TOP STORY
- Many Americans don't believe humans responsible for climate change, study finds.
Even as the president pressed the G8 and the world's major polluters to resist cynicism and the pressure of the economic recession to act against global warming, a majority of Americans remain unconvinced that humans are responsible for climate change, or that there is an urgent need to act.
About 49% of Americans believe the Earth is getting warmer because of the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity, the survey by the Pew Research Centre and the American Association for the Advancement of Science said. Some 36% attributed global warming to natural changes in the atmosphere and another 10% said there was no clear evidence that the earth was indeed undergoing climate change.
Scientists in contrast are overwhelmingly persuaded that global warming is caused by humans - some 84% blame human activity.
Meteor Blade’s Green Diary Rescue celebrates Daily Kos eco diarists 6 days a week!
POLITICAL NEWS
- House overwhelmingly rejects signing statement.
The House rebuked President Obama for trying to ignore restrictions to international aid payments, voting overwhelmingly for an amendment forcing the administration to abide by its constraints.
House members approved an amendment by a 429-2 vote to have the Obama administration pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require a Treasury Department report on World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) activities. The amendment to a 2010 funding bill for the State Department and foreign operations was proposed by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), but it received broad bipartisan support.
The conditions on World Bank and IMF funding were part of the $106 billion war supplemental bill that was passed last month. Obama, in a statement made as he signed the bill, said that he would ignore the conditions.
- Panetta orders internal probe of secret spy program after some members of Congress say CIA misled them.
CIA director Leon Panetta has ordered an internal inquiry into the agency's handling of a contentious and still highly-classified intelligence program that has caused a heated dispute between the CIA and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee. The move by Panetta appears to be an implicit acknowledgement by the agency that it should have disclosed information about the post-9/11 secret program to Congress much earlier than it did.
CIA and congressional officials have refused to describe the nature of the covert program, but insisted it is not connected to the CIA's use of controversial "enhanced" interrogation techniques. But the program's existence erupted into a major political dispute Wednesday night when seven House Intelligence Committee Democrats released a letter charging that the agency had "concealed significant actions" and "mislead" members of Congress by failing to inform the oversight committees about the program until last month. The Democrats demanded that Panetta "publicly correct" his statement last May 15 declaring "it is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress."
- Washington Post sorry after sale of political dinners turns sour -- Readers and journalists protest over newspaper's bid to profit from lobbyists.
The paper's website announced an internal investigation into how such an idea was ever even considered. Meanwhile, the paper's executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, and its CEO, Donald Graham, are spending this week meeting with small groups of reporters to assure them the whole thing was a mistake. "We should be in the business of shining bright lights on dark corners, not creating the dark corners," Mr Brauchli said.
- If Obama’s Political Operation Can Pressure Senators, Why Not Liberal Groups?
Ever since it was reported last week that President Obama privately said he’s wary of outside liberal groups pressuring Dem Senators to back a public health care option, there’s been a bunch of debate about whether the President tacitly wants them to keep it up.
Here’s a bit of evidence that he does: Obama’s outside political operation, Organizing for America, is doing the same thing, pressuring Senators to back a public option.
- House Dems look at taxing the rich for health care.
House Democrats working on President Barack Obama's goal of health legislation are narrowing in on an income tax surcharge on the highest-paid wage earners to help subsidize insurance for the 50 million people who lack it.
- Cyber attack targets include White House and the Pentagon.
A powerful internet attack that overwhelmed computers at US and South Korean government agencies for days was even broader than initially realised: targets included the White House, the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange and other official websites in the most widespread cyber offensive of recent years.
Other targets of the attack included the National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, State Department, the Nasdaq stock market and The Washington Post newspaper, according to an early analysis of the malicious software used in the attacks.
The cyber assault on the White House site had "absolutely no effect on the White House's day-to-day operations," said spokesman Nick Shapiro.
- Justice Department Whistleblower Is Fired in Alabama re Siegelman case.
A U.S. Department of Justice whistleblower has been fired from her job after speaking out about wrongdoing in the Middle District of Alabama.
Grimes provided documents to Justice Department watchdogs showing that Leura Canary, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, had stayed on the Siegelman case long after she had supposedly recused herself. Grimes also provided evidence of improper contacts between jurors and members of the prosecution team.
- Gov Web Sites Still Offer Conflicting Numbers on Stimulus Spending.
