Bush's plan to forge a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could commit the US military to defending Iraq's security would be the first time such a sweeping mutual defense compact has been enacted without congressional approval...
Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki have already agreed that a coming compact will include the United States providing "security assurances and commitments" to Iraq to deter any foreign invasion or internal terrorism by "outlaw groups"...
"We don't anticipate now that these negotiations will lead to the status of a formal treaty which would then bring us to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress," General Douglas Lute, Bush's deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, said...
Legal specialists and lawmakers of both parties are raising questions about whether it would be unconstitutional for Bush to complete such a sweeping deal on behalf of the United States without the consent of the legislative branch.
WaPo - "Delivering what they called a 'prebuttal' to... Bush's final State of the Union speech, congressional Democratic leaders called on Bush to chart a new direction for the U.S. economy and restore America's 'moral authority' abroad, notably by publicly renouncing torture and closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility... House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) highlighted... Bush's failure to make cost-effective investments in domestic and foreign programs because of his commitment to a war in Iraq that costs about $330 million a day."
McClatchy - Immigration officials are detaining and deporting U.S. citizens. "Unlike suspects charged in criminal courts, detainees accused of immigration violations don't have a right to an attorney, and three-quarters of them represent themselves... 'The burden of proof is on the individual to show they're legally entitled to be in the United States,' said [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] spokeswoman Virginia Kice.
NYT - "Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey suggested Friday that he might never provide an answer to the question that threatened his Senate confirmation last year: Does the harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding amount to torture? 'I didn’t say I wouldn’t answer it,' he said at a news conference. 'I didn’t say that I would,'"
He can also expect to be questioned in the hearing about the White House’s renomination this week of Steven G. Bradbury to run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel as an assistant attorney general.
The new nomination was seen as a snub to Senate Democrats who had called for the White House to find another candidate for the job after the disclosure in October that Mr. Bradbury, who is running the office without Senate confirmation, had written classified legal memorandums in 2005 that authorized the use of interrogation methods that human rights groups define as torture.
"Steve Bradbury is one of the finest lawyers I’ve ever met," Mr. Mukasey said when asked if he supported the White House move. "I want to continue working with him."
WaPo - "The Air Force has made substantial changes in its handling of nuclear weapons in the wake of a B-52 flight last August during which the pilots and crew were unaware they were carrying six air-launched cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, according to a policy directive approved last week. A key change is a firm prohibition against storing nuclear armed and nonnuclear armed weapons in the same storage facility".
NYT - "The Education Department has brushed aside a finding by its own inspector general that a student lender improperly received $34 million in federal subsidies, and is instructing the lender to decide for itself how much money it should pay back. In a letter sent Friday to the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, a state-owned company that makes and guarantees student loans, the department said it had estimated the overpayment at only $15.1 million... But it told the agency to calculate for itself the amount it thought it had overbilled the government."
WaPo - "U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and Federal Transit Administration chief James S. Simpson stunned Virginia politicians... when they outlined what Simpson called 'an extraordinarily large set of challenges' that disqualifies the [Metro extension to Dulles International Airport] from receiving $900 million in federal money. Without that, the project would die."
LA Times - "Under grilling by a hostile Senate committee Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson defended his decision to deny California permission to implement its own global-warming law, even as legislators launched an effort to force its reversal... Johnson failed to mollify Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the committee chairwoman and perhaps his fiercest critic, who vowed to press ahead with her investigation into how the EPA chief reached his decision."
Reuters - "FCC Chairman Kevin Martin circulated an order... among the agency's four other commissioners that would allow AT&T to buy the spectrum from Aloha Partners... Martin circulated the order just before the start of a big FCC auction of valuable government-owned 700-megahertz airwaves in which AT&T is one of the potential bidders."
WaPo - "The Senate signaled in a key vote yesterday that it supports giving some of the nation's largest telephone companies immunity from dozens of privacy lawsuits related to a federal domestic eavesdropping program initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In a lopsided 60 to 36 vote -- with 12 Democrats joining Republicans in the majority -- the Senate rejected a version of the proposed legislation sponsored by Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. That bill omitted immunity for the telecommunications firms involved in warrantless eavesdropping. "
NYT - Neocon warmonger Paul Wolfowitz returned to the Bush administration as the Chairman of the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board. "Preceding Mr. Wolfowitz was former Senator Fred Thompson, [whose] run for president... crashed and burned".
