowitz , head of clinical pharmacology at UCSF.

Nor is there evidence that drugs in fat cause cravings or flashbacks, said Banys, of San Francisco's VA Medical Center. "You could also say that craving is caused by evil spirits, which cause you to do bad things and therefore it's demonic possession. You couldn't prove it wasn't, and it seemed to make sense. But that's the use of metaphor, not science."

Banys said research shows that cravings are associated with dopamine, a neurotransmitter. And Cermak said flashbacks are thought to be prompted by "re- exposure to the drug-taking situation, or a reasonable facsimile (that) causes the brain to begin experiencing some of the same chemical changes that administering the drug itself produces."

Drs. Benowitz, Banys and Cermak dismissed the idea that niacin and sauna can rid the body of drugs, as did Dr. David Smith of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic and Dr. Igor Grant at UC San Diego.

(end of excerpt)

American travelers are finding blades planted in their luggage, and it looks as if federal workers - make that employees - are culpable.

"The question I have is, 'What's the point of tossing items into people's suitcases?'" David Grindle of Bloomington, Ind., told the Herald-Times. "Is the TSA doing this on purpose in an attempt to catch someone else? I wish I knew."

After Grindle and his family returned from an airline trip to Florida, they found wire cutters in one of their bags, along with a note that said a screener from the Transportation Security Administration had inspected the suitcase.

The family immediately thought of Dorrine and George Theodore, also residents of Bloomington, who found a knife with a 10-inch blade - and a note from the TSA - in their luggage after they flew home from California last month.

"I've been to Europe, where they search your bags in front of you, and I have no trouble with that," Grindle said. "But it makes me nervous having my bags searched without me being present, especially when inspectors are flipping things in my bags that don't belong to me. What would stop them from putting illegal drugs in my bag?"

TSA mouthpiece Chris Rhatigan said the reports mystified her. "If I could answer that question, I'd be rich. They could have been honest mistakes. Perhaps the bags somehow popped open during their travels, and someone dropped something inside. I honestly don't know."

(end of excerpt)

The residents of Jenin refugee camp have begun returning to homes destroyed during Operation Defensive Shield. The homes are being rebuilt by UNRWA with a $29 million grant from the United Arab Emirates.

Construction of 100 of the 530 housing units detroyed by the IDF in April 2002 has been completed, and 70 families have returned to their homes, which are better designed than the previous buildings. UNRWA officials say they hope the entire camp will be rebuilt by the end of the summer.

UNRWA decided, after a debate on the issue, to take 15 percent of the original area of each destroyed house and use the area to widen roads so that in the future it would be possible for Israeli tanks to pass more easily.

Many residents opposed this, saying it should be made more not less difficult for Israeli tanks to enter the camp. UN officials decided it would be wiser to leave wider roads so that the houses would not be destroyed again.

In addition, UNRWA moved 100 families to a new area on the outskirts of the camp where new houses were built for them, once again in anticipation of the necessity to leave more space for tanks.

"We have lost the right of return," said one of the camp's committee members this week when he saw the new homes.

(end of excerpt)

The conciliatory tone by cleric Muqtada al-Sadr came during a sermon read by an aide to a congregation in Kufa, scene of recent fighting between his al-Mahdi Army militia and U.S. forces.

In the sermon, the fiery young cleric said, "I support the new interim government" and asked his followers to "help me take this society to the path of security and peace."

"Starting now, I ask you that we open a new page for Iraq and for peace," the message said.

[..]

In an interview Friday night with Al Arabiya television, Mr. al-Sadr's spokesman, Ahmed al-Shibani, said the cleric was ready for a dialogue with the interim government "on condition that it works to end the occupation and clearly announces to the Iraqi people and to the world that it rejects the occupation."

"It has to put a timetable for the end of the occupation," Mr. al-Shibani said. "This is the main and principled way to recognize this government and cooperate with it."

(end of excerpt)

The FBI bulletin said the Earth Liberation Front reportedly was planning a "day of action and solidarity" that could include acts of eco-terrorism, according to Tor Bjornstad, a police commander in Olympia, one of 10 cities named as possible targets.

