US officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since Pres. Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren't counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians. While the number of “sectarian murders” not involving bombs has decreased, the number of people killed in explosive attacks is rising: up from 323 in March to 365 just through April 24. Bush told Charlie Rose that counting those bombings would be handing their perpetrators “victory.”

Experts who have studied car bombings say it's no surprise that US officials would want to exclude their victims from any measure of success. Car bombs are almost impossible to detect and stop, particularly in a traffic-jammed city such as Baghdad. US officials in Baghdad concede that while they've found scores of car bomb factories in Iraq, they've made only a small dent in the manufacturing of these weapons.

Main Source: McClatchy Newspapers

Lawyers for some of the 385 prisoners still at the US's Guantánamo prison have condemned a Justice Dept. request for tighter restrictions on client visits. The lawyers say their jobs are already near-impossible and that claims they are security threats and inappropriately pass information to media are really attempts to further diminish the already severely limited scrutiny Guantánamo receives. They say prisoner unrest is in reaction to jail conditions, not their instigation, and that all of their information goes through military censors.

Under the proposals, filed earlier this month in Washington DC, lawyers would be restricted to just 3 visits with an existing client, correspondence they send to their clients would be vetted by military intelligence officers and government officials would be empowered to prevent lawyers from having access to secret evidence used by military tribunals to decide whether the prisoners were "enemy combatants".

Main Source: The Independent

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is to sue the EPA if it fails to act promptly on California's 2005 request to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from autos. The administration demands action by the end of October, at which point more than 22 months will have passed with no decision. A recent Supreme Court ruling dismissed the EPA and Bush claim it lacks the authority to regulate the gases that contribute to global warming. The EPA has begun the process to act on California's request but refuses to set a timetable for a decision.
Main Source: Associated Press

Gunmen plundered 12 truck-loads of computers and bags of sugar from a shelled Coca Cola plant in Mogadishu on Friday during a lull in fighting between allied Somali-Ethiopian troops and insurgents, a local manager said. The odd stray bullet was heard in the Somali capital, a day after PM Ali Mohamed Gedi claimed gains in the government's 9-day offensive against Islamist fighters and some clansmen. But many Somalis, undergoing a refugee exodus worse than Iraq in recent months, were skeptical the war was winding down.

There was no respite for medical workers struggling with little or no supplies to patch up the wounded, many ferried to overflowing hospitals in wheelbarrows and donkey carts. Trapped by fighting, several women gave birth in an improvised maternity ward – a grass hut under a tree, where one midwife has delivered 6 babies in the last 3 days. Some 350,000 people have fled Mogadishu since February, more than 1/3 of its 1 million population.

Main Source: Reuters

Citing US plans for missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, Pres. Vladimir Putin has announced Russia will withdraw from a treaty, seen as the cornerstone of stability in Europe, that limits troop deployment and conventional weapons. Putin accused the US of a plot to build up its military forces in the region, rejecting US claims the shield is to defend against attack by Iran. Putin has quadrupled defense spending and plans a new class of ballistic missiles, while the US has resisted Russian proposals for mutual nuclear weapons reduction.
Main Source: The Telegraph

White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 federal agencies, a White House spokesman and other administration officials said Wednesday. The previously undisclosed briefings were part of what appears to be a regular effort in which the White House sent senior political officials to brief top appointees on which seats GOP candidates might win or lose, and how the election outcomes could affect administration policies.

Such influence is prohibited under a federal law known as the Hatch Act, meant to insulate virtually all federal workers from partisan politics. In addition to forbidding workplace pressures meant to influence an election outcome, the law bars the use of federal resources – including office buildings, phones and computers – for partisan purposes.

Main Source: Washington Post

The FBI touts civil-rights enforcement as a top priority, but the number of investigations into such cases – from hate crimes to police abuses – has fallen sharply, raising concerns that victims are left with nowhere else to turn. Pressed by the Bush administration to beef up counterterrorism ranks, the Bureau has pulled agents off civil rights and slashed the number of investigations conducted nationwide. From 2001-2005, new policies have contributed to two-thirds fewer investigations targeting crimes typically left to federal jurisdiction.
Main Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer

FEMA is to extend payments until March 2009 for the more than 100,000 households dependent on housing aid since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. But, beginning March 2008, residents of government-subsidized housing will have to pay rent, starting at $50 and increasing another $50 each month. Some residents, such as disabled people and seniors, would be exempt. The at least 86,000 residents living in trailers or mobile homes would be given the option to buy the homes at fair-market value. HUD is to take over the program from FEMA.