LA Times - "State game agencies and private citizens would be allowed to kill federally protected gray wolves that threatened dogs or seriously decreased deer, elk or moose populations in parts of the northern Rocky Mountains, under a federal rule announced Thursday" by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. The agency is trying to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list.
NYT - "A coast-to-coast onslaught of presidential campaign advertisements began rolling out this week, with Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton already spending millions on commercials in Feb. 5 nominating states on a scale more reminiscent of a general election... By choosing to spend several million dollars each on commercials that will run simultaneously in more than a dozen states over the next 10 days - and, in Mr. Obama's case, on CNN and MSNBC as well... Even the cable networks said they were caught off guard by the decision of Mr. Obama's campaign to take to the air nationally nearly 10 months before the November election".
NYT - "John Edwards accused his Democratic rivals of bringing 'New York and Chicago politics to South Carolina' on Friday, and told voters on the day before the primary here that he is the only candidate who will represent their interests in the White House... The Edwards campaign released a new television ad on Friday, with the title 'Grown Up', using footage from the Democratic debate on Monday when Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama fired back at each other and Mr. Edwards intervened, calling it 'squabbling'."
BBC News - "A woman believed to be the last native speaker of the Eyak language in the north-western US state of Alaska has died at the age of 89. Marie Smith Jones was a champion of indigenous rights and conservation... She helped the University of Alaska compile an Eyak dictionary, so that future generations would have the chance to resurrect it."
WaPo - "Scientists in Maryland yesterday said they had built from scratch an entire microbial chromosome, a loop of synthetic DNA carrying all the instructions that a simple cell needs to live and reproduce. The feat marks the first time that anyone has made such a large strand of hereditary material from off-the-shelf chemical ingredients."
Spiegel - "Romano Prodi has fallen. In a dramatic vote of confidence in the Senate on Thursday evening, the Italian prime minister came up short and resigned shortly thereafter. Archrival -- and former premier -- Silvio Berlusconi is waiting in the wings."
Independent - "Venice has long struggled to live with its own success... The population has been on the slide since the mid-1950s and today stands at 60,000, half what it was at the time of the great flood of 1966. Ideas for checking the tourist influx include putting a tax on visitors, but the tourist industry, which has a turnover of €12bn (£9bn) a year, resists it strongly... But now the residents are fighting back."
BBC News - "Everyone in the banking world wants answers about the elusive French rogue trader, Jerome Kerviel. At the age of 31 he is accused of defrauding the Societe Generale bank, leading to a loss of 4.9bn euros ($7.1bn; £3.7bn). That tops the work of British trader Nick Leeson who, in 1995, bankrupted Barings bank by losing £860m - then worth $1.38bn - on Asian futures markets. Societe Generale said Mr Kerviel, on a reasonably modest salary of less than 100,000 euros ($147,000, £74,000), appears to have netted no personal financial gain from his alleged schemes. His lawyers say he is not on the run and is ready to talk to the authorities. "
NYT - "Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government suffered its first high-profile casualty on Thursday when Peter Hain, the work and pensions secretary, resigned in the face of a police investigation into his political fund-raising practices... Mr. Brown has supported Mr. Hain until now. But on Thursday, when the Metropolitan Police said it would begin investigating Mr. Hain’s fund-raising record, Mr. Brown readily accepted his resignation. "
DW-World - "Serbia's pro-Western President Boris Tadic in Moscow... thanked the Russian leadership for its support of Serbia in the Kosovo conflict, as the two countries agreed to grant Russia a major stake in Serbia's oil and gas industry. In the presence of Tadic and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia's state-controlled oil concern Gazprom and Serbia's NIS signed an agreement granting Gazprom control of 51 percent of the Serbian company for 400 million euros ($586 million)."
Guardian - "Detectives in Moscow yesterday confirmed they have arrested the man regarded as Russia's most notorious mafia boss, who is wanted by both the US and UK authorities for his alleged involvement in decades of international crime. Police swooped on Semyon Mogilevich when he emerged from a business meeting at Moscow's World Trade Centre. They formally arrested him on Thursday, together with Vladimir Nekrasov, a millionaire Russian businessman."
Spiegel - "Women at Turkish universities could soon show up in class wearing traditional Islamic head scarves... Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has its root in an Islamist religious movement, reached an agreement with an opposition nationalist party on Thursday to cooperate on legislation to lift the two decade-old ban."
Independent - "Helmut Schmidt, Germany's 89-year-old former chancellor and its most renowned and inveterate nicotine addict, became the first prominent victim of his country's new anti-smoking laws yesterday and faced the prospect of court action for lighting up in public."