The others were Eugene; Ore.; San Francisco; Modesto, Calif.; Morgantown, W. Va.; Portland, Maine; Worcester, Mass.; Lake Worth, Fla.; and Lawrence, Kan., Bjornstad said.

The general warning was part of a weekly intelligence bulletin the FBI distributed to some 18,000 law enforcement agencies on Wednesday, said Bill Carter, a spokesman in the FBI's Washington, D.C., headquarters.

No specific targets were identified in the bulletin, Bjornstad said. He said his department contacted what it considered potential targets, including auto dealerships, building contractors and the Port of Olympia, which exports timber.

"We have to take it seriously, and one of the reasons is that this group has claimed credit for a fair amount of criminal activity in the past several years," Bjornstad said.

[..]

A Web site titled "International Day of Action & Solidarity with Jeff 'Free' Luers" featured a list of events planned for Saturday, including protests at SUV dealerships.

Jeff Luers is serving a 22-year sentence in Oregon for a 2000 arson at an auto dealership and an attempted arson at an oil company.

(end of excerpt)

The chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff and the prosecutor handling charges against suspected Sept. 11 terrorists in Germany will testify next week in the final hearing of the commission investigating the attacks.

The hearing next Wednesday and Thursday will track the development of the plot from its origins in the 1990s. On the second day, the 10-member panel will review the national emergency response by the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. air defenses on the day of the attacks.

Among the questions the panel wants answered: What was the federal government's protocol for responding to the Sept. 11 attacks? How well did the government perform that day? Are federal officials now ready in the event of future attacks?

"We will attempt to close the circle," said Thomas Kean, the commission's Republican chairman. "We will look back to the roots and growth of al Qaida, its previous attacks on the United States, its financing and international support, and how it plotted such detailed and intricate attacks on our soil."

"The commission will then turn again to the day of Sept. 11, 2001, to examine how the federal government learned of and responded to the attacks," he said in a statement.

Scheduled to testify in addition to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, are top law enforcement and intelligence experts on al Qaida, including Matthias Krauss, who is handling the prosecution of the al-Qaida cell in Hamburg, Germany, that was key to the hijacking plot.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a former attorney in New York who prosecuted alleged terrorists in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, also will testify.

Speaking on the emergency response will be Myers and officials from the FAA and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD.

Relatives of Sept. 11 victims have said they want to know whether military jets could have been scrambled sooner after the first hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. on that fateful day. They believe quicker notification could have prevented American Airlines Flight 77 from crashing into the Pentagon more than 50 minutes later, killing 184 people.

(end of excerpt)

U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow met this week with executives from the Russian oil producer Yukos, Gazprom and Transneft, Russia's oil pipeline monopoly, just 10 days after Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham met with Kremlin officials and Russian companies. Their hope is to increase Russia's energy exports to the United States and accelerate Gazprom's projects to liquefy gas in the Arctic.

The United States is so serious about natural gas deals with Russia that the U.S. Export-Import Bank may help finance a $15 billion project to develop Russia's giant Shtokman gas field.

"The subject of investment has been discussed, including in the context of proposals which U.S. ExImBank may put forward," Russia's deputy industry and energy minister, Ivan Materov, said this week. Materov also said Russia was interested in large American energy companies participating in the project.

His American counterpart, McSlarrow, said liquefied natural gas projects have emerged as one way to stave off an anticipated shortfall in North American natural gas supply.

"Under everybody's scenario, LNG imports will have to increase," said McSlarrow, at a news conference this week. "I think Russia realizes that it ought to be a major player when it comes to LNG."

The Shtokman deposit, on the shelf of the Barents Sea beyond the Arctic Circle, has estimated reserves of 3.2 trillion cubic meters of gas and 31 million tons of gas condensate.

Gazprom wants to sign a deal to develop Shtokman and build a liquefied gas plant, and potential partners mentioned in press reports include Norsk Hydro, Houston-based ConocoPhillips, as well as ChevronTexaco, Exxon Mobil and Shell.

But industry analysts said they are skeptical about liquefied gas plant projects between Gazprom and U.S. companies, given the delays on other energy projects in Russia.