Advocates criticized the new plan as short-sighted and noted it excludes many former residents of New Orleans public housing complexes slated for demolition. Those residents fear being left homeless when their HUD aid expires in September. A class-action lawsuit seeks to return them to public housing.

Main Source: LA Times

Canada's Conservative government has announced a new emissions-reduction plan that falls well short of the country’s commitments under the Kyoto protocol on climate change. Large emitters of industrial greenhouse gas not meeting the timetable will be allowed to pay into a fund for pollution control technologies and companies will be given credit for emission reductions in the past.

Environmental groups said that because the planned reduction by 18% over 3 years is tied to units of production, not overall output, total greenhouse emissions in Canada may continue to rise. They specifically noted the oil sands projects in Alberta – an increasingly important energy source for the US – would probably increase production by twice the rate they are required to curb per-unit gas emissions during the 3-year period.

Main Source: New York Times

The Senate took the rare step of attempting to end a war Thursday, calling on Pres. Bush to withdraw most American troops from Iraq by next April. The $124.2 billion spending bill, approved by the Senate 51-46 after House passage Wednesday, provides more than $90 billion for general war spending over the next several months. The president has promised to veto the legislation as soon as it crosses his desk, probably early next week, and Congress lacks the votes to override Bush’s block.
Main Source: Chicago Tribune

Japan's Supreme Court on Friday cited a 1972 agreement when denying Chinese people's rights to demand compensation from the Japanese government for their forced labor during World War II. The decision overturned a 2004 lower court ruling that ordered a construction company to pay $231,000 to 2 workers and relatives of 3 others forced to labor in severe conditions on the construction of a Hiroshima hydroelectric plant.

The new decision sets precedent expected to affect rulings in other cases in which Chinese and South Korean plaintiffs are demanding war-related compensation. Victims of Japan's wartime aggression – forced labourers and sex slaves – have so far filed about 60 lawsuits with Japanese courts, seeking compensation and apologies from the Japanese government and concerned companies. Many of the lawsuits have been dismissed because of a 20-year statute of limitations to demand compensation, others have been settled outside of court.

Main Source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur

A US Army officer who was commander of a military prison in Iraq has been charged with giving a cell phone to suspected insurgents who were detained there, a charge described as "aiding the enemy." Lt. Col. William H. Steele, who was commander of the Army's Camp Cropper, was also charged with having an improper relationship with a detainee's daughter and an interpreter and possessing pornography, the military said. Steele was arrested last month and confined in a military jail in Kuwait while he awaits preliminary hearings.
Main Source: CNN

The Iraqi government has refused to provide the UN with civilian casualty figures for its latest report, but numbers from various government ministries indicate over 5,500 people killed in Baghdad alone in the first 3 months of 2007. Numbers provided by ministry employees could not be independently verified but were higher than an independent death count based on news accounts and indicate an increase in the recent weeks of the “security plan.” In October, researchers estimated over 600,000 Iraqi civilians killed since the 2003 invasion.

The UN also accused the Iraqi government of failing to “seriously address” problems of detainee abuse, including torture, and to ensure timely and fair prosecution. The emergency regulations governing the Iraq-US crackdown permit arrest without warrants and open-ended pretrial detention, the report said, estimating that over 3,000 people were taken into custody during the plan's first seven weeks. A rights group reported last month that hundreds of people detained in the security crackdown had been jammed into woefully overcrowded detention centers.

Among the UN report's other findings: More than 200 academics have been killed since the start of the war for sectarian reasons or because of their largely secular views and teachings; detainees in Iraqi government-run prisons have frequently been tortured or forced to confess to alleged crimes; at least 40 women in the Kurdistan region have died this year in suspected "honor killings." Such deaths, many of them from burning, followed family members' accusations of immoral conduct involving the victims, the report says.

At least 9 Iraqi police were killed and 15 people wounded by a suicide bomber at an army checkpoint in the Diyala province town of Balad Ruz, a stronghold of Sunni Muslim insurgents. A roadside bomb in north Baghdad killed at least 3 more people and injured 8. Rockets killed 2 more civilians in a southeast Baghdad area where another rocket attack killed 10 people on Tuesday. Yet another rocket attack killed 2 people southwest of Baghdad.

Main Source: LA Times

Also...