Last month, we noted that tracking stimulus spending at federal agencies was a job worthy of Sherlock Holmes. Different agencies count their stimulus spending in different ways, while the government’s catch-all site Recovery.gov appears to use out-of-date and even contradictory information.
The latest example is stimulus spending at the Social Security Administration.
- Dallas police cut extra protection at George W. Bush's home.
In addition to the usual Secret Service protection, Dallas until last week had stationed one on-duty tactical officer per eight-hour shift on the street outside the president’s home. The estimated cost of that service was $300,000 for about a year, according to police officials who asked that they not be named.
"We just had to cut it," said one police official, who agreed to speak on the condition on anonymity. "We’re about to layoff people."
WAR NEWS
- No cap on troops for Afghanistan.
AMERICA'S military chief has flagged the possibility of sending more US troops to Afghanistan on top of 68,000 approved by the Obama Administration, warning that Americans should brace for more US casualties.
Over the past fortnight there has been speculation that there is an unofficial ceiling on the US commitment of troops to Afghanistan, after National Security Adviser General Jim Jones was reported as telling commanders in Afghanistan that President Barack Obama was likely to react badly to a troop request.
But Admiral Mike Mullen has denied there is a cap on the US commitment in Afghanistan, which was identified by President Obama as a priority.
"There is not a ceiling on troop levels," Admiral Mullen, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a speech to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies on Tuesday.
- Mass bombings throughout Iraq leave dozens dead.
Mass bombings continued for a second day Thursday throughout Iraq, killing dozens of people and wounding more than 130 in at least three cities a week after the U.S. military withdrew combat forces from Iraq's major cities.
The widely scattered violence raised fears of a resurgence of the sectarian trauma that plunged the country into a low-grade civil war in 2006-07. Reports have surfaced about a return of the ethnic expulsions by Sunni Muslim and Shiite Muslim insurgents that led to the war's bloodiest months.
- Kurds Defy Baghdad, Laying Claim to Land and Oil.
With little notice and almost no public debate, Iraq’s Kurdish leaders are pushing ahead with a new constitution for their semiautonomous region, a step that has alarmed Iraqi and American officials who fear that the move poses a new threat to the country’s unity.
...The proposed constitution enshrines Kurdish claims to territories and the oil and gas beneath them. But these claims are disputed by both the federal government in Baghdad and ethnic groups on the ground, and were supposed to be resolved in talks begun quietly last month between the Iraqi and Kurdish governments, sponsored by the United Nations and backed by the United States. Instead, the Kurdish parliament pushed ahead and passed the constitution, partly as a message that it would resist pressure from the American and Iraqi governments to make concessions.
- U.S. military didn't want to release Iranians held in Iraq.
The U.S. military on Thursday reluctantly turned over to Iraq five Iranians it had accused of fomenting violence in Iraq. The Iraqi government promptly invited them to meet Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and then released them to Iranian custody.
U.S. spokesmen in Baghdad and Washington said the United States had no choice but to free the five men under the terms of last year's Status of Forces Agreement, which requires the United States eventually to transfer the more than 10,000 Iraqi and third-country detainees it now holds.
- Afghan 'anti-woman law changed'.
The Afghan government says it has changed a planned law which critics had said legalised rape within marriage.
It has removed an article which said a woman had to make herself available for sex with her husband when he desired.
Justice Minister Sarwar Danesh said the changes had been made following complaints by human-rights groups.
- Karzai pardons five Afghan heroin traffickers.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pardoned five heroin smugglers, at least one of them a relative of a man who heads Karzai's campaign for re-election next month, a source and a government spokesman said.
A spokesman for Karzai Thursday confirmed the pardons, which he said came after the intercession of tribal chiefs, long a tradition in such matters in Afghanistan.
A source with knowledge of the case said one of those released was a close relative of Deen Mohammad, who is running Karzai's campaign for re-election in the August 20 presidential poll.
- Karzai victory may trigger Afghan violence, US commander warns.
The expected victory of Hamid Karzai in next month's presidential elections in Afghanistan will trigger a violent backlash from ordinary Afghans, a top US commander in the country has warned.
Although the Taliban have threatened to disrupt polling day itself, David Haight, the US colonel who is in charge of pacifying two strategically vital provinces on the southern doorstep of the capital, Kabul, says he is far more concerned about the aftermath of the election.
- Afghan Truck Blast Kills 16 Children. (video at link)
A huge truck explosion Thursday killed 24 people, including 16 children, in a town south of Kabul, local officials said, and Afghan news media reported that a district along the border with Pakistan had fallen to the Taliban.