"There is clearly interest in the U.S. on Russian energy exports to the West — whether gas or oil," said Stephen O'Sullivan, co-head of research at the United Financial Group. "There is a lot of talk, but not practical support for projects like an oil pipeline to Murmansk to go ahead."

(end of excerpt)

But Karzai called heroin production in Afghanistan a "massive problem" and asked for renewed help from the United States and other nations, insisting that "this is a struggle we cannot succeed in alone."

He said the new growth in the country's drug trade would require "sustained" international assistance to correct.

Later Thursday, while speaking at a Chicago Council on Foreign Relations event, Karzai said Afghanistan was once known for producing the highest quality fruit. But he said in recent years he has seen farmers destroying pomegranate orchards and replacing them with poppy fields. "We have to reverse that trend," he said to the nearly 1,100 people who gathered to hear him speak at the Fairmont Hotel.

The U.S., with 20,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, is leading international military efforts there. Karzai called for NATO to follow through on promises to provide soldiers--perhaps 5,000 or 6,000 more--to secure the country before elections, now set for September after being delayed three months.

"We have concerns about the ability of the Afghan state structure to be able to provide for Afghanistan's people a climate for free elections," Karzai said. Right now, "we do not have that capability for ourselves."

Elections have been pushed back, he said, largely because of technical difficulties in organizing voter registration. In the past month, he said, the number of registered voters has risen from a little under 1 million to 3.5 million. By September, he said, the number of total registered voters should reach 6.5 million to 7 million.

But Karzai urged that NATO troops remain in Afghanistan after the elections, in part to help push the long-delayed disarming of regional militias and to improve "the security of daily life" that is now threatened by warlords.

In the more than two years since the fall of the Taliban, Karzai has sought to co-opt leaders of the divided country's powerful militias and persuade them to lay down their arms. But in a nation where guns have long been a part of the culture and influence is backed up by firepower, the process has so far produced few results, other than skepticism by many Afghans that the president is serious about taking on the warlords.

Karzai insisted Thursday that organized terrorism has largely been rooted out of Afghanistan, and that the country faces mainly "individuals seeking targets of opportunity." One of those targets is Karzai, who survived an assassination attempt in Kandahar in 2002.

The continued attacks are happening "not because they are strong," he said, but rather "because we are weak."

(end of excerpt)

At least five soldiers objected last fall to abuses they saw at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. One demanded to be reassigned, saying the behavior he witnessed there "made me sick to my stomach."

Up the chain of command, the noncommissioned officers who heard such complaints did little to stop the mistreatment, according to Army records obtained by The Associated Press.

One of those same NCOs, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick, is accused of stomping on prisoners' toes and punching another prisoner so hard in the chest that he remarked, "I think I might have put him in cardiac arrest." Frederick is among six soldiers facing courts-martial. Another soldier pleaded guilty last month.

The military's full-blown investigation into beatings and humiliations at Abu Ghraib began in January, after one soldier wrote an anonymous letter to superior officers about troubling photographs. That soldier, Spc. Joe Darby, came forward later to talk to Army investigators and eventually became known as the whistle-blower who uncovered the scandal.

Internal Army documents show that others, too, condemned the abuse they saw at the prison, although their complaints failed to prevent further mistreatment.

A diminutive platoon leader, Sgt. 1st Class Shannon Snider, once barked so loudly at soldiers stomping on prisoners' toes that one witness later told investigators, "I never thought that that voice could come out of somebody so little." Then Snider left the room and the abuse continued, the records say.

The fact that earlier complaints apparently went nowhere adds to the uncertainty over a key question in the Abu Grhaib scandal: Did superior military police or intelligence officers encourage or condone the abuses?

A report from Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba says yes. Taguba wrote that commanders of both the military police and intelligence troops at the prison knew or should have known about the abuse. His report also says military intelligence officers unsuccessfully pressured one military dog handler to sic his animal on prisoners.

Some of the six enlisted soldiers awaiting trial will try to use that command inaction as part of their defense. Since other soldiers got little response to repeated objections to abusive practices, the defense lawyers will argue, those involved in the mistreatment figured it was approved by commanders.