» Suicide bomb kills 9 Iraqi soldiers, injures 15 others   (Reuters)

» UN criticizes Iraq government on detainee abuse  (New York Times)

The US Supreme Court has overturned 3 death sentences Texas issued to convicts in the 1990s, saying the men deserve fresh trials. Prior to a Supreme Court decision in 1989, Texas required the death penalty if a jury found the convict committed deliberate murder and was a future threat of violent crimes. The procedure likely prevented jurors from considering "constitutionally relevant mitigating evidence." Texas changed its jury instructions in 1991, only after at least 47 of 392 condemned were sentenced under the flawed instructions.
Main Source: Agence France-Presse

A majority of the Supreme Court's right-leaning bench may reject a key part of the 2002 campaign-finance reform law that bans ads from endorsing or opposing candidates by name just before elections. Even “issue ads” aired mainly by political action committees often help or hurt candidates. But some justices argued lifting the ban would gut the law's restrictions on unregulated “soft money” by allowing corporations to pay for ads, which Justice Breyer considers “the single best way to get somebody defeated or elected.”
Main Source: CNN

Also...

» Justices warn 'soft money' would effectively be unregulated  (New York Times)

The US House has voted 218–208 in favor of a $124 billion spending measure that the Senate is expected to pass today. The huge bill would fund the war on Iraq, among other things, but it demands troop withdrawals begin Oct. 1 or sooner if the Iraqi government does not meet certain benchmarks. The bill sets a non-binding goal of completing the troop pullout by April 2008, allowing for forces conducting certain non-combat missions to remain. Democrats lack the 2/3 majority needed to override a veto Pres. Bush has promised for the bill.
Main Source: Associated Press

US and Iraqi efforts to win international support to stabilize Iraq’s economy are running up against serious obstacles, with key countries balking at provisions for debt relief and others concerned about blanket endorsement of an Iraqi government that has failed to follow through on many political promises, according to sources involved in the negotiations.

Kuwait, Russia, China and Iran in particular are hesitant to sign a proposed resolution that calls for 100% debt relief for Iraq, given the tens of billions each country is owed in outright debts or in war compensation by Baghdad. Washington has officially forgiven the $4.5 billion Iraq technically owed the US, but other Western creditors have only forgiven up to 80%, which is the same relief most Middle Eastern and Asian creditors are now saying they’ll consider. Still, the US is asking them for more.

All of Iraq’s debt and war compensation was accumulated under Saddam Hussein, whose regime creditors now uniformly consider to have been illegitimate. This has led dissident debt-relief advocates to argue that the debt is “odious” and should therefore be forgiven as a matter of principle, acquired as it was by a dictator.

Main Source: Washington Post

Also...

» U.S. calls on countries to relieve Iraq’s debt  (DPA)

» Archived: U.S. forgives Iraq debt to clear way for IMF  (The NewStandard)

Ethiopian tanks pounded supposed insurgent positions in Mogadishu on Thursday, intensifying an offensive that has emptied half the city of its residemts. Insurgents fired back with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades in a second week of fighting that has centered around an anti-government stronghold in the north of the city.

Fighters called the escalation the heaviest since US-backed Somali-Ethiopian forces defeated Islamists in a 2-week war at the end of 2006. Locals and rights activists say nearly 300 people have been killed in the sustained battles. A car-bomb attack on Ethiopian trucks killed 4 civilians in Mogadishu and a suicide car bomber blew up at an Ethiopian military base west of of the capital on Tuesday. An aid director said a missile stuck the roof of a children’s hospital packed with 20-30 adult civilians already wounded in fighting. The children had been evacuated.

Main Source: Reuters

Also...

» Missile hits Mogadishu hospital packed with civilians  (Associated Press)

» Mogadishu suicide bomber kills 4 civilians at Ethiopian base  (Reuters)

The state on Wednesday dropped 36 counts of cruelty to the infirm against the owners of a nursing home where 35 people died in the flooding of Hurricane Katrina. Salvador Mangano and his wife, Mabel, still face 28 counts of cruelty to the infirm and 35 counts of negligent homicide. State prosecutors said the Manganos, who own St. Rita's nursing home in St. Bernard Parish, should have taken steps to evacuate patients before flood waters rose due to the 2005 storm.
Main Source: Associated Press

Peru's largest miners federation is planning an indefinite, nationwide strike for Apr. 30, and workers at many of the country's largest pits – including the largest gold mine in Latin America – vow to join the walkout for better benefits. The federation of 74 mining unions, representing some 22,000 workers, is demanding Pres. Alan Garcia fulfill campaign pledges to eliminate mining-company outsourcing and to improve pension benefits. Mine owners have described the strike as a political protest and asked the government to declare it illegal.
Main Source: Reuters

Also...