Guardian - "Molehills... today became a key research tool when a wildlife charity urged people to count them, potentially yielding a mountain of information about the secretive creatures which produce them. The People's Trust for Endangered Species wants at least 10,000 spotters to log molehills over the next eight months... The mole is thought to be widespread in the UK, but it rarely leaves its subterranean burrow and no one knows – or has studied – exactly how many there are, or how many molehills an individual mole is responsible for."
NYT - "For the first time since Kenya plunged into postelection chaos four weeks ago, the nation’s warring political leaders met face to face on Thursday, but afterward opposition leaders accused the president of being a fraud. President Mwai Kibaki, who won re-election by a suspiciously thin margin, and the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, who says the election was rigged, talked for about an hour in Mr. Kibaki’s office. It was just the two of them, along with Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, who is overseeing the negotiations."
NYT - "The political bickering continued in Kenya on Friday, and so did the violence, with young men in gangs from opposing ethnic groups killing one another in the streets with machetes and bows and arrows. Nakuru, one of the biggest towns in the troubled Rift Valley, seems to be the new trouble zone... More than 650 people have been killed in Kenya since a disputed presidential election in December".
AFP - "Zimbabwe's veteran President Robert Mugabe announced on Friday that the crisis-hit southern African country will stage a general election on March 29 when he will seek a sixth term in office... The elections would be held the day after the parliament in Harare is dissolved."
WSJ - "A power-supply crisis in South Africa... forced the suspension of mining activity... The government said it was treating the situation as a national emergency after some of the world's largest mining companies, including AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. and Anglo Platinum Ltd., said they had halted operations across South Africa because the state power provider couldn't ensure the supply of electricity."
Reuters - "Iraqi security forces have begun a 'decisive' final offensive against al Qaeda in Iraq to push the Sunni Islamist militants out of their last major stronghold in the north, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said... 'We have set up an operations room in Nineveh to complete the final battle with al Qaeda along with guerrillas and members of the previous regime,' Maliki said, referring to other Sunni militants the Shi'ite-led government says remain loyal to... Saddam Hussein."
LA Times - "A suicide bomber posing as a policeman killed the police chief of northern Iraq's Nineveh province Thursday as he visited the site of an attack a day earlier. The brazen assassination, which occurred in the presence of Iraqi and U.S. troops, underscored the challenges confronting the American military as it struggles to sustain security gains made in the last year... The police commander, Brig. Gen. Salih Mohammed Hassan, was the third provincial police chief slain since August and the second in less than two months."
McClatchy - "Officials in Iraq's mostly Sunni Muslim Anbar province are refusing to raise Iraq's new national flag, which the parliament approved earlier this week. 'The new flag is done for a foreign agenda and we won't raise it,' said Ali Hatem al Suleiman, a leading member of the U.S.-backed Anbar Awakening Council, 'If they want to force us to raise it, we will leave the yard for them to fight al Qaida.'"
NYT - "Egypt tried to restore its border with Gaza on Friday, stationing riot police officers in an effort to block Palestinians from entering. But Palestinians used a bulldozer to knock down another portion of the wall... The new breaches in the wall were large enough for cars and trucks to drive through, and some Egyptian guards then retreated."
NYT - "A powerful car bomb killed one of Lebanon’s top terrorism investigators and three other people in east Beirut on Friday... The investigator, Capt. Wissam Eid, was killed just before 10 a.m., when a bomb in a parked car near an overpass detonated as he drove past in the mostly Christian Hazmieh district."
McClatchy - "Despite repeated offers from the United States, Iran has refused to set a new date for further talks between the two countries in Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi officials said... The U.S. and Iran were to hold a fourth round of talks in December. The talks never took place... The Bush administration has accused Tehran of funding, training and supplying Shiite militias in Iraq. Iran denies the charge and accuses the U.S. of destabilizing Iraq."
LA Times - "Moderate Iranian politicians barred from participating in upcoming parliamentary elections vowed Thursday to fight the disqualifications and threatened to boycott the vote. Iranian authorities this week barred nearly one-third of the 7,240 candidates who had applied to run in March 14 legislative elections.... But those banned included many members of the so-called reformist camp who tried to change Iran's political culture in the late 1990s and who are hoping to wrest at least one branch of government from conservative hard-liners."
LA Times - "The U.S. military would be willing to undertake joint combat operations with Pakistani forces against Islamic militants if Pakistani leaders request the help, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said... [His] remarks... represented the first such public offer by a top Bush administration official since a change last year in Pakistan's military leadership."