"It's telling that another person ... did complain to their superior officer and was told, 'There's nothing wrong. You have to go forward'," said Mary Rose Zapor, a lawyer for Pfc. Lynndie England, one of the accused soldiers. "Had my client known she could complain, it wouldn't have made any difference."

One of the soldiers who complained most vigorously was Spc. Matthew C. Wisdom, a fellow military police soldier assigned to the Abu Ghraib cellblock where most of the worst abuses happened. No one answered the telephone at Wisdom's home in Richmond, Va., this week.

Wisdom told investigators he witnessed some of the abuses of Nov. 8, the night prisoners were forced to masturbate and were stacked, naked, into a human pyramid.

Wisdom complained to at least three sergeants in his chain of command, who agreed to remove him from the cellblock.

"It made me sick to my stomach, sir, disgusted," Wisdom told a judge last month during a hearing to take the guilty plea of Spec. Jeremy Sivits.

One of Wisdom's commanders, Sgt. Robert F. Jones, took the complaint to a higher-ranking noncommissioned officer -- Frederick.

"Frederick assured me that everything would be taken care of," Jones told Army investigators.

But Frederick was accused by one soldier of stomping on the toes of prisoners and punching another prisoner in the chest for no discernible reason that November night. Frederick is facing military charges in connection with the abuse.

Another soldier who complained was Sgt. Stephen C. Hubbard, who happened to see some of the abuse pictures on another soldier's computer. Hubbard complained to Staff Sgt. Robert J. Elliott, who demanded proof, according to statements to Army investigators.

"I threatened to go to (the) commander with info," Hubbard told investigators, saying he was upset that former Pennsylvania prison guard Spc. Charles Graner Jr. had been returned to the cellblock despite complaints about him.

Hubbard also said he complained to Snider, who was accused by Wisdom of tossing one prisoner into a pile of bodies.

The investigators' records obtained by The AP do not say what, if anything, happened after Hubbard's complaints.

Staff Sgt. Reuben Layton, a medic at the prison, told investigators he saw Graner hit a wounded detainee. Layton said he ordered Graner to remove handcuffs from the prisoner but did not report the incident.

Taguba cites two others who did not go along with abuses. The report says 1st Lt. David O. Sutton stopped an abusive act and reported it to his chain of command.

Taguba also hailed Master at Arms 1st Class William J. Kimbro, a Navy dog handler, for refusing to participate in abuses despite "significant pressure from the MI (military intelligence) personnel at Abu Ghraib."

(end of excerpt)

McALESTER, Okla. -- Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols was again spared the death penalty Friday when jurors who convicted him of 161 state murder counts deadlocked over his sentence, six years after a federal jury reached a similar impasse.

The hung jury denies prosecutors the death sentence they first demanded nearly a decade ago while the bodies were still being pulled from the twisted ruins of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Jurors announced they could not reach a verdict after deliberating for about 19 1/2 hours over three days. Nichols will be sentenced by Judge Steven Taylor, who is required by law to sentence Nichols to life in prison.

Taylor asked jury foreman Peter Mills if more deliberations could bring about a decision. Mills said that would not help.

"Three days you have worked on this," Taylor told the jury. "And sometimes this is how cases end. The law anticipates that juries may not reach unanimous conclusions.

"I don't want any of you to leave the building tonight feeling that you have let down the system. You've done your job," Taylor said. "I am very proud of you. I commend you."

The deadlock was a blow to state prosecutors and victims' family members who said death was the appropriate punishment for the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

The jury, which convicted Nichols on May 26, began deliberating in the trial's sentencing phase Wednesday, after a week of emotional testimony. Nichols, 49, faced sentences of life in prison or death by injection.

Taylor set the sentencing for Aug. 9.

(end of excerpt)

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set aside the convictions of a Reno couple and ordered a federal judge to let jurors testify about their reactions to Internal Revenue Service officers who attended the trial. If the judge decides one or more jurors may have been intimidated, he can order a new trial; if not, the convictions are to be reinstated.

The couple, Martin and Nanja Rutherford, were convicted by a Reno federal jury in 2001 of willfully filing a false tax return for 1992 and failing to file a tax return for 1993. They were sentenced to five months in prison and ordered to pay $145,000 in fines and restitution but have remained free during their appeals.