» Peru oil exploration could harm 'hidden' tribes  (Reuters)

Cuba appears to have taken a step toward blunting international criticism of repression on the island with the release of 7 political prisoners, including well-known dissident leader Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, who’d spent 17 years in prison when he was released Sunday. On Tuesday, Havana released another 6 men, whose arrests in 2005 led to the adoption of sanctions by the EU, which have since been lifted temporarily. The releases come ahead of a high-level meeting between Cuba and Spain at which Cuba will seek a permanent end to EU sanctions.
Main Source: The Independent

More than 400 North Koreans being held in a Thai immigration facility have launched a hunger strike, demanding they be sent to South Korea. The asylum seekers – 100 men and 314 women – have waited in the cramped detention center for about 3 months. A South Korean asylum aid official told the defectors they could go to South Korea if they ended the hunger strike, but the refugees demanded to see their air tickets before complying.

More North Koreans began fleeing the country after the 1990s, when famine caused by natural disasters and mismanagement led to as many as 2 million deaths. Some 10,000 North Koreans have sought refuge in South Korea, most arriving in recent years. Those seeking to flee North Korea do so through the comparatively porous frontier with China, since the border with South Korea is among the world's most fortified – the Koreas remaining technically at war. Thousands more North Koreans are believed to be hiding in China, which deports them to North Korea.

Main Source: Associated Press

As Special Counsel Scott Bloch plans a probe of some Bush administration activities, advocates pointed to his deficient record and deep ties to the administration and conservative groups, warning he may just “provide cover" for a White House seen as covering for him. Bloch is to investigate White House political motives behind the firing of at least one US attorney; if Karl Rove's staff violated the Hatch Act in briefing agency managers on Republican goals; and if the White House improperly used RNC accounts for e-mails.

Whistleblower groups have long said Bloch has a record of ignoring and failing to protect those reporting wrongdoing, which is his primary job as special counsel. At Bloch's confirmation hearing, he was urged to reduce the large backlog of whistle-blower and other complaints. Bloch disposed of a great many of them – so many that an advocate for environmental whistle-blowers said they had received no satisfaction from the agency.

Main Source: LA Times

Also...

» Archived: Whistleblower office accused of ‘purging’ staff  (The NewStandard)

» Rove investigator himself under suspicion  (Truthout)

A crowd of abortion-rights activists welcomed Mexico City lawmakers' 46–19 vote requiring city hospitals to provide abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. But the law, which also opens the way for private abortion clinics, is facing a run-in with the Catholic church and a likely court battle. Opponents vowed to go to Mexico's supreme court to challenge the bill expected to have effects far beyond the capital, which is North America's largest city and home to much of the country's hospital and healthcare infrastructure.

Under the Mexico City bill, women having an abortion after 12 weeks would be punished by 3–6 months in jail. Those who perform the abortion operation after the first 12 weeks would face 1–3 years in jail. Girls under 18 would need their parents' consent for any abortion. In the rest of Mexico, abortion is allowed only in cases of rape, severe birth defects or if the woman's life is at risk. Doctors sometimes refuse to perform the procedure even under those circumstances.

Main Source: Associated Press

Native American and Alaskan women are suffering rates of rape and sexual violence nearly 3 times higher than the US average, a new Amnesty International study says. The study found a maze of tribal, state and federal jurisdictions often allowed men to rape with impunity, creating a vicious cycle that emboldened rapists and led to more attacks. Justice Dept. figures indicated more than 1 in 3 Native women would be raped in their lifetime, although that figure may be substantially higher because of a traditional reluctance to report sex crimes.

The report accused the US government of undermining tribal justice systems by consistent under-funding, which results in a dearth of appropriately trained medical staff at Indian Health Service facilities and waits of hours or days for police response to reported rape or sex crimes. Alaska was the rape capital of the US, Amnesty said citing FBI statistics. Between 2000 and 2003, one study found that native Alaskan women in Anchorage were roughly 10 times more likely to be raped than other women in the city.

Main Source: Agence France-Presse

Also...

» Archived: Violence against native women has ‘colonial roots’  (The NewStandard)

Scores of gunmen attacked a Chinese-run oil field in a remote area of Ethiopia on Tuesday, killing 9 Chinese and 65 Ethiopians, in a raid claimed by a separatist rebel group. Guerillas with the Ogaden National Liberation Front, which is fighting for the independence of ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia's eastern Ogaden region, also kidnapped at least 6 Chinese workers. A government spokesman said some Ethiopians may also have been kidnapped during the assault in a location where China's Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau is searching for oil.
Main Source: Agence France-Presse

Outrage over the construction of a wall around a Sunni Arab neighborhood in Baghdad has revealed the depths of Iraqi frustration with the petty humiliations created by the occupation forces’ new security plan, ostensibly intended to protect them. American and some Iraqi officials were clearly taken aback by the ferocity of the opposition to the wall, and on Monday the US was showing signs of backing away from the plan.

