Wednesday, April 09, 2008

SPB News for Wednesday.


Report: Jimmy Carter to Meet With Hamas Leader in Syria — NEW YORK CITY — Former President Jimmy Carter is reportedly preparing an unprecedented meeting with the leader of Hamas, an organization that the U.S. government considers one of the leading terrorist threats in the world.


US Water Pipelines Are Breaking The Environmental 'Protection' Agency says utilities will need to invest more than $277 billion over the next two decades on repairs and improvements to drinking water systems. Water industry engineers put the figure drastically higher, at about $480 billion. Water utilities, largely managed by city governments , have never faced improvements of this magnitude before. And customers will have to bear the majority of the cost through rate increases, according to the American Water Works Association, an industry group

Bush seeks $4 billion more for Afghan reconstruction projects The Bush regime is hoping to pledge almost $4 billion in additional aid for Afghanistan at an international donors conference to be held in Paris in June, a U.S. official said Tuesday. France will host the meeting on June 14 and has set a broad goal of raising $12 billion to $15 billion to fund Afghan reconstruction projects through 2014. The United States is looking to contribute a minimum of 25 percent of that total, the official said.

U.S. Lawmakers Invested in Iraq, Afghanistan Wars U.S. lawmakers have a financial interest in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a review of their accounts has revealed. Members of Congress invested nearly 196 million dollars of their own money in companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a day from Pentagon contracts to provide goods and services to U.S. armed forces, say nonpartisan watchdog groups.


Secret plans for US troops to stay in Iraq A secret draft agreement is being drawn up to allow United States forces to remain in Iraq indefinitely, it has been reported. The document, which was written a month ago and is and marked "secret" and "sensitive", is intended to replace the United Nations mandate for coalition troops, including British forces, to remain in Iraq, which expires at the end of the year. The draft authorisation would allow for the US to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security".


FBI Data Transfers Via Telecoms Questioned --FBI budget for collection system increased from $30M in 2007 to $40M in 2008 When FBI investigators probing potential 'terrorist plots' anywhere want access to a suspect's telephone contacts, technicians at a telecommunications carrier served with a government order can instantly transfer key data along a computer circuit to an FBI technology office in Quantico. The circuits, little-known electronic connections between telecom firms and FBI monitoring personnel around the country, are used to tell the government who is calling whom, along with the time and duration of a conversation and even the locations of those involved. Recently, three Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to colleagues citing privacy concerns over one of the Quantico circuits and demanding more information about it.


Libby won't fight for Pa. law license Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. will not fight to keep his law license in Pennsylvania. Libby was disbarred by Washington, D.C., courts last month over his perjury conviction in the CIA leak case. State and federal court officials in Pennsylvania have issued a temporary suspension in the wake of Libby's conviction.


Credit crunch costs '$1 trillion' The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that potential losses from the credit crunch will reach $945bn (£472bn) and could be even higher. The IMF says that losses are spreading from sub-prime mortgage assets to other sectors, such as commercial property, consumer credit, and company debt. It says that there was a "collective failure" to appreciate the risky borrowing by financial institutions.

Conyers Schedules Hearing with John Yoo
House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) wants to former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo to discuss his now-infamous March 14, 2003 memo that broadly authorized the use of torture by military interrogators of unlawful combatants.

1 comment:

airJackie said...

Yoo listen and learned well from the criminal activity of the Korean War. As his parents left Korea because of the torture and lack of human rights. Yoo decided to in put those laws to replace the US Constitution. Now one might ask by the President or his advisers didn't step in. Well it was exactly what the White House wanted. Yoo should be charged with War Crimes and so should the rest of the White House. To bad the Media and reporters never read what happen during the Korean War they will have seen it's being done in the United States now.

Interesting to see President Carter go to visit Hamas. At lease one American Leaders respects the fact they won the election.