During the trial, the court said, between seven and 10 current and former agents of the IRS and the Justice Department sat behind the prosecution table and talked occasionally with the prosecutors.

After the trial, three jurors submitted statements saying they were aware of the agents, and one juror said they seemed to be continually glaring at the jury. Two of the statements said jurors discussed the agents' presence, the power of the IRS and the possibility of retaliation against jurors who voted for acquittal.

U.S. District Judge Edward Reed denied a new trial on the grounds that there was no proof the agents were trying to influence the jury. But the appeals court said the agents' intent was irrelevant if their conduct affected the jury.

Although jurors can't be asked why they voted to convict, "a juror's testimony concerning his fear that individuals would retaliate against him if he voted to acquit (or convict) would be admissible,'' Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the 3-0 ruling that ordered Reed to hold a new hearing.

The ruling delighted Kevin Mirch, the Rutherfords' lawyer. "Jurors came up to us (after the trial) and said the IRS was loading up the courtroom and they were nervous that they would get audited if they acquitted them,'' he said.

(end of excerpt)

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S.-led coalition leaders ordered an investigation Friday into whether the expansion of a military camp damaged archaeological sites around the ancient city of Babylon.

L. Paul Bremer and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez dispatched a team of archaeologists to assess the site at Camp Alpha, which was set up to provide security in the area 50 miles south of Baghdad, a statement issued by the coalition said.

The two leaders ordered all contractors working in or around the vicinity of the Babylon site to halt any activities that could damage archaeological sites and ordered that planning begin for the relocation of any troops in the immediate area.

(end of excerpt)

At the Supreme Court, the least significant and least noticed cases sometimes say the most about the institution and our system of justice. Dretke v. Haley, decided last month with no fanfare, is just such a case. Unfortunately, the story it tells is of an institution and a system remarkably unconcerned with the common call simply to do the right thing.

Everyone involved in Michael Wayne Haley's case - the State of Texas, which prosecuted him; the lower federal court judges who heard his case; and all the U.S. Supreme Court's Justices - recognize that he's been in jail more than six years for a crime carrying a maximum sentence of two years.

The lower federal courts ordered Haley released. But Texas, despite agreeing that Haley is serving time under an unlawful sentence, still appealed to the Supreme Court to keep Haley in jail. And the Supreme Court, rather than setting him free, doomed him to another long round of litigation in the lower courts.

How does this happen? The story of Haley's case illustrates how hard it can be to correct, through our system, what is really a simple and straightforward injustice.

(end of excerpt)

ENGLAND fans will be allowed to smoke dope before Sunday’s crunch clash with France — to keep them calm.

Cops in Lisbon plan to crack down on drunk supporters while turning a blind eye to those spotted puffing on a spliff.

Pot-smoking fans have been assured they will not be arrested, cautioned — or even have their drugs confiscated.

Last night experts said the Portuguese police’s “Here We Blow” policy would reduce chances of a punch-up between rival fans.

Alan Buffry of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance said: “If people are drinking they lose control, if they smoke cannabis they don’t.

“Alcohol makes fans fight. But cannabis smokers will be shaking hands and singing along together.”

Dutch police used a similar policy in Euro 2000 and England’s hooligan element were too stoned to fight.

A Lisbon police spokeswoman said: “If people cause a problem through drugs and become a menace then police will take action. But when this doesn’t happen why should the police be the ones making the fuss?”

(end of excerpt)

Martha Stewart's lawyers on Thursday asked a federal judge to toss out her conviction for obstructing justice and grant her a new trial, arguing that false testimony by a government witness was "vital to the prosecution's case."

"No conviction should be premised on the perjured testimony of any government official," they said in a statement.

Stewart faces up to 16 months in prison for hindering probes into why she sold her ImClone Systems Inc. stock a day before federal regulators rejected the company's colon cancer drug.

Prosecutors accused their own witness, Larry Stewart, former forensic scientist for the Secret Service, of lying at her trial. He is charged with perjury.

(end of excerpt)

A former Qwest executive facing a second trial over an alleged scheme to improperly book nearly $34 million in revenue has been named in a new indictment that narrows the scope of the government's case.