At a rally on Monday, residents of the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Adhamiya pledged support for PM Nouri Al-Maliki because of his declaration on Sunday in Cairo that construction of the wall around their neighborhood must stop. Their endorsement was revealing because many Sunnis see Maliki as the representative of a government bent on annihilation of Sunnis. But Shia groups fear that though Sunni Arab neighborhoods are the ones being cordoned off this week, next month it could be Shiite areas as well.

Main Source: New York Times

Home sales posted their sharpest drop in 18 years in March, a real estate group said Tuesday, as problems in the subprime mortgage sector pushed sales well below what economists had forecast. Sales of existing homes fell 8.4% to an annual rate of 6.12 million in March from February's 6.68 million rate, the National Association of Realtors said. It was the biggest one-month drop since January 1989.

The median home price slipped 0.3% to $217,000 from a year earlier. Earlier this month, the real-estate trade group Wachovia projected that 2007 would be the first year to show a decline in the nearly 40 years that it has tracked prices.

Phillip Neuhart, an economist with Wachovia, said it's clear that potential home buyers are being spooked by the continued bad news about home sales and prices, as well as problems in subprime mortgages. Housing worries were one of the factors in the drop in the Conference Board's consumer confidence index, also released Tuesday.

Main Source: CNN

Ecuador police fired tear gas in sporadic confrontations with some 400 pro-reform protesters rallying against lawmakers who rejected a court decision backing a national referendum to rewrite the country's constitution. A prosecutor ordered the arrest of 24 right-wing deputies, nearly half of the 50 who the country's highest court had ordered reinstated after being sacked for opposing Pres. Rafael Correa's far-reaching reforms. Several of the deputies fled to Colombia to avoid charges of treason.

The accusations followed Congress's dismissal of the country's 9 Constitutional Tribunal justices for reinstating the lawmakers who opposed Correa. With the political opposition out of the way, voters then this month approved the convention by a 5-to-1 margin, giving Correa the go-ahead in his effort to revamp the legislature and other government structures to pursue his nationalist, “socialist” agenda.

Main Source: Agence France-Presse

The head of the US Environmental Protection Agency has signed papers formally beginning the process to rule on California's request for federal permission to regulate tailpipe emissions, but the agency head repeatedly refused to say how soon he will decide whether to regulate carbon dioxide. In April, the US Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's long-held argument that it had no authority to regulate the heat-trapping gas.

While the court did not say the EPA must regulate carbon, it said if it doesn't, it must show that carbon dioxide emissions are not a danger to public health. California cannot implement 2002 regulations to reduce auto emissions without federal permission. The California standards have been adopted by 11 other states also awaiting EPA action before they can move.

Main Source: Orange County Register

Also...

» EPA won't specify global-warming plans  (Associated Press)

The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland's enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming. Several miles long, the island was once thought to be the tip of a peninsula halfway up Greenland's remote east coast but a glacier joining it to the mainland has melted away completely, leaving it surrounded by sea. It’s discoverer named the newly isolated spot “Warming Island.”
Main Source: The Independent

Scientists have discovered a planet not much bigger than Earth that could be covered in oceans and has the right temperature to support life. And it is only 20.5 short light years away. By 2020, it should be possible for a telescope to take a close look at the planet, which has not yet been named, to see if there is any sign of life. The newly found planet is older than our solar system. It is revolving around the star known as Gliese 581, a red dwarf in the Libra constellation.
Main Source: The Independent

A veteran US lawmaker on Tuesday introduced legislation urging VP Dick Cheney's impeachment for manipulating intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq. The resolution introduced by House Democrat Dennis Kucinich also says Cheney fabricated ties between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, and has threatened aggression against Iran “absent any real threat to the US." Kucinich, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, said the bill would go a long way in restoring the US's world standing, which has suffered because of its war on Iraq.
Main Source: Agence France-Presse

Inmates set fires and tried to tear down a fence in a massive riot at a prison in Indiana on Tuesday in which at least 2 members of the corrections staff were injured, officials said. Casualties among inmates were not reported. Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the "disturbance" at the New Castle Correctional Facility, a medium-security men's prison, the Dept. of Corrections said. Prisoners set at least three blazes and attempted to rip down fences, prompting police and corrections officials to try to secure the perimeter.
Main Source: Agence France-Presse