The truck had overturned several hours before and the children, ages 8 to 12, had stopped on their way to school to watch police officers investigate the crash when the truck exploded, according to the provincial governor.
WORLD NEWS
- Tehran: army of police and militiamen attack unarmed protesters.
The Iranian regime warned that any demonstrations would be mercilessly crushed, and meant it. As darkness fell on baking, dust-shrouded Tehran last night an army of riot police and hardline basiji militiamen used batons, gun butts and tear gas to beat back thousands of Iranians converging on the city centre.
"The security presence was massive. It was like a military occupation," one witness told The Times. "They were clubbing the hell out of people."
- Iranian police fire in air to disperse protesters.
Riot police fired in the air to disperse pro-reform demonstrators in central Tehran on Thursday, nearly four weeks after a disputed election triggered mass protests across Iran, a witness said.
Police detained several people among hundreds of protesters who turned up near Tehran University in defiance of a ban on gatherings for the anniversary of violent student demonstrations in 1999, the witness told Reuters. Another witness said police also used tear gas.
- Boldness of Qaeda Affiliate in Africa Raises Fears in West.
Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa has carried out a string of slayings, bombings and other lethal attacks against Westerners and African security forces in recent weeks that have raised fears the terrorist group may be turning a more deadly corner.
American and European security counterterrorism officials say that the attacks may signal the return of foreign fighters from the battlefields of Iraq, where they honed their bomb-making skills. The attacks also reflect Al Qaeda’s growing tentacles in the northern tier of Africa, outside the group’s main sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the officials say.
- Obama Enlists Major Powers to Aid Poor Farmers With $15 Billion.
President Obama has enlisted the world’s leading powers to contribute $15 billion to help millions of the world’s poorest farmers grow enough food to feed themselves, American officials said Wednesday.
If the assistance is delivered and is in fact mostly new money, it will constitute the largest international effort in decades to combat hunger by investing in the fundamentals of an agricultural economy, including seed, fertilizer, grain storage and research into new plant varieties.
With the ranks of the hungry expected to exceed a billion people this year, the undertaking has great urgency for the bulk of the world’s poor who still live in rural areas.
- Tamil death toll ‘is 1,400 a week’ at Manik Farm camp in Sri Lanka.
About 1,400 people are dying every week at the giant Manik Farm internment camp set up in Sri Lanka to detain Tamil refugees from the nation’s bloody civil war, senior international aid sources have told The Times.
The death toll will add to concerns that the Sri Lankan Government has failed to halt a humanitarian catastrophe after announcing victory over the Tamil Tiger terrorist organisation in May. It may also lend credence to allegations that the Government, which has termed the internment sites "welfare villages", has actually constructed concentration camps to house 300,000 people.
- China quake destroys 10,000 homes.
An earthquake in south-western China has destroyed 10,000 homes and injured more than 300 people, 30 of them seriously, according to state media.
The US Geological Survey said the 5.7 magnitude quake struck in Yunnan province at 1917 local time (1119 GMT).
ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS
Climate Change & Energy
TORTURE AND PROSECUTION NEWS
- Where's Pentagon 'terrorism suspect'? Talking to Karzai.
Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil spends his days going from one high-level official meeting to another with the swagger of a tribal elder, advocating for the needs of Kunar province, his home region.
[T]he Pentagon says that Wakil is among 74 former Guantanamo Bay detainees who've returned to or are suspected of returning to terrorism after their release from the island prison camp.
... The discovery that Wakil, far from being in hiding, operates openly among officials of Afghanistan's U.S.-allied government raises questions about the report's credibility, however. Despite his bravado, Wakil acknowledges that the report has him worried that he'll be detained again.
- Mexico Accused of Torture in Drug Wars.
The Mexican army has carried out forced disappearances, acts of torture and illegal raids in pursuit of drug traffickers, according to documents and interviews with victims, their families, political leaders and human rights monitors.
From the violent border cities where drugs are brought into the United States to the remote highland regions where poppies and marijuana are harvested, residents and human rights groups describe an increasingly brutal war in which the government, led by the army, is using harsh measures to battle the cartels that continue to terrorize much of the country.
- Revealed – the secret torture evidence MI5 tried to suppress.
The true depth of British involvement in the torture of terrorism suspects overseas and the manner in which that complicity is concealed behind a cloak of courtroom secrecy was laid bare last night when David Davis MP detailed the way in which one counter-terrorism operation led directly to a man suffering brutal mistreatment.