A federal grand jury late Wednesday indicted Thomas Hall, a former senior vice president of sales, on three counts of wire fraud and one count of securities fraud.

The charges, disclosed Thursday, supersede a 2003 indictment accusing Hall and three other former Qwest Communications International executives of 12 counts including conspiracy, wire fraud and securities fraud.

''We're pursuing less counts as part of our streamlined case against the defendant,'' U.S. attorney's office spokesman Jeff Dorschner said. ''The refined version is based on the government's experience from the first trial.''

(end of excerpt)

Italian and French authorities denied Thursday that a terror suspect arrested in Milan and believed to be a key figure behind the Madrid train bombings was planning an attack on the Paris subway.

Authorities have said that Rabei Osman Ahmed was planning an attack, but gave no details. Italian news reports have indicated Paris Metro as the target.

The reports said Osman Ahmed was recorded asking about the Paris subway and its security. Italian dailies Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica cited what they said were transcripts of telephone conversations in which Osman Ahmed appeared to organize logistics for another suspect who was on his way to the French capital.

``We categorically deny the reports,'' said a joint statement issued by the Milan prosecutors leading the probe, Maurizio Romanelli and Armando Spataro, and referring to the alleged Paris plot.

The prosecutors also denied all other reports ``concerning the identification of any other specific target'' - a reference to reports pointing to a NATO base in Belgium and to a chemical attack in the United States.

In Paris, police said an analysis of intelligence from Italy following Osman Ahmed's arrest shows that no attack on Paris Metro was being prepared.

They also noted that the French terror alert security level has gone down a notch since the close of D-Day ceremonies, which means that ``there is not currently a direct threat to our country and to Paris in particular.''

(end of excerpt)

Denmark said Thursday it opened an investigation into claims by a translator for Danish and U.S. troops in Afghanistan that he witnessed incidents of torture and killing of prisoners in American custody two years ago.

Denmark's military prosecutors will determine whether the claims can be substantiated, said Cmdr. Torben Martinsen, a spokesman for the Defense Command, the country's top military authority.

Martinsen refused to release details about the Danish translators claims, including the number of alleged victims. The man was not identified by name nor was it known if he was a military man or civilian working with the 100 Danish soldiers on assignment in Afghanistan in 2002.

[..]

The translator worked in Kandahar, the main U.S. military base in southern Afghanistan, where he "assisted the Americans' questioning of prisoners," Danish Defense Minister Soeren Gade said.

The U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen declined to comment on the report.
In May, a Danish medic working in Iraq claimed that British troops in September 2003 had beaten two Iraqis during a field interrogation, including one who allegedly died.

Gade said Britain's Royal Military Police will send an investigator to Denmark to gather information as part of a British probe. Denmark's nearly 500 troops in southern Iraq are under British command.

(end of excerpt)

Colombian officials said Thursday they are willing to suspend an offensive against left-wing rebel groups if the rebels agree to a cease-fire.

"They must first agree to the cease-fire," said an official of President Alvaro Uribe, the right-wing leader who has both battled and sought negotiations with Colombia's Marxist rebels.

Officials for the president reportedly disclosed the proposal to the foreign media in Bogota, El Tiempo reported in their online edition.

Thursday's offer follows a similar one made last week by Uribe, who said during a trip to Mexico he was willing to negotiate a peaceful resolution with the left-wing rebel group the National Liberation Army, or ELN -- even if the rebels do not put down their arms during the talks.

(end of excerpt)

But, faced with opposition from NATO allies France and Germany as well as Russia, he was forced to acknowledge that his suggestion of a day earlier for the alliance to play a greater role by sending troops was "unrealistic."

"I don't expect more troops from NATO to be offered up," Bush said. "That's an unrealistic expectation."

French President Jacques Chirac, who had dismissed Bush's idea shortly after it was first made, renewed that opposition at summit's end, saying Paris had "clearly indicated that we could not accept a mission of this type for NATO."

"Any interference by NATO in this region appears to us to run great risks, including the risk of a confrontation between the Christian West and the Muslim East," Chirac said.

[..]

Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country along with Japan is the only non-NATO member of the G8, also poured cold water on the troop idea, suggesting that the alliance was seeking to replace its Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, with a new one.