AP - "Pakistan's president said Friday U.S. troops cannot do a better job than his forces in routing the Taliban and al-Qaida, and the United States should increase its presence in Afghanistan instead to deal with the growing insurgency there. Pervez Musharraf reiterated that Pakistan opposes any foreign forces on its soil and said 'the man in the street will not allow this — he will come out and agitate.'"
BBC News - "Pakistan's military says it has successfully fired a medium-range ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The Shaheen-1 (Hatf IV) has a range of 700km (440 miles). It was launched at the end of a training session. Pakistan and its neighbour India - both nuclear powers - routinely carry out missile tests."
Army Times - "U.S. officials are cautiously optimistic. 'We’re not losing in Afghanistan,' Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, President Bush’s deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, said... 'The Taliban is not winning. But we have a lot of work to do.' Lute boasts that the U.S. has 'never been beaten tactically in a firefight in Afghanistan.' But he acknowledged that winning on the battlefield won’t suffice 'unless we can put those tactical military wins together with improved governance by the Karzai regime and improved, coherent reconstruction packages on the economic scene.'"
AP - "Hundreds of Afghans chanted anti-American slogans to protest the deaths of nine policemen who local officials said were killed Thursday in an anti-Taliban operation by U.S.-led coalition troops. The coalition denied killing the policemen."
WaPo - "A death sentence handed to a reporter in Afghanistan has prompted the United Nations and several press freedom organizations to urge the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to intervene in the case. Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 20, a reporter for the daily Jahan-e Naw and a journalism student at Balkh University, was arrested Oct. 27 in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, an area where mullahs hold particular influence over law and cultural life."
The Hindu - In New Delhi, "visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday called for 'rightful place' for India in the emerging world order and strongly backed its entry into the G8 group of nations to tackle the challenges of 21st century more effectively... [Sarkozy] also supported India’s inclusion as a permanent member in the United Nations Security Council".
Guardian - "Police arrested five people, including a doctor, in the suburbs of Delhi early this morning for allegedly removing kidneys from young men without their permission and selling them to wealthy patients. The illegal organ transplant trade was being run from a private hospital in Gurgaon, just outside Delhi. News reports claimed that at least 500 kidneys had been illegally transplanted."
AP - "China unveiled new steps Friday to cool rapidly rising food prices, saying it will boost farm subsidies and curb industrial use of corn after data showed inflation at near decade-high levels despite a slew of earlier measures. Beijing also will try to boost grain production by paying more for wheat and rice".
Reuters - "China told its miners and port authorities on Friday to stop coal exports for the next two months to help end its most severe power crisis yet... China's export halt comes at a time when supply of coal is extremely tight at most exporting countries due to strong demand and a variety of logistical problems."
BBC News - "The divorce rate in China has increased by almost 20% over the past year, with 1.4m couples filing for separation during 2007, government officials say. Some experts put the rise down to a change in the law which has made divorces easier to obtain. Others say China's one-child policy has produced a generation of adults focused on their own needs and unable to sustain a relationship."
Guardian - "A popular Burmese poet has been arrested over a love poem that contained a hidden message criticising the military junta's notoriously sensitive top general. The eight-line poem appeared to be an innocent verse about Valentine's Day, by Saw Wai. But when read vertically the first word of each line describes Burma's leader, General Than Shwe, as 'power-crazed'."
AFP - "Thailand's parliament is to elect the country's new prime minister on Monday, an official said, with the leader of a party backing deposed premier Thaksin Shinawatra widely tipped for the job... Thaksin's allies in the People Power Party (PPP) ... said the party would nominate its bullish leader Samak Sundaravej as Thailand's new prime minister."
AP - "Police will question Indonesian intelligence agents for the first time about their alleged involvement in the poisoning death of a top human rights activist after a former pilot was convicted Friday of murder. The questioning could break years of deadlock over the investigation into the killing of Munir Thalib, who had a reputation for exposing military abuse during the U.S.-backed dictatorship of former President Suharto."
Jakarta Post - "When the deadly tsunami devastated Aceh and Nias in 2004, the global response was unprecedented. Millions of people -- from children to senior citizens -- donated huge amounts of money and goods to tsunami victims. Indonesia on Thursday expressed its gratitude to the international community during a special ceremony called 'Indonesia Thanks the World', held at Balai Sudirman in Jakarta."