In a dramatic intervention using the protection of parliamentary privilege, the former shadow home secretary revealed how MI5 and Greater Manchester police effectively sub-contracted the torture of Rangzieb Ahmed to a Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), whose routine use of torture has been widely documented.
- Senate again votes to block release of detainee photos.
Lieberman and Graham's move is aimed at trumping a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union that seeks detainee abuse photos. A federal appeals court withdrew its order last month to release the images after a White House appeal. President Barack Obama and Defence Secretary Robert Gates say release of the photos could inflame anti-American sentiment and put U.S. troops at risk.
- It's official: Waterboarding is a word says Dictionary company.
Now the dictionary people at Merriam-Webster have decided it's a real term that came into the American vernacular in 2004.
The word is waterboarding.
And the Springfield, Mass., publishing company announced Thursday that it had introduced the word into its 11th edition Collegiate Dictionary as a noun with the following definition:
"An interrogation technique in which water is forced into a detainee's mouth and nose so as to induce the sensation of drowning.''
NATIONAL NEWS
- Waves of job losses sap U.S. states' budgets.
Already sapped by a long U.S. recession, states' budgets will likely shrivel even more as waves of Americans lose their jobs, and the damage done to public services such as education could last for years.
Looking at the U.S. unemployment rate, which stands at 9.5 percent and is projected to rise above 10 percent, National Governors Association Executive Director Raymond Scheppach said states' economic conditions are going to "get worse in about 10 months, and it'll stay bad for a while."
During any recession, problems caused by job declines appear in states' budgets late in the downturn and are hard to eliminate. Unemployment injures the budgets so badly that economists use jobless rates instead of production and growth to measure the depth of states' recessions.
- US Lawmakers Sound Alarm About Commercial Real Estate Market.
U.S. lawmakers rang alarm bells about the troubled commercial real estate industry, which has been walloped by the credit crunch and an implosion of property values.
"The commercial real estate time bomb is ticking," Joint Economic Committee Chairman Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said in opening remarks to a hearing before her panel Thursday.
Banks have yanked back on lending to developers of shopping malls, apartment complexes, hotels and office parks. Meanwhile, the securitization market - a key source of funding for the commercial real estate industry - has been in a deep freeze since last year.
- Cities lose out on to rural areas on road funds from stimulus: Urban advocates say disparity could stall country’s economic progress.
According to an analysis by The New York Times of 5,274 transportation projects approved so far — the most complete look yet at how states plan to spend their stimulus money — the 100 largest metropolitan areas are getting less than half the money from the biggest pot of transportation stimulus money. In many cases, they have lost a tug of war with state lawmakers that urban advocates say could hurt the nation’s economic engines.
- Every family's nightmare: Burr Oak Cemetery graves allegedly stripped for profit.
But on Wednesday, the historic African-American cemetery became the site of a horror story.
As many as 100 human bodies — someone’s grandfather, grandmother, father, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew cousin or friend — were removed from their graves and the plots resold.
... The thieves dumped the bodies in a mass site in the rear of the cemetery — caskets and all.
- Growing numbers of poor people swamp legal aid offices.
After years of funding shortfalls, legal aid societies across the country are being overwhelmed by growing numbers of poor and unemployed Americans who face eviction, foreclosure, bankruptcy and other legal problems tied to the recession.
The crush of new clients comes as the cash-strapped agencies cut staff and services.
CIVIL RIGHTS, DISCRIMINATION & HATE NEWS
- Mass. challenges federal Defense of Marriage Act.
Massachusetts, the first state in the nation to legalize gay marriage, has become the first to challenge the constitutionality of a federal law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, saying Congress intruded into a matter that should be left to individual states.
- AIDS Activists Arrested After Shutting Down Capitol Rotunda.
A group of 26 AIDS activists chained themselves to each other in the Capitol Rotunda on Thursday morning, startling visitors, shutting down the landmark area and prompting their arrest by Capitol Police.
The group, which was protesting President Barack Obama’s failure to get rid of a ban on funding needle exchange programs, arrived at the Rotunda around 10 a.m.
MISCELLANY NEWS
- Family's urine bid to locate dog.
A family who tried to lure back a lost dog by leaving a trail of their urine on streets near their home have been criticised by the city council.
A Bristol City Council spokeswoman said: "We would not consider this to be a good idea from an environmental health point of view."
Louise Baltesz, 43, said the whole family had been "chipping in" to help lay down the scent trail.
She said she was aware of criticism aimed at the family, but they were willing to do anything to get Simon back.