"NATO needs an enemy," he said. "In the past, it had one. Perhaps it is looking for one now. For Iraq, it would be better if the role was limited to the United Nations."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's top ally in Iraq, appeared mystified by the suggestion that a new disagreement had arisen but was quick to predict that any differences would be resolved.

"I am not quite sure where this disagreement has surfaced, but I think the disagreement will be overcome," he told reporters, calling the presence of a large number of NATO forces in Iraq impractical.

(end of excerpt)

The U.S. government acknowledged Thursday that a recent report declaring a decline in terrorism in 2003 was wrong.

The report, released in April and touted by top administration officials as a sign of the success of the war on terrorism, was based on faulty data, said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

In fact, he told reporters, the corrected report will show "a sharp increase over the previous year." The corrected version is not yet completed, he said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell denied the errors were the result of an effort to make the administration look good.

"Of course not," he told reporters. "I'm very disturbed that there were errors in the report."

Given that officials touted the original report as a positive, reporters asked Powell whether the corrected report indicates the war on terrorism is not working.

"Nobody has suggested that the war on terrorism has been won," responded Powell. "The president has made it clear that it is a war that continues and that we have to redouble our efforts."

The government's goal in releasing the corrected report "is to give the American people the facts," he said.

Boucher, facing similar questions, said, "When we're sure we have the new facts, the right facts, we will prepare an appropriate analysis and give you our assessment at that moment."

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From the Inner Harbor to the Bay Bridge, local and state homeland security authorities are beginning to build a regional network of 24-hour surveillance cameras that will first go live this summer in Baltimore.

The closed-circuit video surveillance system of public spaces will begin in the Inner Harbor by summer's end, and a $2 million federal grant accepted by the city yesterday will expand the cameras into downtown's west side by early November.

"We're trying to build a regional network of cameras," said Dennis R. Schrader, director of homeland security for Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.

What of privacy concerns raised by groups opposed to cameras constantly monitored by retired police officers or college students?

"We're at war," Schrader said.

The network is part of a comprehensive strategy in the Baltimore area to spend $25 million in homeland security grants this year and next to improve regional cooperation on terrorism concerns. The idea stemmed from a regional group of leaders that is jointly acquiring decontamination equipment and backups for 911 and power systems.

The network of cameras will be placed in downtown's west side because it has light rail and Amtrak lines, federal and state government buildings, and many cultural institutions.

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However, Utah holds steady on its test scores — well above the national average in science, and is slightly above average in reading and math, Petersen said.

"Considering the resources spent, it's a remarkable bargain the taxpayers are getting," Petersen said.

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Misguided U.S. training of Iraqi police contributed to the country's instability and has delayed getting enough qualified Iraqis on the streets to ease the burden on American forces, the head of armed forces training said Wednesday.

"It hasn't gone well. We've had almost one year of no progress," said Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who departs Iraq (news - web sites) next week after spending a year assembling and training the country's 200,000 army, police and civil defense troops.

"We've had the wrong training focus — on individual cops rather than their leaders," Eaton said in an interview with The Associated Press.

A credible, well-equipped national security force is crucial to America's plans to pull its 138,000 troops out of Iraq, along with the 24,000 soldiers from Britain and other coalition countries.

As U.S. occupation leaders prepare to hand power to an Iraqi government in less than three weeks, Iraq's own security forces won't be ready to take a large role in protecting the country. A U.N. Security Council resolution approved Tuesday acknowledges Iraq's lack of a developed security force and provides a continued multinational troop presence until 2006.

Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy U.S. defense secretary, wrote in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal that the Iraqi army — including the Taji-based Iraqi National Task Force, which focuses on internal strife — will begin assuming some security duties over the next few months.

Iraqi forces could soon "take local control of the cities," with U.S. troops moving into a supporting role, Wolfowitz wrote.

In April, Iraqi security forces failed their first big test, when about half the police and military forces deserted during rebel uprisings in Fallujah, Najaf, Karbala and elsewhere.