WaPo - "The Pentagon has chosen Guam... as the prime location in the western Pacific for projecting U.S. military muscle... [Guam is] set to become a rapid-response platform... as well as a highly visible reminder to China that the United States is nearby and watching... U.S. Marines by the thousands and U.S. tax dollars by the billions ($13 billion at last count) are to be dispatched to Guam over the next six years, along with a major-league military" weaponry.
AFP - "Japan and the United States on Friday signed an agreement slightly trimming Japan's financial burden for hosting US military bases as Tokyo tries to contain a growing national debt... Japan is struggling to reduce a massive national debt left over from the 1990s when the government used public spending to try to rouse the economy out of recession." Irony is not dead!
AFP - "A Japanese naval ship headed Thursday for the Indian Ocean on a refuelling mission as the country rejoined the US-led 'war on terror' after months of bitter political wrangling... The escort ship Murasame headed to sea from Yokosuka. The fuel supply vessel Oumi is scheduled to leave Friday. The ships will provide fuel and other support to coalition forces operating in the Indian Ocean as part of the US-led" occupation of Afghanistan.
AP - "No beatings. No threats. No overnight interrogations. Facing mounting accusations of brutality, Japan's National Police set their first-ever guidelines for questioning methods Thursday in an attempt to rein in agents who go too far in pressuring suspects to confess. The new rules are the first serious step by the police to change their methods, which have long been criticized at home and abroad for relying too much on confessions — often coerced — rather than on evidence."
Guardian - "Looters have ransacked homes in flood-stricken outback towns in Australia, breaking into abandoned houses and stealing household goods while their owners were holed up in evacuation centres. Police said residents in Queensland, which has been hit by the worst floods in living memory, returned to check on their water-logged properties and were shocked to find windows and doors smashed and their belongings damaged or taken away by thieves."
SMH - "Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says Australia and Japan agreeing to disagree over whaling in Antarctic waters won't affect relations between the two countries. Mr Smith, who flies to Tokyo next week for talks with his Japanese counterpart Masahiko Koumura, described the relationship as long-term and enduring."
BBC News - "Japanese whaling ships have been warned not to enter New Zealand's Antarctic waters by Prime Minister Helen Clark. Military planes were patrolling areas of the Southern Ocean for which New Zealand is responsible and would take photos if they see the fleet, she said."
MercoPress - "Brazil's government managed oil company Petrobras announced this week the discovery of a huge second natural gas field 290 kilometeres off the coast of Rio do Janeiro and 40 kilometeres north of the Tupi field which is thought to be one of the largest discovered in the past twenty years... The discovery was made by a consortium made up of Petrobras - which has an 80% stake in the find - and Portugal's Galp Energies (20%)."
Guardian - "Amazon rainforest deforestation has "risen sharply. Government satellite images show that at least 1,280 sq miles (3,235 sq kilometers) of rainforest were lost between August and December last year, mainly because of soy planting and cattle ranching... The Brazilian Amazon has been decimated by a combination of loggers, farmers and ranchers over the last 40 years... Generous US subsidies for biofuel crops are a big factor behind the sudden deforestation."
LA Times - "Hector Febres was the man who knew too much." The former coast guard officer was awaiting a verdict on charges of torture during Argentina's 'Dirty War' "was poisoned last month in his cell... Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado, who is overseeing the investigation [of his death], rejected speculation about suicide and ruled this month that Febres probably was slain to keep him silent. Who killed him remains a mystery."
AFP - "A Venezuelan national on Friday pleaded guilty in a plot to cover up the source of 800,000 dollars seized in Buenos Aires and allegedly destined for the electoral campaign Cristina Kirchner, now Argentina's president. Moses Maionica, 36, admitted before a US judge in Miami that he acted as an unregistered agent of the Venezuelan government in the United States."
Miami Herald - "A stream of invective by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez branding Colombian President Alvaro Uribe a 'liar,' 'coward' and 'pawn of the U.S. empire' has tumbled relations between the two neighbors. Analysts say Chávez is acting partly from personal animosity toward Uribe... and partly to strengthen his hand politically at home and abroad after several recent reversals."
Globe and Mail - "The Harper government's position that it was not aware the [Canadian] military had suspended the transfer of prisoners to Afghan custody fully unravelled Friday as the Prime Minister's communications director retracted comments she had made to that effect, while the Opposition claimed it was briefed on the policy change two weeks ago."
Globe and Mail - "Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is at odds with the federal government and on a collision course with other premiers after the release Thursday of his long-anticipated climate-change plan... With its booming oil industry and reliance on coal-fired electricity, Alberta is responsible for one-third of Canada's total emissions and shows the fastest growth in greenhouse gases."