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A mass movement and a mountain of disturbing evidence has been growing beneath the radar of U.S. media. The U.S. media (including alternative media) has done an extraordinarily superhuman job of "hearing" "seeing" and "speaking no evil." However, almost immediately after 9-11-2001's horrendous attacks on New York and Washington D.C., many researchers, ordinary citizens, and journalists [who've been given precious little print in U.S. papers or TV] began to smell something rotten . . . not in Denmark . . . but rather, right here in the good ol' US of A.

This movement's early roots began when many people scratched their heads in wonder at "how 4 commercial jet liners could fly hijacked for nearly an hour and a half the morning of 9-11, without any Air Force fighter interceptor jets turning a wheel until it was too late," as stated by acclaimed Canadian TV journalist, Barry Zwicker. Zwicker's powerful documentary "The Great Deception," which suggests top Bush Admin. officials were likely complicit in the 9-11 attacks, aired on Canada's Vision TV network which is viewed by millions of Canadians. Unfortunately Americans in the U.S. have been "protected" from viewing this critical documentary.

Researchers, like Zwicker and others, quickly learned that in 2001 before the 9-11 attacks 62 aircraft had been intercepted by Air Force fighter interceptor jets, and usually within 10 to 15 minutes of going off course. [http://septembereleventh.org/airdefense.php] Yet bizarrely, on 9-11 four commercial jets were hijacked off course for about one and a half hours before the last one crashed into the most highly protected building in the world (the Pentagon). . . yet no interceptor jet intercepted it in all that time. Alarm bells went off with citizens across the U.S. and the world. A number of people including former NYPD detective, Frank Serpico (played by Al Pacino in the movie about his life as an NYPD whistleblower exposing corruption at the New York Police Department), began to express a suspicion of the "official 9-11 story" during a whistleblower awards ceremony nationally televised on C-SPAN.

Then other issues came to light regarding 9-11, and foreknowledge of the attacks.

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The Defense Department spent an estimated $100 million for airline tickets that were not used over six years and failed to seek refunds even though the tickets were reimbursable, congressional investigators say.

The department compounded the problem by reimbursing employee claims for tickets the Pentagon bought, the investigators said.

To demonstrate how easy it was to have the Pentagon pay for airline travel, the investigators posed as defense employees, had the department generate a ticket and showed up at the ticket counter to pick up a boarding pass.

The General Accounting Office of Congress issued the findings in two reports on the Pentagon's lack of control over airline travel, copies of which the Associated Press obtained yesterday. A prior report, issued last November, found that the Pentagon bought 68,000 first-class or business-class airline seats for employees who should have flown coach.

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The United States next year will begin handing personal data about U.S. air travelers to the security services of foreign countries, including Russia, under a global aviation security plan crafted yesterday at the Group of Eight summit.

Among the initiatives in the plan is "data exchange on visa watch lists and advanced passenger information," a senior administration official told reporters on the condition of anonymity.

"Advanced passenger information" is data available before check-in, through the computerized records of airline booking systems.

The official did not say exactly what data about U.S. citizens might be made available to G-8 partner states, but that it would be more extensive than what the United States now exchanges with Europe.

"The information exchange that we are talking about developing here will go beyond the arrangements that we've made bilaterally with the European Union," the official said.

The data-exchange deal with the European Union -- which has been in practice for more than a year but was not formalized until June 1 -- covers 34 data fields on the so-called PNR, or passenger name record, including name, address, phone details and credit card numbers.

But data covered by the new plan likely will include some kind of unique identifier, such as a passport number, date of birth or Social Security number.

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A Saudi graduate student was acquitted today of charges that he used his computer expertise to foster terrorism.

[..]

Al-Hussayen set up and ran Web sites that prosecutors say were used to recruit terrorists, raise money and disseminate inflammatory rhetoric.

His defense maintained that his association with the Web sites was as a Muslim volunteer and computer expert who simply wanted to keep the sites in operation.

Al-Hussayen's attorneys have argued that he had little to do with the creation of the material posted. And they say the material was protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of expression and was not designed to raise money or recruit militants.

But prosecutors cited religious edicts justifying suicide bombings and an invitation to financially support the militant Palestinian organization Hamas in arguing that Al-Hussayen should be convicted.

His supporters also said the government used vague anti-terrorism laws to prosecute Al-Hussayen for his beliefs.

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